Markus Strasser

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The Triplet of Opacity

public Nassim Taleb

The human mind suffers from three ailments as it comes into contact with history, what I call the triplet of opacity:

illusion of understanding
,
retrospective distortion
,
overvaluation of facts

illusion of understanding

the world that is more complicated (or random) than they realize;

The complex phenomena do not lend themselves to slogans, to easy answers, or to single solutions.

retrospective distortion

You can read a text, but you don’t get any sense of the infinity of choices that were made in that text until you start trying to reproduce it.

how we can assess matters only after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror

history seems clearer and more organized in history books than in empirical reality

School repels fine minds by stripping math of cultural context and leaving only a skeleton of technicalities

The researchers then asked the women their reasons for their choices. Texture, “feel,” and color featured among the selected reasons. All the pairs of stockings were, in fact, identical. The women supplied backfit, post hoc explanations.

overvaluation of facts

and the handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories—when they “Platonify.”

The Triplet of Opacity