Random Quotes Compiled Over a Month (P.1)
Generally, I consider discussing a quote without context and explanation is evil (as discussed in another post of mine). Therefore, with each of the quote, I would try to include some context and commentary.
Fooled By Randomness, The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
(I initially wanted to compile quotes from multiple sources into one post, but it seemed to be too lengthy. Therefore part 1 will be published with memorable quotes only from this book)
Throughout the book, the author generally discusses about how often people misunderstand their successes and failures. Too often, they blame bad luck for terrible outcomes but take all the credit when something beneficial go their ways. The author rings a warning bell for us readers to be more open to random movements of the universe, which affects life tremendously.
First quote(s)
I start with a platitude that one cannot judge a performance in any given field (war, politics, medicine, investments) by the results, but by the costs of the alternative (i.e., if history played out in a different way).
Clearly, the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome, but such a point seems to be voiced only by people who fail (those who succeed attribute their success to the quality of their decision).
This quote is found in the second chapter, which was on alternative histories.
To my limited understanding, the quote implies that it is not enough to look at a result and applaud the decision. Also, people takes credit for an outcome too often, when the outcome is attributable to mere luck [or randomness].
To understand the sentence more clearly, consider the following ridiculous example provided by the author.
A Russian Roulette — with thousand, or million of available chambers [and still, only one bullet]
Russian roulette is a game where you put a revolver into your head and pull the trigger. The special feature of revolver is that it only contains one bullet [a normal gun has six chambers (or slots to put bullets into), according to the author and movie watching experience]. If you survive, you win.
In this example, the gun has thousands or even millions of empty chambers while the number of bullet remains one. Another twist is that you gains a huge amount of wealth upon winning.
Let’s say one agrees to participate and survives, it is maybe inaccurate to says that his decision is wise [because of the profitable outcome]. He may lose his life, and that is the cost of an alternative history.
In life, countless decisions are made in a single day. One should be careful when assessing outcomes [personal assessment, performance review, etc.] to avoid misinterpretation.
Second quote(s)
Four decades ago, the Catholic church translated the services and liturgies from Latin to the local vernaculars; one may wonder if this caused a drop in religious beliefs. Suddenly religion subjected itself to being judged by intellectual and scientific, without the aesthetic, standards.
We do not need to be rational and scientific when it comes to the details of our daily life — only in those that can harm us and threaten our survival. Modern life seems to invite us to do the exact opposite; become extremely realistic and intellectual when it comes to such matters as religion and personal behavior, yet as irrational as possible when it comes to matters ruled by randomness (say, portfolio or real estate investments).
In preceding paragraphs, the book discusses about when he personally accepts to be fooled by randomness (that is to enjoy something as an outcome of talent and hard work [only] rather than with the help of luck). Literature, poetry, and religions are among his listings. The book continues to discuss how the author enjoys poetry in original language. He suggests that it is more beautiful and less awkward to read compared to the translated version. He doubts that when the aesthetic writings are translated, they subject themselves to be interpreted with logic and reasoning.
Then he accuses modern life of urging people to experience rationality in reverse: subjects which should be consumed with aesthetic standards are consumed with rationality alone, while subjects requiring logical reasoning are approached without scientific methods.
The reason I like these sentences are because they line up well with my ideal outlook to life: completing any given task with the most correct approach available. “There is time and place for everything” — Maybe it is from a Pokémon game I played way back in the past.
The latter quote also reminds me that I am an average person living in a modern life, thus I must be careful when solving any problems. If I fail, I may use inappropriate standards when approaching a decision or assessing a solution.
Third quote(s)
The problem is that we read too much into shallow recent history, with statements like “this has never happened before,” but not from history in general (things that never happened before in one area tend eventually to happen). In other words, history teaches us that things that never happened before do happen. It can teach us a lot outside of the narrowly defined time series; the broader the look, the better the lesson. In other words, history teaches us to avoid the brand of naive empiricism that consists of learning from the casual historic facts.
This sections discuss how people falsely take past performance of something to predict its future outcome. The author argues that something never happened before have a great chance of happening in the future. The longer things go without a ‘rare event’, the more vulnerable they are subject to one.
The quote more specifically states that if we examine history more broadly, we should see across disciplines that rare (and catastrophic) events did happen. But unfortunately, most choose to look at the history of one performance in isolation, without consulting historic facts (that all sort of unexpected and rare events did happen). Recall the Russian roulette example above, to use the past n — 1 case to decide that the next would turn out the same is foolish. For this faulty belief to work out, one must assume that nothing had changed, which is never the case. As we know, things are always in constant change.
A story crossed my mind when I read those lines. It is about a village whose builders had constructed a damp just as high as the water level witnessed in the past, which inevitably faced its demise because the water eventually rose past the threshold.
Another interesting statistics I have read about involving sport popped to mind. It is said that the players (basketball, football, what not, I don’t remember) who had been making ‘hot streaks’ would attract huge investments. However, in next few games or seasons, he was more likely perform badly. They called it ‘regression to the mean’ — where his hot streaks were above mean performance, which had lasted for sometimes. Therefore, in following performance, it would statistically be below average performance. This does not demonstrate the thought behind the quote as clearly as the previous story, but I put it here nonetheless.
Fourth quote(s)
No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.
I can use data to disprove a proposition, never to prove one. I can use history to refute a conjecture, never to affirm it.
The quotes remind me specifically of the way I approach solving math problems when I was in high school [or secondary, does not matter]. Whenever the problem asked me to disprove something, I always tried to find a counterexample. It did not bring me good marks of course, as teachers/professors expect solid mathematical proof that such statement cannot be satisfied, etc.
The quote reminds me of another similar one: “The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” — I do not remember where I read this, but it fits splendidly. Bottom line is: be careful when interpreting empirical data.
Fifth quote(s)
If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past’s past), then why should our future resemble our current past?
The gist of the quote tends to be similar of that expressed by the third quote(s), or fourth… It seems quite repetitive, but I like how this particular quotes sound. 💯
Sixth quote(s)
The problem is that finding of absence and an absence of findings get mixed together. There may be great information in the fact that nothing took place.
More problematic, there are plenty of scientific results that are left out of publications because they are not statistically significant, but nevertheless provide information.
The quotes remind me to slow down before judging why some tasks are not finished. When a child does not finish his homework, parents, teachers, etc. accuses him of being lazy, being lack of motivation, etc. In truth, he might have put all his effort in to no avail. His not finishing homework does not equate him not doing it. What the child does is researching, at much smaller scope and scale.
Researching is tedious, and finding of absence is generally unappreciated. ‘This method does not yield any significant result’, ‘This method is not better than state-of-the-art method’, etc.
Seventh quote(s)
Unless the source of the statement has extremely high qualifications, the statements will be more revealing of the author than the information intended by him. This applies, of course, to matters of judgement.
Eighth quote(s)
Recall that epic heroes were judged by their actions, not by the results. No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last words.
Happy working from home. 💯
