This FT review of ‘Lecturing Birds on Flying’ points to a quote by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the book’s preface: "Giving someone the wrong map is worse than giving them no map at all." (Via Mark Earls)
It’s a sort of maxim that seems an ironclad un-contestable truth. No doubt, it was quoted by Taleb as such – to make the case for the arguments in the book.
I am not qualified to say anything about the quant mathematical models – the "wrong maps" – that led to the current financial climate and are the subject of the book in question.
But I have more than a sneaky suspicion that Taleb is wrong to assert that a wrong map does more harm than having no map.
In fact, a wrong map is almost always the first step towards a right map. Because it represents what we already think we know and allows for our individual or collective experience(s) to verify if that’s true – and to change the bits that don’t match. Ad nauseam.
It was true in the times of Christopher Columbus – when map-transforming expeditions could be undertaken only by a handful few. And it is especially true now, when the wonders of digital technology make everything around us a palimpsest – thus enabling each one of us to embark on micro-explorations that result in the continuous refinements of our "maps." (Something I wrote about in a piece some time ago.)
Strangely, the quote is the sort of thing that Taleb stands against – something that seems intuitively right, but is in fact far from it.
A far more instructive and appropriate quote for the occasion would have been Alfred Korzybski’s assertion: "The map is not the territory."
And that’s something all of us – including the financial academics currently in the dock – would do well to remember.
[World map from 1689 by Gerard van Schagen – via Caveman 92223]
Original Post: http://www.misentropy.com/2009/07/maps-and-why-nassim-nicholas-taleb-is-wrong-about-them.html
