ICCF-25 - Presentation Videos (almost all).

I would recommend watching the password protected Vimeo version. The slides are fully legible on that one (and the sound is better).

I think this is a good example of treating these reactions as a "fourth quadrant problem".

By that, I am obliquely referring to the (by now) familiar idea often referred to as "black swan theory" - in which problems are assumed to fall into three categories. These are often labelled as problems with "known knowns", "known unknowns", and "unknown unknowns" - the last being the eponymous "black swan".

However if these phrases are tabulated, in a 2x2 square, you will see that there is a fourth quadrant, that can be labelled "unknown knowns". This fourth quadrant represents things that many people already know - but in the process of analysis we have ignored as irrelevant, forgotten about, dismissed as unimportant, or they are so far outside of our particular discipline that we either never learned they existed, or we are totally blind to them - even when looking straight at them.

This last issue is related to what the late, great, Douglas Adams referred to as an SEP Field.

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Douglas Adams' 1982 novel Life, the Universe and Everything (in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series) introduces the idea of an "SEP field" as a kind of cloaking device. The character Ford Prefect says,

"An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot."

The narration then explains:

"The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there."

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So, maybe, rather than assuming that there must be a mysterious black swan hiding behind a particular problem, we should spend more time applying what we already know, and ridding ourselves of particular blind spots.

Quote from Frogfall

By that, I am referring to the (by now) familiar idea often referred to as "black swan theory" - in which problems are assumed to fall into three categories. These are often labelled as problems with "known knowns", "known unknowns", and "unknown unknowns" - the last being the eponymous "black swan".

There is a book titled "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Taleb. It was on the best seller list for a long time. I was unimpressed by it. He lists many events which he claimed were little known, very surprising, and not anticipated. He is wrong about most of them. I, personally, knew about most of these things. The ones relating to technology. I was not surprised by them. I checked several, and they were predicted by experts, and also by very smart people such as Arthur Clarke. Some were predicted decades before they emerged.

I am uncreative, unoriginal, and conventional. As Fleischmann said, "we are painfully conventional people." He meant it, and so do I. That is actually an advantage when it comes to recognizing Black Swan events. It means I take things at face value, and I assume things have a prosaic explanation. You may think that means I do not believe in Black Swan events such as the discovery of cold fusion, but it is just the opposite. When hundreds of scientists confirm excess heat, I assume the heat must be real, because that is how science works. There must be a "prosaic" explanation -- that is, one that fits with the laws of physics -- but we have not yet discovered it. That often happens. It cannot be a miracle, and there is no way a widely replicated result can be wrong. That is the conventional, stick-in-the-mud view.

The people who deny cold fusion, and the people who are surprised by Black Swan events are the ones who should do their homework. Not me. I conclude the quality of being improbable is mostly in the mind of the observer. Events are seldom inherently improbable. Nature does not work that way. In physics, "everything not forbidden is compulsory" as Gell-Man put it. Events are surprising to people whose minds are not prepared for them. Who have not studied history, and not done their homework.

My mother was an expert in statistics and public opinion. Like most statisticians she had a strong feeling that things have a prosaic explanation. As the expression goes, when you hear hooves, think of horses, not zebras. She knew the difference between likely and unlikely, and she did not confuse the latter with "unanticipated." On November 1, 1950, she was riding in a streetcar close to the White House. There were several loud bangs. Someone said, "my God, they're shooting at the President!" She looked up from the newspaper and said, "nonsense, that is just a truck backfiring." It turned out someone was trying to shoot President Truman. They killed a Secret Service agent. My mother assumed the bang noises were prosaic and usual. I inherited that attitude from her. However, that does not mean that she never believed cold fusion. On the contrary, she had seen so much progress, and so many breakthroughs such as the atomic bomb, she was inclined to believe that human knowledge is limited, scientists and other experts are often wrong or they lack imagination, new ideas are often opposed for irrational reasons . . . and for all these reasons and more, cold fusion might well be right. In other words, conventional, well informed knowledge of history will make you more inclined to be open minded, and better at anticipating Black Swan events. That was true of my mother, and of Martin Fleischmann, and I hope it is true of me.

Quote from JedRothwell

There is a book titled "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Taleb. It was on the best seller list for a long time. I was unimpressed by it

Same here. I read Taleb's book when it was first published - and thought it was badly written, repetitive, and missed some of the real issues as to why people are surprised when the world doesn't fit their own particular mental models.

Maybe it was just because, as a child, I fed black swans in the local park

The concept certainly precedes Taleb - and I still don't think he actually understood it.

But the phrase has entered the public psyche. George Miley even wrote a book subtitled "A technologist’s search for a Black Swan".

Quote from Frogfall

Same here. I read Taleb's book when it was first published - and thought it was badly written, repetitive, and missed some of the real issues as to why people are surprised when the world doesn't fit their own particular mental models.

Maybe it was just because, as a child, I fed black swans in the local park

The concept certainly precedes Taleb - and I still don't think he actually understood it.

But the phrase has entered the public psyche. George Miley even wrote a book subtitled "A technologist’s search for a Black Swan".

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Believe it or not, his other books are even worse. Antifragile is unreadable.

Quote from orsova

Antifragile is unreadable.

I will give it a miss!

Getting back to my mother's reaction to hearing the gunshots at the White House, she told me that story as a warning. Her message to me was: "You and I assume things are prosaic, and we are usually right. But sometimes we are wrong." Beware of assuming you are right. Beware of assuming there is nothing new. Sometimes those hooves you hear really are zebras!

She liked to quote Damon Runyon: "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

The difference between probability and truth seems to get a lot of people into a pickle.

A good way to highlight the difference is with the Monty Hall Problem.

(And I'm sure your mother, JedRothwell would have had no trouble understanding this correctly.)

Just a note that several of the videos are not available at the ICCF25 Vimeo website, but are, oddly enough, available at the SSF Youtube channel.