Monthly Archives: December 2012

BBC Radio 3 – Night Waves, Nassim Taleb

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This is the best I’ve heard so far on the book tour. NNT is the first guest after the intro. Interesting to hear what he has to say about looking out for the weak. Will be very interested to hear if that came up in his Brooklyn talk with Russ Roberts (which I’m on the lookout for).

Nassim Taleb, The Old Regime and the Revolution, The Hunt

Monday 26 November 2012

Nassim Taleb, the banker-turned-philosopher who predicted the financial collapse of 2008, has been called ‘the hottest thinker in the world’. His internationally bestselling book, The Black Swan, was about the impact of rare, unpredictable events. In his latest book he expands on this theory and comes up with the concept of ‘antifragile’ – the idea that through small shocks and surprises humans (and financial systems) can become more than robust – they can thrive and become antifragile. But critics have labelled this theory ‘antisocial’. Rana Mitter meets Nassim Taleb to test the robustness…

via BBC Radio 3 – Night Waves, Nassim Taleb, The Old Regime and the Revolution, The Hunt.

Black Swan author challenges the belief that pressure is bad for the economy | City A.M.

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BANKS should be more like cats than washing machines. So suggests Nassim Taleb, ex-trader and controversial author of The Black Swan, who has a new book out in time for Christmas. What he means is that living things – cats, economists, bankers – display a property that even our best-designed machinery lacks: a quality that he names antifragility, fragility’s true opposite.

To be antifragile, it is not enough to be robust and able to resist a few knocks. Something antifragile is actually better under pressure: self-healing, it treats damage as a source of data, from which it learns and adapts, ending up stronger than before. Perhaps that’s why cats are said to have nine lives.

via Black Swan author challenges the belief that pressure is bad for the economy | City A.M..
HatTip to Dave Lull

Antifragile: how to live in a world we don’t understand – LSE Audio

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Listen at LSE
Download(Right Click, Save)
AudioSpeakers: Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Recorded on 5 December 2012 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.

Taleb believes that many of the best and most successful systems in the world such as evolution have antifragility at their heart. Conversely, those systems which reject antifragility and suppress volatility such as modern politics and banking become weaker and less able to withstand the inevitable shocks – the major tragedy of modernity, according to Taleb. But antifragility is not simply an antidote to “black swan events”. Taleb believes that understanding antifragility makes us less fearful in accepting the role of these events as necessary for history, technology, knowledge and everything.Nassim

Nicholas Taleb spends most of his time as a flâneur, meditating in cafés across the planet. A former trader, he is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University. He is the author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, an international bestseller which has become an intellectual, social and cultural touchstone. This event marks the publication of his new book, Antifragile.

via Antifragile: how to live in a world we don’t understand – Video and audio – News and media – Home.

From Michael Lewis to Montaigne, the best writers first live an interesting life – NewStatesman

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That is one of the brilliant arguments in Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s new book. Taleb himself started writing when he was still a trader. His day job bought him freedom, time and autonomy to follow his intellectual passions. He wrote as he chose. Taleb is not alone. Stendhal was a diplomat, Trollope worked as a civil servant for the Post Office, Kafka was employed by an insurance company.

Just do something

Taleb’s argument makes me feel better about the awkwardness I suffer when I am asked how to pursue a “career” in writing. I’ve always wanted to say this: “Don’t! If you really want to write, then do so. Just don’t view it as a prearranged career, a battle campaign to be planned. Writing isn’t like that. Perhaps you need to do something else first.”

via From Michael Lewis to Montaigne, the best writers first live an interesting life.

THE IDEAL STATE..

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‎(Continued) THE IDEAL STATE. Friends, tonite on NEWSNIGHT 10:30 London time I am offered to describe “the ideal state”. No more reciting the same stuff. Of course the perfect state is not a nation-state but municipal confederation; & the higher up the more via negativa. Borrowing should not be allowed at the top, only at the lower level. And of course the reason behind unifications in Europe and formation of modern nation states is martial.

via (Continued) THE… | Facebook.