Monthly Archives: January 2013

Nassim Taleb – CNBC 1/28/13

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“If you cannot use randomness and disorder and variability and volatility as fuel, you won’t make it in the long run.”

Nassim Taleb on Icahn/Ackman: ‘They’re Only Human’
Monday, 28 January 2013 10:08 AM ET
Nassim Taleb, author of “Antifragile” and “The Black Swan,” shares his outlook for the U.S. economy, investment strategies and his thoughts on the heated conversation between Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman over Herbalife
Source: CNBC.com

Audio

“Banks borrow cheaply because you’re lending them every April 15 ok, you’re stopping them out.”

Nassim Taleb: We Have to Address the Core of the Problem
Monday, 28 January 2013 10:36 AM ET
Nassim Taleb, author of “Antifragile” and “The Black Swan,” discusses the U.S. economy. “This is not a healthy system. We have to address the core of the problem and we have not,” he says
Source: CNBC.com

Audio

via nassim taleb – CNBC.

NOTE FOR BOOK VI of ANTIFRAGILE – HOW TO SEEK FRACTAL IMMORTALITY

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NOTE FOR BOOK VI of ANTIFRAGILE – HOW TO SEEK FRACTAL IMMORTALITY

I find it insulting to nature that a single individual would seek immortality (a follow up to Jean-Louis Rheault’s posts here and my statements of revulsion at Kurzweil’s “singularity”). Immortality is not only unethical; it is even unnecessary.

My genes can be immortal; they are the ones that should seek immortality. And they tend to do.

We continue our lives, our genes diluted at every descendant, but at every generation there are more descendants that offset the dilution. Simply, if one has 2 descendants who in turn have 2 descendants, at the 2nd generation I duplicate myself in two halfs (so stay immortal in 2 parts), and as the fractal tree shows, at the 7th generation, I am present in 1/128th of each of the 128 individuals.

(I am simplifying. More technically, one needs a bit more than 2 decendants to stay “whole”, owing to genetic drift from the replication errors of the DNA. So no wonder we have historically had ~ 2.2 children per woman. Further, I am not counting the fact that my genes also survive through indirect descendans, such as nephews, etc. And I am not counting re-combinations, i.e. descendants marrying each other).

We are fragile; our genes are antifragile.

via Timeline Photos | Facebook.

Friends, the final revision of my rebuttal of the idea that *small probabilities are expensive…

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Friends, the final revision of my rebuttal of the idea that *small probabilities are expensive* (Ilmanen’s paper) is about to be submitted to FAJ (where his paper was published). I link it to the general error, a methological blindess to fat tails, I now call “Pinker empiricism”.

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/Ilmanen.pdf

Comments on the first part is welcome as the editors need the paper by Monday. Thanks in advance.

via Timeline Photos | Facebook.

Taleb On “Skin In The Game” And His Disdain For Public Intellectuals | Zero Hedge

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I have the ReasonTV interview earlier on the blog. But in case you were wondering what Zero Hedge thought of it…

Nassim Taleb sits down for a quite extensive interview based around his new book Anti-Fragile. Whether the Black Swan best-seller is philosopher or trader is up to you but the discussion is worth the time as Taleb wonders rigorously from the basic tenets of capitalism – “being more about disincentives that incentives” as failure he believes is critical to its success and is clearly not allowed in our current environment – to his intellectual influences and total disdain for the likes of Krugman, Stiglitz, and Friedman – who all espouse grandiose and verbose work with no accountability whatsoever. His fears of large centralized states such as the US is becoming and Europe is become being prone to fail along with his libertarianism make for good viewing. However, his fundamental premise that TBTF banks should be nationalized and the critical importance of ‘skin in the game’ for a functioning financial system are all so crucial for the current ‘do no harm’ regime in which we live. Grab a beer or glass of wine, it is Taleb and watch…

via Taleb On “Skin In The Game” And His Disdain For Public Intellectuals | Zero Hedge.

The Lebanese Method | The Majalla Magazine

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Taleb argues that we are built to be fooled by theories. He says, “Theories come and go, experience stays.” Fat Tony trusts experience and, in one anecdote, becomes rich in 1991 when he bets against the experts who believe the price of oil will rise with the first Gulf War. The theory is that a war causes hoarding and bottlenecks yet, as Tony notes, the date of the war was known so far in advance that too much oil had been hoarded. Tony is beholden to no theories. He simply looked at the figures, saw there were more barrels of oil than the world needed, and bet on the price falling, which is exactly what happened.

via The Lebanese Method | The Majalla Magazine.