101–110 of 131 posts
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Ha! Love the understated tone there. Nature is "a journal" like the Pyramids are "a stone pile".
Nature Biotechnology is in fact only "a journal", there is Nature proper and then lots of spin-offs that have to be evaluated on their own merit.
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> The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms) That article is a prime example of pseudo intellectualism, mostly because he lumps all GMOs in one big bucket, there's no general characteristic yet he and co-authors forces one. No wonder it's "only" on arxiv and hasn't made it anywhere else (look at the endorsers: https://arxiv.org/auth/show-endorsers/1410.5787 ) A rebuttal di…
FWIW, I read Antifragile, and this GMO position seems to go against the general principles he espoused there. Having read it, I expected he would think the status quo is already optimal for addressing GMOs: some regions go full forward with it, some heavily restrict it, some ban it entirely. This will then give a great dataset for long term effects while also hedging against it being a catastrophe. But Taleb's curren…
Without accurate information, you can't know if your corn flakes were made with GMOs or not.
I look forward to reading his book. His writing style is good but not great. I'm surprised about a lot of accusation of arrogance,etc... From what I have read his arrogance, might be misconceived as he is willingness to call out anybody on what he perceived as their BS. We need more people to call others out on their BS. (US elections, MSM, cnbc, Mosanto, wall street...) Anybody that open comes out and says Saudi Ara…
The accusation of arrogance is especially ironic coming from the HN crowd, who assume themselves being especially qualified to comment on fields they are not experts on (statistics and economics in particular, but many others as well)
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I read Fooled and Black Swan and I'm just going to admit it: I don't get it. I mean, I think I understood both books. But can someone explain why they're supposed to be so revelatory? I found them to be... something else. Many, many smart people seem to swear by Fooled. Why? What am I missing?
I felt the same about Black Swan. And his attitude turned me off completely. So, no, it's not just you.
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Okay, so I haven't read the book but I read the scathing review - and I think your rebuttal isn't quite fair. You started to address the review but switched to ad hom attacks to discredit the reviewer - when in reality the reviewer is a past financial professor who works in risk management, and makes some very salient points about the logic behind the books claims. Even what you say about sampling binomial vs. expone…
Sorry about the ad homs; the reviewer used moral/philosophical instead of technical reasons to argue against (except that point on simulations), so I assumed he was a riled up layperson. I read his review too fast, I guess. The reviewer's point is this: "Finally, the author is not asking me to personally give more money to the government, he wants me to support forcing other people to do it. But those other people ha…
Even in that statement you quoted out of context, the reviewer is referring to how we all have the same amount of luck, so luck alone shouldn't be the basis for a progressive tax.
Now, there are good reasons for a progressive tax, but the reviewer is saying it doesn't justify ignoring illogical arguments in the book. Just because the conclusion is proven right somewhere else doesn't mean that all arguments for it are valid.
For somebody who wrote 'Fooled by ..' one of my favorite books of all time, he certainly doesn't seem to suffer from self-doubt when it comes to stating his personal hypotheses. I can look past his condescending tone (especially towards the wealthy and 'pseudo' intellectuals), but his certitude in his own ideas -- especially after pressing home the point that we are surrounded by randomness -- tarnishes his punditry…
I read Fooled and Black Swan and I'm just going to admit it: I don't get it. I mean, I think I understood both books. But can someone explain why they're supposed to be so revelatory? I found them to be... something else. Many, many smart people seem to swear by Fooled. Why? What am I missing?
In particular, the idea that the financial models (think Black Scholes and Long Term Capital Management) are based on seriously bad (e.g., non-fractal) ways of thinking about the way that the world works. The incident where Mandelbrot detected the prices of cotton to have an element involving some unexpected exponent (one sixth? memory isn't bringing that up). The standard way of thinking about these facts admit that they can't handle that. Thus, much of the way risk is modeled is like the guy looking for his lost ring under the street lamp even though he lost it half a block down. "At least there is light here."
Who else is telling us that bell curves and current risk models don't work? Not CNBC, Yahoo, Fox.
Another thing that I took away was how uncomfortable financially successful people are with the idea that luck is a significant component, perhaps even more than their talent and business skill.
Insofar as the issue of his tone or arrogance is concerned, I don't get that. Is it possible that when we complain about an adversary or messenger with bad "tone" or "arrogance" that there is something in the message that we don't like? Certainly he is direct and blunt in his approach. Doesn't put me off.
I feel like it is similar to the reaction that many classically trained engineers when confronted with chaos theory. The world can't possibly be that "random". Except that there is some deep beauty in this oddly-named "Chaos" theory that lends exceptional stability to many phenomenon.
And on the topic of Chaos, it is interesting to go back to James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science and read the part about how "there is no climate". Essentially, there isn't anything that guarantees us that the whole system won't just float off arbitrarily into a new Ice Age. Contemplate that in today's debate about climate change. That is, if you postulate that there is "global warming" (renamed to the more apparently less controversial "climate change") and get everybody to agree, what do you do? Is it not possible, in a chaotic system that is moving to a new attractor, that actions we take, like cutting in half carbon emissions, might have a totally unexpected effect? That would be my bet. Kind of a complicated decision to make in a heated political arena, populated by tribes of one sort or another, don't you think?
So the lesson from Swan and Fooled, in the large, to me, are "your models for how stuff works is likely busted, particularly if your income depends on you believing in them."
But then I am just a simple country boy.
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Fooled by randomness is his best book, but it's probably getting replaced by Robert Frank's book "Success and Luck" on my recommendation list for that topic. It's just a good reminder that you might be luckier than you think and that skill doesn't fully explain the successful achievements. Black Swan is seriously hard to read through; his arrogance is insufferable. The point he's making is fairly self evident; the bo…
I also found his arrogance in Black Swan insufferable - enough that I lost all taste for his writing. I saw him talk in person in my building when he was promoting Anti-Fragile, and I was also not impressed. Do you still recommend I read Fooled By Randomness?
Do you think highly of Mandebrot? Clearly a deep thinker. Most of his writings are filled with his self references.
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I also found his arrogance in Black Swan insufferable - enough that I lost all taste for his writing. I saw him talk in person in my building when he was promoting Anti-Fragile, and I was also not impressed. Do you still recommend I read Fooled By Randomness?
I would. Do you think highly of Mandebrot? Clearly a deep thinker. Most of his writings are filled with his self references.
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I would. Do you think highly of Mandebrot? Clearly a deep thinker. Most of his writings are filled with his self references.
My own academic papers have a decent number of self references, too. But there is an enormous difference between referencing your own work, and telling the reader that the author is brilliant and those other people over there are stupid.
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I read Fooled and Black Swan and I'm just going to admit it: I don't get it. I mean, I think I understood both books. But can someone explain why they're supposed to be so revelatory? I found them to be... something else. Many, many smart people seem to swear by Fooled. Why? What am I missing?
I liked both and learned significant things from both. Haven't yet read anti-fragile. In particular, the idea that the financial models (think Black Scholes and Long Term Capital Management) are based on seriously bad (e.g., non-fractal) ways of thinking about the way that the world works. The incident where Mandelbrot detected the prices of cotton to have an element involving some unexpected exponent (one sixth? mem…