Black Swans and Black Hats

I'm back. What a nice relaxing Easter break it's been - I've celebrated several birthdays and tried to think about anything other than advertising for a week.

However, with term starting tomorrow, it's back in the saddle time. For my birthday, I received "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I don't intend to critique it, or at least not yet, because I'm only a third of the way through, and I'm not 100% convinced that I fully understand everything I've read.

But roughly speaking, the book is about how our minds lead us to seek out patterns, and twist facts to fit our theories, when in actual fact these patterns and theories are constantly broken by unexpected events - the Black Swans of the title. But when these Black Swans occur, we act afterwards as if we should have expected them all along, and formulate a new theory to explain them.

One symptom of this mindset is the prevalence of "confirmation bias" - the tendency to seek out information to fits rather than challenges our views. It's part of the reason the opposing sides both inside and outside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are so entrenched in their positions, wilfully ignoring the flaws and demons in their own team.

So let's apply this to an idea evaluation technique we're taught at the school - Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats.

When you're analysing an idea, the hardest hat to put on is the black one - the one that searches for flaws. The other hats you may barely need to don - you're so caught up in the brilliance of your idea, the immediate response is to look for reasons that it works.

We spend all our time trying to prove ourselves right, when such a thing is nearly impossible. Proving something wrong is much easier. For example, to prove I am the perfect lover, I would have to give a faultless sexual performance at every single opportunity for the rest of my life. But I know that I'm not - and all it takes to prove it is just one ropey night in the sack*.

So the main message I'm taking from Taleb is simply, for the moment - don't ignore the Black Hat. But at the same time, I won't be forgetting the Black Swan either. Just because an idea doesn't fit established rules doesn't mean it will definitely fail.

School starts tomorrow, let's throw a few curveballs this term.

*and there have been more than one of these.