Tuesday, November 30, 2010
I was explaining Antifragility to my Italian publisher: a writer is antifragile, a blue-collar worker robust, others fragile. If I beat up an economist, I would spent a few days in an Italian jail, but book sales would shoot up and my message wd be aut…
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Don’t tell my publishers, but as soon as I see a book of mine in the stores, my book is dead for me. My book is only alive when I am still writing it otherwise it does not respond to me anymore (Socrates who hated the written word said the same about t…
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
DEFICITS & JENSEN'S INEQUALITY – So Art de Vany's statement about energy deficit can be translated into the ubiquitous Sigmoid Function f(x) = [1/(1-Exp[c x]], concave in the positive and convex in the negative.Note that the Kahneman/Tversk…
Monday, November 29, 2010
A question for Art De Vany (and others) on Jensen's inequality & biochemical reactions. If you consumed 2600 calories in one sitting, compared to spread out over 7 meals, how different would the energy production be? Is consumption convex or co…
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Let me restart: an opportunist is someone 1) who violates a certain set of universals for a given reward, 2) who develops opinions about someone or something because there is a reward (finance people), 3) does not do a certain set of actions for their …
Sunday, November 28, 2010
1) Milano, walks & muscato desert wine.2) My ethical system can be reduced to the following: OPPORTUNISM is despicable in all its forms -under constraints of manners. Classicism clashes with post-4th C. AD: doing good to go to heaven or other rewar…
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Shared by JohnH
Strange to see NNT making ANY kind of prediction, in principal. I am reminded of Marshall McLuhan- he thought of his ideas as ‘probes’, not meant to be taken literally, but to serve as areas of intellectual energy he felt should be b…
Saturday, November 27, 2010
a)Preparing for a lecture is highly unethical: if it is not interesting enough for you to know independently, then you should not be lecturing on it. Otherwise:prostitution.b) Studying for an exam is unethical (but to a lesser extent): if you are not i…
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Shared by JohnH
It’s great to see NNT’s ideas put to use. Raise the standards!
Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, has written about this. He calls it the “narrative fallacy” which is a fancy way of saying the news media takes the facts at …
Thursday, November 25, 2010
It takes both insight & character to know the value of what you have before you lose it.[ Οι γαρ κακοι γνομαισιν ταγαθον χεροιν/εχοντες, ουκ ισασι,πριν τις εκβαλη, “Vulgar minds can only k…
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Warm thanks all for the help; the TIME questions were excellent. I was also interviewed by one of the very few journalists NONjournalists Michael Elliott, a former scholar & a true erudite. Now I may try the Beaujolais Nouveau 2010 as NO Lebanese …
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
I need HELP! TIME magazine is subjecting me (via the publisher) to 10 questions by (their) readers and all I got are the usual clueless stuff, not the quality questions I got on this page. Please help http://10questions.time.com/2010/11/22/ask-nassim-…
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Shared by JohnH
Up to 21 questions so far. HatTip to Dave Null.
David Levenson / Getty Images
The former trader gained international acclaim with his best-selling books Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life and T…
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Amateur prophets add to the future, pros remove from it.http://www.economist.com/node/17509373?story_id=17509373&CFID=149238396&CFTOKEN=89583226Nassim Taleb looks at what will break, and what won’twww.economist.comParadoxically, one can make lo…
Monday, November 22, 2010
The only discussion of stochastic arts (nonrationalistic-trial-and-error) I can find in history, so far, στόχαστικὴ τέχνη, a very brief one, in Alexander of Aphrodisias, of all things, a commentator on Aristotle.http://www.amazon.com/Qu…
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Discussion of AntiFragility at Columbia U (NY) today (11:40-12:30); not really open to public but can take a few who crash it by showing up at 11:25 AM, Address, Warren Hall, NE corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 115th Street. Plan to improvise and discuss…
Friday, November 19, 2010
Every Ponzi Fails in TimeIn February Nassim Taleb remarked that, “every single human being” should short US Treasuries. Mr. Black Swan may have been a little early, but he’s right, of course. Treasuries are a bubble of epic proportions. And when that b…
Friday, November 19, 2010
Bibliography-An Alternative View of the History of Medicine
Thursday, November 18, 2010
NNT posted this to his Facebook page today. Reporter “Now I’m afraid readers are going to have to wait a little while for this book, right…NNT ” Five years maybe.”
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
[Cont- Subtractive Therapy] Pomponius Atticus, severely ill, tried, the Stoic way, to take his own life. Having chosen starvation, he was cured of his illness. [retold by Montaigne]
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Shared by JohnH
NY Times reviews The Bed of Procrustes. HatTip to Dave Lull
Sarah Josephine Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
THE BED OF PROCRUSTES
Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
…
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
It has taken medicine 2500 years to realize that, like epistemology, healing & therapy are largely subtractive, not additive: you cure by removing elements from peoples' lives (say foods, carbs, medications, nicotine, bosses, cars, New Jersey, …
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Summa Theologiae, the notion of Book-as-Monument. Missing a piece of the works feels equivalent to owning a large painting with a missing area. These derive their splendor from their comprehensiveness.Books as monument (though not Summas): Bayle'…
Friday, November 12, 2010
The denigration of anti-fragility is in a sentence that dominates Summa Theologiae; one variant: “Agen autem non movet nisi ex intentione finis”, an agent does not move except out of intention for an end; in other words THAT AGENTS ARE SO RATIONAL THEY…
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