Loneliness
The painful isolation of holding unconventional insights that challenge mainstream consensus, illustrated by Nero's experience before the 2008 financial crisis and his relief in finding a kindred spirit in Fat Tony.
THE IDEA
A word on Nero’s loneliness. For Nero, in the dark days before the economic crisis of 2008, it sometimes caused him pain to be alone with his ideas—wondering at times, typically Sunday nights, if there was something particularly wrong with him or if there was something wrong with the world. Lunch with Fat Tony was like drinking water after an episode of thirst; it brought immediate relief to realize that he was either not crazy, or at least not alone in being crazy. Things out there did not make sense, and it was impossible to convey it to others, particularly people deemed intelligent.
Consider that of the close to a million professionals employed in economic activities, whether in government (from Cameroon to Washington, D.C.), academia, media, banking, corporations, or doing their own private homework for economic and investment decisions, fewer than a handful saw it coming—furthermore, an even smaller handful managed to foresee the full extent of the damage.
And of those who saw it coming, not a single one realized that the crisis was a product of modernity.
Nero could stand near the former World Trade Center site in downtown New York, across from the colossal buildings housing mostly banks and brokerage houses, with hundreds of people running around inside them, expending gigawatts of energy just moving and commuting from New Jersey, consuming millions of bagels with cream cheese, with insulin response inflaming their arteries, producing gigabytes of information just by talking and corresponding and writing articles.
But noise it was: wasted effort, cacophony, unaesthetic behavior, increased entropy, production of energy that causes a local warming up of the New York area ecozone, and a large-scale delusion of this thing called “wealth” that was bound to evaporate somehow.
You could stack the books and they would constitute an entire mountain. Alas, to Nero anything in them that deals with probability, statistics, or mathematical models is just air, in spite of evidence that and evidence this. And you learn more in a few lunches with Fat Tony than from the social science sections of the Harvard libraries,1 with close to two million books and research papers, for a total of 33 million hours of reading, close to nine thousand years’ worth of reading as a full-time activity.
Talk about a major sucker problem.
When to use it
Recognizing the emotional burden of being a contrarian in a field dominated by consensus (e.g., finance, public health, climate science).
Evaluating the reliability of expert predictions by considering the loneliness of accurate forecasters.
Designing decision-making processes that encourage dissenting voices to surface without fear of isolation.
Understanding why certain critical insights (like the flaws in modern economic models) are slow to gain acceptance.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Nero’s Loneliness Before the 2008 Crisis
Nero felt isolated because he saw the impending financial collapse while most experts dismissed it. Lunch with Fat Tony relieved his solitude, confirming he was not alone in his unconventional view.
The Vast Ignorance of Professionals
Out of nearly a million economic professionals, only a handful predicted the 2008 crisis, and none attributed it to modernity itself. Seeing through the consensus can be lonely.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Can you recall a time when your own insight was at odds with the majority? How did you cope with the loneliness of that position?
What are the warning signs that a widely accepted belief might be a 'major sucker problem'?
How might seeking out a 'Fat Tony' figure help you test and validate unconventional ideas?
Often confused with
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Antifragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)