Very little is known about the life of Thomas Bayes. We don’t know whether he was born in 1701 or 1702 and we don’t know if the picture commonly associated with him has been misattributed. We do know that, despite his poor publication record, Bayes was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. But [...]
Nassim Taleb
Nassim Taleb’s media tour surrounding his new book, Antifragile, continues. In this interview he uses the fiscal cliff as an example to explain his theory that chaos should be embraced.
Nassim Taleb on CNBC talking about his new book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. The key message is you need volatility, you need stressors in the system, and you need companies and you need markets who can survive those stressors and thrive by them. Exactly. We need to encourage people to take certain classes [...]
“A decision is responsible,” wrote Charles Frankel, “when the man or group that makes it has to answer for it to those who are directly or indirectly affected by it.” A great example of this is Hammurabi’s Code: If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and [...]
I’m really enjoying reading Nassim Taleb’s new book Antifragile. It’s really changing how I view the world. An adapted piece from Antifragile appeared in the Wall Street Journal, offering five policy rules that can help us establish antifragility as a principle of our socioeconomic life. Rule 1: Think of the economy as being more like [...]
Nassim Taleb in Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets: The argument in favor of “new things” and even more “new new things” goes as follows: Look at the dramatic changes that have been brought about by the arrival of new technologies, such as the automobile, the airplane, [...]
Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment, and Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, discuss their interpretations of historical achievement and human accomplishments. (H/T @SamMcNerney)
In this interview with Foreign Policy, Nassim Taleb reflects on the most stable country in human history and the folly of the European Union. On the European Union: On paper, it might appear much more efficient to be large — to have economies of scale. But in reality, it’s much more efficient to be small. [...]
