Hello fellow NNT fans. It’s been a good run. A solid stream of NNT related info and news since 2007! NNT helped me set a record in sustained curiosity/interest. Life is intervening however, and for the foreseeable future, updates will be intermittent. When I’m back to a daily publishing schedule I’ll update this post. In the meantime you can follow NNT on Facebook and Twitter.
Best,
JohnH
When someone starts a sentence with the first half containing “I” , “not”, and “but”, the “not” should be removed and the “but” replaced with “therefore”.
Examples:
“I am not prejudiced, but”
“I will not honor you with a reply, but”
“I do not usually [...], but”
–
The most infuriating is a letter that starts with:
“I do not always agree with what you say, but”
via When someone starts a sentence with the… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
High Modernity: routine in place of physical effort, physical effort in place of mental expenditure, & mental expenditure in place of mental clarity.
via High Modernity: routine in place of… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
My nightmare: This [EDITED] got the Black Swan idea in reverse (WSJ):
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/05/17/spotting-black-swans-with-data-science/
(reposted after editing my first reaction… more polite but not really)
Spotting Black Swans with Data Science
blogs.wsj.com
Traditional analytic models can’t keep up with today’s unprecedented volume and variety of data. The emerging field of data science, closely intertwined with the explosion of Big Data, aims for a better understanding of dynamic, complex systems through in-depth analysis across multiple data sets, an…
via My nightmare: This [EDITED] got the… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Friends, here is: my new text. Volume 1 covers the ideas of The Black Swan expressed mathematically.
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html
(added derivations of skin-in-the-game, etc.)
How can one correct academic fraud? Not only have economics professors not addressed the substance of my points accusing them of misusing statistical methods, remember these frauds are still using risk methods that got us here, but they are countering with a smear campaign spreading all manner of erroneous personal & academic information … anonymously, or so they think. As I said there is a reason to be academic: lack of courage of voicing one’s opinion, so one can bust them directly through subpoena or just pay $18K to have a list of their names. Nothing is anonymous on the web.
via Friends, here is: my new text. Volume 1… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness. (Revised).
via It is a sign of weakness to avoid… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Language evolves from mistake to mistake, much better than through deliberate improvement. (Antifragile)
via Language evolves from mistake to… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it.
via The only valid political system is one… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Traffic expressed in time to travel from point A to point B is convex to the number of cars. If you raise the number of cars by 1% you increase travel time by a lot more than 1%. Obviously, the solution is to spread traffic and avoid concentration. 2-3% fewer cars in one area can mean a lot. Google map is doing just that. It allows the collective of citizens to divert traffic and that small number makes a huge difference. This beats the planners/bureaucrats who have at least in NYC proven that cannot possibly comprehend nonlinear responses.It is the same problem of nonlinear harm in nature. Consuming just a little less of some items, and switching to other food groups, or constantly changing pollutants just as changing routes thanks to Google maps can bring back stability to the system.
NOTE 1: Optimally it would make people switch AWAY from cars.
NOTE 2: travel time is a negative; it is convex so we are concave to it => FRAGILITY.
NOTE 3: This is the same general idea of distribution of stressors/avoidance of concentration.
via Timeline Photos | Facebook.
Never before have I set out to read a book with such high expectations, only to encounter such severe disappointment. As an admirer of Nassim Taleb’s earlier books, Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, I expected to find insight and wisdom along similar lines in Antifragile. While Taleb’s latest book does contain some valid observations and a few intriguing general strategies for living, the overwhelming thrust of the book is one of bitter distaste for modernity (and, to a significant extent, technological progress), as well as an abundance of insults for anyone who would disagree with not just Taleb’s ideas, but with his personal esthetic preferences. While sensible in the realms of finance and (mostly) economics, Taleb’s prescriptions in other fields venture outside of his realms of mastery and, if embraced, would result in a relapse of the barbarisms of premodernity. Perhaps as the outcome of his own phenomenal success, Taleb has become set in his ways and has transitioned from offering some controversial, revolutionary, and genuinely insightful ideas to constructing a static, intolerant, totalistic worldview that rejects deviations in any field of life – and the persons who so deviate.
via Fragile Reasoning in Nassim Taleb’s “Antifragile”: An Enlightenment Transhumanist Critique | QL | Gennady Stolyarov II.
Success in all endeavors is requires absence of specific qualities. 1) To succeed in crime requires absence of empathy, 2) To succeed in banking you need absense of shame at hiding risks, 3) To succeed in school requires absence of common sense, 4) To succeed in economics requires absence of understanding of probability, risk, or 2nd order effects and about anything, 5) To succeed in journalism requires inability to think about matters that have an infinitesimal small chance of being relevant next January,
…6) But to succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the mirror.
via Success in all endeavors is requires… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Time for the education system to realize that slow learners are deeper, more robust, and unlike fast ones, make small, rather than large mistakes.
via Time for the education system to realize… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Anger is a convex heuristic; it is not a reaction to be judged by its small mistakes, but by the total payoff, assuming you direct it at things that offend your sense of ethics. Forget the dictum that anger is madness, to be controlled, etc. If you systematically vent your anger at things that offend you deeply, you may have small regrets, but the upshot is that you will never feel corrupt, hypocritical, or unprincipled. This is the only life worth living. (ANTIFRAGILE HEURISTICS)
via Anger is a convex heuristic; it is not a… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
TO ECONOMISTS. Let me make it clear. I am as orthodox neoclassical economist as they make them, not a fringe heterodox or something. I just do not like unreliable models that use *some* math like regression and miss a layer of stochasticity, and get wrong results, and I hate sloppy mechanistic reliance on bad statistical methods. I do not like models that fragilize. I do not like models that work on someone’s computer but not in reality. This is standard economics. I showed in 1.7 that we cannot use standard deviations and it is not a matter of taste. Being an economist does not mean being a turkey. Yet all economists persist in these bogus methods.
