Monthly Archives: October 2018

A Diabolical Halloween Story aboard the VIA Rail

A Mephistopheles Story

I love my Mephistopheles story. It’s a true story. I’ve told it to a few friends. The ones who are raging atheists (most of them) are skeptical. My religious friends (the minority) find it strange, as in, “Dude, you know, that’s like weird.” So I stopped telling it. But, hell, Halloween is coming up. And, perhaps we can all agree that Halloween gives storytellers an excuse to break out their best ghost stories? If so, keep reading.

Choices, choices, choices

Let’s go back to 2014. I was finishing my last year of work before going on an indefinite sabbatical to finish writing The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy. There were enough funds for one more vacation. But it’d have to be frugal. Or relative frugal. A variety of options lay on the table. First option was a guided hiking tour in the Albertan Rockies. Credit card tramping in the Rockies!–what could be better? Nice hike during the day and return to civilized hotel in the evenings. This is my style! Second option was a trip to Kiev, Ukraine. Believe it or not, they were offering round trip airfare, hotel included, starting at $1100. Of course, this was after Russia invaded Ukraine (but before the Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down…). Maybe there was a modicum of danger. But for $1100 dollars all-in to Ukraine, I’ll take a few chances, no problem! Third option was a train trek across Canada. Trains have a certain lore. And you never know how a train trek really rides until you try. Choices, choices, choices.

So, on decision evening, as I was pondering the options, Journey happened to be playing on the stereo. Then the song of songs came on. You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? You know the song that runs:

Just a small town girl,

Living in a lonely world

Took the midnight train going anywhere.

Just a city boy,

Living in South Detroit

Took the midnight train going anywhere.

Never mind South Detroit would actually be in Windsor, Ontario: that’s a great line and a great song. And what is more, Steve Perry was telling me to catch the midnight train! No more decision-making required!

Not Quite Midnight Train (but close)

So here’s where the story starts. The VIA Rail line starts in Vancouver in a grand old terminal close to Chinatown, the “Pacific Central Station.” To get the best view of the Rockies, it’s an evening departure. The train was delayed several hours, so we ended up leaving closer to midnight. I had reserved a sleeper cabin. They’re the coolest things. The cabin is maybe 6′ long x 4.5′ wide x 7′ high. With a window. The bed folds up, and when it reclines, it covers the water closet and the lavatory. Which means, of course, if you get up in the middle of the night, you’ll need to fold the bed up.

Sleep Patterns

Did you know that this sleep routing of ours, the one that says: “get eight hours sleep each night” is a nineteenth century phenomenon? It turns out that in the Middle Ages people slept in shorter intervals, but more frequently. How do scholars know this? Well, there’s a set of early morning prayers for 3am. So people must have been getting up to pray. Some conjecture that the body’s natural sleep cycle may be to sleep four or five hours twice a day. Because we work 8 hour shifts during the day, it’s hard to test this out. But since I was on the train, I was going to give intermittent sleeping a shot.

Sleeping on Trains

Yes, the tracks are loud. No, it was no problem going to bed. Quite easy actually. The sounds of the tracks functions like a white noise. That evening, I had a few beers with the Australian rugby team in the drinking cabin (wow, they sure can pound them back, and so can their wives). Actually, I had been sitting in the corner of the drinking cabin and one of them more or less grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said: “Some drink with us!” He was so big, I didn’t know if it was an invitation or a threat at first. And I met one of the VIA Rail conductors, M. She was a Catholic lady, originally from Quebec. But she had since found out about this magical land in BC where it’s nice all year round and was living on the islands with her family. She worked the west coast leg of the trip: from Vancouver to Winnipeg. At Winnipeg, she would get on the train going back to Vancouver. She liked her job. It meant being separated from her husband and kids, but the job also gave her a week or two free time between shifts.

After retiring to my cabin at around 11pm, I set the alarm for 3am. At 3 I would get up and read. And look out the window. And just eat in the whole train experience. For this trip, I had brought a special book to re-read by one of my favourite authors: Goethe’s Faust. Every decade or so, when I want to read the story of the good and evil that men do, the lofty heights of ambition and the wretched lows of depravity and loss of direction, I return to this play to relearn the sum of human existence. Faust, of course, is Goethe’s retelling of the old legend of the magician/scholar who makes a bet with the devil.

