Things that didn't happen

My tendency is to oversimplify, which seems to work out fine, as even the most complex systems move at different levels through states of complexity and simplicity, apparent chaos and underlying / overarching order. Also, I live a very limited life [no authority, no kids] in which the consequences of making mistakes rarely spill out of this room.

However, that doesn't mean my life is not, from some perspectives, one long string of mistakes, simplicity falling into chaos, even though I can never see it like that.

I rarely think about the past, but sometimes I list episodes when things almost took a turn for the definite worse, inre. unplanned parenthood, imprisonment, serious injury or death. If I was the praying type, and I'm not, I would've begged some god to get me out of those situations with the promise to lead a better life from then on. Perhaps the fact no prayers were made doesn't matter, and I still ought to have done things differently and better, and perhaps I did.

Related post: The utility of slack

Practice / Theory

Mango on the ground at NCKU, Tainan

...when I gave a lecture in the sociology department of LSE on the Black-Scholes-Merton scam, they told me that the previous lecturer, Phil Scranton, made the same talk on the jet engine: we were using it while nobody truly understood the theory. They needed the original engineers to make things work. Theory came later to satisfy the intellectual bureaucrats. But that’s not standard history.

Nassim Taleb's notebook is a reliable source of gems

Meanwhile, the universe sits outside my skin, doing everything in ways beyond my comprehension.

I sit quietly, doing nothing. Learning more by observing one crumpled paper closely than all attention paid to a book.

If I return to reading it's because I lack the energy / insight to truly see what is around me.

A game of chance and skill

Scientific American highlights a study that suggests the Red Baron was as much lucky as the best ace of his war.

He racked up 80 official air combat victories—the biggest winning streak on either side—before being shot down on April 21, 1918...

German records list 2,894 WWI...[...]...[analyze the pilots' defeat rate—their total chances of being shot down after each flight. That rate started off high—25 percent for the first flight—but fell sharply; by the 10th flight it had leveled off below 5 percent, consistent with the weaker pilots getting picked off and the remaining aces having similar skills in the air. At that rate, the researchers conclude that the odds of one in 2,894 pilots racking up an 80-win streak are about 30 percent—not so remarkable after all.

Still, I wouldn't bet my life on a on being the one in 2,894 with a 3 in 10 chance of success, with success being an 80-win streak that ended being

hit by a single .303 bullet, which caused such severe damage to his heart and lungs that it must have produced a very speedy death.

Wikipedia entry