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Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

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Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#11

Post by csomar »

I'm not certain where the author wants to go with this. Comparing research with an Airplane flight seems not correct to me.

Also

> By definition chance cannot lead to long term gains (it would no longer be chance)

Heh. The whole universe might be made by "chance". It is, in fact, quite possible that the total energy of the universe is 0. Our existence is a fluctuation.

Define long term gains. Since infinity is out of our possible reach, it is possible (though unlikely) to make long term gains just by chance. Especially, if you have a large audience. Some of them will get lucky.

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#12

Post by adrianN »

EricBurnett wrote: post #9
jjk166 wrote: post #2

"The point we will be making here is that logically, neither trial and error nor "chance" and serendipity can be behind the gains in technology and empirical science attributed to them. By definition chance cannot lead to long term gains (it would no longer be chance); trial and error cannot be unconditionally effective: errors cause planes to crash, buildings to collapse, and knowledge to regress." This is an extrem…

The expected value of an infinite series of coin flips centers on 0. Sure, you might get lucky, but you can't leverage that as a strategy to ratchet up value. That's the point about luck in the non convex case. To your mining example, that's where prospecting comes in. Use your knowledge to make checking candidate locations cheaper (increasing convexity) - knowledge of geology to approximate likelihood, improvements…

If heads is 1 and tails is 0 then the expected value is 0.5. The expectation really depends on what values your random variable can take.

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#13

Post by small_mind »

The writing style of this article strikes a tone that seems overly eager to place an eloquent vocabulary on display.

  Hey guys! Look at all the
  big, big words I can use!

  Don’t I sound smart???
Seriously. It’s like they wrote, and proof read the original draft, then performed a search/replace for any polysyllabic synonym they could opportunistically inject.

Why do they need to sound smart? Is it really because they know they’ve got nothing to say? Is this an SAT reading comprehension test?

You could sum up the sentiment with an anaology to paraphrase the concept: “defensive programming is no replacement for accomplished programming skill” (to borrow a concept comparable to investing)

Big words, small mind.

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#14

Post by evrydayhustling »

jjk166 wrote: post #2

"The point we will be making here is that logically, neither trial and error nor "chance" and serendipity can be behind the gains in technology and empirical science attributed to them. By definition chance cannot lead to long term gains (it would no longer be chance); trial and error cannot be unconditionally effective: errors cause planes to crash, buildings to collapse, and knowledge to regress." This is an extrem…

I think another way to put this is that betting on convexity still requires a formal theory of costs and benefits, even if not of the risks involved.

There are some cases where that model can itself seem pretty fragile (like estimating the opportunity cost on your hole digging), but others where it night feel reasonable. Pick your poison!

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#15

Post by bchjam »

jjk166 wrote: post #2

"The point we will be making here is that logically, neither trial and error nor "chance" and serendipity can be behind the gains in technology and empirical science attributed to them. By definition chance cannot lead to long term gains (it would no longer be chance); trial and error cannot be unconditionally effective: errors cause planes to crash, buildings to collapse, and knowledge to regress." This is an extrem…

> No experiment could ever possibly hurt scientific knowledge

what about one with a falsified result?

fwiw I think convexity and understanding are relatively orthogonal, but how could one employ the former without the latter? However the author's position seems to be more that gaming systems works better than exploring their contexts. Sometimes you might make more money in less time, but the money is all you'll get out of it. In practice, maybe understanding and convex payoff functions are both useful at different scales.

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#16

Post by lolc »

jjk166 wrote: post #2

"The point we will be making here is that logically, neither trial and error nor "chance" and serendipity can be behind the gains in technology and empirical science attributed to them. By definition chance cannot lead to long term gains (it would no longer be chance); trial and error cannot be unconditionally effective: errors cause planes to crash, buildings to collapse, and knowledge to regress." This is an extrem…

I'd say the zero is where you don't do anything. There's no gain and no loss. Once you decide to do something, you have to spend to make it happen. The dice example is pointless when the roll is assumed to be zero effort and you get a random number for it. Where's the gain?

> No experiment could ever possibly hurt scientific knowledge.

Sure could. An experiment might yield a false result. You might get a false negative and abandon a promising discovery. You might get a false positive and waste more experiments on an impossible setup. It's all about opportunity cost.

But overall I couldn't follow Taleb's writing. It's not accessible to me anymore.

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#17

Post by hannasanarion »

bchjam wrote: post #15
jjk166 wrote: post #2

"The point we will be making here is that logically, neither trial and error nor "chance" and serendipity can be behind the gains in technology and empirical science attributed to them. By definition chance cannot lead to long term gains (it would no longer be chance); trial and error cannot be unconditionally effective: errors cause planes to crash, buildings to collapse, and knowledge to regress." This is an extrem…

> No experiment could ever possibly hurt scientific knowledge what about one with a falsified result? fwiw I think convexity and understanding are relatively orthogonal, but how could one employ the former without the latter? However the author's position seems to be more that gaming systems works better than exploring their contexts. Sometimes you might make more money in less time, but the money is all you'll get o…

Falsification is something that you do to hypotheses, not data. Experiments that Aristotle performed to demonstrate classical elemental theory are still valid and useful, his incorrect interpretation of the underlying mechanisms notwithstanding

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#18

Post by buboard »

jjk166 wrote: post #2

"The point we will be making here is that logically, neither trial and error nor "chance" and serendipity can be behind the gains in technology and empirical science attributed to them. By definition chance cannot lead to long term gains (it would no longer be chance); trial and error cannot be unconditionally effective: errors cause planes to crash, buildings to collapse, and knowledge to regress." This is an extrem…

> This is an extremely flawed initial assumption.

that was not an initial assumption but (presumably) the subject of the essay. its not clearly stated in the text though

> you can certainly win on chance in the long run

No you can't ; both casinos and insurance companies make choices that give them an assymetry in gains, and thus they benefit from the randomness of events. Chance is by definition centered around the mean.

The question of scientific research directions is interesting , but i m not sure that research is a random walk. There are biases and "hunches" that guide scientists.

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#19

Post by repsilat »

rotexo wrote: post #7

Is anyone surprised by the notion that ratcheting is critical for consolidating gains made from chance events? I thought that was a trivial observation (maybe my biologist bias is showing here).

It might be obvious but worth saying anyway. Giving something a name can help you use it as a unit of work, or reason more effectively/accurately/mechanically.

A lot of arguments are built on abstractions like "competition" and "chance", and having a short list of common exceptions to those heuristics on hand is pretty useful. Now when discussing federalism in the U.S., I'll not only wonder whether there are free-rider problems or economies of scale missed out on, I'll also think about whether local decisions are effectively "locked in" forever.

Re: Understanding is a poor substitute for convexity (2012)

#20

Post by jimnotgym »

small_mind wrote: post #13

The writing style of this article strikes a tone that seems overly eager to place an eloquent vocabulary on display. Hey guys! Look at all the big, big words I can use! Don’t I sound smart??? Seriously. It’s like they wrote, and proof read the original draft, then performed a search/replace for any polysyllabic synonym they could opportunistically inject. Why do they need to sound smart? Is it really because they kno…

I saw Taleb's name at the top and stopped reading. Can we start a thing that we put Taleb's name in brackets at the end of a post title (Like NSFW) so I don't have to be sick in my mouth?

It is statistically provable that Taleb has the world's biggest ego. I have no time for his rampant mysogyny. I know he might say clever stuff, but it's not worth feeling unclean for.

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