Goethe’s Faust

My favourite Faust translation is Philip Wayne’s verse translation, easily available as a Penguin edition. I also have a Norton Critical Edition with a helpful commentary: the text is not the easiest to follow. And, to round it off, I also have Kaufmann’s translation which has the German text on the facing page. All three texts came with me on the trip.

At 3am sharp the alarm woke me up. I could hear the beat of the train going over the rails. It was pitch black outside. I turned on the light and propped the pillow on the wall, and dug out Wayne’s verse translation of Faust. Now 3am is actually a great time for reading. No distractions. Quickly, I got to the part where Faust summons up the great earth spirit. And here’s where the trouble started.

I was reading the passage where Faust summons the earth spirit, and it was so powerful that I thought, to do it justice, I really out to be reading it in German. Fortunately, Kaufmann’s edition with the German text was also there. I dug this out and started reading the German lines. And while I was reading the words, they clinged and they clanged together so much like a magic spell, I thought, to really really do the lines justice, I should read them out loud. Which I did. Now halfway through the passage, I started hearing a banging noise from the adjoining compartment. And since I could hear it above the sound of the tracks, it must have been some commotion.

Fearing some disaster (anyone seen Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express?–David Suchet probably has the most convincing film adaptation), I jumped up and went over to M’s cabin (my new conductor friend was staying next door). She opened the door after a few knocks and she looked white like a sheet. I was glad that she opened the door, and sort of awkwardly asked her if everything was okay. And in a sort of awkward way she nodded and said yes. At this point, I didn’t know what to say so I just said I was checking up on her because I thought I heard something. And then I said good night and excused myself. Going back to my cabin, I thought that was weird, but didn’t think too much of it. Maybe I was just hearing things–the excitement of the train had affected the nerves, perhaps? I kept reading.

Breakfast

The next morning, I went down to breakfast. Now breakfast (and all the other meals) aboard a train is a special treat. You’re paired with other folks at the table, and you’re all expected to tell some kind of story about your train experience. But that’s another tale. After breakfast, I went off to the next compartment to read for another hour or so before having a nap. That’s when M. approached me. She apologized for the previous night. She said that she had had a dream. I said that it must have been some dream you were having to make such a racket. And then she said that she dreamt that the devil was sucking out her soul. Now, if you ask my friends, they’ll say that I’m the last person to believe in ghosts and goblins. But even this made me feel odd. I could feel the goosebumps rising. Perhaps Goethe’s spell, in some weird way, had worked? After all, I had been reading the diabolical incantation out loud. Well M. saw my strange reaction. I hastily made something up: “I’m glad it was just a dream,” or something like that and went back to my quarters. And I thought: “Could it really be? Could there be more out there?”

Lunch

After lunch, I was sitting around one of the compartments reading Faust again. M. came by to say hello (on the train people are constantly running into one another, as you can imagine). By this time, I was feeling a little self-conscious, and when she sat down for a quick chat, I made a little move to brush the book aside. You see, on the cover is a picture of Faust with the devil. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want her to see this.

But of course, every time you brush something aside, however discreetly, it unfailingly draws the other person’s eye. We exchanged some pleasantries, but during the conversation I could tell she was trying, in her own equally discreet way, to see why I was trying to conceal the book, which I had brushed off to the corner of the table and was covering with my free hand.

For the rest of the afternoon, we continued to play this cat and mouse game. Each time she came around, I’d brush the book off to the side and then she’d try to see what sort of suspicious book I was reading.

Next Day

The next day, I was chatting with M. again. While we were chatting, the cook came out and joined the conversation. The whole VIA Rail crew quite enjoys being on the train, and, as a result are often in jolly spirits. Now the thing I remember the most about the cook is that, at one point–and it was almost preordained–he asked what I was reading. I said, “Faust,” and thought that was a save, since who these days still remembers the name? Out of a hundred people, if you said “Doctor Faustus,” maybe ten would remember the old tale. And if you said: “Faust,” that number drops down to single digits.

But here my luck ran out: the cook was quite familiar with Faust. “Faust,” he says, “isn’t that the guy who sold his soul to the devil? Cool!” As he said that, you could just see the blood draining from M’s face. She got up quickly and left without a word. I have no doubt in my mind that she put two and two together: her dream of the devil sucking out her soul and the guy in the next cabin reading occult texts. Luckily, the train was almost at Winnipeg, where M. would head back to Vancouver and I would continue on to Toronto.

