Monthly Archives: November 2015

Irish Beer, Red Meat, Gamma Functions, Gini, Life Expectancy, Kuala Lampur, Data

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https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/662680049863237632

There is a debate around the perceived toxicity of red meat and bacon. (Facebook)
Regrettably few researchers get the point that you need to include *frequency of intake* in the testing rather than just the average intake (a point belabored in Antifragile). Everything nonlinear depends on second order effects.

How often matters much more than how much.

Populations in history have tended to eat meat irregularly ( the Greek ate meat only on sacrifice days) but like lions and other hunters/carnivores they gorge on it during these episodes. Orthodox Christians are vegan around 200 days a year, but they feast on fatty meat during feast days.
Having taken a look at the paper I can safely say that the authors missed the point. The report is based on statistical confounders.

Incidentally Monsanto missed the point with the crops that are genetically engineered to produce their own pesticides. As these crops release the pesticides continously, rather than by bursts, they are effective enough to represent a risk to your health, but not enough to harm the pests.
Jensen’s inequality, once again.

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/662627962248896512

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/662256614078967808

Many people keep boasting that we tend to live longer than our ancestors using the misinterpreted measure of life expectancy. (Facebook)

Life expectancy doesn’t tell you how LONG people live.
It mostly tells you how many children fail to survive. So reducing childhood mortality when it is high extends life expectancy much more than efforts aiming at making people live longer. For instance bringing childhood mortality down from 30% to what we have today, close to 0, extends life expectancy by about 25 years –which is the bulk of the gains since the middle ages.

If you want to really measure how long people live, use the expectancy at 40.

For those into these things, this is the perfect illustration of the beautiful concept of ergodicity.

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/661842761163739136

NECSI Executive Education: Antifragility | NECSI

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Source: NECSI Executive Education: Antifragility | NECSI