About to break Orthodox lent, 40 days without animal products (except for fish on a few select days). Makes you grasp 1) rebirth (beyond symbolism), 2) celebration without prior sacrifice is theft, 3) religion is about walking the walk, not this modern notion of “belief” 4) antifragility in all its aspects, of course (includes the iatrogenics of abundance, happiness as defined by hedonic states)…

Solution to the AGENCY PROBLEM: Never get on a plane unless the person piloting it is also on board.
Generalization: no-one should be allowed to declare war, make a prediction, express an opinion, publish an academic paper, manage a firm, treat a patient, etc. without having something to lose (or win) from the outcome.

Over history, humans have gravitated around three poles, magic, religion, and science. Secretly, all they want is a disguised version of magic.

Shared by JohnH

“PAPER TO BE PRESENTED AT BENOIT MANDELBROT’S MEMORIAL Yale University, APRIL 29, 2011” HatTip to Dave Lull

143 The error about the error (Fukushima, again)

Paper on the epistemology of error.

An error rate can be measured. The measurement, in turn, will have an error rate. The measurement of the error rate will have an error rate. The measurement of the error rate will have an error rate. We can use the same argument by replacing “measurement” by “estimation” (say estimating the future value of an economic variable, the rainfall in Brazil, or the risk of a nuclear accident). What is called a regress argument by philosophers can be used to put some scrutiny on quantitative methods or risk and probability. The mere existence of such regress argument will lead to two different regimes, both leading to the necessity to raise the values of small probabilities, and one of them to the necessity to use power law distributions.

Shared by JohnH

Most of this article is behind a paywall right now. HatTip to Dave Lull. Article has been opened to public until 6/13/11.

Such environments eventually experience massive blowups, catching everyone off-guard and undoing years of stability or, in some cases, ending up far worse than they were in their initial volatile state. Indeed, the longer it takes for the blowup to occur, the worse the resulting harm in both economic and political systems.

Seeking to restrict variability seems to be good policy (who does not prefer stability to chaos?), so it is with very good intentions that policymakers unwittingly increase the risk of major blowups. And it is the same misperception of the properties of natural systems that led to both the economic crisis of 2007-8 and the current turmoil in the Arab world. The policy implications are identical: to make systems robust, all risks must be visible and out in the open — fluctuat nec mergitur (it fluctuates but does not sink) goes the Latin saying.