On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile | Page 7

have emerged by chance.
The dead rats, you see, are no longer around to steal our cheese, or to give us Weil's disease. Whatever their strengths or weaknesses, virtues or vices, they are gone, and are mourned by nobody. We forget them. But it is a mistake to overlook them because some of them, at least, might well have had characteristics which would be valuable outside the context of our flawed selection procedures.
Another point to note is that the survivors, the chosen few, will themselves tend to conclude, falsely, that they are necessarily superior to those who died. Usually, the nature of rats being what it is, they will conclude that they areinfinitely superior to the dead. Some humans share this characteristic.
The swimmer's body
Another mistake in thinking is described by Taleb as 'the swimmer's body' error.
It is observable that athletes who participate in different events have differing physiques: rugby forwards are big and beefy; high jumpers are tall and slim; and swimmers often have rather beautifully proportioned bodies with 'elongated muscles'.
Observers who are fuzzy thinkers sometimes conclude from this that if they want to have a beautifully proportioned body they should take up swimming. But this is what is known, in popular parlance, as getting things arse over tip.
Swimmers do not end up looking beautiful because they took up swimming; they excel at swimming because they have the kind of physique which lends itself to fast progress through water, and which is itself aesthetically pleasing, the more so when developed by exercise.
The swimmer's body error often involves the false attribution of a particular outcome to a particular set of traits. In the business world, it is not unusual to find books which purport to identify the common characteristics of successful entrepreneurs. The analysis is usually based on the careers and backgrounds of those who have got to the top, and it generally yields a list of such 'success factors' as optimism, confidence, and a willingness to take risks. Yet had the researchers interviewed those whofailed in business, going bankrupt within two or three years, they would undoubtedly have found the same characteristics present.
By the way, it does not necessarily follow from this (should you be tempted to think it) that the successful entrepreneurs are successful only as a result of chance, or random events; but it is a mistake to attribute their success to qualities which they share with many of those who failed.
Casanova: a case history
Casanova's famous memoirs tell of a life of continual setbacks and escapes from dangerous situations, followed by periods of prosperity and advancement. His was a roller-coaster ride, and it seems that, when it came to overcoming difficulties, Casanova was an unusually resourceful man.
This impression is false. In the above paragraph, the words 'it seems' are the crucial ones. We know about Casanova simply because, through a series of accidents of fate - random events - he happened to survive long enough to write a ten-volume set of memoirs about his escapades.
Other adventurers, thousands of them, doubtless got into similar scrapes and difficulties, but they ended their days on a dueller's sword or died in a debtors' prison. Casanova was not unusually talented or resourceful: there was nothing to differentiate him from any other self-serving layabout except that Madame Randomness happened to take a shine to him.
Next step
It would be possible to spend some time discussing Taleb's arguments and examples, which are not without their own weaknesses. That, however, is not the point of this essay. The point here is to learn to think clearly about writing and publishing; and to that end we will now apply some of Taleb's ideas to the present-day circumstances of writers and publishers, and see what emerges.
Part 3: The experiment with rats when applied to publishing
Applicability and relevance
Taleb's ideas about randomness have proved useful in facilitating clear thinking in a number of fields of activity: for example, Card Playermagazine tells us that they are applicable to the game of poker. It will therefore be useful to go through each of the points made in Part 1 and to examine their relevance to the book trade in general and the writer's position in particular.
The first thought that struck me, on reading Taleb's draft chapter for his book on black swans, was that the experiment with rats is closely analogous to the process of selecting books from the slush pile. And, just in case there is anyone reading this who doesn't know what a slush pile is, let me explain.
Defining the slush pile
Unknown and unpublished writers tend to be, as remarked in Part 1, wildly ambitious and eager for fame, money, and literary reputation. To achieve these objectives they have to get published. And to get published they have to arrange, as a first step, for their work to be offered to