[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]

/lit/ - Literature


View post   

File: 133 KB, 960x955, comment-karides-Nassim-Nicholas-Taleb-an-observer-of-society-960x955.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14974765 No.14974765 [Reply] [Original]

>Black Swan (2007) is proven right again
How does he do it, bros?

>> No.14975162

>unexpected things happen
woah

>> No.14975164

arab

>> No.14975170

>>14974765
i hope you're not doing this for free

>> No.14975176

>>14975162
>it's so obvious!!!!!!
>entire world ignores it and everything goes to shit

>> No.14975180

>>14974765
remove kebab

>> No.14975184

Taleb published a short essay a couple days ago insisting that the epidemic isn’t even a Black Swan; rather a White Swan, since it was pretty clearly bound to happen eventually in the modern interconnected world.

>> No.14975210

>>14975176
>bro why didn't you prepare for this unexpected thing???

>> No.14975212

>>14975184
2008 crisis wasn't a black swan either since recessions happen now and then. The guy is just a midwit hack, the worst thing that can happen is for a midwit to gain any sort of attention

>> No.14975236

>>14975210
>bro what is fragility?

>> No.14975252

based man of Arabian descent who discovered things unexpectedly may happen

>> No.14975279

>>14975212
>2008 crisis wasn't a black swan
It definitely was to the people who lost loads of money because of it.

>> No.14975546

>>14975184
>>14975212
Bill Gates predicted a global virus outbreak ten years ago.
Karl Marx predicted reappearing global economic crashes more than a century ago.
Because both things existed, but not on a global scale. Small white swans, big white swans. Swans all along.

>> No.14975568

>>14974765
>Okay, here’s my idea: we prepare for things that you can’t prepare for!
Genius! What source, what divine source?!

>> No.14975582

his entire schtick is a logical fallacy; if something is less likely to happen, it's idiotic to design your entire workflow around it.

>> No.14976723

2007 wasn't even black swan, as it was wholly engendered by the system

>> No.14976737
File: 72 KB, 750x450, Karl-Marx-portrait-jubilee-trier-germany-capitalism-economist-communism.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14976737

More like pic related was proven right again.

>> No.14976750

>>14975582
it's not designing your workflow around it, its modulating your risk to it

>> No.14976848

>>14976750
amounts to the same problem in practice. modulating risk means using resources suboptimally while awaiting critical failure that probably won't happen.

let's say you had a coffee shop with a better risk plan than any other coffee shop in town. you modulated it against fire, flood, gentrification, whatever. then corona happens and gov't simply closes town down. enjoy your risk modulation with zero profit.

>> No.14976879

>>14975582
if you do not prepare for the sun exploding in 5billion years then you are a retard

>> No.14976969

Antifragile and SITG also proved him right in regards to experts, politicians, sitg among other things.

>> No.14977060

>>14976848

Lets say you also had written a coffee recipe book, a magazine, an online coffee show or podcast. You are now more antifragile as even if the gov shuts down stores you still have arms of business that gain from the situation.

>> No.14977092

>>14977060
>let's say you do five things on top of your retail business
>start a podcast now that everyone has it


you answer is basically 'be commercially viable in 5 different branches of economy'

>> No.14977106

>>14975582
how did you even figure out how to post on this website

>> No.14977112
File: 895 KB, 1650x2531, ooa.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14977112

>>14974765
Isn't it just all chaos and the unexpected will no doubt happen

>> No.14977114

>>14975184
>since it was pretty clearly bound to happen eventually in the modern interconnected world.
He already said this in Black Swan (2007). Cope.

>> No.14977194

>>14977092
Thats why not everyone should go and start a business. It's not easy or fair. You do have to be viable in multiple branches though taking some aspects of your business digital are not such a difficult length to go as you make it. These are things that should have been started years ago not just now that the pandemic hit. This is why it's good to have optionality in whatever you do so you can weather storms and not just blow up because you put all of your eggs in one basket.

>> No.14977297

For a while I actually made it up to middle management and tried to talk to my CEO about fragility, even lent her my copy of the Incerto. Eventually she returned it and said she thought the author was very rude. Big mistake on my part, she wound up hating me and I quit. I did hear through the grapevine though that my efforts to reduce fragility actually had a huge impact in the last few weeks for the company. Mainly my work in writing and implementing a coherent telework policy and making sure our HR department had surge capability for hiring (you know, just in case something bad were to happen and we needed to replace lots of people all at once...).

