Read: Black Swan 100-133 (chapters 8-9), bottom of 185 - bottom of 189 ("The Grueness of Emerald," "That Great Anticipation Machine"), top of 196 - top of 200 ("The Melting Ice Cube," "Once Again Incomplete Information," "What They Call Knowledge"), top of 223 - top of 228 ("The Long Tail," "Naive Globalization," "Reversals Away from Extremistan"), 284 ("Two Ways to Approach Randomness"), 286-298 (chapters 18-19)
That looks like a lot, but it's actually the same length as the previous two assignments. And as I said today, I think the further you read along, the more you will understand.
Read: They Say / I Say 121-128 ("Academic Writing Doesn't Always Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice")
46 (Jenny - repeat). Define narrative fallacy (according to Taleb) and offer two new examples - anything that isn't discussed in Black Swan is OK.
48 (Cathy). The move of "mix[ing] academic and colloquial styles" that Graff & Birkenstein advocate is very difficult to do, and it is also somewhat peculiar to American English. Do you think this "mixing" is more difficult for you than it would be for an American student? (Or less difficult?) Would this type of mixing be desirable in a 中文 essay?
49 (Tiara). Explain what Taleb means by "silent evidence" and give a (new) example of a mistake/misinterpretation that comes from ignoring silent evidence.
50 (Elsa). Describe a person you know who is like "Fat Tony." Describe a person you know who is like "Dr. John."
51 (Alice). Ask a question about something confusing to you in Black Swan.
52 (Catherine). Ask a question about something confusing to you in Black Swan (different than #51).
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Q48.
ReplyDeleteAs in the last part of this chapter in They Say I Say illustrates, whether we have to write an essay combining formal language and colloquial language or not depends on the occasion and the audience of the essay, and I think when writing a Chinese essay the theory also works. According to my memory, in high school, teachers didn’t especially ask us to put colloquial language into our Chinese essays, I think the reason is that both teachers and students regard writing essay as a formal thing, they just want to be formal. As to the question whether we can do better combining academic language and colloquial language than American students, I don’t quite sure what you’re asking is about writing an English essay or just essay regardless of languages? If your question is about writing an English essay, my answer would be American students because I think they have better mastery of the language therefore they can control their tones more freely. If your question is the latter, I have to say that I have no idea about that.
Q49 from Tiara
ReplyDeleteTaleb points out that history is in fact written by who is happen to survive, while people tend to view the survivals as winners. And the silent evidence refers to that people overlook the story of those who do not survive.
What I think about is the movie called Life is Beautiful. It depicts the history about German
slaughter the Jews in WWII. The German consider to themselves as winners. What they did is cruely kill the Jews so that they could write their own history, while the Jews would be wiped on history. This example may be too dramatic...
Q.52 from catherine
ReplyDeletethe most interesting part for me is p.196, the concept of "backward process" and "forward" process. i think i can understand what the author tries to tell, but i am cusious that is there any opposite example about it. the ability to predict in the concept seems a little bit contradict against the author's arguement: in this case, predicting result is easier than reconstruct, but on the other hand, he also claim that prediction is not so simple as we imagine. this is my confusion about Black Swan
"Fat Tony": once I was making a bet with my friend, we were playing the coin just like the writer's question to Tony and John. We played it for about fifteen times, and it was almost "NT10" each time. The last time I bet that it would be "NT10" but it was "head". So I am the one that seems like "Fat Tony"
ReplyDelete“Dr. John": my father is a person like John. I always think that he is a "dead mind" one. During everyday life, he is always laughed by us. One time he was mixing the fertilizer and the soil to plant rose, and he measured the quantities of the fertilizer and the soil with a cup and a platform scale, which cost him almost half hour. It's quite funny.
46 (Jenny - repeat). Define narrative fallacy (according to Taleb) and offer two new examples - anything that isn't discussed in Black Swan is OK.
ReplyDeleteSince the definition of "narrative fallacy" I gave last week seems correct, I would just give one new example this time.
Sometimes people would change an event they overheard when they want to retell it to others. When they retell the story, especially when they won't remember it in detail, they tend to add some details that make the story sound more reasonable or interesting but don’t exist in the original story. For example, the story one heard at first might be "I saw a mother held a stick in hand talking to her child who was crying." When the person retells the story, it would be changed into like, "Someone saw a child was terribly crying because of his mother yelled at and hit him with a stick!”
It seems that I should give two examples, but I couldn’t think of two different ones. I have come up with several but they are all similar. So I just give one.
51. (Alice) The author constructs a black swan theory and tell people to be aware of silent evidence, to use “because” more carefully and to avoid narrative stories Frankly speaking, I think that these suggestions are hard for “normal people”. And since black swan events are unpredictable, do people have capability to confront with their limited perception and predict the future, or is it necessary?
ReplyDelete