Tag: Nassim Taleb

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“Trial and error is freedom.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“Difficulty is what wakes up the genius”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder


QUOTES OF THE DAY

“If there is something in nature you don’t understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: ‘innocent until proven guilty’ as opposed to ‘guilty until proven innocent’, let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated—the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder


“Trump Isn’t A Trainwreck” Nassim Taleb Destroys Media Narrative, Urges “Rational” Investors To Hedge

Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
May 19, 2017 8:38 AM

When Nassim Nicholas Taleb looks at President Donald Trump, he doesn’t see “a trainwreck.” The real trainwreck, according to the trader turned author, is “unfettered globalization.” That’s the real danger that members of “the resistance” should be worried about, Taleb says during an interview with Bloomberg.

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The Skin of Others in your Game

Guest Post by Nassim Taleb

How to be a whistleblower –Delenda Monsanto — James Bond isn’t a Jesuit priest, but he is a bachelor –so are both Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes –Collective intelligence in P.R. firm Ketchum (hired by Monsanto)–Putting the skin on terrorists

A Mortgage and Two Cats

Imagine working for a corporation that produces a (so far) hidden harm to the community, in concealing a cancer-causing property which kills the thousands but with an effect that is not (yet) fully visible. You can alert the public, but would automatically lose your job. There is a gamble that the company’s evil scientists would disprove you, causing additional humiliation. Or the news will come and go and you may end-up being ignored. You are familiar with the history of whistleblowers which shows that, even if you end up vindicated, it may take time for the truth to emerge over the noise created by corporate shills. Meanwhile you will pay the price. A smear campaign against you will destroy any hope of getting another job.

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What Nassim Taleb Can Teach Us

Authored by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

Nassim Nicholas Taleb does not suffer fools gladly. Author of several books including The Black Swan and Antifragile, Taleb is known for his incendiary personality almost as much as his brilliant work in probability theory. Readers of his very active Medium page will experience a formidable mind with no patience for trendy groupthink, a mind that takes special pleasure in lambasting elites with no “skin in the game.”

“Skin in the game” is a central (and welcome) tenet of Taleb’s worldview: that we are increasingly ruled by an intellectual, political, economic, and cultural elite that does not bear the consequences of the decisions it makes on our (unwitting) behalf. In this sense Taleb is thoroughly populist, and in fact he correctly identified trends behind the Crash of ’08, Brexit, and Trump’s election. He understands that globalism is not liberalism, that identity and culture matter, and most of all that elites don’t understand how randomness and uncertainty threaten the inevitability of a global order.

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Real Life is Risk Taking

Guest Post by Nassim Taleb

Chapter from Skin in the Game

Life in the Simulation Machine

There are many ways to convince with an icepick — Councils of bickering bishops Theosis– Why Trump will win

I once sat in a dinner party on a large round table across from a courteous fellow called David. The host was a physicist, Edgar C. who was honoring an author, a former secretary of the great Borges, so, except for the fellow David, everyone was dressed like people who read Borges. As to David, he was dressed like someone who didn’t know that people who read, among other such authors, Borges, needed to dress in a certain way when they congregated. At some point during the dinner he unexpectedly pulled an ice pick and made it go through his hand. I had no clue what the fellow did for a living –nor was I aware that Edgar was into magic as a side hobby. It turned out that David was a magician (his name is David Blaine), and that he was very famous.

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“This Is Not Fascism” Nassim Taleb Warns “There’s A Global Riot Against Psuedo-Experts”

Submitted by Suhasini Haidar via TheHindu.com,

Economist-mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb contends that there is a global riot against pseudo-experts

After predicting the 2008 economic crisis, the Brexit vote, the U.S. presidential election and other events correctly, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the Incerto series on global uncertainties, which includes The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, is seen as something of a maverick and an oracle. Equally, the economist-mathematician has been criticised for advocating a “dumbing down” of the economic system, and his reasoning for U.S. President Donald Trump and global populist movements. In an interview in Jaipur, Taleb explains why he thinks the world is seeing a “global riot against pseudo-experts”.

I’d like to start by asking about your next book, Skin in the Game, the fifth of the Incerto series. You do something unusual with your books: before you launch, you put chapters out on your website. Why is that?

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Nassim Taleb Explains “How To Go Bankrupt & Be Loved By The Many”

Authored by Nassim Nicholas Taleb via Medium.com,

Inequality vs Inequality

There is inequality and inequality.

