Class will meet at the usual time; I have an exercise for you to do with the other students. But I will also send an e-mail about arranging alternate hours so I can extend our 1-on-1 talk to greater than 10 minutes per student.
For those who remain interested in Taleb, here is the most important essay he wrote during the financial crisis in 2008. And here is his Twitter feed.
Your next task is to create a philosophical 'map for thinking'... it doesn't need to be the same as Beane, Gladwell, Taleb, or Lady Gaga. My suggestion for an outline is to actually start with the same exercise I did, which was to draw a map/chart. Then I would suggest making a standard paragraph outline divided by sections or categories of the chart. Or by problematic areas of the chart that require further explanation. For each section, try to come up with at least two demonstrative examples that easily fit, and one that doesn't fit or can't be explained. Why? Multiple examples will create a redundancy so your essay draft is less fragile... in other words it will give you more choices in case your first example doesn't really work out. And why a non-fitting example? Because examples that don't fit will help you draw those boundaries between domains more precisely, or help you re-think your system. (Of course we have become somewhat skeptical of maps in general, but a good map actually indicates its own limitations.) I would also recommend that you try to think of a "they say" for the start of your essay... in other words it would be much easier to begin by contrasting your 'map' with some other one that you find to be inadequate or misleading.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
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