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Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

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Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#21

Post by anton1989 »

VodkaHaze wrote: post #12
sremani wrote: post #9

I thoroughly enjoyed his other book, "Anti-Fragile" and even more enjoy his twitter feed. He may be low on humility factor, but him calling out BS is refreshing, esp. the self-proclaimed vanguards of science whose work in science is filled with holes and/or is sparse. Read some of the preview chapters, posted here and twitter feed. Fits very well with his writing style and over all theme. I look forward to read this…

For someone calling out vanguards of science, he's light on science himself. He pulled all his "theories" out of his ass, with no empirical support or mathematical deduction. Fooled by randomness was nice and all, and Black Swan was OK (if you can read past his arrogance), but now he considers himself a "public intellectual", and treats himself as the class of a Nobel winner when he has no more credentials than any o…

Probability theory is the queen of science

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#22

Post by deepnet »

JulianRaphael wrote: post #3

I look forward to reading this book. It would be interesting to have an investigation of the two different kinds of "skin in the game" in this book. There is a positive spin of the expression, e.g. the entrepreneur, who has skin in the game of his company via his shares and resources. This scenario (ideally) results in eustress. However, there is also a negative spin of the expression, e.g. an employee, who has skin…

Misalignment of incentives with desired outcomes is often overlooked as a cause of social ills. In general people do what gets them pay and promotion.

Bonuses and shares align owners and employees interests.

In Shaw's introduction to Pygmalion he points out we pay our doctors when we are ill; contrasting this to paying only when well, which Shaw suggests more clearly aligns preventative medicine with doctor's pay.

Or the classic budget underspend resulting in less funding next year, incentivising innefficiency.

'Juking the Stats' is the epitomy. A useful metric, like pupils passing tests when used to allocate budgets becomes the sole object of teaching. Rather than education, the school teaches the test and worse those who are educators are ground down - as Simon's Pryzbylewski finds in The Wire.

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#23

Post by VodkaHaze »

anton1989 wrote: post #19
VodkaHaze wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of his theories are scientific. They're nice mental models to keep of the world, but they certainly don't justify his level of arrogance, especially not towards others who actually follow the scientific process to postulate theories

You don't seem to know what scientific means, do you?

Are his theories formulated in a rigidly defined and testable manner, and empirically tested?

No, they're "rules of thumb". Rules of thumbs can be great to make complex decisions (like in trading, as he does), but coming up with a few rules of thumb and doing well at your job does not warrant his level of confidence in his intellect.

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#24

Post by brbrodude »

xfax wrote: post #5

Am I the only one who doesn't enjoy Taleb's writing style? I find that he tends to use overly complex vocabulary to explain very simple ideas.

I don't think it's complex vocabulary at all, to me it reads like plain talking(or thinking) and I think it's refreshing... On the themes he talks about, if it were talked about in a strict logical-technical manner it would be really, really boring.

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#25

Post by ricksplat »

VodkaHaze wrote: post #15
jkldotio wrote: post #6

Here are two Facebook posts from Taleb related to the topic and a ~3 minute video that has the main point. "The establishment composed of journos, BS-Vending talking heads with well-formulated verbs, bureaucrato-cronies, lobbyists-in training, New Yorker-reading semi-intellectuals, image-conscious empty suits, Washington rent-seekers and other "well thinking" members of the vocal elites are not getting the point abou…

Seems like he's gone full ZeroHedge

Except this guy is a known and reputable expert in economics. He's worth listening to unless you fear he may be shorting his readership (joking).

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#26

Post by ricksplat »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #16
sremani wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://arxiv.org/a/taleb_n_1.html If that is pseudo intellectual for you, you are too rich. Lets not forget his success as bond trader and his fund making massive sums of money in market volatility.

His fund lost massive amount of other people's money over the long term. (Guess he didn't have enough skin in the game.)

Have you got more info on that? I'd be interested in following it up.

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#27

Post by ricksplat »

VodkaHaze wrote: post #23
anton1989 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to know what scientific means, do you?

Are his theories formulated in a rigidly defined and testable manner, and empirically tested? No, they're "rules of thumb". Rules of thumbs can be great to make complex decisions (like in trading, as he does), but coming up with a few rules of thumb and doing well at your job does not warrant his level of confidence in his intellect.

Aren't rules of thumb in his case the outcome of inductive reasoning based on many observations? Sounds pretty empirical to me. It is a fundamental strength of science that such formulations accept falsifiability - so the fact that his hypotheses/theories/laws don't hold in all cases just means they need to be refined for those cases.

It also common scientific practice to accept hypotheses within bounds of probability.

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#28

Post by dagw »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #16
sremani wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://arxiv.org/a/taleb_n_1.html If that is pseudo intellectual for you, you are too rich. Lets not forget his success as bond trader and his fund making massive sums of money in market volatility.

His fund lost massive amount of other people's money over the long term. (Guess he didn't have enough skin in the game.)

Where are you getting those numbers from? The most reliable numbers I could find where in this WSJ article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118429436433665637

which claims that while his fund may have under-performed other funds over its lifetime and suffered a couple of years of modest losses during a period of stable growth, it did make massive returns during the dot.com crash which was kind of the funds raison d'etre.

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#29

Post by ThomPete »

golergka wrote: post #17
Houshalter wrote: post #11

The chapter about minorities ruling majorities was really insightful. He mentioned how if even a small percent of people become anti GMO, then GMOs will die out. A scary thing to keep in mind with the whole "label it" debate that was on here a few days ago.

And a good way to fight that is to form a stubborn minority that only eats GMO food.

that won't work in the EU which have have a much more sceptic view on these things.

Their principle is the direct opposite of the US. If there is just the slightest risk that something is dangerous they forbid it.

In the US they only forbid things if there is overwhelmingly evidence that points towards it being dangerous.

Re: Skin in the Game – chapter drafts by Nassim Taleb

#30

Post by henrik_w »

sremani wrote: post #9

I thoroughly enjoyed his other book, "Anti-Fragile" and even more enjoy his twitter feed. He may be low on humility factor, but him calling out BS is refreshing, esp. the self-proclaimed vanguards of science whose work in science is filled with holes and/or is sparse. Read some of the preview chapters, posted here and twitter feed. Fits very well with his writing style and over all theme. I look forward to read this…

I agree on both points. I really enjoyed reading Antifragile, lots of good concepts and ideas! But his Twitter feed is pretty depressing to read - lots of attacking back and forth.
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