The first is the inequality people tolerate, such as one’s understanding compared to that of people deemed heroes, say Einstein, Michelangelo, or the recluse mathematician Grisha Perelman, in comparison to whom one has no difficulty acknowledging a large surplus. This applies to entrepreneurs, artists, soldiers, heroes, the singer Bob Dylan, Socrates, the current local celebrity chef, some Roman Emperor of good repute, say Marcus Aurelius; in short those for whom one can naturally be a “fan”. You may like to imitate them, you may aspire to be like them; but you don’t resent them.

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Nassim Taleb: The Syrian War Condensed (For Almost Dummies)

Submitted by Nassim Nicholas Taleb via Medium.com,

Juxtaposition. The way to analyze the situation is to look at the factions comparatively. You do not compare Assad’s regime to the Danish or Norwegian governments, but to the alternative. The question becomes if there is anything in the left column that is worse than the right column?

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Nassim Taleb Rages At The Bullshit Statistics Of War In Syria

Authored by Nassim Ncholas Taleb, originally posted at Medium.com,

When Pasquale Cirillo and I examined the historical accounts of wars for our statistical analysis of violence, we discovered huge holes –people take numbers for gospel, yet many accounts were fabrications. Many historians, political “scientists”, and others for fall for them, then get to write books. For instance we saw that the scientific entertainer Steven Pinker based his analysis of the severity of the An Lushan rebellion on a shoddy overestimation –the real numbers of casualties could to be lower by an order of magnitude. Much of Pinker’s thesis of drop in violence depends on the past being more violent; it thus gets further discredited (the thesis is shaky anyway as Pinker’s general assertions conflict with the statistical data he provides). Peter Frankopan, in his magesterial The Silk Roads, seem to get the point: estimations of casualties from the Mongol invasions were inflated as their accounts exaggerated the devastation they caused in order to intimidate opponents (war is not so much about killing as it is about bringing submission). Our main (technical) paper is here.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations.”

Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

“The mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they have succeeded in obtaining in the different States, and which are employed altogether for their benefit; and unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.”

Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address


VOTING TO DESTROY THE ESTABLISHMENT

“The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event, I just don’t know what that event will be.” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Taleb is a prickly arrogant SOB who doesn’t give a crap what intellectuals, academics, and other establishment elitists think about him. He has an Ivy league MBA, but despises everything about the curriculum of Ivy League MBA programs. He has a PhD, but scorns academics and their worship of theories and models. He enjoys poking holes in the storylines of the propaganda spewing corporate media. He glories in ridiculing the predictions of captured “experts” mouthing the talking points of whichever corporate interest is paying them blood money.

I read his brilliant Black Swan book back in 2008. It was a difficult read, but there were so many gems of wisdom throughout the book, it was a powerful tome predicting the financial collapse in real time. He wrote it in 2006. He understands the world doesn’t operate the way Ivy League models say it is supposed to operate. The world is propelled by black swans, not a normal distribution of the world. He was right in 2006 and he’s right now. The paragraph below has been making the rounds in the alternate media this past week. The establishment media would never publicize it, as their job is to protect the crumbling social order.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race “looking out for its best interests,” as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable


What’s Next: Deflation, Inflation, Or Hyperinflation?

Submitted by Bill Bonner via Bonner & Partners (annotated by Acting-Man.com’s Pater Tenebrarum),

Divided Opinions

We are not the only publishers to offer opinions. And not the only ones with alternative points of view. So, to answer these questions, let’s look first at the range of opinions on offer…

First, there is “the authorities must know what they are doing… besides, I have more important things to think about” camp. This is by far the largest group: hoi polloi. The masses. The lumpenproletariat.

 

border collie

Saved by the border collie

 There may be some grumbling and kvetching. But most people count on the feds to manage the economy, foreign policy, the future, and the government. They expect mistakes from time to time. But they also believe the system can be trusted to produce an acceptable, although perhaps not always ideal, outcome.

And if not, God help them. Because the difference between the outcome if they bothered to think about it and the outcome if they didn’t is the same. They have no ability to influence public policy… and not much room to maneuver in their private lives.

They get salaries, pensions, Social Security. They need jobs, mortgages, student loans, and medical insurance. They have little capital to invest or protect. They depend so heavily on “the system” that they can’t afford to believe there is something deeply wrong with it. They go along. They get along.

 

sheeple

Going along, getting along…

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