from The Black Swan: a quote

The distance between opinions is remarkably narrower than the distance between the average of opinions and truth.

from: The Black Swan

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

So… take all opinions and boil them down to their very essence.  This will be farther from the truth than the distance between each individual opinion. Juxtaposed opinions have varying degrees of validity…  especially when contrasted with one another.

Hove you read The Black Swan?  Tell us your opinion below

It seems that the collective mind of man is far from understanding absolute truth. Moreover, each individual man may have ideas that are tangential, yet closely related to his fellows. If someone has a tangential thought off of an opinion that is flawed, it is more than likely that the resulting idea will be flawed as well. It may even be considered more flawed than the initial opinion.

But these are just my ideas… and in my mind every single thought ever thought is flawed and not absolute truth. The thought is just a representation of the truth. A symbol pointing towards the truth. Not absolute in itself. Every step you take towards absolute truth opens up a rabbit hole that leads to even more layers of reality built on a construct that hides the pure essence of the universe.

I was recommended this book by Sommer Gentry a highly esteemed academic, the professor of Mathematics at the United States Naval Academy .  I have been researching a lot about business and investing.  I was curious on suggestions of an amazing logical mind, about books on investing.

I found the richness of this philosophical quote quite delicious.  It Seems that Taleb considers himself a philosopher foremost.  However he does have great understanding of economies and history.

I am aware that my previous waxing addresses this quote in and of itself.  I have removed it from the context of book as a whole.  I have enjoyed considering the quote in more general terms rather than how it pertains to markets.  Its relation to peoples opinions of markets is just as viable as it is to opinions in general.  The Universality of Taleb’s statement is delightful to me.