Green Swan
Green Swan
In 2007, the statistician Nassim Taleb wrote the Black Swan. Part economic treatise, part humanist philosophy, its main legacy was the concept of narrative fallacy. To oversimplify his message, he claimed that as human beings, we do not cope well with uncertainty and so often piece together unrelated past events into a coherent story to convince ourselves that an outcome was inevitable. He claims that this hindsight is dangerous enough but that, worse, we have a habit of then projecting these fallacies forwards to help shape future projections. Sounds to me that Taleb was an Argyle fan.
Throughout last season, uptheline maintained the view that in the impossibly unpredictable world of near closure, all bets were off. That there was no precedent for our predicament and that arm-chair punditry was at best pointless and at worst downright unhelpful. Best to let the chaos unfold, hope for the best and enjoy the ride. Somehow it worked.
But should this awareness of our tendency to create order from the unrelated not justify a more lasting legacy? It is a commonly held view that if we had kept Holloway, spent just a fraction more and retained three or four flair players back when we were in the Championship, life would now be different. That a series of events (change of manager, selling of players, world cup bid, new owners and lack of investment) have together placed our club in an impossible position.
The Taleb view would be that this is pure narrative fallacy. As an Argyle fan, he would argue that from standpoint of the present it is easy to manufacture a coherent history in which one event impacted the next creating an inevitable spiral because it is more difficult to conceive the reality – sometimes, shit happens. And he would maintain that this narrative should never, at all costs, form part of planning or predicting a future. Learn lessons from events, of course, and control the variables that you can to minimise the risk of repeating mistakes but never think that a fallible reconstitution of the past is a reliable guide for the future.
And yet. ‘Spend more’. ‘Sack the manager’. ‘Sack the board’. So many fans (and not just at Argyle) seem so certain of a path’s past and future direction, they are blind to the chaos that can alter its course. Go from 1-0 up and playing well to 3-1 down and we – that is all of us with no exceptions – will adapt our view to show a pattern that this was bound to happen. This reinforced when we surrender another slim lead to end up with a point.
The outcome? Our natural temptation to piece together unrelated facts and factors is one we should fight hard to resist. Whether as fans, coaches or players, we should instead remain focussed on the outcomes that can be affected in isolation – such as a need for a more robust midfield, improved fitness and defending from set pieces, better ability to chase a second goal instead of protecting the first – rather than creating patterns with no meaning. If instead we hold onto the narrative fallacy that trends are endemic or that outcomes are inevitable, we will play our own small part in making untruths truths. Poor analysis can only help create poor outcomes; you need only watch or read Moneyball for a lesson in how objectivity and confidence can alter fortunes for the better when it would be easier to make the wrong decisions.
If there is a narrative worth following and comparisons to be made, it is that we are 6 times better off than we were a year ago and with defeats and goals conceded considerably down. Same old Argyle, maybe, but moving in the right direction.
Next week: a Nietzschean critique of Paul William’s far poster header against Colchester.
Wednesday, 19 September 2012