I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea that people invent ideas, but generally I think that having help with something is better than trying to do it all yourself. I think having two different extremes interact and debate each other would probably yield more interesting truths than having one very smart moderate attempt to discover the truth on their own, provided that those extremes are being evaluated by a neutral and intelligent third party and those extremes are trying to court the third party to their point of view.
I think Taleb’s quote is more about how all people attempt to predict the actions of all other people, and then act accordingly. Lots of behavior in the social sciences functions like a super extreme version of a Keynesian Beauty Contest where all participants are both judges and players, there is no limit to how meta or recursive you go except whatever limit is imposed on you by your cognitive limits, and you have access to information that isn’t just incomplete, but is often actually wrong.
It’s not physically impossible, like simulating a complicated simulation that simulates itself (and is thus bigger than itself which is basically a contradiction) but it’s in a similar sort of vein and degree of difficulty. Very meta and recursive, very difficult to measure things or to verify if what you’re doing is correct or if you even understand what you’re doing.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea that people invent ideas, but generally I think that having help with something is better than trying to do it all yourself. I think having two different extremes interact and debate each other would probably yield more interesting truths than having one very smart moderate attempt to discover the truth on their own, provided that those extremes are being evaluated by a neutral and intelligent third party and those extremes are trying to court the third party to their point of view.
I think Taleb’s quote is more about how all people attempt to predict the actions of all other people, and then act accordingly. Lots of behavior in the social sciences functions like a super extreme version of a Keynesian Beauty Contest where all participants are both judges and players, there is no limit to how meta or recursive you go except whatever limit is imposed on you by your cognitive limits, and you have access to information that isn’t just incomplete, but is often actually wrong.
It’s not physically impossible, like simulating a complicated simulation that simulates itself (and is thus bigger than itself which is basically a contradiction) but it’s in a similar sort of vein and degree of difficulty. Very meta and recursive, very difficult to measure things or to verify if what you’re doing is correct or if you even understand what you’re doing.