I will show in Volume 2 of FT & AF how Markowitz and Samuelson-Merton optimization blow you up. Refusing a model that blow you up is as orthodox economics as one can get.
I want to take the charlatanism out of economics and there is a way to do it: examine layers of stochasticity. Detect fragility, and remove offending model.
Nor do I like to be closely associated with behavioral economics. I go ballistic every time a fringe economics group invites me to give a lecture. Kapish?
.
And finally although I do not want to be an academic, EVERYTHING of substance in the text has been peer-reviewed (or is in the process of peer reviewed) in Quant/Math/Stat journals.
Thanks
See the test > pages 100 in https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_31K_MP92hURjZxTkxUTFZnMVk/edit
via TO ECONOMISTS. Let me make it clear. I… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
HOW TO STRENGTHEN YOUR ARGUMENT:
Since I’ve posted my two doc showing excatly where economics use BS statistical methods that do not support their conclusions (=>irresponsible charlatans), no economist has anything said of *substance*. But the good news is that they were not silent, but annoyed and critical. Every sentence that is not directed at the argument strengthens it.
The doc is now 110 pages, here. Read Chapters 1-3.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_31K_MP92hURjZxTkxUTFZnMVk/edit,
The econ professors (typically young professors starting a career) seem to comment here. Enjoy:
http://www.econjobrumors.com/
via HOW TO STRENGTHEN YOUR ARGUMENT: Since… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Many are good at solving equations but not understanding them; others are good at understanding equations but not solving them ; a few are good at both understanding and solving equations; those left over who are neither good at solving equations nor understanding them, yet insist on doing mathematics, become economists.
via Many are good at solving equations but… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
In old age, the difference between happy and unhappy in the quality/regularity of some bodily functions (use imagination), money can’t buy.
(3rd revision)
via In old age, the difference between happy… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Full of typos, but a very concentrated technical demonstration of the need of skin in the game . For comments as I just wrote it quickly. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50282823/skininthegame.pdf
via Full of typos, but a very concentrated… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Antifragile Heuristic 34 (Barbell, Jensen’s Inequality): Underreact most of the time, overreact mercilessly on the occasion, going for the jugular, and people will will leave you alone. Fughetabout “measured” reactions. Be unpredictable.
***
From FBR (2001). “This point has applications in evolutionary biology, evolutionary game theory, and conflict situations. A mild degree of unpredictability in your behavior can help you to protect yourself in situations of conflict. Say you always have the same threshold of reactions. You take a set level of abuse before getting into a rage and punching the offender in the nose. Such predictability will allow people to take advantage of you up to that well-known trigger point and stop there. But if you randomize your trigger point, sometimes overreacting at the slightest joke, people will not know in advance how far they can push you. The same applies to governments in conflicts: They need to convince their adversaries that they are crazy enough to sometimes overreact to a small peccadillo. Even the magnitude of their reaction should be hard to foretell. Unpredictability is a strong deterrent.”
via Antifragile Heuristic 34 (Barbell,… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
Journalists cannot grasp that what is interesting is not necessarily important; most cannot even grasp that what is sensational is not necessarily interesting.
via Journalists cannot grasp that what is… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
The fool considers that what he doesn’t understand is either extremely stupid, or extemely intelligent, pending on how others react to it.
via The fool considers that what he doesn’t… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
5.0 out of 5 stars The model book, May 8, 2013
By
N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”
This review is from: Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning (Dover Books on Mathematics) (Paperback)
There is something admirable about the school of the Russians: they are thinkers doing math, with remarkable clarity, minimal formalism, and total absence of unnecessary pedantry one finds in more modern texts (in the post Bourbaki era). This is of course surprising as one would have expected the exact opposite from the products of the communist era. Mathematicians should be using this book as a model for their own composition. You can read it and reread it. Professors should assign this in addition to modern texts, as readers can get intutions, something alas absent from modern texts.
HatTip to Dave Lull
via Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning (Dover Books on Mathematics).
For a scientist or a a thinker, life should be no more than 9 part production, 1 part dissemination or promotion, enough to maintain social contact and get feedback seminars with some peers that entail discussions or communication with the tribe on this page count as production. For artisans, life is 10 parts production, zero promotion. Alas for academics, from what I observe, life is 19 parts dissemination and institutional fluff, or pedagogy, 1 part production, and declining for “superstars”, who seem to converge to 20 parts dissemination.
via For a scientist or a a thinker, life… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
@nntaleb