A Fresh Perspective- Standing the problem on its head, June 28, 2010

By	N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”

I am relieved to finally find a book that deals with Black Swan Events in a new way. Ayache brings a reverse-probabilistic perspective: instead of considering that a price is the result of probabilistically derived expectation, he reverses the issues and investigates these artificial constructs as “probabilities” and “expectations” as secondary, derived, fictitious concepts that we bring about to explain prices, decisions, and other things.

This, of course, is just the beginning, so one has to be understanding about the speculative aspect of the effort –so view this as a gutsy look at the “end of probability” and how we will need to envision the world once we get rid of this artificial, antiquated tool.

I am also glad to see that those of us trained in the trading of options can have views original enough to influence the philosophy of probability and the philosophical understanding of contingency.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author The Black Swan