Fluke

Recognizing that often meaningless, accidental outcomes emerge from an intertwined, complex world is empowering and liberating. We should all take a bit less credit for our triumphs and a bit less blame for our failures.

Fluke by Brian Klaas is a deep dive into the phenomenon of randomness—not merely the presence of it in our lives, but its central role as the driver of all human events—from the most significant to the least. Klaas’s book is certain to rankle some readers, as it did me at many points. Despite his perhaps ‘controversial’ thesis, the author maintains a fairly conversational, narrative style (he explains that our brains have evolved to seek out and appreciate narrative structure, so this is entirely self-serving on his part). The opening episode gives the story of how Kyoto was saved from the atomic bomb by virtue of Henry Stimson having gone on his honeymoon there—a mere fluke, a chance accident in the course of history; the author even brings a gruesome episode from his personal history into the mix. Yet, as Klaas unveils to us over the course of the book, such instances are far from accidents or chance occurrences—rather, they are the primary movers of everything in the universe.What I appreciated most in this book is how Klaas, a social scientist by training, examines flukes and contingencies through multiple avenues—neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, chaos theory, evolutionary biology, and history. The butterfly effect is a fairly well-known concept, so enjoining it with research, frameworks, and theories, was greatly insightful. The author also takes care to mention contrasting viewpoints on several occasions, so at times the discussion seems well-rounded. Still, toward the end, you get the sense of Klaas’s convictions, and it is hard to not have that attitude limit how you read the text—whether you agree or not. Namely, Klaas is a hard determinist, which is a common enough view in scientists, but perhaps less so for a social scientist; indeed, the author even seems somewhat apologetic about it (and at times paternalistic). I don’t fault him for that—indeed, he makes a convincing argument, even if I don’t entirely agree with it, and it is a decent primer for those unfamiliar with these points. However, it still colors his arguments with bias, and I wasn’t satisfied with his quick dismissal of opposing viewpoints or evidence that may have contradicted him. As someone who leans more toward a compatibilist view, I wished he would have engaged with their arguments more in-depth, especially Daniel C. Dennett.Though as fascinating and engaging as this book could be, I found myself gradually losing interest and momentum. Part of this is because of the formulaic structure of the book—each chapter introduces a new concept or approach that examines flukes in response to a fundamental question, building on from the previous chapter. However, after several chapters of this, it became quite repetitive and predictable, perhaps because much of the buildup goes toward the discussion on determinism, which Klaas apparently sees as groundbreaking or earth-shattering for some people. This is not to discount him—I’m sure for many people, these are topics they haven’t considered before. Still, he could have been less condescending about it; at one point he says, ‘…you might angrily object, yet again. (Do you need a hug?)’ Elsewhere he asks the reader if they have heard of ‘less common instruments such as a gue, lituus, sambuca, or peri yazh’—well yes, especially if they happen to be from that culture! Klaas mentions how his editors forced him to revise this book and cut out significant amounts of extraneous material; I sympathize with his tendency to examine these issues in detail, since they can be so compelling. But I also sympathize with his editors—he could have certainly cut away chunks of certain chapters and still had a fairly cohesive book.Perhaps what rankles me isn’t really the determinism; I get that, and even somewhat sympathize with such an affliction. What is a likelier candidate for my unease is perhaps Klaas’s unbounding sense of optimism that lends itself to the concluding chapters; yes, he tells us, everything might be determined—but it’s actually great, because if we have no (internal reality of, as opposed to a feeling of) agency, everything we do matters because we are all parts connected to the greater whole! A bit too saccharine for me, with a slight aftertaste of that promise-the-world optimism that you usually see in self-help books. I challenge the author to be more nuanced than that. I also would have liked him to challenge some of his own inherent assumptions—at times he seems to either ignore or not notice contradictory flaws in his own statements. For example: ‘If you are a rational thinker who believes in science, then anything that happens must either be caused or uncaused. There are only two options. If something is caused, then it is the necessary product of what came before—things can’t be caused by something that hasn’t yet happened.’ While this is all true, it is also rather pedantic after we’ve spent pages discussing paradigmatic shifts in science and evolving conceptions of truth and causes. Moreover, to impute causation from a series of small causes through such a large time span as nearly infinity—or even one person’s lifetime—becomes almost meaningless. If everything is a cause, then the concept of causation ceases to be useful. At another point, he says something along the lines of, ‘If that’s true, then everything in our lives is governed by the deterministic forces of physics.’ That ‘if’ is doing a lot of heavy-lifting there, Klaas.Interestingly, this last point reminded me quite a lot of the Stoic conception of the cosmos and the universe as inherently concentric. It’s a pity he did not bring that into consideration, especially since he does bring in Aristotle’s categories of causes and eudaimonia (and even Lucretius—I was overjoyed). The discussion of centering the individual self in the vastness of the universe, as ‘one vibrating string’ within a symphony rather than the conductor was moving, and would be eye-opening for anyone. I am biased, of course, but I wished Klaas had delved more into this notion from philosophical discussions; he begins to in the final chapter, but it is far too condensed. I appreciate his focus for these themes and certain others—the surprisingly simple acceptance of one’s insignificance, but also the counterintuitive notion of admitting uncertainty—the power of ‘I don’t know’, as Wisława Szymborska discusses in her 1996 Nobel Lecture. There is a beauty in idleness, in appreciating mystery for what it is rather than forcing it to come out of the shadows. As someone who has too many damn Pocket articles saved and too many books on my to-read list, I am well aware of the necessity of saying no and savoring the bliss that comes from remaining ignorant. Yet I still have a natural inclination to consume (there is that national vice!) as much information as I possibly can; in that sense, this book was a useful reminder back to these simple but powerful ideas that are rooted in mindfulness and intentional presence.While this book was intriguing enough to entice and not quite sufficiently engaging to keep me hooked or altogether convinced, I applaud Brian Klaas for writing a book that is certainly needed in this zeitgeist; a greater appreciation of chaos and its role in our lives is no bad thing. Though Klaas perhaps regrets that the universe has not deigned for me to give this book five stars, as he mentions in the book, I would still be grateful to ‘debate determinism and free will over a beer’ with this guy.Notable quotes:※ ‘Life’s victories have become, to many, eliminating moments of slow, quite reverence and replacing them with hyperproductive multitasking as we chase Sisyphean goals that will never be enough to satiate us.’※ ‘It can be comforting to accept what we truly are: a cosmic fluke, networked atoms infused with consciousness, drifting on a sea of uncertainty.’※ ‘Nietzsche wrote that this tension comes from the human impulses for both the Apollonian and Dionysian. Both were sons of Zeus, but Apollo represented order, logic, and reason, while Dionysus is aid to be an irrational agent of chaos who loves to party and dance. To fully live, we need both.’ [Rather oversimplified, but he gets the broader point.]※ ‘Within the misguided mentality of the Church of Control, Dionysian moments are to be engineered, not discovered. Everything, even joy, can be turned into a metric.’ [Apologies for being off-topic, but I would love to have a dinner party with Brian Klaas and Angie Kim discussing this line!]※ ‘How many actions do we take in modern life that are not for something else?’※ ‘Aristotle wrote not of fleeting happiness, but of lasting eudaemonia, or flourishing. To erect the framework for flourishing, we need a reliable superstructure that provides for our basic needs, a bulwark against a sense of precarious survival.’※ ‘All of us matter, though some of us will influence events within our lifetimes in more or less profound and visible ways. But if we want to maximize the chance that our actions will matter even more, then the best pathway comes from one of the finest innovations our species has ever evolved: cooperation. Humans who work together create change together.’※ ‘Millions now treat undirected contemplation as a waste of time, a frivolity to be life hacked out of your goal-driven schedule. A drive or commute must be filled with radio, chatter, mindless games, music, or podcasts—but rarely silence.’