Dear editor,
A May 20 op-ed article, “Black Swan events in Korea?” based on a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, has given enough food for thought to every reader in Seoul including myself.
To my mind, the swan strategy needs to be understood, analyzed, interpreted and adopted by one and all in the world including Korea and India. As I recall, a swan is said to be a bird endowed with the wisdom of drinking the milk and leaving the water from a mixture of milk and water.
This unique capability of a swan is worth replicating by our leaders who decide the fate of their people. Let them understand the chemistry of mixtures and compounds worth learning from the swan to choose a strategy ― a choice of time, place and manner of attack of the problem at hand such as sustainable development, terrorism, relationships between nations, global warming and other natural disasters.
In my humble view, “black and white” is the truth in the form of facts on a white paper which provides the information and status and needs to be accepted as a watch tower without distinction of the color of the swan (black or grey).
The disrespect of the economist, statisticians, risk raters and noble laureates in economics is not in good taste and brings down the credibility of the otherwise learned author of the “Black Swan” theory. The events may be classified as black events which are not known in advance as death which is otherwise inevitable for everyone who has been born.
It is worth referring to the book “Death of Economics” by Paul Ormirod who has blamed econometricians and mathematicians for making economics complicated. The author has appealed to the fraternity of economists to make it simple and not complicated by using econometrics and mathematics.
In my humble view, it is economics as the queen of social sciences which unite people where it is politics which divides people on the basis of religion and nationality. The world has become a global village with relationship management of the kind in a village with a sense of belonging only because of economic and trade relations which are inevitable and needed today.
M.M. Goel
Professor of Indian economy
Seoul