Happy Halloween!

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I’m doing Melpomene’s work.

Risk Theatre Major Milestone – Book at Proofing Stage

Friesen Press sent back the first proofs of The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected on Friday, October 5, right on schedule. Four files came in the package: 1) hardcover PDF (e.g. dustjacket), 2) softcover PDF, 3) interior pages of the book called the “book block,” also PDF, and 4) another version of the interior pages of the book on a special Word file that’s linked to the PDF book block. Here’s the softcover PDF–I had asked for something spare, authoritative, and easy to read from a distance:

TRTMOT_SC_18-10-04

 

The revision process is straightforward. Changes to the text and light formatting (adding or deleting bold and italics) are done on the Word document. Any other changes such as adjusting tabs, paragraphs, charts, page / footnote numbers, size of fonts, and inserting / deleting headings must be done on the PDF documents. You open the PDF file on Adobe Acrobat Reader, select the comment tool, set the sticky note where the change is to occur, and type in the instructions for the designer.

For example, I wanted a subject reference on the top left hand corner of the back cover. To do this, I put a little comment note on both the soft- and hardcover on the top left hand corner of the back cover and left the following instructions: “Insert subject reference DRAMA/LITERATURE.” Altogether, it took me a week and a half to finish the revisions to the first proof. The exercise clocked in at thirty hours, give or take.

I began with the Word document. 147 changes in the text, which is, at this point, hard to believe. There were many minor corrections from converting my original Word document into Friesen’s special Word document. For example, some of the subheadings needed to be capitalized throughout. Same with the running headers. Also, paragraphs were broken up inadvertently. This accounted for maybe 30 of these 147 changes. Next were the corrections to maintain consistency. When quoting footnotes, they were referred to sometimes as 279n.14 (this would refer to page 279 note 14). At other times, there would be a space, as in 279 n.14 or 279 n. 14. The manuscript was written over a period of ten years, so my own conventions evolved. Also in this category is consistency in orthography, especially for the ancient Greek names. For example, is is “Eteocles,” “Eteokles,” or “Eteoklus?” Making everything consistent accounted for maybe 20 of the 147 changes. Next were the changes to improve the flow. When reading the manuscript, some of the lines seemed to stick. For example, in the discussion of Othello, the proof read: “Iago claims to feel slighted because Othello passed him up for promotion.” This seemed to stick, and, to improve the flow became this: “Iago claims to feel slighted because Othello has passed him over for promotion.” These improvement to flow accounted for 90 or so of the 147 changes. Reading the text aloud helps with improving flow: if you can say it, then you can read it. Then there were the embarrassing errors. There were two or three of these. Honestly, through all the revision rounds, it was surprising to seem them. Subject-verb agreement, for example. The proof read: “Eteocles draws a lot and interpret the tale of the tape.” Of course, it should read that he interprets the tale of the tape. One thing I learned from this exercise is that a lot of work goes into making an error free book. Errors can be so persistent…

After I revised the Word document, next up was the PDF document of the book. 140 changes were posted into the PDF document through the comment tool. Changes to the PDF document were of a more cosmetic nature than the changes to the Word document. I wanted, for example, the vertical bar in the text to indicate a blockquote removed. I thought footnotes at the beginning of each chapter should be enumerated from 1, instead of being numbered consecutively from the first to the last chapter. Things like this. In the conversion process from my original Word document to the book proof, lots of little unforeseen things pop up which don’t appear quite right. For example, verse quotes easily fit onto a line in a Word document. But if a verse is quoted in a book proof, sometimes it runs into the next line (the book page is narrower and if it’s a blockquote, it will be also indented in from the left margin). So, if a verse quote ran into the next line, I wanted a short tab to indicate that the verse was being continued from the previous line. All little things. But all the little things add up. The feeling correcting proofs is not unlike going camping during mosquito season.

I’ve sent the proof back to Friesen. Their designer will take three weeks to incorporate the revisions into the text and send back a revised set of proofs. Then I’ll review and if they’re good, I’ll sign them off and the indexer can start. If I notice anything else, there will be another revision round, which will have to be paid for as an extra: my self-publishing package “Launch” only includes the first revision round. I feel that I’ll have to pay for one additional revision round to get everything to the point where it needs to be.

