Dopamine: Brugger and Graves (1997), among many other papers. See also Mohr et al.
(2003) on dopamine asymmetry.
Entropy and information: I am purposely avoiding the notion of entropy because the way
it is conventionally phrased makes it ill-adapted to the type of randomness we experience
in real life. Tsallis entropy works better with fat tails.
Notes on George Perec: Eco (1994).
Narrativity and illusion of understanding: Wilson, Gilbert, and Center bar (2003): "Helplessness
theory has demonstrated that if people feel that they cannot control or predict
their environments, they are at risk for severe motivational and cognitive deficits,
such as depression." For the writing down of a diary, see Wilson (2002) or Wegner
(2002).
E. M. Forster's example: reference in Margalit (2002).
National character: Terracciano et al. (2005) and Robins (2005) for the extent of individual
variations. The illusion of nationality trait, which I usually call the "nationality
heuristic," does connect to the halo effect: see Rosenzweig (2006) and Cialdini
(2001). See Anderson (1983) for the ontology of nationality.
Consistency bias: What psychologists call the consistency bias is the effect of revising
memories in such a way to make sense with respect to subsequent information. See
Schacter (2001).
Memory not like storage on a computer: Rose (2003), Nader and LeDoux (1999).
The myth of repressed memory: Loftus and Ketcham (2004).
Chess players and disconfirmation: Cowley and Byrne (2004).
Quine's problem: Davidson (1983) argues in favor of local, but against total, skepticism.
Narrativity: Note that my discussion is not existential here, but merely practical, so my
idea is to look at narrativity as an informational compression, nothing more involved
philosophically (like whether a self is sequential or not). There is a literature on the
"narrative self"—Bruner (2002) or whether it is necessary—see Strawson (1994) and
his attack in Strawson (2004). The debate: Schechtman (1997), Taylor (1999), Phelan
(2005). Synthesis in Turner (1996).
"Postmodernists" and the desirability of narratives: See McCloskey (1990) and Frankfurter
and McGoun (1996).
Narrativity of sayings and proverbs: Psychologists have long examined the gullibility of
people in social settings when faced with well-sounding proverbs. For instance, experiments
have been made since the 1960s where people are asked whether they believe
that a proverb is right, while another cohort is presented with the opposite
meaning. For a presentation of the hilarious results, see Myers (2002).
Science as a narrative: Indeed scientific papers can succeed by the same narrativity bias
that "makes a story." You need to get attention. Bushman and Wells (2001).
Discovering probabilities: Barron and Erev (2003) show how probabilities are underestimated
when they are not explicitly presented. Also personal communication with
Barron.
Risk and probability: See Slovic, Fischhoff, and Lichtenstein (1976), Slovic et al. (1977),
and Slovic (1987). For risk as analysis and risk as feeling theory, see Slovic et al.
(2002, 2003), and Taleb (2004c). See Bar-Hillel and Wagenaar (1991).
3 1 6 NOTES
Link between narrative fallacy and clinical knowledge: Dawes (1999) has a message for
economists: see here his work on interviews and the concoction of a narrative. See
also Dawes (2001) on the retrospective effect.
Two systems of reasoning: See Sloman (1996, 2002), and the summary in Kahneman and
Frederick (2002). Kahneman's Nobel lecture sums it all up; it can be found at
www.nobel.se. See also Stanovich and West (2000).
Risk and emotions: Given the growing recent interest in the emotional role in behavior,
there has been a growing literature on the role of emotions in both risk bearing and
risk avoidance: the "risk as feeling" theory. See Loewenstein et al. (2001) and Slovic
et al. (2003a). For a survey see Slovic et al. (2003b) and see also Slovic (1987). For a
discussion of the "affect heuristic," see Finucane et al. (2000). For modularity, see
Bates (1994).
Emotions and cognition: For the effect of emotions on cognition, see LeDoux (2002). For
risk, see Bechara et al. (1994).
Availability heuristic (how easily things come to mind): See Tversky and Kahneman
(1973).
Real incidence of catastrophes: For an insightful discussion, see Albouy (2002), Zajdenweber
(2000), or Sunstein (2002).
Terrorism exploitation of the sensational: See the essay in Taleb (2004c).
