Monday, November 15, 2010

(Un)Known Unknowns

In his latest book The Bed of Procrustes (see excerpt), Nicholas Nassim Taleb continues to explore the theme of the limits of human knowledge and the consequences of misunderstanding those limits.

Towards the end of his extraordinarily long and productive life, Peter F. Drucker was asked whether, in retrospect, there was anything he wished he had done that he had not been able to do. "Yes," he replied, "quite a few things. There are many books I could have written that are better than the ones I actually wrote. My best book would have been one titled Managing Ignorance, and I'm very sorry I didn't write it."

Perhaps Taleb's new book provides yet another step towards the achievement of Drucker's unfulfilled objective.

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