But the average of the function is as follows. Take the square of every payoff, 1^2+2^2+3^2+4^2+5^2+6^2 divided by 6, that is the average square payoff, and you get 15.67. So, since squaring is a convex function, the average of a square payoff is higher than the square of the average payoff. The difference, here between [...]
Apparently the NNT quotes Bloomberg posted earlier today (and to which I posted a link) were taken out of context and NNT isn’t too happy about it. So why is Taleb so furious? Basically he says he wasn’t giving investment advice at all, and that he was giving an hour-long lecture on anti-fragility and risk, [...]
The more frequently you look at data, the more noise you are disproportionally likely to get (rather than the valuable part called the signal); hence the higher the noise to signal ratio. And there is a confusion, that is not psychological at all, but inherent in the data itself. Say you look at information on [...]
NNT and Danny Kahneman are at the Hay Festival (UK) this weekend! Nassim Nicholas Taleb Event 117 • Sunday 3 June 2012, 4pm • Venue: Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage AntiFragility The visionary probability guru and Black Swan author previews his study of How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand. Price: £6.25 Sponsored [...]
A breakup of the euro “is not a big deal,” Taleb said yesterday at an event in Montreal hosted by the Alternative Investment Management Association. “When they break it up, there will be a lot of fun currencies. This is why I am not afraid of Europe, or investing in Europe. I’m afraid of the [...]
Many of Taleb’s concerns also take on a strangely moral tone in contexts where moral questions are tertiary. If the Fed actually did need to bail out the banks to stop 25% unemployment from happening, I would do that every day of the week and twice on Sunday, questions of the morality of transferring resources [...]
If you want to bypass someone’s permission, use the expression “with your permission” via If you want to… | Facebook.
Get it while it’s hot! (I don’t republish pdfs NNT has removed the links to). Friends, I wonder if this chapter is easy to read and get. Thanks. www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pebbles.pdf via Friends, I wonder… | Facebook.
The only problem with the last laugh is that the winner has to laugh alone. via The only problem… | Facebook.
There is nothing more hideous than excessive refinement in food, dress, lifestyle, etc. via There is nothing… | Facebook.
ZeroHedge weighs in. Taleb also touches on something we have been arguing for since 2009, namely that if banks are to expect bail outs whenever they blow up, they should be treated as utilities, with full caps on comp, net income, and earnings. To wit: “Banks are utilities. I don’t understand why we’ve been bailing [...]
There’s more. See it at NNT’s Facebook page, linked below. NOISE AND SIGNAL THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF NEUROTICISM Imagine someone of the type we call neurotic in common parlance. He is wiry, looks contorted, and speaks with an uneven voice. His necks moves around when he tries to express himseld. When he has a small pimple [...]
BBC Newsnight invited NNT on to discuss the recent JP Morgan $3B investment loss fiasco. “Friends, thanks to Ktenneh’s help we have this statement of exasperation with the bankers’ scam.”
We now have a name, iatrogenics, for when someone (say a doctor) causes harm while trying to help. But there is still no word for the situation of someone who ends up helping while trying to cause harm. via We now have a name,… | Facebook.
Every plane crash makes the next one less likely; every bank crash makes the next one more probable. via Every plane crash… | Facebook.
I just bought Tom Holland’s book on the rise of Islam for the sole reason that he was attacked by Glen Bowesock, the most prominent living scholar of the Roman Levant. Tom Holland is a popularizer and I would not have taken him seriously otherwise. A heuristic to estimate the quality of research is the [...]
The exam was a philosophy essay: “What is Risk?”. Someone handed a nearly blank sheet, on which was written a single sentence “This is risk”. via The exam was a… | Facebook.
Final cover and pub date Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder via Final cover and pub… | Facebook.Canada too! Thanks Paul & Jon
NNT spoke at Hedgework in Frankfurt on May 8, 2012.More pictures at the Hedgework site. Manche Systeme seien zerbrechlicher, andere weniger. „Wenn Sie ein Wasserglas tausend Mal aus fünf Millimeter Höhe auf den Boden fallen lassen, wird es dies mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit überstehen“, sagte Taleb am Mittwochabend bei einem Vortrag vor dem Diskussionskreis für alternative [...]
Dave Lull dropped me a line to point out that Antifragility is now available for pre-order in UK. Jon points out that it’s also available for pre-order in the U.S.
Continues on NNT’s Facebook see link below. Hungry DonkeysSo far we argued that preventing randomness in an antifragile system is not always a good idea. Let us now look at the situation in which adding randomness has been a standard operating method, as the needed fuel for an antifragile system permanently hungry for it.A donkey [...]
Only this bit of NNT, but lots of Khaneman, Tversky, Thaler etc. as well, in this excellent article. It’s natural for us to reduce the complexity of our rationality into convenient bite-sized ideas. As the trader turned epistemologist Nassim Taleb says: “We humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen [...]
(same chapter on Modernity) … all manner of violations of humanism under the banner of secular humanism seemed to have an intellectual justification —the redoing of all the ills of religion without its tricks and heuristics. The state was now like a corporate balance sheet: one does not care of what happens outside of it, [...]
The messy multi-ethnic empire, the so-called Austro-Hungarian empire, vanished after the great war, along with the Ottoman neighbor and rival, and, to a large extent, sibling don’t tell them —to be replaced with the crisp and clean nation state of Austria. This would be the equivalent of moving New York City to central Texas, and [...]
We seem to sensationalize petty crime and ignore gigantic ones. To get things in perspective the most evil mobster, John Gotti, only extracted ~$14 million from the public 6% of what Robert Rubin got, or 1% of Sandy Weill’s and, almost only harmed other mafiosi. via We seem to… | Facebook.
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