Bloomberg TV Markets and Finance
Published on Aug 16, 2017
Aug.16 — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, adviser at Universa Investments, sat down for an interview with Erik Schatzker Tuesday evening in New York. Taleb, famous for his assessment of risk, says there are greater risks out there than nuclear war with North Korea.
Dr. Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” takes apart our foreign and monetary policies. Why do neocons and mainstream media keep pushing war and conflict? They face zero risk. This is something new in history. Those who decide on interventionism overseas are never harmed by the interventions. Plus…are we headed for a market crash that makes 2008 look like a picnic? And if so, what will the aftermath look like?
This will be available to listen to (from the BBC) for a year.
Do you underestimate the risk you are under? Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ideas on probability and risk challenge assumptions made by markets and mathematicians all of over the world. His ideas on our blindness to the impact of improbable events have lead him to be described as a ‘super hero of the mind’ and ‘the hottest thinker in the world’. He is the author of the mega-selling books on randomness and the impact of the improbable on life and on economics – Black Swan and Anti-Fragile. His official title is Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University and he continually ranks as one of the most influential people on the planet. He joins Justin Rowlatt and an audience at the Grand Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne in Paris for a special event, staged in partnership with Paris Dauphine University. Duration: 55 minutes First broadcast: Saturday 11 January 2014
Something people don’t realize about fat-tailed probabilities: We may accept to take risks with .00001 pct chance of blowing up the planet. May be OK for some. But the inconsistency is that we do serially and collectively take A LOT of “one-off” risk. If nothing happens, we may do it again. And again. Or we may take many of these at the same time. Merely allowing such action will eventually mean that we will have 100% chance of blowing up the planet.
Recall the principle, by Kolmogorov’s zero-one law, that eventually if you have a small chance of blowing up you end up blowing up with CERTAINTY; the planet has never blown up (in trillions of trillions of bounded variations over billions of years) precisely because it took close to ZERO risks of blowing up. Nothing beyond local variations.
This seriality is something to add to the precautionary principle. Some risks we should NEVER take.
via Something people don’t realize about… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.
The author and philosopher and the Ogilvy Group UK vice-chairman join John Plunkett at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to discuss how ideas relating to resilience, uncertainty, randomness and variation can apply to the advertising industry. They look at how the ’80/20′ theory of resource allocation can lead to disproportionate gains for minimal risk