Category Archives: Contributors

RELIGION vs ATHEISM: Religious people are largely atheists…

RELIGION vs ATHEISM: Religious people are largely atheists, depending on the domain & why the discussion is largely flawed.

Some philosophy now. One brilliant contribution by economists is the concept of “cheap talk”, or the difference between “stated preferences” (what you say) and “revealed preferences” (from actions). Actions are louder than words: what people say (in opinion polls or elsewhere) isn’t as relevant, as individuals reveal their preferences with hard cash or, more generally costly action, or even more generally risky action (which, invariably, brings us to *skin in the game*). This is why opinion polls are considered largely BS. I also believe that the notion of “belief” is largely misunderstood.

Likewise I consider the difference between “believer” and “atheist” as mere verbiage unless someone shows difference in action.

In Chapter 1 of SILENT RISK, the notion of “probability” is shown to be verbalistic and empty (probability maps to “degrees of belief” mathematically, is ~ belief), largely INCOMPLETE, while revealed preferences via decisions is what matters (more technically probability is something deeply mathematical, useless on its own, an integral transform into something larger, and cannot be “summarized” in words). And decisions and decisions ONLY can be a metric for RATIONALITY. [Footnote 1]

In our paper Rupert Read and I wrote that the “belief” content of religion is epiphenomenal (“pisteic” not epistemic), it is merely like believing in Santa Claus makes Christmas a more colorful event.

Belief is cheap talk (to oneself). Western society, particularly the U.S., has managed to marry deep religiosity (in talk) with total atheism (in words). What matters in the West, is the action by the state never impacted by religion. In rational decision-making it has a small cost.

If you want to know if someone is a believer in words not in action, just observe whether he relies on some supernatural force to get him out of trouble or if he’d rather rely on the laws of physics and the logic of biology. An individual who goes first to the doctor and as a mere luxury to the priest (without paying for immediacy) is technically atheist though nominally a religious believer. So it looks like religion is something left to the spiritual, socio-ritualistic.

The idea hit me when I saw a joke of a cleric who said “I throw charity money in the air, letting The Lord take what share He wants and I keep the rest”. People have adapted to the idea for millennia.

Finally “Christianity” has evolved since the Middle Ages to become “atheistic in decisions and Christian in beliefs”.

Some unrigorous journalists who make a living attacking religion typically discuss “rationality” without getting what rationality means in its the decision-theoretic sense (the only definition that can be consistent). I can show that it is rational to “believe” in the supernatural if it leads to an increase in payoff. Rationality is NOT belief, it only correlates to belief, sometimes very weakly (in the tails).

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[Footnote 1] See in Silent Risk the paradox of the trader who makes a bet against the “probable” though he believes it will eventually happen.

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SILENT RISK(S) is at:

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html

via RELIGION vs ATHEISM: Religious people are… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Small doses of trauma build up firm resistance|AsiaOne Business News

One is that the economy is organic and has much more in common with a cat than a washing machine.
Unlike a washing machine that is engineered for just one purpose and does not take well to external stress or disorder, a cat can learn much from a bit of stress on its bones, for instance.
“Everything organic needs stressors to communicate with the environment.”
Bones have appetite for stressors, the bone density increases with some variability.
“While policymakers try to lower risks in the economy, Mr Taleb believes that it is better for smaller problems to surface and be dealt with, rather than have them erupt with more venom later.

via Small doses of trauma build up firm resistance, News, News, AsiaOne Business News.
HatTip to Pradeep

Complexity is about the scale.Some systems are very intelligent…

Complexity is about the scale.Some systems are very intelligent in the aggregate while composed of unintelligent units Ant colonies.Some systems are very unintelligent while composed of very intelligent units certain countries on the Mediterranean.Some systems are intelligent while composed of intelligent units 19th C science, legal systems throughout history.And some systems are very unintelligent while composed of unintelligent units Washington, finance, modern academia, economics.

via Complexity is about the scale. Some systems are… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Our longer & near Our longer & near final version of the Precautionary Principle.final version of the… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Our longer & near final version of the Precautionary Principle. The web is great. We posted our paper and kept improving it just from indirectly answering criticism on twitter by integrating them in the text, and naming BS ones and erroneous reasoning “fallacies” antifragility. Calling something a fallacy such as the potato fallacy, or the Russian roulette fallacy saves time and eliminates sophistry. The best is the “carpenter fallacy” which addresses the insults by biologists.We are not adding the math appendix as it intimidates people and might cause them to stop attacking our paper .

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIbGFzOXF5UUN3N2c/edit

via Our longer & near final version of the… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.