A New Heuristic Measure of Fragility and Tail Risks: Application to Stress Testing Abstract Pdf A better approach, according to Taleb and his IMF co-authors Elie Canetti, Tidiane Kinda, Elena Loukoianova, and Christian Schmeider, is to measure the difference between outcomes arising from different scenarios instead of focusing on the estimates of potential losses themselves. [...]
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Why the One Percent of the One Percent benefit from inequality more than general prosperity: A Note for AntiFragilehttp://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/Onepercent.pdf via Why the One Percent… | Facebook.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Consider that all the wealth of the world can’t buy a liquid more pleasurable than water after intense thirst. Few objects bring more thrill than a recovered wallet or laptop lost on a train.The essence of life is some volatility.[ANTIFRAGILITY & variations] via Consider that all… | Facebook.
You can respect a human, you should never admire him. It hit me thinking of this commoditized-metricized-modernistic sports-fan worshiping business why1) two of the three Semitic religions Judaism & Sunni Islam have a thing against human representation & consider that perfection and purity is not the business of humans &, critically, we humans should not [...]
I am trying to divest this page from anyone whos is a “fan” of an aberration & monstrosity called a competitive athlete, or anyone seeking a commoditized metric called “accomplishment”. You should limit the “fan” business to the non-publicity-prone people around you who exhibit outstanding ethical behavior and have made sacrifices for the benefit of [...]
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Lance Armstrong: There is something highly offensive about exploiting cancer survival, making an industry out of it; in addition to making such a survival an accomplishment. Quite disheartening to those no less worthy but who will not be capable of overcoming the disease.For obvious reasons, I am entitled to comment on the subject. via Lance [...]
A government stating “we will not stand idle in front of atrocities committed by foreign dictator xxx” is typically trying to mitigate the guilt for standing idle in front of more atrocities committed by xxx. via Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
The optimal solution to being independent and upright while remaining a social animal is: to seek first your own self-respect and, secondarily and conditionally, that of others, provided your external image does not conflict with your own self-respect. Most people get it backwards and seek the admiration of the collective and something called “a good [...]
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Public & powerful figures tend to get admiration in inverse proportion to proximity; happy are those at the bottom of the ladder who have it the other way. via Public & powerful… | Facebook.
Seems the paper NNT published the other day Spurious Tail.pdf is causing quite a stir. A lot of it [Time, CNBC, WSJ] is just so much financial news filler, but certainly a Felix Salmon post deserves our attention. The professions you really want to avoid, after reading Taleb’s paper, are not financial but rather creative. [...]
It is perplexing, but amusing to observe people getting extremely excited about things you don’t care about; it is sinister to watch them ignore things you believe are fundamental.Aphorisms via It is perplexing,… | Facebook.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
TO MY LEBANESE FRIENDS. Heading soon to Lebanon in spite of events (please don’t tell my publishers). What people keep complaining about is the “instability” of the situation and the tension -not wondering that (1) tension is good; the more people are scared of instability (hence vigilant), the more stable the place (complacency is bad); [...]
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Why it is no longer a good idea to be in the investment industry. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/spurioustail.pdf via Why it is no longer… | Facebook.
The principle of distributing errors: (1) no single individual, institution, or corporate unit should have the ability to make an error consequential enough to affect the overall system (CONCENTRATION); (2) Crowds should be organized in a way to never be able to act synchronously as a single crowd (TEMPORAL HOMOGENEITY);(may seem simple but we are [...]
The fact that people in countries with cold weather tend to be harder working, richer, less relaxed, less amicable, less tolerant of idleness, more overorganized and more harried than those in hotter climates should make us wonder whether wealth is mere indemnification, and motivation is just overcompensation, for not having a real life. via The [...]
BOOK JACKET … Taleb refuses all awards, honors and rankings as debasement of knowledge by turning it into spectator sports. via BOOK JACKET …… | Facebook.
I find it insulting when someone imposes his narrative on you, categorizes you, instead of letting you do the self-categorizing. via I find it insulting… | Facebook.
A science starts with a convincing logical argument, followed by developments, fluff and procedures turning into institutions. Then we are left with the institutions without the logical argument. via A science starts… | Facebook.
A happier world is one in which everyone realizes that 1 it is not what you tell people, it is how you say it that makes them feel bad, 2 it is not not what you do to them but how you make them look that gets them angry, 3 they should be the ones [...]
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Just noticed that some of NNT’s scholarly papers have been updated on the SSRN site. For example… The Illusion of Thin-Tails Under AggregationJournal of Investment Management, ForthcomingTaleb, Nassim NicholasMartin, George A.Last Revised: 22 Apr 12 It is assumed that while portfolio theory fails with daily returns, that it would work with yearly returns, an standard [...]
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Blowups and explosive errors happen the most in fields where there is a penalty for simplicity. via Blowups and… | Facebook.
Just as eating cow-meat doesn’t turn you into a cow, studying philosophy doesn’t make you wiser. via Just as eating… | Facebook.
Friends, the notes are here: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/appendixnotes.pdf via Friends, the notes… | Facebook.
If you get easily bored, it means that your BS detector is functioning properly; if you forget (some) things, it means that your minds know how to filter; and if you feel sadness, it means thay you are human. via If you get easily… | Facebook.
The good life -the vita beata – is like reading a Russian novel: it takes 200 pages of struggling with the characters before one can start enjoying things. Then the agitation starts to make sense. via The good life -the… | Facebook.
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