The Map and the Territory
by Alan Greenspan · first published 2013
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Like all of us, though few so visibly, Alan Greenspan was forced by the financial crisis of 2008 to question some fundamental assumptions about risk management and economic forecasting. No one with any meaningful role in economic decision making in the world saw beforehand the storm for what it was. How had our models so utterly failed us? To answer this question, Alan Greenspan embarked on a rigorous and far-reaching multiyear examination of how Homo economicus predicts the economic future, and how it can predict it better. Economic risk is a fact of life in every realm, from home to business
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Recently: "The map and the territory" by Michel Houellebecq. It's certainly not the kind of book that you'd think is inspiring in a literal way (ie. would make you want to go and achieve things etc.), but it's just such an extraordinary…
on “What book has inspired you the most?” ↗The conviction in his tone and how he wears rationality like a cape, the book helped me understand the meaning of rationality, the map and the territory and power of beliefs to predict and also acknowledge the existence of an objective reality. Its sort of a journey down the rabbit hole for me.
on “Ask HN: What books fundamentally changed the way you think about the world?” ↗…that he was waylaid by the whole thing. I just happened across his recent book whose title is intruiging, though by reviews and what little of it I skimmed, the content is less than overwhelming: The Map and the Territory. I'd need to find the backstory on the title, but it is strongly reminiscent of Robert Pirsig's Lila, the opening chapter of which starts with the author navigating a river by what turns out to be the…
on “Mathematical Equations That Changed the World” ↗Not to take away from the specific challenges of blind people, but this is a broad problem whenever there is a mismatch between the map and the territory. The mismatch can come from sloppy work or just from the way the world changes over time and the map doesn't keep up. I've seen plenty of cases in IT systems where bad documentation is much worse than…
on “Death by Tactile Paving” ↗