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Treat! From Reason.com

Reason’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Taleb for a wide-ranging discussion about why debt leads to fragility (5:16); the importance of “skin in the game” to a properly functioning financial system (10:45); why large banks should be nationalized (21:47); why technology won’t rule the future (24:20); the value of studying the classics (26:09); his intellectual adversaries (33:30); why removing things is often the best way to solve problems (36:50); his intellectual influences (39:10); why capitalism is more about disincentives than incentives (43:10); why large, centralized states are prone to fail (44:50); his libertarianism (47:30); and why he’ll never take writing advice from “some academic at Cambridge who sold 2,200 copies” (51:49).

I was struck in Rome by the discovery of…

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I was struck in Rome by the discovery of the absence of smooth and bland surfaces; nothing is low-dimentional. Everything ancient has ornaments in the smallest details; no area is left smooth, even for functional objects. The only exceptions I could find were Etruscan artifacts.These are 1st Century terra cotta oil lamps, one notices embellishments. Later Christian era oil lamps are of course adorned with religious symbols.I am now convinced, looking at a modern wall, that smooth surfaces hurt us deeply into our soul We have already discussed how we crave some class of variations, something that can be mapped by Jensen’s inequality.We are antifragile to dimentionality of objects. I feel that looking at a modern architectural object is an eyesore, even a soul-sore. I wonder if grafiti are a naturalistic rebellion against low-dimension.

via Timeline Photos | Facebook.

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Farm Lane Books Blog

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Many sections of this book were eye-opening and they helped to change my perception of certain events. I particularly liked the thought that women who carry items on their head have better posture and bone density than those that don’t:

The tradition has been to think that aging causes bone weakness (bones lose density, become more brittle), as if there was a one-way relationship possibly brought about by hormones (females start experiencing osteporosis after menopause). It turns out, as shown by Karsenty and others who have since embarked on the line of research, that the reverse is also largely true: loss of bone density also causes aging, diabetes, and, for males, loss of fertility and sexual function.

Some of the ideas, especially the thought that small wars are good for the population as a whole, are controversial, but I found them thought provoking and enjoyed the little arguments they created in my head!

via Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – Farm Lane Books Blog.