{"id":6476,"date":"2014-01-05T16:32:55","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T00:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=6476"},"modified":"2014-01-05T16:32:55","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T00:32:55","slug":"barbell-logic-a-logical-error-in-dealing-with-nassim-nicholas-taleb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/barbell-logic-a-logical-error-in-dealing-with-nassim-nicholas-taleb\/","title":{"rendered":"BARBELL & LOGIC: A logical error in dealing with… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

BARBELL & LOGIC: A logical error in dealing with the notion of “average” is to think that, in a conflict in which we are outsiders, the middle ground is likely to be right, instead of considering that each side has a 50% probability of being 100% right, and the middle ground is the least likely to be correct.<\/p>\n

We make such mistakes in intellectual life but not in naturalistic settings. When you tell people that a woman has 50% percent probability of being pregnant, (50% of being not pregnant) but 0% probability of being half-pregnant, they get it. Replace “pregnant” with “right” and see that you are likely to make the error.<\/p>\n

This leads many to avoid barbells by having only “moderate” risks or “moderate” opinions.<\/p>\n

The only time I got angry with Robert Shiller was when, in 2006, he said that I was “sort of” right (about the risks in the system) but was too extreme and needed “moderation”. Actually philosophers know about fallacy in the “argument to moderation”: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Argument_to_moderation<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

via BARBELL & LOGIC: A logical error in dealing with… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BARBELL & LOGIC: A logical error in dealing with the notion of “average” is to think that, in a conflict in which we are outsiders, the middle ground is likely to be right, instead of considering that each side has a 50% probability of being 100% right, and the middle ground is the least likely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facebook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6478,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6476\/revisions\/6478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}