Escape From Pianosa

Nassim Taleb’s book, The Black Swan really got me thinking about luck, and how to incorporate the idea of luck into a philosophy of life. If we are bad at predicting, for instance, what career will make us happy, then we should try as many different careers as possible to see which one we like. We should take lots of small risks, with a chance for a big payoff.

If I try out a career as a real estate agent, and I find that I don’t like it, then I have failed. I’ve made an error. But I’ve lost very little–my risk was small. In fact, the discomfort I experienced in a career I disliked was probably balanced out by the comfort of my newfound knowledge.

I can repeat this process with many careers until I find one that I enjoy immensely–my Black Swan career so to speak–something that I enjoy so much, that all the previous failures and erroneous predictions about what career would make me happy are insignificant.

In attempting this process, I must be wary of the confirmation bias. If, before becoming a real estate agent, I convince myself that real estate will make me happy (as opposed to keeping an open mind about the result), then I will look for confirming evidence of this belief. I will say “see, I do love real estate!” every time something positive happens, and I will tend to ignore the disconfirming evidence until it grows so immense that I am unable to ignore it.

Falling into such a trap will cause me to waste precious time that could be spent looking elsewhere for career satisfaction. And more time wasted means fewer opportunities to find the ideal career.

I just finished reading the most amazing book–The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It’s a real masterpiece of an essay. I learned so much from the book that I can barely begin to describe it all.

The most important ideas I learned are that there are major limits to our knowledge, and that uncertainty plays a large role in our lives. Experts and laymen alike are simply not good at predicting the future–especially “Black Swans,” extremely high-impact events that are unforeseeable. There can be good black swans (your novel becomes a bestseller making your rich) and bad ones (the stock market crashes and your retirement fund is wiped out).

Taleb delves deeply into epistemology–which inspired me to read Karl Popper–and so many other areas like probability, prediction, markets, bell curves vs. power laws; the book is so fascinating, you’ll just have to read it yourself.

The bad news is that my trip to Europe was postponed once again; the good news is that it’s still in the works, and that I’ll be in town to see The Decemberists on Saturday. That show will complete me entirely awesome summer concert series, which has included Manu Chao, Thievery Corp., Rodrigo y Gabriela, and now the Decemberists with the BSO.

At improv rehearsal last night I had this conversation three separate times:

Other person: How was your weekend?

Me: Pretty good, went to the beach.

OP: Oh yeah? What beach.

Me: Rehoboth.

OP: Oh, isn’t that the GAY beach?

Me: Yeah, it’s really really gay. But it’s cool, they let straight people hang out there too. I have a straight visa because I’m a friend of the gay man.

I’m selling my rental property in East Baltimore–great time to sell, right?

So I was showing it last night to another investor and as we were walking to our cars we heard pop pop pop pop pop. Hey were those gunshots? Yeah, I think so. Funny because I hear that all the time in Baltimore, just random popping–I always thought they were fireworks. A woman unrolled a window above us and said “get used to it, mmm hmm.” We didn’t see anyone running, or police sirens or anything. Target practice?

Am I going to Europe? I’m not sure. Months ago I realized that I want to be a writer, or at least to give it a shot, having nothing else at the moment that strikes my interest. I realized that the reasons for my employment in real estate were wholely monetary–a means to an end, and that the ends were varied but included travel and writing and possibly a return to formal schooling, despite all its shortcomings. I also realized that the money would never come if that’s all I cared about (cliché, but true in my case).

So I decided to pursue my interests without regard to money–to play for the sake of music, without an eye towards success, as Rodrigo y Gabriela put it during their concert Saturday.

I applied for a job as a writer for a European guidebook, and much to my surprise, I got the job. I was supposed to leave next week, but there’s been some delays with the publisher, which should be resolved in the next few days. I suppose that if they aren’t resolved that I’ll be back to square one–not that this gig was ever anything more than a temporary endeavor.