Economic Bricolage
We should treat failed entrepreneurs with the reverence that we reserve for fallen soldiers.

The Federal Reserve, in Mr. Taleb’s view, is an iatrogenic institution run by fragilistas doing more harm than good by trying to root out randomness. This might seem a cheap shot were it not for Mr. Taleb’s track record in spotting some of the ingredients of the recent financial crisis. In particular, after 2003, he took a lot of criticism because “I kept telling everybody who would listen to me, including random taxi drivers (well almost), that the company Fannie Mae FNMA +0.36% was sitting on a ‘barrel of dynamite.'” He has little mercy for the Keynesian economist Joseph Stiglitz and the Orszag brothers, Peter and Jonathan, economic consiglieres to Democratic administrations, who insisted around the same time that the probability of default in the government-sponsored enterprises was “so small that it is difficult to detect.”

via Book Review: Antifragile – WSJ.com.

And like many attempts to lay the foundation for a new philosophical system, it offers its own vocabulary and a platter of new concepts. Hubristic wielders of rationality are dubbed “fragilistas” (Alan Greenspan, at one point, is labeled an “uberfragilista”). Those who practice “naïve interventionism” by recklessly meddling in complex systems often give rise to “iatrogenics,” or “harm done by the healer, as when a doctor’s interventions do more harm then good.” The many who believe that human knowledge begins in the academy are guilty of the fallacy of “lecturing birds on how to fly.” There are so many neologisms and repurposed turns of phrase, in fact, that a back-of-the-book glossary is provided for easy reference.

via A Manifesto for Disorder: Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ‘Antifragile’ Reviewed – The Daily Beast.

His point is that some things benefit from ‘mishandling’, from shocks, bangs and random knocks.
An emergency or problem, for example, can often lead to a useful new idea.
‘The airline industry benefits from every mistake ever made anywhere on the planet,’ he said. ‘Any pilot who makes a mistake anywhere on the planet today will make your next flight safer. The banking industry is the opposite.
‘Every mistake takes the banking system closer to total collapse. One system is antifragile, the other is fragile.’

via Renowned thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Let’s cherish the unpredictable | Metro.co.uk.

He’s throwing a party for his students the next night “to get them drunk”. With what aim? “No aim. They’re just so uptight.” He loves parties “but with close people. Not with hotshots. Not some black-tie dinner where you’re sitting next to some schmuck who’s going to tell you what he paid for his swimming pool. And not artsy fartsy. I can’t stand artsy fartsy.”

But isn’t it hypocritical to be so anti-artsy fartsy when you are artsy fartsy?

“I’m not. I’m mathematical not artsy.”

“But you go on about your private library. You say you spend at least 30 hours a week reading. You love the classics.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t mean I’m artsy. I don’t hang around with artsy people. I have zero literary friends.”

I wouldn’t want to get into a Twitter catfight with Nassim Taleb. Or be a banker in the audience when he gives one of his talks. “They pay me tens of thousands of dollars to come and rip them apart.”

But he gives good lunch. And he does something which no interviewee in the history of interviews has ever done – he pays. Whatever else he does or doesn’t do, Nassim Taleb puts his money where his mouth is. He has skin in the game.

That, or it’s another example of “fuck-you money”. Possibly both.

via Nassim Taleb: my rules for life | Books | The Observer.