General books on psychology of decision making (heuristics and biases): Baron (2000) is
simply the most comprehensive on the subject. Kunda (1999) is a summary from the
standpoint of social psychology (sadly, the author died prematurely); shorter: Pious
(1993). Also Dawes (1988) and Dawes (2001). Note that a chunk of the original papers
are happily compiled in Kahneman et al. (1982), Kahneman and Tversky (2000),
Gilovich et al. (2002), and Slovic (2001a and 2001b). See also Myers (2002) for an
account on intuition and Gigerenzer et al. (2000) for an ecological presentation of the
subject. The most complete account in economics and finance is Montier (2007),
where his beautiful summary pieces that fed me for the last four years are compiled—
not being an academic, he gets straight to the point. See also Camerer, Loewenstein,
and Rabin (2004) for a selection of technical papers. A recommended review article
on clinical "expert" knowledge is Dawes (2001).
More general psychology of decision presentations: Klein (1998) proposes an alternative
model of intuition. See Cialdini (2001) for social manipulation. A more specialized
work, Camerer (2003), focuses on game theory.
General review essays and comprehensive books in cognitive science: Newell and Simon
(1972), Varela (1988), Fodor (1983), Marr (1982), Eysenck and Keane (2000),
Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science has review
articles by main thinkers.
Evolutionary theory and domains of adaptation: See the original Wilson (2000), Kreps
and Davies (1993), and Burnham (1997, 2003). Very readable: Burnham and Phelan
(2000). The compilation of Robert Trivers's work is in Trivers (2002). See also
Wrangham (1999) on wars.
Politics: "The Political Brain: A Recent Brain-imaging Study Shows That Our Political
Predilections Are a Product of Unconscious Confirmation Bias," by Michael Shermer,
Scientific American, September 26, 2006.
Neurobiology of decision making: For a general understanding of our knowledge about
the brain's architecture: Gazzaniga et al. (2002). Gazzaniga (2005) provides literary
summaries of some of the topics. More popular: Carter (1999). Also recommended:
Ratey (2001), Ramachandran (2003), Ramachandran and Blakeslee (1998), Carter
(1999, 2002), Conlan (1999), the very readable Lewis, Amini, and Lannon (2000),
and Goleman (1995). See Glimcher (2002) for probability and the brain. For the
emotional brain, the three books by Damasio (1994, 2000, 2003), in addition to
LeDoux (1998) and the more detailed LeDoux (2002), are the classics. See also the
shorter Evans (2002). For the role of vision in aesthetics, but also in interpretation,
Zeki (1999).
NOTES 3 1 7
General works on memory: In psychology, Schacter (2001) is a review work of the memory
biases with links to the hindsight effects. In neurobiology, see Rose (2003) and
Squire and Kandel (2000). A general textbook on memory (in empirical psychology)
isBaddeley (1997).
Intellectual colonies and social life: See the account in Collins (1998) of the "lineages" of
philosophers (although I don't think he was aware enough of the Casanova problem
to take into account the bias making the works of solo philosophers less likely to survive).
For an illustration of the aggressiveness of groups, see Uglow (2003).
Hyman Minsky's work: Minsky (1982).
Asymmetry: Prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky [1979] and Tversky and Kahneman
[1992]) accounts for the asymmetry between bad and good random events, but
it also shows that the negative domain is convex while the positive domain is concave,
meaning that a loss of 100 is less painful than 100 losses of 1 but that a gain of
100 is also far less pleasurable than 100 times a gain of 1.
Neural correlates of the asymmetry: See Davidson's work in Goleman (2003), Lane et al.
(1997), and Gehring and Willoughby (2002). Csikszentmihalyi (1993, 1998) further
explains the attractiveness of steady payoffs with his theory of "flow."
Deferred rewards and its neural correlates: McLure et al. (2004) show the brain activation
in the cortex upon making a decision to defer, providing insight on the limbic
impulse behind immediacy and the cortical activity in delaying. See also Loewenstein
et al. (1992), Elster (1998), Berridge (2005). For the neurology of preferences in Capuchin
monkeys, Chen et al. (2005).
