The axeman cometh

National Review, June 25, 2007 by George Gilder

The very nature of creativity is that it always comes as a surprise to us. If it didn't we could predict it and plan it and it would not be necessary; socialism would work! In a free economy, a high degree of evident randomness does not mean actual randomness. Arandomlike pattern is evidence not of purposelessness but of an entrepreneurial economy full of creative surprises. To understand a domain dominated by human action rather than by aleatory throws of chance events, the observer must use not an oscilloscope that measures frequencies on a chart but a microscope that examines the facts and details of particular creations.

Taleb's book is just another creative tome on the yellow-brick parking lot that seeks to seal off the universe from any entropic blemish of creation, whether divine or entrepreneurial, leaving only the author to perform his trivial tarantella before adoring crowds, who admire the grace of his argument and the elegance of his prose as he proves the futility of excellence and insight, elegance and grace.

What Taleb derides as the narrative fallacy, the ludic fallacy, the teleological temptation, or the prophetic impulse are the behavioral styles that make us human. They are the techniques we use as baselines by which we can identify the unusual or the innovative. They are the imaginative and creative faculties that allow us to surmount our surroundings of random jungle and desert and contrive civilizations that can afford to furnish elegant cafes and other comfortable settings for hedonic writers such as Nassim Taleb. They are the essential source of creative ventures like Nassim Taleb's flawed but fascinating books.

Mr. Gilder is editor-in-chief of Gilder Technology Reportand co-founder of the Discovery Institute. His most recent book, The Silicon Eye, was a finalist for the Royal Society's Aventis Prize for science.