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Monthly Archives: May 2012

Hungry Donkeys

Friday, May 11, 2012

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 […]

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The Irrationality of Irrationality: The Paradox of Popular Psychology | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network

Thursday, May 10, 2012

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 […]

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(same chapter on Modernity)

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

(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, […]

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The messy multi-ethnic empire…

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

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 […]

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We seem to sensationalize petty crime and ignore gigantic ones.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

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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