14 thoughts on “Miguel de Cervantes (2) vs. Albert Camus (1); Twain wins

  1. if i inappropriately boil this down to quixote vs sisyphus, i suspect the latter would inspire a much livelier debate. (while i’m sure andrew would love if the speaker just read off a power point for 4 hours, i’m assuming this seminar is interactive.)

  2. Camus on ramdomness; how make a model when there is no signal — only noise.
    Cervantes on making the world fit the model through self-delusion.

    Two fascinating statistics lectures with the same underlying theme — modelmaking as a chimera: “a horrinble or unreal creature of the imagination.”

    I’m going to go with Camus simply because Gelman, Ioannides and Simonsohn tell me most of what we need to know about self-delusion. It’s through confronting the void that we will get insight.

  3. A Camus seminar would be entirely (about the) absurd. My vote goes to Cervantes talking about the mighty giant corporations hidden behind wind energy. On top of that, there’s no doubt Cervantes likes better Bayesian Quixote than Frequentist Sancho!

  4. Cervantes. Both can can write the shit out of a book, but Cervantes has better abstracts. “Guy thinks he’s in a book, fights windmills; rich people put him in charge of an island because they’ve read the book” sounds fascinating; “City gets sick, people die, then the rest of them get better, and the lesson is that people are worth it” sounds like some “chicken soup for the soul” bullshit.

    • Both are oddly relevant at a time when Ebola threatens and when wind power is making a comeback.

      So what happens to the structure of an African village post-Ebola? What permanently changes, if anything? Camus would undoubtedly have interesting things to say.

  5. If we invite Camus, those who prefer Cervantes miss out completely. But if we invite Cervantes, those who prefer Camus can just as well imagine that instead of Cervantes it is Pierre Menard talking – and Menard is close enough to Camus in time and origin to be a good substitute. Therefore Cervantes wins.

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