Category Archives: Contributors

Real World Risk Certificate, Borjana, Zari, Markowicz, Stoyan Stoyanov, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Apple pen | Twitter

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@nntaleb As if the rebels never killed civilians? What are you drinking? @janinedigi Permalink 3:34 PM – 26 Feb 2016

@LieraMarco “When you remove religion, people start believing in all kinds of bullshit, such as economics” @nntaleb #RWRI Permalink 12:34 PM – 26 Feb 2016

@nntaleb OK I just bought the Apple pen (and the pro) as a result of the comments. Thanks! Permalink 10:29 AM – 26 Feb 2016

@domineefh during 5 days with @nntaleb & #RWRI i’ve learned more usable staff and beautiful math than during 5+ years at the university Permalink 5:13 AM – 26 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Typing is a Procrustean bed compared to writing longhand. @OneTopQuark Permalink 2:35 AM – 26 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Friends, is there an application and a tablet to email longhand? #LindyEffect predicts a reversion to handwriting (technology adapts to us) Permalink 2:24 AM – 26 Feb 2016

@ewg Food Lobby Spends $101 Million in 2015 to Avert #GMO Labeling http://bit.ly/1oDeq9x   #StopTheDARKAct #RightToKnow Permalink 8:35 PM – 25 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Are you also proud of your smear campaign agents? https://twitter.com/RobbFraley/status/702962046967615489   Permalink 1:12 PM – 25 Feb 2016

@tommiesunshine #WhichHillary? The one controlled by corporate interests & their money? #ImNotWithHer pic.twitter.com/gZkyOwsAvH Permalink 12:23 PM – 25 Feb 2016

@nntaleb volatilità e “fat tails” code spesse https://twitter.com/dottorpax/status/702937718184091648   Permalink 11:42 AM – 25 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Aaron understood the no-tie-allowed, now showing higher clustering in left than right tail #RWRI day 4 pic.twitter.com/Bl97W4xg2l Permalink 11:06 AM – 25 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Day 4 of Real World Risk #RWRI Stoyan Stoyanov showing defects of naive uses of Kolmogorov-Smirnov pic.twitter.com/sbqeETTAxp Permalink 10:16 AM – 25 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Trick to be troll-free. When you block someone, block ALL his followers. The heuristic works wonders. Permalink 4:59 AM – 25 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Learning Markowicz & econ/finance theory before understanding fat tails is wrong; like having to learn astrology prior to astronomy.#REWRI Permalink 4:50 AM – 25 Feb 2016

@VergilDen “Bullshit is convex to the number of variables you have.” #RWRI #BigData @nntaleb Permalink 2:10 PM – 24 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Day 3: Zari’s doctoral advisor was AN Kolmogorov. pic.twitter.com/Lmkpqj8eBz Permalink 12:03 PM – 24 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Day 3: Borjana on asymmetries and extremes pic.twitter.com/wwyoVPwXQb Permalink 8:46 AM – 24 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Day 3 of the Real World Risk Certificate, Boryana presenting Turbulence to a nonturbulent audience. pic.twitter.com/1JbHNpT1m4 Permalink 8:16 AM – 24 Feb 2016

@nntaleb What Are the Chances of a Third World War? Debunking sloppy statistics a la Pinker. Paper with @dottorpax pic.twitter.com/O08nry7mtn Permalink 8:04 AM – 24 Feb 2016

@pascalbouvier utterly impressed by the Real World Risk course led by @nntaleb . Best two days I could have spent in NYC. Fat tails here we come. Permalink 3:35 PM – 23 Feb 2016

@pascalbouvier Second day rocking even more than first day. https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/702132645195603968   Permalink 7:23 AM – 23 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Inaugural Real World Risk Certificate, day 2. @AAAAAAAnne pic.twitter.com/HGFpGeltEZ Permalink 6:07 AM – 23 Feb 2016

@nntaleb Medicine is largely an apprenticeship model @KEcurious @DavidBCollum Permalink 5:08 AM – 23 Feb 2016

