Don’t read this book

Nassim Taleb, of “black swan” fame, has a new book out. It’s called Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand, and purports to explain what makes financial and social systems robust. I haven’t read the book, and probably never will – for reasons that will become apparent below. But I am still tempted to say a few words regarding Taleb’s mode of analysis. In doing this, I’ll follow Pierre Bavard’s advice on “how to talk about books you haven’t read” – without, of course, having read his book either.

The Baron von Münchhausen economy

A couple of years ago Emily Yoffe wrote an article on narcissism for Slate. Reading it, one could readily conclude that Alexis de Tocqueville’s and Christopher Lasch’s warnings had finally come to pass. Then Yoffe appeared on the Colbert Report and made the argument that narcissistic behaviors had helped ignite the financial crisis. To which Colbert retorted: “But the economy and the market are really just built up on confidence. Why don’t we just recapture that narcissism that we had a year ago and just pretend that everything is OK? And won’t the market just come right back? Won’t we just rebuild the bubble?”

Asians: Too Smart for Their Own Good?

This is the title of a NYT opinion piece by Carolyn Chen, Director of the Asian American Studies Program at Northwestern. In it, she argues forcefully for lifting the quotas for Asian Americans at top universities, the way those were renoved for superachieving Jewish students back in the 1960s. Of course, the Asian quotas can now only be secret, which makes their fallout all the more devastating: “At highly selective colleges, the quotas are implicit, but very real. So are the psychological consequences. At Northwestern, Asian-American students tell me that they feel ashamed of their identity — that they feel viewed as a faceless bunch of geeks and virtuosos. When they succeed, their peers chalk it up to ‘being Asian.’ They are too smart and hard-working for their own good.” And Amy Chua’s “tiger mom” bravado comes in for a beating since it “set back Asian kids by attributing their successes to overzealous (and even pathological) parenting rather than individual effort.”

Zeitgeist 2012

An article in the NYT recently gave some advice on (ad)dressing a festering social wound: “How to Attack the Gender Gap? Speak Up.” My immediate thought was: how about creating a less competitive and fairer social environment? But this just shows how naïve I can be.

We have been through this too many times…

These were the words of a visibly shaken Barack Obama yesterday as he fought back tears and parts of his face visibly trembled while he spoke. He was so emotional that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer appeared almost moved in his post-comment comments. Some will no doubt blame the president for failing to show the steely resolve befitting a strong Commander-in-Chief. As Antonio Damasio and others have demonstrated, though, lack of emotional input in judgment and decision making can be an even greater problem than uncontrolled emotionality. Which, by the way, shouldn't inspire much confidence in Angela Merkel's leadership style as described in Der Spiegel ("A Cold Heart for Europe: Merkel's Dispassionate Approach to the Euro Crisis").

You are not a number

The NYT carries two articles on different topics but with similar titles and even more similar messages: “Messi’s Brilliance Transcends His Numbers,” and “Dear Rafiki, You Are Not Your SAT Score.” I suspect Ethan Roeder, the chief quant of the Obama re-election campaign, would want to argue this point a bit. He would acknowledge that data cannot tell us everything about anyone; but would probably add that they, nevertheless, provide valuable information if analyzed properly.

Phony and Phonier

Observers cannot stop scratching their heads and nodding in disbelief at the inept naïveté  with which David Petraeus and his mistress-biographer Paula Broadwell tried to conceal their doomed escapades. Indeed, one would expect slightly greater sophistication from the spymaster of the Free World, and even from a West-Point-educated lieutenant-colonel from the U.S. Army reserve. I suspect, though, that their childish silliness has an easy explanation.

The German engineering genius

If anyone doubts that the world is going to the dogs, a couple of recent engineering disasters in Germany offer the final and definite proof. First, the opening of the new Berlin airport, initially scheduled for last June, has been pushed back several times because of concerns over its fire-control system. The current due date is October 2013. And this is only the latest of a series of high-profile construction projects to be plagued by serious snafus: a couple of train/subway stations, the new concert hall in Hamburg, the building of the German CIA…

Clash of the titans

A review in the NYT says the main protagonist in the movie “Flight” is played by a “titanic Denzel Washington.” This prompted the natural question: if Denzel Washington is titanic, what was, say, Martin Luther King? Supermegatitanic? The linguistic inflation epitomized by such bombastic language has long been lamented by intellectuals. German writer and linguist Uwe Poerksen has bemoaned the spread of “plastic words” like “development” and “empowerment” which have lost any substantive meaning and can be used to describe and justify almost anything. In a similar fashion, writer Jennifer Egan has lampooned a fictional academic star who studies “the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks” – like "friend," "real," "story," "change," “identity,” “search,” “cloud,” and countless others.

