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Monthly Archives: November 2013

Commentary on the statement: “Studying neurobiology to understand humans…

Commentary on the statement: “Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.” (from ANTIFRAGILE) When it comes to narratives, the brain seems to be the last province of the theoretician- charlatan. Add neurosomething to a field, and suddenly it rises in respectability and becomes more convincing as people now have the […]

Antifragile Libraries pt 1: Antifragility and collections | It’s Not About the Books

I recently read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s excellent book Antifragile: how to live in a world we don’t understand. It’s a rather sprawling, heavily footnoted opus – but with time to reflect I think Taleb has a great deal to teach librarians. Given the word count Taleb assigns to railing against bureaucrats, corporations, universities and government […]

Mathematical Definition, Mapping, and Detection of (Anti)Fragility by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Raphael Douady :: SSRN

We provide a mathematical definition of fragility and antifragility as negative or positive sensitivity to a semi-measure of dispersion and volatility (a variant of negative or positive “vega”) and examine the link to nonlinear effects. We integrate model error (and biases) into the fragile or antifragile context. Unlike risk, which is linked to psychological notions […]

Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like…

Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature. via Studying neurobiology to understand humans is… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Never read a book review written by an author whose books you wouldn’t read.

Never read a book review written by an author whose books you wouldn’t read. (Heuristic) via Never read a book review written by an author… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.