Monthly Archives: September 2013

Rolf Dobelli’s Case

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Rolf Dobelli’s Case

Please note that I am putting these facts in the public domain, not making any legal or even ethical claim (yet). Just facts.

(Four months after becoming aware of the problem, and exactly one month after informing Dobelli, I resolved to put this here.)

Taken from Taleb’s Incerto (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, & Antifragile) and other material without attribution; partial list.[i] [ii] These correspond to Rolf Dobelli’s various articles as well as his latest book.

***

Rolf Dobelli translated and summarized the section on via negativa from the unpublished manuscript of Antifragile (with which he was entrusted) in a German newspaper Zeit, with no sourcing and attribution. And published it before Antifragile.

One could stop here and draw a conclusion… but there is more: in the US version:

Taleb

Michelangelo was asked by the pope about the secret of his genius, particularly how he carved the statue of David, largely considered the masterpiece of all masterpieces. His answer was: “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.” (Antifragile)

Dobelli

The pope asked Michelangelo: “Tell me the secret of your genius. How have you created the statue of David, the masterpiece of all masterpieces?” Michelangelo’s answer: “It’s simple. I removed everything that is not David.”

via Rolf Dobelli’s Case.

Taleb on Skin in the Game | EconTalk

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SEPTEMBER 9, 2013
Taleb on Skin in the Game
Nassim Taleb Hosted by Russ Roberts
Nassim Taleb of NYU-Poly talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his recent paper with Constantine Sandis on the morality and effectiveness of “skin in the game.” When decision makers have skin in the game–when they share in the costs and benefits of their decisions that might affect others–they are more likely to make prudent decisions than in cases where decision-makers can impose costs on others. Taleb sees skin in the game as not just a useful policy concept but a moral imperative. The conversation closes with some observations on the power of expected value for evaluating predictions along with Taleb’s thoughts on economists who rarely have skin in the game when they make forecasts or take policy positions.
Download Size:28.8 MB Right-click or Option-click, and select “Save Link/Target As MP3.

via EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty.

Nassim Taleb on the Errors of Richard Dawkins and of Intervening in Syria.

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A few weeks back, see, Richard Dawkins caused a bit of controversy when he claimed that Trinity College has produced more Nobel Laureates than the entire Muslim world has been able to muster. As it turns out, Trinity College has also produced more Nobel winners than all of femininity combined, or of all of China as well. The problem isn’t the numbers, but the inference that Dawkins makes from it, which was something along the lines of when it comes to intelligence, the entire Muslim world is backward. Taleb addresses this in the video below as being flawed in terms of the probabilities of there being more smart folks living in the West than there are in the rest of the world.

Basically, he argues that you can’t make inferences from things that take place in the tails of a Gaussian distribution curve, especially in that place we live that Taleb calls Extremistan, where the winners take a disproportionate amount of the gains in a society. Be advised, math alert!

via Nassim Taleb on the Errors of Richard Dawkins and of Intervening in Syria..

Most people don’t understand what it means to be skeptical of experts…

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Most people don’t understand what it means to be skeptical of experts. Skepticism should be one-sided, or should lead to one-sided actions, the one that is “wise” in the precautionary sense. If the majority of experts tell you water is poisonous, don’t exercise your skepticism by drinking. But if experts tell you water is “safe”, you are invited to be skeptic, or err on the side of skepticism. Likewise with climatic matters: we cannot affort to be skeptical of models, even if you knew they are wrong. This explains why you can be equally skeptical of both economic and climatic modelers, but distrust one class and trust another. We are fragile if we trust economists, and fragile if we distrust climate people.

(Newcomers, please keep comments rigorous and make sure you understand the point before posting. And stick to the logic of the argument. And unless you are familiar with the concavity argument, please don’t post.)

via Most people don’t understand what it… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.

Richard Dawkins, in his statement about the number of Nobels granted to Moslems…

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Richard Dawkins, in his statement about the number of Nobels granted to Moslems, showed a total ignorance of probability. A primitive violation. You never get an idea about the mean from measuring the tail (number of Nobels per capita). The “tail”, the extreme, depends mostly on the variance and is very sensitive in the mean. Small differences in education, less than 1% can produce 100x changes in the number of persons in the tails. To compare 2 populations, you compare THE MEANS, not the extrema, STATISTICS 101!

It is an intellectual violation of the worst order. I wonder why the press never picked up on this. And why in the world does anyone call Richard Dawkins a scientist?

Please not that I am not a Moslem, but Greek Orthodox Levantine.

(I set aside the notion that had some Medieval moslem compared his population to that of Northern, the difference would have much, much more striking, and to say the least *not predictive*. Also ignore his use of a Western metric on a non Western population).

via Richard Dawkins, in his statement about… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.

(continued) Mr Dawkins you cannot compare Nobels per capita as a metric for intelligence because of nonlinearities. If a naive “scientist” (fooled by randomness) like you compared Ashkenazis Jews, representing ~5 million, with 50% of scientific Nobel Prizes, to the rest of the world’s population of 7 bil, he would have assumed that Ashkenazis have IQs of 7000 times the average!

Mr Dawkins I can send you my book Fooled by Randomness that might help you try to think a bit harder about these problem. Also the error (misunderstanding convexity) is discussed 2x in Antifragile.

via (continued) Mr Dawkins you cannot… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.

(continued) my comment used IQ as an example, but we can use educational level, any metric: the response for the population of the super-super-elite is vastly nonlinear and depends mostly on variance.

via (continued) my comment used IQ as an… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.

Friends, should I do a micro-mooc on the Dawkins statement?

via Friends, should I do a micro-mooc on the… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.

Micro Mooc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ8C6oN81d0&feature=youtu.be

What can we learn from Mr Dawkins’ errors and misuse of probability?

A brief nontechnical micro-MOOC on the error of comparing populations by focusing on the tails, and how tail probabilities are

via Micro Mooc:… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.