Give rape a chance?

According to a story in the Guardian, "more than one in three men surveyed in the Democratic Republic of Congo's war-torn east admits committing sexual assault, and three in four believe that a woman who "does not dress decently is asking to be raped." If I recall correctly, a similar study done in South Africa a few years ago produced similar results. Such findings, though, seem to have made no impression on Steven Pinker, Joshua Goldsten, and other liberal intellectuals who have confidently argued that both large-scale violence and violent crime are fast becoming obsolete - this time for real. 

Phony warrior

Last week, Maureen Dowd complained about the “mind-boggling phoniness of [Mitt] Romney” (“My Mitt Fantasy”). According to David Brooks, however, “Romney’s shape-shifting nature” could in fact help him push though Congress some sort of bipartisan reform if he were to become president. Hurray for inner emptiness and “The Upside of Opportunism”! The funny part is that Brooks passes for a “conservative.” The more bizarre part is that the majority of GOP supporters – and probably some opponents – don’t seem to sense Romney’s inner emptiness.

A New Kind of Social Science for the 21st Century

This is the title of an interview on the Edge web site with Nicholas Christakis, a “Physician and Social Scientists” at Harvard. He hails the “biological hurricane approaching the social sciences” and “the era of computational social science.” He believes that by pooling all the relevant data “we” (or, rather, clear-sighted scientists like him) will soon achieve a clear understanding of previously murky aspects of human behavior – for example, of how “humans aggregate to form collective entities.” These new causal models will then allow for effective “interventions” at different societal levels.

To illustrate this new approach, Christakis points to a study he and others did on the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer population spread thinly on the Kenyan savannah. They created “a kind of Facebook for the Hadza” mapping the totality of their social connections. The result was quite surprising. As it it turned out, modern telecommunications and urbanization have absolutely no effect on the “structure of human social networks.“ In Christakis’s words, “Hadza social networks look just like ours. In every kind of way we could study these networks, mathematically, they didn't differ from ours.”

The go-go economist

The NYT features a profile of Glenn Hubbard, “Romeney’s Go-To Economist.” Hubbard is still dean of the Columbia business school, and can well become Secretary of the Treasury if Romney somehow sails into the White House. Once there, he would likely seek to revive George W. Bush’s economic policy, i.e., return the US to the economic course which once led it to the precipice. Otherwise, Hubbard looks like another nerdy libertarian economist who passes for a “conservative,” American-style. He has not shrunk from raking in millions from industries whose practices he has justified in academic papers and articles; and from corporations and executives accused of fraudulent behavior, in whose defense he has readily provided “expert” testimony.

Going solo Tajik style

On one of the news channels there was some curious footage from Tajikistan. It highlighted the plight of thousands of Tajik women who have been abandoned by their husbands. Since Tajikistan doesn’t offer an abundance of well-paying jobs, it turns out that perhaps 30 percent of Tajik bread winners have spent years as sometimes unwelcome gastarbeiter in Russia. As they were toiling away from home, at some point quite a few decided to call back home with a shocking announcement. They solemnly declared they were divorcing their wives, often leaving them to shoulder the burden of raising several children with very little income. Why has this trend taken such epidemic proportions in recent years? I have another elegant theory explaining it all.

Conspiracies all the way down

Maverick feminist Camile Paglia has joined the chorus singing paeans to capitalism on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. In her contribution, titled “How Capitalism Can Save Art,” she argues there is a simple reason why art has lost existential ground over the last couple of decades – what elese could you expect, if “the most talented college students are ideologically indoctrinated with contempt for the economic system that made their freedom, comforts and privileges possible.” This, of course, is a refrain of the conspiracy theory embraced by all sorts of cultural/social “conservatives” – and Paglia has swallowed it as self-righteously, though she describes herself as “a libertarian Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008.” This fatal attraction of conspiratorial thinking is in fact quite curious.

