Thank goodness Osama bin Laden is dead. He provided untold physical and psychological torment to so many. He spooked my entire generation and is responsible for changing so many aspects of the modern experience. The tragedies he caused were to my generation what the great communist/Soviet threat was to our parents, an enemy that is more than a mortal foe, but an existential threat, a meme for evil personified. More than anyone in decades, he was responsible for an innocence lost across the world, where flight manifests need to be checked by the minute and departing loved ones can’t be sent off at their gate. It already seems like the world has always been this way, but he made it so.
Looking at all the coverage of his death, reciting the now familiar narrative of his assassination, it highlights the ease of looking back rather than forward. The mind has such a natural instinct to emplot itself in a larger picture. The world is too complicated to often navigate without these narratives. The hunting down of bin Laden is a prime example. And maybe I am mistaken, but no one thought he was in Abbottobad. No one even put him within 100+ miles of Islamabad. No one even ventured he was where he was until just a week ago, after we discovered it. Most people didn’t even know there was such a place as Abbottobad, Pakistan before last week. Now this development seems very acceptable, and is quickly becoming a completely integrated part of our story and the world's. And so we move on to the next mystery, complete with many predictions. And while there is certainly nothing wrong with predictions, it is important to realize the importance of the error margin, or in many cases realize that we have no way to even measure what the error term could be.
We don't know when we're thinking about uncertain things, how uncertain we often are. But yet we rely on these predictions, and include them in our personal and social narratives with great alarcrity. This mismatch between our confidence in action versus often lack of predictive confidence can create at best, happy surprises (like bin Laden's death) and at worst, very unhappy ones (like we actually have no idea how to rate pools of mortgages). We don't know something for a long time, then we suddenly find out and supply an all explaining ex ante narrative to explain this divergence. But finding out, i.e. being dealt a reality, is not the same as learning, and in these cases we may force lessons where there are none, or as many as we force. Because a mystery was removed does not mean it has been explained. But by wrongly assuming (or even more than that, it might even be instinctual: those who told better stories were more convincing and better able to influence those around them, and so were more materially robust and thus able to survice, as well as reproduce more) that we have deduced lessons, we can continue to rely on the very tendencies that produced errors of prediction in the first instance, falsely thinking that because we now have the answers that we can explain them or reproduce them heuristically, and thus conclude that our narrative fallacy has been eliminated. But we merely corrected the record post-script, we did not change the components of our method of writing future scripts. It is the difference between having the final narrative, versus having the construct to produce future narratives.
But let's remember how wrong we were in our predictions of the physical location of public enemy number one. The refrain for the last decade has always been, “he’s somewhere in the mountainous regions on the border of Afghanistan” or “in a cave along the border” or “in the northern federally-administered tribal areas”. This was the commonly accepted view for the better part of a decade. And when it turns out to not be true, we collectively adjust our mindsets with almost total effortlessness. What had been common sense for years is suddenly contradicted, and we don’t (seem) for a moment question our conventional wisdom.
This example illustrates a much broader trend, what Nicolas Nassim Taleb has called platonifying. It refers to the act of ascribing explanations or reasons for things when we have no reason to be sure of the answer- "we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas". It is the process of forcing oneself to learn more than it is possible to learn. It is one of the growing intellectual risks of modern times. Just because we can pull up more information faster than ever, does not mean we can deduce more. And just because we can transmit new facts (like bin Laden was killed in Abbottobad) to more people than ever before faster than ever before, does not mean we can predict more. It might mean we can be confused more, surprised more. This information-rich environment is extremely conducive to assigning meaning and narratives, but that does not mean it is justified.
It is far easier to judge after the fact than predict before it, and it is far easier to watch others do something successfully (that you had not predicted, called for, or been involved with) and then instantly make it part of your narrative, than participate in it in real time. But after all, what is the narrative of finding public enemy number one where no one thought he would be? Where no one predicted? Maybe the narrative is better, more accurately described as, “we do not know as much as we think we do”, “the world is harder to predict before than judge after”, “lessons are not so easily learned when the problem is still real, only after it is solved (often by others)”, and “it is always easier for us when someone else is taking the risk.”
In the post-modern existence, we sure seem to be pretty sure of ourselves. We have filters, data engines, feeds, editorials, etc. EVERYWHERE. We see a thousand of them a day. And in the end, most of this might just be us talking to ourselves, with very little relation to the actual state of the world. Perhaps there is no harm in this. Perhaps people just must hear themselves talk to calm their fears, pass the time, or in Eliot Spitzer’s case, make a living. But perhaps it does do harm. If we are constantly attaching narratives and affixing explanations to the world, which I think is a reasonable observation (just look around), and the world is far more uncertain than we realize, then we are apt to plan, make decisions, react, and emote in ways inconsistent with the real world. We are apt to be unprepared and frequently surprised. And seeing as the only way to discover false narratives, is to experience the reverse, these surprises are often not without consequence.