One interesting thing that I learned is that Library and Archives Canada no longer supports Cataloguing in Publication or CIP data for self-published titles. This is a major loss, as it identifies a self-published title as being self-published immediately. CIP data appears as a few lines on the copyright page and it helps libraries out by spelling out the author’s biographical information and the book’s call number. CIP data also goes out to booksellers and libraries to facilitate the book distribution process. The reason for the lack of support is lack of funding. You know, I think a lot of writers would pay Library and Archives Canada for CIP data to include on the copyright page. Why not make this something that can be paid for? If there’s been budget cutbacks, theyt could even charge a hefty number, say $150 or $250. Even for their massive bureaucratic juggernaut, that should cover the clerical work involved in producing a few lines of text and entering them into the national database. Then at least self-published writers would have the option of getting CIP data. Right now, there’s not even the option. And yes, I’ve emailed Library and Archives Canada to ask them to consider charging self-published authors for this service. Let’s see what they say.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m doing Melpomene’s work.

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life – Taleb

2018, Random House, 279 pages

Book Blurb

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan, a bold new work that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility.

“Skin in the game means that you do not pay attention to what people say, only to what they do, and to how much of their necks they are putting on the line.”

In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one’s own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life.

The phrase “skin in the game” is one we have often heard but rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it’s also an astonishingly rich worldview that, as Taleb shows in this book, applies to all aspects of our lives. As Taleb says, “The symmetry of skin in the game is a simple rule that’s necessary for fairness and justice, and the ultimate BS-buster,” and “Never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them.”

Author Blurb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb spent twenty-one years as a risk taker before becoming a researcher in philosophical, mathematical, and (mostly) practical problems with probability. Although he spends most of his time as a flâneur, meditating in cafés across the planet, he is currently Distinguished Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. His books, part of a multivolume collection called Incerto, have been published in thirty-six languages. Taleb has authored more than fifty scholarly papers as backup to Incerto, ranging from international affairs and risk management to statistical physics. Having been described as “a rare mix of courage and erudition” he is widely recognized as the foremost thinker on probability and uncertainty. Taleb lives mostly in New York.

Great Writers Give You Great Ideas

Taleb, as assiduous readers will recall, planted the idea in my mind that a theory of tragedy could be based on risk. While wandering around the big Borders bookstore in Providence Place Mall one evening, his book Fooled by Randomness jumped out at me. Around this time, I had been reading a pile of economics books: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Malkiel (recommended) and various books by Jeremy Siegel (less recommended). It was at this time I discovered concepts like the efficient market hypothesis and that finance is really quite interesting. There was also a personal reason to learn about investing. My seven year fairy-tale run in academia was coming to an end and it was time to become a civilian again. I still had an investment portfolio that, believe it or not, I had still been adding to while in university (to the tune of $25 or so a month–saving is a hard habit to break). I hadn’t really done anything with it since the Bre-X and Dot Com crash of 1999, but I figured it was time to get back into the game.

1999 was a bad year for investing. My Royal Bank advisor had steered me into tech (it’s the new economy) and precious metals (another hot sector) mutual funds. In addition to exorbitant management fees (round 3% those days), both sectors crashed. Panicked and bummed out, I sold and, by selling, locked in my losses. I lost interest in investing for six years. After which time, I decided if I was going to get back into the game, I would learn how the system worked and do everything myself in a self-directed account. So, I picked up Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness to become a better investor. But the unanticipated outcome was that I would also base a theory of tragedy around the impact of low-probability, high-consequence events. But hey, that’s another story. Back to Taleb.

Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

The book’s subtitle is “Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life.” What does that mean? Taleb’s argument is that symmetrical situations in which risk and reward are balanced are preferable to asymmetrical situations in which rewards can be had without risk. Take, as an example, building a house. The best case scenario is if you build the house yourself because you’re taking on the risk (if could go over budget, the design could be faulty, etc.,) and reaping the potential reward (if it goes well you save a bunch of money). When you take on risk for a shot at a reward, you have skin in the game.

