Next Wednesday I make my contributions to the Glasgow Science Festival. I'm giving a talk: Fat tails, stock market crashes and the extinction of the dinosaurs: thinking about unlikely events" I have my own take on these stories, of course, starting from some of my professional interests, but best-selling books have also dealt with related topics recently.
I have to expect, for instance, that some of the people in the room will have read The Black Swan by N N Taleb. So I'm reading it myself to have some idea of what he says, and in case there are some good ideas in there I can steal. At the moment this feels like excessive dedication to duty. Mr Taleb has some interesting things to say but he does say them at length. I have no idea what he's like in person but he comes across in print like a certain sort of person you meet in academia: highly intelligent, creative, arrogant, opinionated, garrulous, both inspirational and tedious, difficult to be around. A thin, elegant monograph could have put the same central ideas elegantly and compellingly - and the central ideas are very interesting. But that book wouldn't have been a best-seller, appealing to people who like the image of the hectoring visionary, and Mr Taleb would have had much less fun writing it. Unfortunately a book that is fun to write might be less fun to read.
Haven't finished it yet, maybe it'll get better. Already I dislike anybody in the audience who's read it! (only joking ,please come along even if you have).
One of his recurring images is of the turkey that gets used to regular feeding, to a stable, comfortable environment, oblivious to the possibility of a sudden, dramatic change in its fortunes. Were we turkeys in DACE? I don't think so - but even a keen awareness of bad possibilities doesn't allow you to predict exactly when they will happen. Perhaps this is Mr Taleb's point, and he'll have something useful to say on these lines before I finish the book.
I know I also need to read the sections on natural science before forming a final view. Don't know if I'll mention him or not next Wednesday, let's see where he leads.
Maybe see you there anyway!