Shame no more

Today, Dr. Brook Magnanti is some kind of British research scientist. A few years ago she was writing – alongside her dissertation – a racy blog describing her exploits as a high-end prostitute in London. Interviewed recently on the BBC chat show Hard Talk, she claimed that prostitution had empowered her; and said she would do it all over again if she had a choice. She also said she wished her daughter would one day follow confidently in her footsteps.

Hey, big spender

Following President Obama’s dispirited performance at the Denver debate, even many of his ardent supporters tweeted a blizzard of grumbles. According to the NYT, Andrew Sullivan, a liberal blogger, complained that the president was “boring, abstract, and less human-seeming than Romney!” 

Nerd-in-Chief?

Vanity Fair carries a fawning profile of President Barack Obama. Among the many vignettes it contains, one immediately caught my attention. Obama found in the Oval Office some bookshelves filled with china. Apparently, his predecessor wanted to illustrate his  faux self-depricating point that you don’t need to be an enthusiastic (or even competent) reader in order to become President of the United States. Obama was mildly shocked, so he ordered his staff to throw the plates and dishes out. What did he put on display as a replacement?

The Flynn Delusion

Der Speigel carries yet another article which revisits the lame debate: “”Is the Internet Really Making Us Dumber?” The article refers to a new book by James Flynn, of “Flynn effect” fame. The way I read him, it seems kids' abilities at some very peculiar forms of abstraction have indeed been improving; but their verbal prowess has been slipping. Which change is more significant?

A rich man’s world

A leak to the press a few days ago indicated that Bernard Arnault, the French ultrabillionaire (or “job creator,” depending on your ideological leanings), had applied for Belgian citizenship. This widely publicized move was his apparent counterpunch to President Francois Hollande’s plans to slap a 75 percent emergency tax on any French citizen earning over 1.1 million euro a year. Back in the 1980s, Arnault had temporarily fled to the US, the land of Reaganomics, when Francois Mitterand had launched a similar quasi-socialist experiment. This time, though, Arnault plans to remain in France as this will decrease his Belgian tax liability. And he claims – wink-wink – that he is not jumping jurisdictions in order to decrease his tax exposure.

The joy of instant gratification

Jane Brody, a committed middle-aged walker, biker, and swimmer, presents in the NYT some new ideas for the promotion of aerobic exercise (“Changing Our Tune on Exercise”). According to some health experts, the promise of better health in some distant future and even a postponed death does not provide a sufficiently strong incentive for most individuals to stick to an exercise routine. To them, such potential benefits seem “distant and theoretical” (with men, who often have a stronger penchant for detached abstraction, being a bit more inclined to take them seriously). And if some individuals took up exercise in order to slim down, the prospects can be even worse. As most are bound to fall short of any notable results, such body-conscious exercisers are likely to face disappointment and even lower self-esteem.

So, what is to be done in order to motivate more people to keep up an exercise schedule? 

#TheJoyofSex – and career advancement

#TheAtlantic carries again one of those “provocative” trend-spotting articles which have become its trademark. It’s called “Boys on the Side,” and is written by #HannaRosin.  Here is the summary which appears below the title: “The hookup culture that has largely replaced dating on college campuses has been viewed, in many quarters, as socially corrosive and ultimately toxic to women, who seemingly have little choice but to participate. Actually, it is an engine of female progress—one being harnessed and driven by women themselves.”

Eyes wide shut

In her recent op-ed, “Likability Index,” Maureen Dowd presents the US presidential contest as a clash of the introverts. This diagnosis may be off a bit, particularly in Romney’s case – as he seems singularly devoid of the rich inner life typically associated with introversion. Leaving that aside, Dowd also asks an interesting question: “Will Mitt’s new mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, make his run more personable?”

Why Smart People Are Stupid

This is the title of Jonah Lehrer’s penultimate blog post at The New Yorker. In the bitterest of ironies, it turned out this title refered to him. If anyone doesn’t know, Lehrer was on the path to a career in neuroscience when a few years ago he switched tracks to become the most lucid neuroscience popularizer – a best-selling author and a speaker commanding high fees at corporate events. Then, at some point, it all went fell apart.