#books Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb ## Empiricism >In philosophy, **empiricism** is an epistemological view that holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the central role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions. However, empiricists may argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sensory experiences. >[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism) ## Chapter 6: The Narrative Fallacy [[Thinking Fast and Slow#Chapter 19 The Illusion of Understanding]] >We, members of the human variety of primates, have a hunger for rules because we need to reduce the dimensions of matters so they can get into our heads. Or, rather, sadly, so we can *squeeze* them into our heads. The more random information is, the greater the dimensionality, and thus the more difficult to summarize. The more you summarize, the more order you put in, the less randomness. Hence *the same condition that makes us simplify pushes us to think that the world is less random than it actually is.* > >And the Black Swan is what we leave out of simplification. >(p.69) The more abstract a subject is the easier it is to reason because the more susceptible we will be towards anecdotes. We simplify out of necessity to understand but we expose ourselves to the reduction bias in doing so and miss important information. [[Simple versus Simplistic|Simple does not always mean simplistic]] and in our urge to move away from [[Uncertainty]] we end up taking greater [[Risk]]. >If you work in a randomness-laden profession, as we see, you are likely to suffer burnout effects from that constant second-guessing of your past actions in terms of what played out subsequently. Keeping a diary is the least you can do in these circumstances. (p.73) >The way to avoid the ills of the narrative fallacy is to favor experimentation over storytelling, experience over history, and clinical knowledge over theories. >[...] >Another approach is to predict and keep a tally of the predictions. >(p.84)