I have nearly finished Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan (yes, very late to the party). It’s a book about uncertainty. Some parts are very complex but it is written accessibly.

The title of the book is based on the concept that for a long time, humanity believed swans were only white, until they came across a black swan. Therefore, it was an unknown unknown (as opposed to known unknowns) that had changed their concept of what swans were.

The business of art is in extremistan

The book suggests it is very unlikely that my art business will ever take off and become a major huge success. I wouldn’t doubt that (though I do like to think optimistically). Realistically, I’ll have some small ongoing sales and an interesting time exposing people to my ideas. I don’t think anyone gets into selling art thinking this is a highly profitable endeavour. Rather, the appeal is to express oneself, or to create something that does not yet.

Capturing the positive uncertainties

The book does mention that we need to enhance our ability to capture positive Black Swans. So maybe I might get a random lucky break. Who knows. If I continue long enough, maybe I’ll have more exposure to these random occurrences. I like to keep positive.

The book has a number of other gold nuggets I enjoyed:

1) Attend parties

Attending social gatherings is important to increase the potential exposure to random “breaks”.

2) Wisdom in nature

Redundancies abound because of the catastrophic issues of not having failsafes. For instance, we have multiple eyes, kidneys, brain hemispheres, so that if one failed, another can take over.

3) Small parts reflect big parts

I also enjoyed learning about fractals. The concept is that parts close up of something actually reflect the parts that are far away.

Trees are comprised of mini-tree structures on branches, for instance. I’ll have to keep this in mind for the next time I draw a tree.

There’s a great image of a camera lens cap on dirt, but then the second photo then has a person the same size of the lens cap beside it, making it clear that the dirt was comprised of much larger rocks.

4) Challenge the experts

According to the book, the Gaussian bellcurve model doesn’t necessarily reflect reality outside of certain constrained circumstances. There were many instances challenging those whose know-how tends to be irrefutable simply because we can’t comprehend what they are saying. To me then, if someone says they have unlocked the success of how to run an art business, I should probably put my skeptical hat on.

5) Use data from experience, not theory

The book mentions the distinction between two types of people: “Fat Tony” and “Dr. John”.

Fat Tony is the guy who essentially thinks that there’s great ways to make money off of “suckers”, being great in social settings, and charms folks. He works outside the box.

Dr. John is the uptight guy who brings the same sandwich for lunch and cannot see anything beyond his own way of thinking within a theoretical framework.

While it is easy to say “Be Fat Tony, not Dr. John”, I think the important thing is not to change entirely who your own personality is. Rather, getting data from the actual reality is more important than whatever model seems to be soundproof.