Monthly Archives: December 2013

43 Brilliant Musings From Nassim Taleb’s Facebook Page – SFGate

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Quite a predicament to be both evil and risk averse.
It is a sad situation to be boring without being virtuous.
It takes a lot of skills to be virtuous without being boring.
People laugh out loud and broadcast their laughter when they’re worried about the statement that they purportedly find funny. They would smile – perhaps surreptitiously -otherwise.
If your approach to mathematics is mechanical not mystical, you’re not going to go anywhere.
Be courteous and gentle, but never ever take criticism from people you wouldn’t hire.
A trader listened to the firm’s “chief” economist’s predictions about gold, then lost a bundle. The trader was asked to leave the firm. He then angrily asked him boss who was firing him: “Why do you fire me alone not the economist? He is too responsible for the loss.” The Boss: “You idiot, we are not firing you for losing money; we are firing you for listening to the economist.”

via 43 Brilliant Musings From Nassim Taleb’s Facebook Page – SFGate.

Here is a question on exercise for the naturalistic experts…

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Here is a question on exercise for the naturalistic experts such as Guru Anaerobic and others about muscle tension, “knots” and matters that require curative intervention.
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When you lift heavy weights, you tend to develop “knots” in some areas, painful lumps of muscle fibers, the result of an uneven sudden tension. My personal experience: clean and pressing and deadlifting produce these painful spots in the hamstrings and the gluteus medius. These require rubbing, massage, and other remedies that seems unnatural. The scientific literature is vague on “trigger points” and similar ailments, along with the remedies. Now why does modern life require the unnatural massage? Is it because we no longer sit/sleep on hard surfaces and uneven hard surfaces would normally squeeze these lumps and reestablish circulation, dissolve the “trigger points” or “knots”? Ot is it because episodic weightlifting is too unnatural?
Thanks for whatever ideas you may have, but this is mainly a question for the experienced “barbell” weighlifters who, from the discussion of Brassens’s weightlifting, seem to be numerous on this page.

via Here is a question on exercise for the… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

PLEASE SHARE VIA NEGATIVA RULES. I am quite certain that new year resolutions don’t really work…

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PLEASE SHARE VIA NEGATIVA RULES.

I am quite certain that new year resolutions don’t really work, are more wishful thinking (gyms are full in January and empty in February)… except that interdicts have worked in history: halal/kashrut dietary laws, etc.

I have personally never been successful with positive resolutions, but have been with stated negative year-end rules: in 2007 (never be late for the year 2008 which worked well by injecting redundancies, and seems to have effortless carried over to today) and 2012 (no reading outside of math for 2013, with weak exceptions).

I have no rules for 2014 yet but feel quite satisfied.

Please feel free to state your rules, if you are willing to share, so other can get ideas. They need to be VIA NEGATIVA and easy to generalize (not personal).

via PLEASE SHARE VIA NEGATIVA RULES. I am quite… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Answer to Quiz: The extreme is not an estimate…

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Answer to Quiz: The extreme is not an estimate of the average.

Assuming one can define happiness, a measure in the “tails”, that is the suicide rate, provides a near-random estimate of the average. Likewise counting the super-rich doesn’t give an idea of the wealth of a country. It is much more of a measure of inequality.

Corollary: policies aiming at decreasing unhappiness should be treated as something independent from policies aiming at increasing happiness. (The *via negativa* argument).

Note: I do not believe we know how to measure happiness, but we know how do deal with extreme unhappiness.

via Answer to Quiz: The extreme is not an estimate… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.