Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

#2 Go to parties.

Will do. Thanks for the tip. (Frankly, I'm surprised no one thought of that before...)

You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity.

Parsing...parsing...

Okay, so for envelope he must mean one of the following definitions:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/envelope

This? "something that envelops; a wrapper, integument, or surrounding cover."

Or this? (As a metaphor) "the technical limits within which an aircraft or electronic system may be safely operated."

Okay, let's look at the context: "...parties...envelope...of serendipity". Serendipity is a sort of accidental discovery. So at parties we find the envelope (wrapper? limit?) of "Serendipity" Okay... maybe he means that parties are a good place to accidentally discover things?

If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.

Right, because people who have agoraphobia typically have colleagues they can order around. Howard Hughes and no one else maybe.

That's his #2 life tip. My #2 life tip is: "...but no simpler". My #1 tip is: "Make everything as simple as possible". I can't possibly be alone in seeing this list as combining the worst of banality and inscrutability.

'Envelope' in this context just means 'edge'. Taleb is just saying that some of the best things may come from those most accidental, least expected of serendipitous events that parties are, in a sense, designed to generate in the first place. By going to more parties, you increase your exposure to that edge.

It's also not uncommon for individuals who are people-shy to have friends, partners who aren't, nor is it always necessary to "order around" these people to convince them to go.

It's called being charitable. In other words, don't assume that a stupid interpretation of what someone said is what they actually meant. If that's what you're looking for, it's easy enough to find. Fox News talking heads are great at this.

Yes, I translated it thus:

maybe he means that parties are a good place to accidentally discover things?

You translated it thus:

some of the best things may come from those most accidental, least expected of serendipitous events that parties are, in a sense, designed to generate in the first place.

So, miy translation is shorter but the same, and so I don't thing it is fair to describe it as a "stupid interpretation".

My point is this: His style is pointlessly convoluted----obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation----and that is an age-old rhetorical trick to make a humdrum idea seem profound.

Really I think it's just applied poetry. The rational argument associated with the point is boring. Parsing out "envelope of serendipity" might take epsilon more time/effort but it's that epsilon which causes you to feel a small spark of discovery WHILE parsing the sentence. That feeling of discovery convolves with the conceptual meaning of the sentence and immediately you mentally associate with the similar spark-like feeling of serendipity, and probably also remember a couple of times things like this HAVE happened at parties too. It seems pretty elegant to me. Perhaps it is a rhetorical trick but it's also good people-hacking.

No, it's not the same. Taleb points to the "envelope of serendipity" to emphasize just how important the element of chance really is. I.e., you can't discount even the "chanciest" of chance events. That emphasis is lost in your translation.

Also, I didn't mean to call your interpretation stupid...rather, that you're interpretation assumes a sort of stupidity on behalf of the speaker.

I was able to read Taleb in the original English and understand what he wrote and meant just fine, being a native speaker of said language.

Yeah, so did I. So did I.

But unlike many others, I recognized that he's using poor style as a substitute for meaningful content. That's my point, which I apparently did not make sufficiently clear for native speakers like yourself.

"The art of finding something by looking for something else." What a beautiful thing. Good tip. I would like to note that when he says go to parties, he is probably talking about more than just parties. Be open to going places and seeing people, reach out, and keep your eyes open. You don't always have to have a goal in mind.

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