@nntaleb No I don’t look like Umberto Eco pic.twitter.com/eeY5DdIYaf Permalink 4:53 AM – 23 Feb 2016

@VergilDen When asked how would you explain antifragility to a child, @nntaleb responded “Time is smarter than you.” Permalink 4:09 AM – 23 Feb 2016

GMO Alarmist Nassim Taleb Backs Out of Debate. I Refute Him Anyway | Reason.com

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https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/700813395612676096

Biotech Crops and the Alleged Risk of Human Extinction

Taleb and his colleagues want to impose their supposedly non-naive version of the precautionary principle to forestall activities when “consequences can involve total irreversible ruin, such as the extinction of human beings or all life on the planet.” And GMOs, they feel, could result in “irreversible environmental and health damage” or cause “an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be planetwide.” Biotech crops, they claim, pose a systemic risk of global ecocide.

It is a trivially true statement that if some activity will eventually lead to total ruin, then total ruin, even if it takes a long time, will eventually follow that activity. Taleb and his colleagues just assume that producing and growing modern biotech crops is such an activity, then trivially predict a GMO apocalypse. There is a lot of hand-waving about the dangers of global connectivity and dose response relationships that may be relevant to the workings of financial markets, but they provide no justification for their assumption of biotech disaster. Unwarranted dire assumptions in; unjustified devastating consequences out.

Source: GMO Alarmist Nassim Taleb Backs Out of Debate. I Refute Him Anyway. – Reason.com
HatTip Dave Lull

Alex Reviews Fooled By Randomness

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Reader Alex submitted his review of Fooled By Randomness. Here’s a snippet and a link to his full review.

Fooled By Randomness (FBR) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT) made me rethink everything I thought I knew about how the world worked. Although it appears in the Business or Finance sections at the bookstore, its lessons are relevant in any area of life that involves risk, uncertainty, or luck.

Why do you recommend this book?

The central message of FBR is that people tend to incorrectly draw strong conclusions about why something happened. In particular, when looking at success in a variety of fields, people tend to discount the role of dumb luck.

http://www.lexaholik.com/book-review-fooled-by-randomness-by-nassim-taleb/

Dynamic vs Static Ruin Problems

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Just found out (Facebook) I was not alone in finding something weird in economists not understanding dynamic vs static ruin problems.
It is a strange feeling to realize the answer to the question “Is it me or are they blind to something obvious?” is “no, it is not me”.
Murray Gell-Mann and colleague found the SAME point (though expressed in a more physical setting).

My literary treatment
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50282823/rational.pdf

Gell-Mann and colleague:
http://phys.org/…/2016-02-exploring-gambles-reveals-foundat…

Exploring gambles reveals foundational difficulty behind economic theory (and a solution)
In the wake of the financial crisis, many started questioning different aspects of the economic formalism.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb at ET GBS | The Economic Times

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What is your assessment of the oil industry?

Oil industry is going to be in a shambles. Solar is gaining market share.You have to find some argument for me to use oil if I can use free solar.The argument is solar is hard to store. Then your utility can get enough electricity during the day without storage and supplement it with oil in the night. That will chip away the market share of oil. You have talked about soccer moms (in the US) being bad example of parenting.

Is it because they don’t expose their kids to risks?

If you make a kid too comfortable he is not going to discover anything. You need to have enough variation but no risk. They think that no risk means no variation. Of course you have to minimise harm but have some little bit of roughing.

The schedule of a soccer mom is like a businessman. I want unpredictability in my schedule. They make children like office workers -5 o’clock this, 2 o’clock that. That’s not life.

We’re told you don’t like appointments..

Now I am here. Tomorrow I don’t have anything on schedule till I go and see the Bank of England in mid February . So I have two weeks without a schedule.

Full interview: India too democratic, but PM Narendra Modi forcing things to be done: Nassim Nicholas Taleb at ET GBS