Plato and the Nerd (Platonicity)
Platonicity is the tendency to mistake the map for the territory, focusing on pure forms and crisp constructs, which leads us to overestimate our understanding and can produce Black Swan events when neat models collide with messy reality.
THE IDEA
PLATO AND THE NERD
At the start of the Jewish revolt in the first century of our era, much of the Jews’ anger was caused by the Romans’ insistence on putting a statue of Caligula in their temple in Jerusalem in exchange for placing a statue of the Jewish god Yahweh in Roman temples. The Romans did not realize that what the Jews (and the subsequent Levantine monotheists) meant by god was abstract, all embracing, and had nothing to do with the anthropomorphic, too human representation that Romans had in mind when they said deus. Critically, the Jewish god did not lend himself to symbolic representation. Likewise, what many people commoditize and label as “unknown,” “improbable,” or “uncertain” is not the same thing to me; it is not a concrete and precise category of knowledge, a nerdified field, but its opposite; it is the lack (and limitations) of knowledge. It is the exact contrary of knowledge; one should learn to avoid using terms made for knowledge to describe its opposite.
What I call Platonicity, after the ideas (and personality) of the philosopher Plato, is our tendency to mistake the map for the territory, to focus on pure and well-defined “forms,” whether objects, like triangles, or social notions, like utopias (societies built according to some blueprint of what “makes sense”), even nationalities. When these ideas and crisp constructs inhabit our minds, we privilege them over other less elegant objects, those with messier and less tractable structures (an idea that I will elaborate progressively throughout this book).
Platonicity is what makes us think that we understand more than we actually do. But this does not happen everywhere. I am not saying that Platonic forms don’t exist. Models and constructions, these intellectual maps of reality, are not always wrong; they are wrong only in some specific applications. The difficulty is that a) you do not know beforehand (only after the fact) where the map will be wrong, and b) the mistakes can lead to severe consequences. These models are like potentially helpful medicines that carry random but very severe side effects.
The Platonic fold is the explosive boundary where the Platonic mind-set enters in contact with messy reality, where the gap between what you know and what you think you know becomes dangerously wide. It is here that the Black Swan is produced.
When to use it
When designing new policies or systems, remind yourself that your model is a simplification and will break in unforeseen ways.
In risk management, resist treating uncertainty as a known, quantifiable category; instead, prepare for unknown unknowns and black swans.
When evaluating history or current events, consider how actors' Platonic assumptions shaped their actions and led to surprises.
In personal planning, maintain flexibility and humility about your predictions, especially when they are based on neat categories.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Roman-Jewish God Misunderstanding
The Romans wanted to exchange statues of Caligula and the Jewish god, not realizing that the Jewish concept of god was abstract and non-representable. This is Platonicity: the Romans imposed their neat, anthropomorphic form onto a messy, abstract reality, leading to conflict.
Utopian Blueprints
Attempts to build societies based on a clean ideological blueprint (e.g., utopias) often fail because they ignore the messiness of human nature and context. The Platonic form of a perfect society clashes with reality, producing unintended consequences and sometimes catastrophe.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Can you recall a situation where you were convinced you understood a problem perfectly, only to be blindsided by an unexpected outcome? How did Platonicity contribute?
In which areas of your life do you rely on tidy models or categories that might oversimplify reality?
How can you identify the 'Platonic fold' in your own decision-making and prevent overconfidence in your mental maps?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Black Swan The Impact of the Highly Improbable With a new section On Robustness and Fragility (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)