Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Some can be more intelligent than others in a structured environment—in
fact school has a selection bias as it favors those quicker in such an
environment, and like anything competitive, at the expense of
performance outside it. Although I was not yet familiar with gyms, my
idea of knowledge was as follows. People who build their strength using
these modern expensive gym machines can lift extremely large weights,
show great numbers and develop impressive-looking muscles, but fail to
lift a stone; they get completely hammered in a street fight by someone
trained in more disorderly settings. Their strength is extremely
domain-specific and their domain doesn't exist outside of
ludic—extremely organized—constructs. In fact their strength, as with
over-specialized athletes, is the result of a deformity. I thought it
was the same with people who were selected for trying to get high grades
in a small number of subjects rather than follow their curiosity: try
taking them slightly away from what they studied and watch their
decomposition, loss of confidence, and denial. (Just like corporate
executives are selected for their ability to put up with the boredom of
meetings, many of these people were selected for their ability to
concentrate on boring material.) I've debated many economists who claim
to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly
outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability,
they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a
gangster hit man.”
―
Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
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