Oh dainty turkey! Did you ever know?
Till blessed Christmas , is all you’ll
grow!
Living each day ; just become fatter
But for your flesh, does your life really matter?
Day after day, they lovingly feed !
Filled with a kindness, and a hidden
greed
Alas on Christmas , they leave you with cold feet!
But do they ever ask you, before they chop
you to eat ?
Day after day you knew the friendly trend!
But did you know your meaty end?
Oh dainty turkey! could you ever know?
Whats cooking in fate's hidden stove !
This poem is based on the book Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the nature of randomness (chaos) in economic and social systems. He talks about Bertrand Russell's principle of induction in connection with is-should. Russell related it as a chicken, but turkey problem has a nicer ring to it. To paraphrase "the turkey problem"
ReplyDeleteA turkey gets fed every single day. It is fed and cared for by human beings, who seem to be kind and benevolent in preserving the turkey's well being. However, the day before Thanksgiving something will happen to this turkey outside all the experience of the data he has so far collected, something he would not have been able to predict based on his past life narrative. The turkey's past experience and observation, likely made him feel quite safe even when risk at it's highest, the turkey's induction based on the past proved to have negative value.
try to c the cup half full.... atleast the turkey's fate is decided. What abt us....roaming in the blind alleys of so called life and we call it experience!!
ReplyDeleteand who made anyone the king of anything to decide the turkey's fate...
DeleteIt would never have occurred to me to connect this with NNT's Black Swan, but now that you've explained it, it makes sense. Well put, as always.
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