Life, the Multiverse and Everything...
Summary of the problem discussed in The Black Swan (and associated papers): The problem, basically stated (which I have had to repeat continuously) is about the degradation of knowledge when it comes to rare events (”tail events”), with serious consequences in some domains I call “Extremistan” (where these events play a huge role, manifested by [...]
Can you recall a moment when you could honestly say ‘I told you so’, but when no one listens? Well this just might be one of those for me. This Thursday September the 10th marks perhaps a historic development for both Washington and the financial markets. The US Congress’ Committee on Science and Technology held a [...]
photo credit: stephcarterLeonard Mlodinow, a physicist/author who also, apparantly, understands the impact of random events and the ‘illusion of control’ in everyday life. In this talk he adresses randomness, the illusion of control, probability misinterpretations (i.e. in medicine, sports), psychology (i.e. Kahnemann, Taversky) etc., basically the insights similar to The Black Swan. He talks about randomness, confirmation [...]
Staying the Course: Part II – Zeitgeist Europe ’09 The panel explores those improbable events that the marketplace under-assesses but which end having a powerful and unanticipated influence for investors. Taleb author of brilliant book The Black Swan says “the more you study economics the less competent you’re going to be…. the past is not [...]
A very thoughfull guy, John Petersen, looks into the future and explains what our societies are facing with the current transformations onset by the evergrowing complexity in the world. Being a remarkably diverse fellow, Petersen elaborates further on the widely misunderstood impact of what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls ‘The Black Swans’ and gives some other [...]
At the New Yorker summit Robert Shiller and Nassim Taleb discuss what to do in such times when the spirits aren’t brave at all. Shiller, a Yale economist who famously predicted the last two booms also wrote a book called “Animal Spirits in which he posits that shifts in the economy follow the irrational actions of [...]
After all, we are witnessing the Waterloo of Wall Street. So, ironically, it was in the Canadian province of Ontario, in the small town of Waterloo, that a meeting was convened to shed new light on the world’s financial debacle. In a densely packed conference schedule, the general approach was to take measure of the [...]
Since Tim Geithner did not predict the economic crisis, Nassim Taleb has no interest in listening to him talk about it now. The author of The Black Swan, a book about risk and … [Read More...]
A leaked internal memo from physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva reports a … [Read More...]
The more one probes the universe at smaller and smaller scales, the weirder matter and energy seem … [Read More...]
Can you recall a moment when you could honestly say 'I told you so', but when no one listens? Well … [Read More...]