Bleed or blowup: Gladwell (2002) and Taleb (2004c). Why bleed is painful can be
explained by dull stress; Sapolsky et al. (2003) and Sapolsky (1998). For how
companies like steady returns, Degeorge and Zeckhauser (1999). Poetics of hope:
Mihailescu (2006).
Discontinuities and jumps: Classified by René Thorn as constituting seven classes; Thorn
(1980).
Evolution and small probabilities: Consider also the naive evolutionary thinking positing
the "optimality" of selection. The founder of sociobiology, the great E. O. Wilson,
does not agree with such optimality when it comes to rare events. In Wilson (2002),
he writes:
The human brain evidently evolved to commit itself emotionally only to
a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen, and two or three
generations into the future. To look neither far ahead nor far afield is elemental
in a Darwinian sense. We are innately inclined to ignore any distant
possibility not yet requiring examination. It is, people say, just good
common sense. Why do they think in this shortsighted way?
The reason is simple: it is a hardwired part of our Paleolithic heritage.
For hundreds of millennia, those who worked for short-term gain
within a small circle of relatives and friends lived longer and left more
offspring—even when their collective striving caused their chiefdoms and
empires to crumble around them. The long view that might have saved
their distant descendants required a vision and extended altruism instinctively
difficult to marshal.
See also Miller (2000): "Evolution has no foresight. It lacks the long-term vision of
drug company management. A species can't raise venture capital to pay its bills while
its research team . . . This makes it hard to explain innovations. "
Note that neither author considered my age argument.
CHAPTER 8
Silent evidence bears the name wrong reference class in the nasty field of philosophy of
probability, anthropic bias in physics, and survivorship bias in statistics (economists pre3
1 8 NOTES
sent the interesting attribute of having rediscovered it a few times while being severely
fooled by it).
Confirmation: Bacon says in On Truth, "No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon
the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded and where the air is always
clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in
the vale below." This easily shows how great intentions can lead to the confirmation
fallacy.
Bacon did not understand the empiricists: He was looking for the golden mean. Again,
from On Truth:
There are three sources of error and three species of false philosophy; the
sophistic, the empiric and the superstitious Aristotle affords the most
eminent instance of the first; for he corrupted natural philosophy by
logic—thus he formed the world of categories. . . . Nor is much stress to
be laid on his frequent recourse to experiment in his books on animals,
his problems and other treatises, for he had already decided, without
having properly consulted experience as the basis of his decisions and
axioms. . . . The empiric school produces dogmas of a more deformed
and monstrous nature than the sophistic or theoretic school; not being
founded in the light of common notions (which however poor and superstitious,
is yet in a manner universal and of general tendency), but in the
confined obscurity of a few experiments.
Bacon's misconception may be the reason it took us a while to understand that they
treated history (and experiments) as mere and vague "guidance," i.e., epilogy.
Publishing: Allen (2005), Klebanoff (2002), Epstein (2001), de Bellaigue (2004), and
Blake (1999). For a funny list of rejections, see Bernard (2002) and White (1982).
Michael Korda's memoir, Korda (2000), adds some color to the business. These
books are anecdotal, but we will see later that books follow steep scale-invariant
structures with the implication of a severe role for randomness.
Anthropic bias: See the wonderful and comprehensive discussion in Bostrom (2002). In
physics, see Barrow and Tipler (1986) and Rees (2004). Sornette (2004) has Gott's
derivation of survival as a power law. In finance, Sullivan et al. (1999) discuss survivorship
bias. See also Taleb (2004a). Studies that ignore the bias and state inappropriate
conclusions: Stanley and Danko (1996) and the more foolish Stanley (2000).
Manuscripts and the Phoenicians: For survival and science, see Cisne (2005). Note that
the article takes into account physical survival (like fossil), not cultural, which implies
a selection bias. Courtesy Peter Bevelin.
Stigler's law of eponymy: Stigler (2002).
French book statistics: Lire, April 2005.
Wliy dispersion matters: More technically, the distribution of the extremum (i.e., the
maximum or minimum) of a random variable depends more on the variance of the
process than on its mean. Someone whose weight tends to fluctuate a lot is more
likely to show you a picture of himself very thin than someone else whose weight is
on average lower but remains constant. The mean (read skills) sometimes plays a
very, very small role.
Fossil record: I thank the reader Frederick Colbourne for his comments on this subject.