But let’s say you don’t know how to build a house. You’d have to hire a general contractor (GC) to frame the house and look after the plumbers, electricians, glazers, and other subtrades. The good thing is that you have a pro to build your house. The bad thing is that the risks and rewards to your pro are less symmetric: he doesn’t realize the upside. If the house: a) comes in under budget, b) is built to higher standards, or c) is built three months ahead of schedule the GC doesn’t realize the benefits. To him, the risks and rewards are asymmetric. In other words, he doesn’t have as much skin in the game. Taleb’s solution: incentivize the GC with a performance bonus. That way the homeowner and the GC align their risks and rewards. They place their goals on a less asymmetrical and a more symmetrical footing.

That’s the gist of the book: have skin in the game. Talk is talk. Talk is cheap. You have to walk the walk. Don’t ask someone what hot stock to invest in or what their investing philosophy is. Simply see what they have in their portfolio. And beware of asymmetry: if you get advice where you, but not the person giving the advice, is exposed to the harm should the advice fail, run away.

Unsurprisingly, Taleb’s praise is directed to people who have skin in the game. He singles out the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, who fought in the front lines on the eastern front. In a more recent example of noblesse oblige, during the Falklands War, Prince Andrew also fought on the front ranks, where the danger was the greatest. By taking responsibility for their privilege, they had skin in the game. Martyrs (who die for their beliefs) and businesspeople (who stake their own funds) are further examples of those who have skin in the game. Whistleblowers who face smear campaigns while protecting the public also win Taleb’s praise. In fact, one of the dedicatees of the book is Ralph Nader, who was a victim of an intimidation campaign when he called out General Motors for defective products.

Also unsurprisingly, Taleb’s ire is directed to people who, by gaming asymmetrical situations, profit off the system without putting skin in the game. Journalists, politicians, and academics (especially economists) win his ire. He singles out journalists on BNN or Bloomberg who recommend stocks while they themselves don’t hold positions. The situation is asymmetric because viewers are exposed to harm if the recommendation fails while the journalist gets a paycheque either way.

Taleb singles out politicians who bail out failing institutions: the politicians take the credit for saving the world while it is the taxpayers who fund the bailouts, not the politicians. Taleb devotes significant attention to Bob Rubin, a former Secretary of the United States Treasury. As Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, Robert Rubin had opposed regulating collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps, and other derivative instruments that Warren Buffett would later refer to as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” After his tenure as Treasury Secretary, he received over $120 million from Citibank, which was rolling in the cash by offering these selfsame derivative financial instruments. But when these derivative instruments led to the 2008 financial crisis and banks needed to be bailed out, the bailout money came out of taxpayers’ pockets, not the pockets of folks like Bob Rubin who had made a fortune by promoting them. To Taleb, this “Bob Rubin Trade” showcases asymmetry: heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose.

Taleb also singles out academics, mainly economists. To Taleb, they come out with fancy economic models and give their models the stamp of approval with their academic credentials. But since academics are divorced from reality (one of his quotes runs: “In the academic world there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world there is”) their models seldom work. Economists create asymmetry because real world traders are exposed to harm if they use the economists’ models while economists continue to collect their salaries no matter whether they are right or wrong.

The Lindy Effect

An interesting concept that gains prominence in Skin in the Game is the Lindy effect. The Lindy effect (named after the New York delicatessen where the idea began) states that the longer something survives, the longer it is likely to survive. A Broadway play, for example, that has been playing for 400 days is likely to play for another 400 days. A religion that has been around for a thousand years can be expected to be around for another thousand years. A book that has been in publication for fifty years is likely to be in publication for another fifty years. If, after fifty years it is still in print, then it will likely last another hundred years. If after another hundred years it is still in print, then it will likely survive another 200 years. And so on.

What is the relationship between the Lindy effect and the idea of skin in the game? According to Taleb, concepts and ideologies also have skin in the game. The role of a writer, for example, should not be to please book reviewers (who are not experts and do not have skin in the game) but to please future readers. Time, to Taleb, is the ultimate arbiter. You can fool some of the people today, but if it stands the test of time, it’s legit. Take, say, a fashionable diet, something like the Atkins diet. It’s new, so who knows if it’s good or bad for you. But take fasting days. Many religions have had fasting days for a long, long time. Fast days are “Lindy proof.” They stand the test of time. Because they stand the test of time, they are very likely to be good for you. Consider also coffee (which has been around 600 years) versus today’s latest energy drinks (which have been around a decade). Which do you think will stand the test of time?

