a snip from taleb's article in forbes:
America's primary export, it appears, is trial-and-error, and the
innovative knowledge attained in such a way. Trial-and-error has error
in it; and most top-down traditional rational and academic environments
do not like the fallibility of "error" and the embarrassment of not
quite knowing where they're going. The U.S. fosters entrepreneurs and
creators, not exam-takers, bureaucrats or, worse, deluded economists.
So the perceived weakness of the American pupil in conventional studies
is where his or her very strength may lie. The American system of trial
and error produces doers: Black Swan-hunting, dream-chasing
entrepreneurs, with a tolerance for a certain class of risk-taking and
for making plenty of small errors on the road to success or knowledge.
This environment also attracts aggressive tinkering foreigners like
this author.
Globalization allowed the U.S. to specialize in the
creative aspect of things, the risk-taking production of concepts and
ideas--that is, the scalable part of production, in which more income
can be generated from the same fixed assets through innovation. By
exporting jobs, the U.S. has outsourced the less scalable and more
linear components of production, assigning them to the citizens of more
mathematical and culturally rigid states, who are happy to be paid by
the hour to work on other people's ideas.
Let us go one step
further. It is high time to recognize that we humans are far better at
doing than understanding, and better at tinkering than inventing. But
we don't know it. We truly live under the illusion of order believing
that planning and forecasting are possible. We are scared of the
random, yet we live from its fruits. We are so scared of the random
that we create disciplines that try to make sense of the past--but we
ultimately fail to understand it, just as we fail to see the future.
there is some significant commentary here for contemporary american humanities scholarship. on the one hand, scholars are quite good these days at trying to amplify the perspective from the margins for the sake of hearing fresher, more perceptive insights into the often very significant blind spots in culture. on the other hand, it is often the case that the very disciplines that are wisely trying to complicate the dominant narratives and amplify the voices on the margin become so circumscribed in their own boundaries of what can be discussed and in what language and with what philosophical assumptions it must be discussed that they often set themselves up to fail in their stated goals. disciplinary boundaries are often themselves disciplinary blindspots, prohibitions against the emergence of synthetic crystallization of human truth.
taleb's "uninhibited, aggressive, proud tinkering" is rare in scholarly communities, because the risks (political and publication/tenure-related) are so high. it is interesting to see that eminent cultural critics in the academy are often not authorized to be such until they have proven their scholarly chops for the first 10-20 years of their careers. many of the best graduate students resist the impulse to tinker at the margins, and are advised against writing the boundary-pushing book that they actually want to write, lest it be considered disciplinarily inappropriate and cut against their (ever-slimming) chances at getting a job, much less getting tenure.
bravery. and time. is what we need.
