Monthly Archives: November 2012

Twitter / nntaleb: Yes He should put back whatever he had after disclaimer. Nothing wrong with parody.

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There’s more to this, much of which may have been deleted, but a little shyte storm broke out this morning on Twitter around some ”favorite passages”, ostensibly from NNT’s new book, Antifragile (that was the context of the blog post) published by Joshua Brown at ‘the Reformed Broker’. The post has since been removed, probably at the behest of NNT’s London publisher’s lawyer. If you’re quick however, you can catch it in Google’s cache. A couple of them made me laugh out loud.

In the end, NNT invited @ReformedBroker to repost them with a disclaimer.

Nassim N. Taleb Nassim N. Taleb ‏ Yes He should put back whatever he had after disclaimer. Nothing wrong with parody.

via Twitter / nntaleb: @foxjust @ReformedBroker ….

Twitter / nntaleb: @gregoliver_ @dgardner Precision …

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Dan Gardner ‏@dgardner
If you can identify a clear definition of “black swan,” that Taleb has consistently applied, I will give you a C-note.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/24/nassim-taleb-antifragile-finance-interview
…
Nassim N. Taleb ‏@nntaleb @gregoliver_ @dgardner Precision in scientific terms.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_31K_MP92hUNjljYjIyMzgtZTBmNS00MGMwLWIxNmQtYjMyNDFiYjY0MTJl/edit?hl=en_GB
(Links to 400 pages of NNT’s technical papers.)

via Twitter / nntaleb: @gregoliver_ @dgardner Precision ….

Epiphanies from Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Foreign Policy

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The European Union is a horrible, stupid project. The idea that unification would create an economy that could compete with China and be more like the United States is pure garbage. What ruined China, throughout history, is the top-down state. What made Europe great was the diversity: political and economic. Having the same currency, the euro, was a terrible idea. It encouraged everyone to borrow to the hilt.

The U.S. government should have no deficit. There’s way too much debt. It is inexcusable when you have the highest standards of living in the nation’s history! When you get rich, you should have less debt. There’s a vicious element to borrowing when you’re very rich, and having a deficit is an extremely dangerous game.

I have a negative approach to democracy. I think it should be primarily a mechanism by which people can remove a bad leader.

via Epiphanies from Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Foreign Policy.

Book Review: Antifragile – WSJ.com

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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.