{"id":68,"date":"2008-04-13T15:43:12","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T22:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"tag:google.com,2005:reader\/item\/b79ab746745c5ccd"},"modified":"2010-04-12T16:13:37","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T23:13:37","slug":"nassim-nicholas-taleb-the-future-ain%e2%80%99t-what-it-used-to-be-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/nassim-nicholas-taleb-the-future-ain%e2%80%99t-what-it-used-to-be-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Future Ain\u2019t What It Used To Be"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nassim<\/a>If you want to be a dentist, it\u2019s rational to assume that if you go to school, get your degree, and set up a dental practice, you will be able to attain a comfortable standard of living. You may be able to project your probable income range with some degree of accuracy.
\nBut if you want to be a rock star, it\u2019s irrational to assume that if you go to rock school, get good at guitar, and start a band, you will become rich and famous.
\nAccording to Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s way of thinking, the dentist and the wannabe rock star fall into two distinct categories with drastically different risk characteristics. The dentist falls into the domain he calls \u2018Mediocristan\u2019, and the rock star, \u2018Extremistan\u2019. Extremistan is dominated by \u2018fat tails\u2019, or rare but profoundly significant events. Problems arise when we think we\u2019re operating in Mediocristan but in fact are operating in Extremistan.
\n\u201cKarl Marx wanted to turn knowledge into action, what I want to do is turn our lack of knowledge into action\u201d. Taleb suggests that by becoming aware of our own ignorance, we can stop taking action where our action is irrational.
\nI\u2019m on my second reading of Fooled By Randomness<\/a> and am very much looking forward to The Black Swan<\/a>. In the meantime I\u2019ve been hunting down all the audio I can find on Taleb because his talks are extremely interesting and he is a very engaging speaker. He has a bit of attitude when addressing an audience, in part no doubt because much of what he has to say offends of lot of people, especially anyone whose expertise is related to forecasting. He has obvious disdain for financial forecasters in particular, probably because he sees the impact these \u2018guys in suits riding around in limousines\u2019 have on the lives of \u2018people taking the subway to work everyday\u2019 (i.e.pensions).
\nWhat Taleb has to say has resonated with me at a very deep level. Much of the facts and studies he brings to light confirm my long lingering suspicion that something about the way the world sees itself is profoundly inaccurate and weirdly irrational.
\nI\u2019ve listened to each of these talks at least a half dozen times and every time I do I take away another profound insight. Be sure to check out Taleb\u2019s Home Page<\/a> as well.
\nTaleb on EconTalk.org April 30, 2007<\/em><\/a>
\nLongNow Lecture-The Future Has Always Been Crazier Than We Thought Feb. 4, 2007
\n<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to be a dentist, it\u2019s rational to assume that if you go to school, get your degree, and set up a dental practice, you will be able to attain a comfortable standard of living. You may be able to project your probable income range with some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,111],"tags":[7,17,15,16,11],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-john","category-start-here","tag-black-swan","tag-extremistan","tag-mediocristan","tag-narrative-fallacy","tag-taleb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":905,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}