And this is a much broader point, seen in many contexts. Think of how surprised nearly everyone (especially the experts) was at the economic collapse of 2008. We had our narrative pre-2008, and then completely, totally different narrative post-2008. And we switched between them almost instantly, instinctually, reflexively, without almost realizing it. We did not extrapolate from that huge error in narrative, to be more cautious with future narratives. We simply went about “fixing” the problem and using a different narrative. But we still use the same mental constructs and psychological tendencies to create new narratives for a world where, if we wish to participate in it at all, is far too complex not to attach narratives. We may have prevented another housing bubble for some time to come, but another bubble? Another error in collective incentives? Hardly. It is certainly not unusual that we would have a hard time negotiating our own fallibility, but I don’t see evidence that we even realize there was any fallibility to begin with.
The same can be said in the context of business ventures. After a business venture is successful, the norm is to describe it as though it were inevitable. This company had some really smart people, and a really great idea, addressing a clear problem, with a big market, and of course there would be customers....etc. etc. Those statements are all said post-script. They are all said after all of those things have been established. Observers will readily comment on what makes an already successful company successful, when it is firmly lodged in the public mind, including a narrative (however inaccurate). But much rarer is the pre-scripted explanation of why a company will be successful (with the exception of those who have a conflict of interest or stake in saying so). In predicting the future prospects for business ventures, the same observers who talk so confidently of why a venture was successful after the fact, will provide disclaimers about why an unproven venture may not be successful. Of course, a subset of these will become successful, in which case then it will become obvious, and the lesson of their success will quickly become deconstructed. The narrative that was not supplied while the story was in progress, is quickly written down after the definitive, concluding scene. Articles are written confidently by critics about why success was realized, but almost entirely after the fact. This challenges the whole notion of the value of this information. If the lessons cannot be applied beforehand, they are not really lessons but summaries.
If the lessons are so obvious, why not state them earlier? Perhaps because no one really knows, yet they must attach meaning to it after it has been proven to be of importance. Many people will tell you why Facebook was a success, with nary a word on Friendster, a comparable social network two years its predecessor. Friendster was not a success, therefore no explanation is necessary. Facebook was, so let us glean its reasons for success. But if the only way one can describe or predict success is after success has already happened, then there is no predictive value of success to begin with. If you have to read the whole story to know what happens, then be very wary of any attempts at ex-facto heuristics. In most cases where we derive lessons or narratives, we are really only seeking understanding and guessing at where it is. To see how inaccurate we are, look at how poor (and minimal) our predictive record is.
[ Side note-- I think the key difference between Facebook and Friendster was that Friendster tried to attack the whole market at once, but what is the value of a social network if you don't know anyone else on it? Facebook established itself in an ever larger set of closed communities. And by signing on communities, Harvard, Ivy Leage, .edu addresses and on, it ensured that people on their social network actually knew each other, and thus was an actual social network. There is no clear substantive difference between Jonathan Abrams (Friendster founder) and Mark Zuckerberg, they are both top-notch talents (witness Abrams' multiple successes). The difference may have been that Abrams was older and thus not in university at the time of founding and so had no ready access to interconnected communities by which to meaningfully grow the user base. ]
In fact as I write this, I am listening to an analyst explain why Microsoft bought Skype, with apparent absolute certainty, listing reasons 1,2,3 that it was done. But in 5 years will have Microsoft incorporated Skype like she says? Almost certainly not. Did this reporter participate in the deal? No. And yet within hours of the deal being announced, we have a complete narrative of why this deal happened, where it's going, how much money it will make. Warning: simply by the nature of technology and technological disruption, these pronouncements will be wrong. Perhaps wrong on the up side, perhaps on the down side. But they will be wrong. There is danger in this, and because we do it so much, there is a systemic risk. And yet, we can't resist the narrative. To understand it without the narrative is almost impossible, but it is the challenge of truly rigorous unbiased analysis.
There is always more uncertainty and risk in the beginning of any endeavor, and in the present tense, than after the issue has been decided or the outcome is known. And yet we are crossing into a time defined by constant and instant judgement on nearly everything or anything someone ventures to do. In a world with so much uncertainty and risk, asserting judgments with such ease and velocity may be mis-matched with reality. As hard as it may be not to instantly seek the Cliff Notes to a recent event or idea, we may be better served to dwell a little more in the unknown and relish the remaining questions, relish the chapters as of yet unwritten. Facts and outcomes always make more sense looking backwards than forwards. As Teddy Roosevelt observed, the prize surely does go to the person in the arena of battle for good reason, and not the critic.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings. –T.R.