I’m not sure about this point, but what I think Taleb is saying with the Lindy effect is this: when you take risk, you have skin in the game, which is good. Risk and volatility is sort of the same thing: if the ride gets too volatile, it’s game over for your endeavour. Volatility and time are also sort of the same thing. So, when you’re taking risks to put skin in the game, you’re actually going one-on-one against time. If you have an idea, to put maximal skin in the game, you want to go against all the other ideas that were and will be out there. It’s a tough game, but there is a reward: the Lindy effect. If you make it to the top, chances are you’ll (or your idea) will stay alive. Not sure if that’s it, but that’s my interpretation of the Lindy effect as it relates to this volume.

Now, this is the fifth volume of Taleb’s Incerto series and it seems with the Lindy effect he’s come full circle. So, the Lindy effect says that something which has survived a long time will likely keep surviving. Unless, of course, this something runs into a black swan. Assiduous readers of Taleb will remember that the second volume of Incerto was called The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The black swan phenomenon is when highly improbable events happen that change everything. Take the very idea of the black swan. The idea came from the Roman poet Juvenal, who said that “a good person is as rare as a black swan.” The punchline is, of course, that black swans don’t exist. So, for hundreds of years, the phrase “black swan” came to denote something that doesn’t exist. And, what is more, the Lindy effect made the “black swan” analogy more and more prevalent as time went on. Until of course, an actual black swan was sighted in Australia by a Dutch sailer in 1636. So, it was a black swan event (sighting a creature that was not supposed to exist) that brought an end to the Lindy effect on the original use of the term “black swan” as understood by Juvenal. It will be very interesting if, in a future work, Taleb pits these two contrasting phenomena against one another.

Does Risk Theatre Have Skin in the Game?

It’s always interesting to tie the books I’m reading back into what I’m doing. This keeps things real. It gives reading a purpose. Here’s a quote from Skin in the Game that confirmed I was on the right track:

The deprostitutionalization of research will eventually be done as follows. Force people who want to do “research” to do it on their own time, that is, to derive their income from other sources. Sacrifice is necessary. It may seem absurd to brainwashed contemporaries, but Antifragile [the previous title in the Incerto series] documents the outsized historical contributions of the nonprofessional, or, rather, the non-meretricious. For their research to be genuine, they should first have a real-world day job, or at least spend ten years as: lens maker, patent clerk, Mafia operator, professional gambler, postman, prison guard, medical doctor, limo driver, militia member, social security agent, trial lawyer, farmer, restaurant chef, high-volume waiter, fire-fighter (my favorite), lighthouse keeper, etc., while they are building their original ideas.

It is a filtering, nonsense-expurgating mechanism. I have no sympathy for moaning professional researchers. I for my part spent twenty-three years in a full-time, highly demanding, extremely stressful profession [he founded a hedge fund called Empirica Capital, which, coincidentally, bet on black swan declines in the stock markets] while studying, researching, and writing my first three books at night; it lowered (in fact, eliminated) my tolerance for career-building research.

For the last eleven years, I’ve been writing a book: The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. But, the book was not enough. As Taleb would say, writing the book is like “talking the talk.” Like the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the Black-Scholes equation (for pricing options), and other economic models that Taleb disdains, the risk theatre model of tragedy, while not an economic model, is an academic model nonetheless. As an academic model, it could use some more skin in the game.

To give the risk theatre model of tragedy some more skin, I started up, with Langham Court Theatre, the 2019 Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Competition. We would award cash prizes to dramatists worldwide to write risk theatre tragedies. We would help these dramatists develop risk theatre to the highest levels by workshopping their plays. And, to help offset travel and accommodation expenses, we’d offer a stipend for dramatists to come attend the workshop in Victoria, Canada.

To fund the book and the competition, I work a real-world job as a project manager for PML Professional Mechanical. I oversee $25 million of construction projects: a mixed use commercial building with Save-on-Foods as the anchor and two residential towers above for Bosa/Axiom, a distinctive condo called the B&W (it’s clad in sections of black and white bricks) for Abstract Developments, and two 20-storey towers for Chard Developments. In other words, I’ve got skin in the game. If Taleb’s thesis is correct, the book and the theatre competition stand a greater chance of success because I’m putting my money where my mouth is.  Here’s hoping. Time will tell.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m doing Melpomene’s work. By the way, this is a great book. Read it. If you haven’t read any volumes in the Incerto series, and are looking for a place to start, you couldn’t go wrong with the second volume, The Black Swan.