FORTUNE-COOKIE SCIENCE (Facebook), definition: an understanding of science, probability & rationality obtained via slogans of the type found in Chinese restaurants’ fortune cookies, particularly easy to spread on the web.

The other night at a party. (Facebook)
“How do your books differ from those of [X]?”.
Me: “I don’t know I don’t often read contemporary authors, and odds are I will never read “X”.
She: “But you are writing books for an audience, no? You are responsible to tell the audience how you compare to others.”
Me: “Do you have a boyfriend?”
She: “Yes, he is here.”
Me: “Did you ask him how he compares in bed to other men at the party or is it something you found out by yourself?”

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Thanks for the symposium on risks. (Facebook)  The article came out in the WSJ. But I wasn’t aware of company: almost fainted.

Anyway wrote only 2 Op-Eds in 2015: NYT and WSJ. The rule is to stay below 3.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the Real Financial Risks of 2016

 

Last email from 2015. (Facebook)  Our paper debunking Pinker’s thesis was accepted by a stat journal Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Applications.

Science Wins! In the months that it took us to publish this our paper was under the scrutiny of professional probabilists and statisticians who deal with Extreme Events, whose comments we collected and incorporated while Pinker and his goons were active in the press, on blogs and social media spreading stawman-clueless commentary.

Happy Science. Happy 2016!

PS- More generally I have to describe the “Pinker fallacy” under fat tails. His claim is sort of, to put it in statistical or scientific terms: “Violence has dropped by .00001 standard deviations. Let us explain WHY.”
PPS- Confirms my idea that, in science, a single comment by a mathematician can outweigh those by a billion BS vendors.

Our paper is here:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.04722.pdf

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