When Jacqueline Novogratz was a young girl, she had a favorite blue sweater. She continued to wear it after it became too small. One day a boy made fun of her for wearing it (“We can ski Mount Novogratz”). The next day she gave it away. A decade later, in Africa, she saw it being worn by a skinny young boy. Thus the title of her new book about trying to make the world, especially Africa, a better place: The Blue Sweater.
In contrast to so many books, usually by men, about helping others, which tend to be about how right the author is/was, this book stresses how wrong she was. An example is a job interview.
“Tell me why you want to be a banker,” he suggested. . . .
“I don’t want to be a banker,” I said. “I want to change the world. I’m hoping to take the next year off but my parents asked me to go through the interview process. I’m so sorry.”
“Well,” he said with a grin, shaking his head. “That’s too bad. Because if you got this job, you would be traveling to 40 countries in the next 3 years and learning a lot not only about banking, but the entire world.”
I gulped. “Is that really true?” I asked, my face completely red. “You know, part of my dream is to travel and learn about the world.”
“It is really true,” he sighed.
“Then do you think we might start this interview all over again?” I asked.
She got the job. It’s easy to see why. And stories like that made me want to read the book
Too “heartwarming”, too improbable (in a fairly easy way to measure and also in terms of the survival of the sweater) and too inconsistent with what I know of New York bankers. I simply don’t believe her. Calling touching fictional stories non-fiction probably boosts sales.
The sweater story doesn’t strike me as heart-warming, just strange. As for “too improbable,” I think Nassim Taleb’s basic point is correct: We are very poor at estimating the likelihood of rare events.