Guest Post by Nassim Taleb
Chapter from Skin in the Game
Life in the Simulation Machine
There are many ways to convince with an icepick — Councils of bickering bishops Theosis– Why Trump will win
I once sat in a dinner party on a large round table across from a courteous fellow called David. The host was a physicist, Edgar C. who was honoring an author, a former secretary of the great Borges, so, except for the fellow David, everyone was dressed like people who read Borges. As to David, he was dressed like someone who didn’t know that people who read, among other such authors, Borges, needed to dress in a certain way when they congregated. At some point during the dinner he unexpectedly pulled an ice pick and made it go through his hand. I had no clue what the fellow did for a living –nor was I aware that Edgar was into magic as a side hobby. It turned out that David was a magician (his name is David Blaine), and that he was very famous.
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I knew very little about magicians, assumed it was all about optical illusions –the central inverse problem we mentioned in Chapter 1 that makes it easier to engineer than reverse-engineer. But something struck me at the end of the party. David was standing by the coat check using a handkerchief to sop us drops of blood coming out of his hand.
So the fellow was really making an icepick go through his hand –with all the risks it entailed. He suddenly became another person in my eyes. He was now real. He took risks. He had skin in the game.
I met him again a few months later and, as I tried to shake hands with him, noticed a scar where the icepick came out of his hand.
To Bicker Like Bishops
This allowed me to finally figure out this business of the Trinity. The Christian religion, throughout Chalcedon, Nicea, and other ecumenical councils and various synods of argumentative bishops, kept insisting on the dual nature of Jesus Christ. It would be theologically simpler if God were god and Jesus were man, just like another prophet, the way Islam views him, or the way Judaism views Abraham. But no, he had to be both man and god; the duality is so central it kept coming back though all manner of refinement: whether the duality allowed sharing the same substance (Orthodoxy), the same will (Monothelites), the same nature (Monophysites). The trinity is what caused other monotheists to see trace of polytheism in the Christian religion, and caused many Christians who fell into the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS) to be beheaded.
So it appears that the church founders really wanted the Christ to have skin in the game; he did actually suffer on the cross, sacrifice himself, and experience death. He was a risk taker. More crucially to our story, he sacrificed himself for the sake of others. A god cannot have such skin in the game in such a manner, cannot really suffer (or, if he does, such a redefinition of a god injected with a human nature would back up our argument). A god who didn’t really suffer on the cross would be like a magician who performed an illusion, not someone who actually bled after sliding an icepick between his carpal bones.
The Orthodox Church goes further, making the human side flow upwards rather than downwards. The Fourth Century bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote: “Jesus Christ was incarnate so we could be made God”[1] (emphasis mine). It is the very human character of Jesus that can allow us mortals to access God and merge with him, become part of him, in order to partake of the divine. That fusion is called theosis. The human nature of Christ makes the divine possible to all of us. [2]
The Matrix
Philosophers, unlike the equally argumentative, but vastly more sophisticated bishops, don’t get the point with their experience machine. The machine is as follows. Simply, you sit in an apparatus and a technician plugs a few cables into your brain, after which you undergo an “experience”. You feel exactly as if an event took place, except that it all happened in virtual reality; it was all mental never physical. Alas, such an experience will never be in the same category as the real –only a modernistic academic philosopher who never took risk can believe that nonsense. Why?
Because, to repeat, life is sacrifice and risk taking, and nothing that doesn’t entail some moderate amount of the former, under the constraint of satisfying the latter, is close to what we can call life. If you do not undertake a risk of real, reversible or even potentially irreversible, harm from an adventure, it is not an adventure.
Our argument –that the real requires peril –can lead to niceties about the mind-body problem, but don’t tell your local philosopher.
Now one may argue: once inside the machine, you may believe that you have skin in the game, and experience the pains and consequences as if you were living the actual harm. But this is once inside, not outside and there is no risk of irreversible harm, these things that linger and make time flow in one direction not the other. The reason a dream is not reality is that when you suddenly wake up from falling from a Chinese skyscraper, life continues and there is no absorbing barrier, the mathematical name for that irreversible state that we will discuss at length in Chapter x.
