JANUARY 2017 / NO. 2
TAGS: NASSIM TALEB, BLACK SWAN, IYI, DEMOCRACY, POPULISM, STEPHANIE HUGHES, BIG DATA, IT, BUZZ

The Intellectual Yet Idiot

“We have been seeing worldwide the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking ‘clerks’ and journalists-insiders”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, November 2016
“These are the paternalistic semi-intellectual experts who tell us what to do (1), what to eat (2), how to speak (3), how to think (4), and who to vote for (5)”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, November 2016
It is fascinating to read these quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the bestselling “The Black Swan” and “Antifragile”. Taleb is speaking about the IYI, the Intellectual Yet Idiot, a product of modernity which has been accelerating since the mid-20th century, to reach its local maximum today, along with the broad category of people without skin in the game who have been invading many walks of life. Academic-bureaucrats seem ubiquitous in our lives but are still a small minority and are rarely seen outside specialized outlets, social media and universities. This is Taleb’s explanation of what happened in India, UK’s Brexit, the election of the current US President and what may happen in a number of European countries as we move towards 2020. The IYI talks about ‘democracy’ when it fits the IYI and ‘populism’ when plebeians dare to vote in a way that contradicts IYI preferences.

Only 0.5% of Big Data is analyzed

In November 2016, I attended the European conference of Strategic Competitive Intelligence Professionals in Prague and had the opportunity to speak to my fellow-key-note speaker Stephanie Hughes PhD, Associate Professor at Northern Kentucky University. She presented three interesting facts: 90% of world’s data was created in the last 2 years (1), 80% of the world’s digital data is unstructured (2), and only 0.5% of Big Data is analyzed today (3). Back in 2011, Nassim Nicholas Taleb made some crucial observations on Big Data:
  1. The more data you research, the more patterns you discover which are purely a coincidence
  2. In addition, these patterns do not repeat themselves
  3. People who love big data are not scientists; they may, however, have something to gain from it
  4. Computer-power allowed us to create the buzzword of ‘Big Data’. We always have done predictive analysis
The ICT industry, thousands of business consultancies, and the conference and seminar sector, have overwhelmed the business world with Big Data hype. In 1999-2000, we had the ‘buzz of the millennium’, followed by ‘the buzz of cloud computing’. We now have ‘the buzz of Big Data’ and the next to come is ‘the buzz of artificial intelligence’. Below is a pertinent quote connecting ‘teenage sex’ with Big Data … So as not to miss the current hype, companies across the world have invested billions of US dollars in Big Data!
“Big Data is like teenage sex. Everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it”
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