General Principle: the solutions (on balance) need to be simpler than the problems.
(Otherwise the system collapses under its complexity).
via General Principle: the solutions (on balance)… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
GREED-PROOF NOT GREED-FREE:
Two millennia ago, Sallust wrote the following:
“When I was a callow young man, I plunged enthusiastically into public life. Instead of modesty, brazenness flourished; instead of self-restraint, bribery; instead of merit, avarice (…)my youthful weakness was corrupted and gripped by ambition. Although I refrained from the wicked ways of the rest, still the same craving for advancement that plagued them with ill-repute and jealousy plagued me too.”(Bell. Cat., III.3)
—
22 centuries from now (if we make it), someone will be writing the same. Yet we hear utopianizing idiots (such as the maker of the movie “Inside Jobs”) bemoaning the “greed” of bankers, the bureaucratizing minds of bureaucrats, not realizing that these are embedded in human nature. Anyone who think we can correct humans is similar to those who think that they will get it right “the next time”…
ANTIFRAGILE-The only strategy for us is to build a greed-resistant system… or go further benefit from the greed of humans. And build systems in which politicians are harmless.
http://www.uq.edu.au/hprcflex/lt2310/sallust1.htm
Classics and Ancient History: Sallust, Bellum Catilinae
via GREED-PROOF NOT GREED-FREE: Two millennia ago,… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
The idea of multiple counterfactuals:When you imagine future outcomes, you change one variable not many together. If you did, you’d have surprises.
http://edge.org/conversation/on-kahneman#25630
ON KAHNEMAN | Edge.org
To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.
via The idea of multiple counterfactuals: When you… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Finally, here is a mathematical proof that the “heuristics” used by traders and derived bottom-up are both more robust and more rigorous (mathematically) than the pseudomathematics used by economists.
The best way to beat economists is to be more rigorous mathematically than they are, not discard the math.
via Finally, here is a mathematical proof that the… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Note 154 on prediction markets, and more generally academic BS, and my argument with one of the proponents.Please don’t comment on prediction markets unless you have either read the paper of watched the video.
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/notebook.htm
via Note 154 on prediction markets, and more… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.