Next let us consider the signaling benefits of overt flaws.
The Donald
I have a tendency to watch television with the sound off. When I saw Donald Trump in the Republican primary standing next to other candidates, I became certain he was going to win that stage of the process, no matter what he said or did. Actually, it was because he had visible, very visible, deficiencies. Why? Because he was real and the public –composed of people who usually take risks, not the lifeless nonrisktaking analysts we will discuss in the next chapter –would vote anytime for someone who actually bled after putting an icepick in his hand than someone who did not. Or Trump was such a great actor that he should be performing in Greek tragedies. Arguments that Trump was a failed entrepreneur, even if true, actually prop up the argument: you’d even rather have a failed real person than a successful one, as blemishes, scars, and character flaws increase the distance between a human and a ghost.
[1] Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν.
[2] “The Son of God shares our nature so we can share His; as He has us in Him, so we have Him in us” Chrisostom
To love is to take the ultimate risk: that what you love you will lose.
A man who deeply loves his wife, and a wife who deeply loves her husband, year after year, decade after decade, experience great joy; the highs are higher and the lows less low.
But this comes at a cost. Someday, one of them will be left alone (barring the usual simultaneous check-out scenarios.) When your marriage is that co-dependent, that integrated, that suffused with mutual devotion, someone is going to suffer…a whole lot.
The same applies to having kids. The notion of a child, or a grandchild, predeceasing me is too horrible to even imagine. [Coincidentally, I have an extremely minute connection to a couple who started a support group for Parents of Murdered Children. When I came across this, I wondered how impossible it must be to survive and go on in life if your child (grandchild) was taken from you by a volitional act of another person. ]
But be it disease, accident or volitional act, the loss of a beloved family member is, undoubtedly, a huge cost we risk when we love.
I try not to forget that, so I don’t take my loved ones for granted.
There is an old Zen story that goes like this:
Once upon a time a wealthy man had just completed the building of a wonderful new home and invited the local Zen master to give a blessing at the house warming. The house was packed with family, well wishers, business associates and friends. Just before the grand feast began, the homeowner asked the Zen master to give his blessing. The old man rose, looked around and spoke, “Grandfather dies. Father dies. Son dies.” and sat down. The homeowner could not stop himself and blurted out, “That is horrible! That is no blessing!” The master looked at him and answered, “In what other order would you prefer it to happen?”
I can only think of one way to relieve the agony of a murdered child or spouse.
PROVEN FORMULA FOR RELIEVING STRESS:
1. Picture yourself lying on your stomach on a warm rock that hangs out over a crystal clear stream.
2. Picture yourself with both your hands dangling in the cool running water.
3. Birds are sweetly singing in the cool mountain air.
4. No one knows your secret place.
5. You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called the world.
6. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.
The water is so crystal clear that you can easily make out the face of the person you are holding underwater. . .
Mike, my buddy Ray had that short scene on his desk along with a fake news story about bio-engineers reproducing a gun in the uterus. The unlikely result was the baby came out shooting and wiped out the attending medical personnel.
Reminded me of that cheesy 70’s thriller, “It’s Alive!” Proving back then that new life is risk.
https://youtu.be/aD9wL0ffxqY
Reading this piece, the only thing I can think about is how sad and moronic it is to feel the need to put an icepick through your hand in order to garner attention from rich assholes.
Taleb implies Blaine was essentially “forced” to do so, since everyone else, including Taleb, was cruelly dressed like Borges aficionados—whatever that looks like… What other resort could possibly elevate the sartorially-challenged in their eyes?
*Are you not entertained?*
This takes Taleb down quite a few notches in my estimation.
