The Ecological and the Ludic
Taleb contrasts games with explicit rules and real situations whose rules and variables are uncertain. He argues that skill in a game or classroom task should not be assumed to transfer to a different setting.
THE IDEA
THE ECOLOGICAL AND THE LUDIC
As we saw with the fellow making the common but false analogy to blackjack in Chapter 7, there are two domains, the ludic, which is set up like a game, with its rules supplied in advance in an explicit way, and the ecological, where we don’t know the rules and cannot isolate variables, as in real life. Seeing the nontransferability of skills from one domain to the other led me to skepticism in general about whatever skills are acquired in a classroom, anything in a non-ecological way, as compared to street fights and real-life situations.
It is not well advertised that there is no evidence that abilities in chess lead to better reasoning off the chessboard—even those who play blind chess games with an entire cohort can’t remember things outside the board better than a regular person. We accept the domain-specificity of games, the fact that they do not really train you for life, that there are severe losses in translation. But we find it hard to apply this lesson to technical skills acquired in schools, that is, to accept the crucial fact that what is picked up in the classroom stays largely in the classroom. Worse even, the classroom can bring some detectable harm, a measure of iatrogenics hardly ever discussed: Laura Martignon showed me results from her doctoral student Birgit Ulmer demonstrating that children’s ability to count degrades right after they are taught arithmetic. When you ask children how many intervals there are between fifteen poles, those who don’t know arithmetic figure out that there are fourteen of them. Those who studied arithmetic get confused and often make the mistake that there are fifteen.
When to use it
A manager uses a decision-making framework learned in an MBA class (ludic) to solve a complex organizational problem (ecological), failing because the framework does not account for unquantifiable human factors.
A policy maker relies on statistical models from textbooks without considering real-world complexities such as black swan events.
A student who memorizes formulas for physics problems is unable to apply concepts to novel real-world phenomena.
An investor uses financial theories assuming market efficiency, ignoring ecological realities like market psychology.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Counting intervals between poles
Taleb reports a counting result shown to him by Laura Martignon from Birgit Ulmer’s work: some children taught arithmetic confused the number of poles with the intervals between them. He uses the fifteen-pole, fourteen-interval problem to question automatic assumptions about skill transfer.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Consider a skill you learned in a classroom. How well does it transfer to real-life situations outside the classroom? Can you identify any iatrogenic effects where formal instruction actually degraded your intuitive ability?
Think of a game you play (e.g., chess, poker). Are there any skills from that game that you have successfully applied in ecological domains? Why or why not?
When making an important decision, are you treating the situation as ludic (with known rules) or ecological (with unknown variables)? How might that framing lead to errors?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Antifragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)