Learning to Fail Successfully
The daily run to Preston Beach became the daily walk. Eventually, it will become the daily memory, until it is no more but an echo in the mind of a reader. Doug Hofstadter saw this clearly in his shortest, and most personal book.
Source: Hofstadter, Douglas R. (2007), I am a Strange Loop, Basic Books
In Summer, standing on the sea wall of Beach Bluff park, smelling water on the wind, hearing the quiet ebb and flow of the waves, and feeling the burning sand under foot bring to mind Emanuel Derman’s first two paragraphs in Chapter 1 of his book about institutional financial models. Might something important be missing from his analogy of sublimation, the direct transition from solid to vapor, as a reference narrative for economic competition?
Source: Derman, Emanuel (2011), Model.Behaving.Badly. Why confusing illusion with reality can lead to disaster, on Wall Street and in life, Free Press
In the Fall, high winds, raging waves, and stones on the road bring back Sebastian Junger’s book about the men of the Andrea Gail, and wave heights rising with the 7th power of wind speed, if memory serves. How far beyond throwing rocks on the road does the energy level in a competitive economy need to go to create Derman’s sublimation?
Source: Junger, Sebastian (1997), The Perfect Storm, A true story of men against the sea, Norton
In winter looking at the high clouds, the lethargic waves, and the snow on the ground brings to mind Cixin Liu’s novelistic reflections on the three-body problem. What happens when the energy level always drops randomly, and all the way down to a level where everything freezes?
Source: Liu, Cixin (2006, 2014), translated by Ken Liu, The Three-Body Problem, a Tor Book
In the Spring, the garden becomes more important than the beach showing the wisdom of Ben McFarland about the chemistry of life, and Ole Peters’ papers on the importance of calculating meaningful and relevant growth rates. However, at some point growth stops, and the beach becomes a way to say goodbye to the garden.
Source: McFarland, Ben (2016), A World from Dust, How the periodic table shaped life, Oxford
This ebb-and-flow of seasons, plants, tides, and fleeting thoughts echoes our shared humanity: the joy of beginnings, the strength of maturity, and the grief of departures.
Institutions learn to fail productively. Individuals learn to fail successfully.
This Substack newsletter focuses on the ability of individuals to learn, and move forward.
According to Korzybski, see the first post titled “A map is not the territory”, language gives us access to other people’s perception systems in real time, and writing gives us such access across generations.
We can build our own mental map to navigate oceans of negativity, and to steer a good life by listening to one another, as well as reading the written record of those who came before us.
Institutions compete with better mind-maps of business ecosystems.
Source: Porter, Michael E. (1980), Competitive Strategy, Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, Free Press
Individuals thrive with better mind-maps of human nature.
Source: Carse, James P. (1986), Finite and Infinite Games, A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, Free Press
In this vein, Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” shows us how to improve our individual mental map with the time-proven experience of laughter as an answer to insoluble problems.
Source: Eco, Umberto (1983) The Name of the Rose, translation of Il Nome della Rosa (1980), Harcourt Brace Javanovich
Laughter helps us all fail successfully.
If Eco is too dark for you, try Taleb’s Antifragile for something more upbeat.
Source: Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2012), Antifragile, Random House
Re-reading Antifragile today feels remarkably more relevant, and understandable than it did when first published a decade ago. Come to think of it, Taleb now feels like a modern-day Rabelais, slapping on an entertaining mix of deep knowledge, common sense, and in-your-face irreverence.
Source: Boulenger, Jacques and Scheler Lucien (1955), Rabelais, Oeuvres completes, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, Gallimard
Would you believe that there are academic books and research papers about Wealth, Health, and Statistics that have the winning power of Umberto Eco’s laughter as they slay, and replace theories that we can now see as error, or even nonsense?
These books, papers, hypotheses, and theories will add new tools, and the joy of new beginnings, to our arsenal of mind-maps that fail successfully.
At the end of each post, we ask ourselves the following question before we publish it:
“What is an individual supposed to do with this?”
My answer for this post:
Mull over the ideas of cycles, learning to fail successfully, finding joy in laughter, and new beginnings. Look at the citations. We will return to them in the future. See if a book catches your interest, read it. Let me know what you think.
“CTRI by François Gadenne”, on Substack, is your personal connection to the author of CTRI’s research, free of controlling invalidators and algorithms.