I’m don’t see how Taleb is implying that Blaine was forced to stick an icepick in his hands to “elevate” the other guests. Obviously, it was dramatic, but the other guests probably assumed, as did Taleb, that it was an illusion. I’m not sure he picked a great example, but Taleb’s point is that some people are ready to take on real risks, embody them, as it were, while others seek only an illusion. Somehow, it is the former we tend to respect and trust. I use to wonder why Jesus had to die on the cross, and then resurrected. The answer slowly dawned on me that if he didn’t, no one would have believed his claims.
jimmieoak, the resurrection wasn’t a neat parlor trick designed to prove anything to people. Have you ever heard the assertion, when you believe it, you will see it?
I’m not talking about those folks who pander to morans who place their faith in faith, who think just visualizing will bring their dreams to fruition.
You ought to keep thinking on that story. There are many lessons there. The one the author chose to illustrate is a little pedestrian for such a wonderful sacrifice.
Imagine, God, who created the world and gave his only begotten son to save it after preparing for ages, is described as not having had skin in the game. What a moronic idea.
I’m saying Blaine pulled the stunt to elevate *himself*.
Re. The whole god part… It’s not profound in the least.. It’s the same human story of posturing and extreme self-regard. The biblical god character is so narcissistic and attention-seeking that— after the toddler-like temper tantrums of the OT have failed—he decides to sacrifice himself to himself. Yeah, that’s the ticket! The ultimate solipsism. Explicitly acknowledged at the end of the piece…
Chubby, this is the most moronic comment you have ever posted.
Solipsism: Prof Pangloss said that if you are the only one who exists, then you are insane as you are talking to yourself.
Your description of an infantile deity is doubly moronic. You are excused, though. That characterization comes from a popular meme originating with the Muzzies. I suggest you and jimmieload get together and compare notes on the purpose of the crucifixion.
You both are on the wrong track. It wasn’t to provide proof of anything and it wasn’t to sacrifice anything to himself. You, my friend are a classical cynic, the type that said they could satisfy their sexual appetite with their hand. Your mental masturbation is no better.
I don’t get it. Why did he joog hisself in the hand with an icepick?
Gawd. Clearly the article was just too intelligent for some. That article has tremendous depth to it, both on the political and theological level. I’m going to get the book.
Ligas, but Llpoh once accused me of being a retard, and although my IQ is 140 and change, there are times I wholeheartedly agree.
This one took me a minute to figure out, namely, that my library will always be lacking..
Life is not a pecking order:
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/SITG.html
Having this man around for tea would be the best excuse I can think of for breaking out the good silver.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Books
The minority rule will show us how it all it takes is a small number of intolerant virtuous people with skin in the game, in the form of courage, for society to function properly.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15
The only thing I’ve ever really accomplished in this life is to know who I am.
While the early Christians may have argued about the duality of Jesus, we have, in my lifetime, learned that Jesus was BOTH man and Creator Son… not dual, two became ONE… a possibility known only to God and Creator Sons.
We all have skin in the game, in the end.
“the public –composed of people who usually take risks…”
This phrase makes me want to re-examine multiverse theory, ’cause in my universe, my experiences have demonstrated to me that my reality indicates otherwise.
Just so…When I took our kids off into the Canadian wilderness for an adventure, some (mostly women) were horrified. There were real risks, even if I didn’t think they were very great. A medical emergency, a canoe accident, who knows….But the kids got it, this was a real life exciting and lasting experience. You can’t get that without risk.
Boy Scout campouts are about as safe as anything that adults with experience and forethought can make them. That being said, every once in a while someone gets hurt: cuts and bruises mostly, but occasionally more severe injuries. You CANNOT learn without risk – if there are no unknowns, you are doing something you’ve already done, and not learning anything new.
If you want to spend your days wrapped in padded cotton with nothing dangerous nearby, then you can stay an infant – and you are one, no matter how many days you accumulate in that condition.
Interesting story. Until I got to the part where he said Jesus came to make men gods. Which is written in the RC catechism.
The reason it had to be God Himself, the possessor and giver of life, that became a man to enter into death with mankind. Is because if it was just a man he could never have conquered death. Because there was never a man who intrinsically possessed eternal life. God does and that’s why death could not hold Him.
Blessings:-}