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
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars A gem April 28, 2013
By N N Taleb
Format:Paperback
I know which books I value when I end up buying a second copy after losing the first one. This book gives a complete overview of the basis of probability theory with some grounding in measure theory, and presents the main proofs. It is remarkable because of its concision and completeness: visibly prof Varadhan lectured from these notes and kept improving on them until we got this gem. There is not a single sentence too many, yet nothing is missing.
For those who don’t know who he is, Varadhan stands as one of the greatest probabilists of all time. Learning probability from him is like learning from Aristotle.
Varadhan has two other similar volumes one covering stochastic processes the other into the theory of large deviations (though older than this current text). The book on Stochastic Processes should be paired with this one.
HatTip to Dave Lull
via Probability Theory (Courant Lecture Notes): S. R. S. Varadhan: 9780821828526: Amazon.com: Books.
An improvement of the LINDY EFFECT: We can sort of measure of conditional antifragility by looking at what went down and bounced back. Things that survive provide information; but things that bounced back from severe hardship provide even more information under some conditions of homogeneity. You are as good as the worst adversity you encountered in your past.This is useful for persons, companies, etc. Never catch a falling knife: I prefer to buy the stock of a company that went down, then bounced back than an equivalent one that never went down to these low levels adjusting of course for other considerations.More technically, things that came back from level Si are stronger than things that came back from level Sj>Si. So for a family of processes {S} that start at the same point S0 and end at the same point ST, the one with the largest distance from its minimum Smin is the one that is potentially the most antifragile.
via Timeline Photos | Facebook.
Mistakes that are reversible aren’t really mistakes; benefits that are irreversible aren’t really benefits.
(Convexity/Antifragility)
via Mistakes that are… | Facebook.
Not everything Nassim N. Taleb says is rubbish. For someone writing about so many different things (people call him ‘eclectic’, although he prefers to be called a thinker), it would be quite a feat never to say anything interesting. His criticism of financial forecasters is undoubtedly warranted – for the most part. He’s also right in observing that forecasters have a bad habit of finding silly excuses for their misses, and tend to take credit for predictions they haven’t actually made (e.g. hindsight bias). But when I read Taleb, I’m constantly reminded of the pot that called the kettle a swan (or something).
One of Taleb’s achievements that boosted his popularity is his correct prediction of the financial crisis. Or should I say, his claim that he correctly predicted the crisis, or one particular event that occurred during the crisis. That claim is not only made by himself and his fans, but to my surprise, it is also admitted by some of his critics.
Before we have a closer look at the precise ‘prediction’ he’s credited with, let’s read again this passage by the master himself (The Black Swan – NN Taleb, 2010 (2nd edition), pp 153-154)…
via FALSE PROPHET – NOSTRADAMUS AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS | QUIXOTIC FINANCE.
@nntaleb