Anyway Taleb is great, I read everything he writes. I just wish I had the math skills to understand that part of it.

>> No.14977309
File: 142 KB, 500x300, 1546730886412.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14977309

>>14977194
that's why his advice is useless; posturing after the fact.

>> No.14977405

Taleb's whole shtick is basically: people are dumb and don't think far ahead.
He's right, but he's also not saying anything new or interesting. It gets old pretty fast.

>> No.14977605

>>14977405
What's new is that he proves it with math, and he lived it out as a trader in the 80s and is now independently wealthy because of it. It's also more funny when he does it because he attacks people he considers idiots mercilessly and all they can do is seethe because he's always right.

>> No.14977699

>>14977309
Maybe if you’d actually read and understood what you’re talking about we could have a discussion. It’s not posturing after the fact it’s specifically aimed at being anti-fragile before the fact, not just creating some narrative. Taleb ultimately isn’t some mad genius, but he shares good ideas and maybe if you actually read and understood instead of just being a pessimist you could form a valid opinion.

>> No.14977720

>>14977699
Okay, I did not read Black Swan but I read Taleb's 400-word 'article' in Guardian where he conspicuously failed to propose any way to remedy the current crisis or chart the path forward. Perhaps you can mention some since you've read his work?

>> No.14977931

>>14977720
>where he conspicuously failed to propose any way to remedy the current crisis or chart the path forward.
Idiot Yet Intellectual spotted.

>> No.14977935

>>14977720

Yes black swan and fooled by randomness were just addressing the issues about how we cannot measure risk and how we create narratives etc and a bunch of other interesting side notes. To address the question of what do we do about it, he wrote his central work antifragile, which describes more actionable things you can do in various fields to be more antifragile vs fragile. This amounts not to trying to measure and graph risk but rather measure and align your behaviors in more antifragile ways. Aside from that his “books” are not easily summarized as they contain a collection of varied topics, anecdotes and sections revolving around these central ideas about risk. The guy writes like an absolutely autistic boomer and yet he is right about a lot so its funny and has made him a meme.

>> No.14977941

>>14976737
More like Kaczynski is vindicated even more.

>> No.14978018

>>14977935
kacynzki's gut feeling was also right about a lot of stuff but that's not scientific method. i fail to see how his advice does not go against probability.

>> No.14978080

>>14978018

He isn’t just going with his gut, he has plenty of technical and mathematical proofs accompanying his ideas. I’m
not sure what you mean by against probability.

>> No.14978093

Actually it was me who predicted this :^)

>> No.14978159

>>14978080
calculating in ludicrous distasters means suboptimal performance; the man was a trader of fictional assets and it shows.

>> No.14978264

>>14975582
People who use ; on the internet are usually midwits as this post illustrates

>> No.14978591

>>14978159
You miss the point. Just actually read the material if you want, you are basing your arguments off of misunderstood assumptions. He’s not calculating in ludicrous disasters he’s saying sometimes no map less harmful than a faulty map or one that only works most of the time. You really are missing the whole point and it’s not optimal to just follow the bell curve all the time because tail risks will wipe you out. It’s optimal until it’s not.

>> No.14978618

>>14978591
any concrete examples and methodology he offers? something akin to a scientific method?

>> No.14978953

>>14978618
>>14978618

Sure he offers lots of heuristics on how to behave against factors such as volatility, time, uncertainty, chaos, error etc in order to expose yourself to more positive upside from risk and manage your downside allowing you to be generally less fragile without having to know the unknowns. For example, in concerns of health, sometimes doing nothing or removing behaviors is better than taking medicine. Doctors used to cause many deaths by blood letting and all other “scientific” methods of the time. This concept of via negativa, approaching the essence of something by negation rather than addition can be applied to many areas of life. Pointing out what not to do is often more helpful than concrete advice of what to do using wrong models.

These ideas are accompanied by very technical mathematical proofs if you want something akin to scientific method where the linearity, convexity, and volatility of events are graphed and your systems can be adjusted against.

The guy is not a god but his ideas are worth engaging with, and if you just brush them off by their common sense sounding summary I think you’d be missing a lot of interesting ideas. Meme threads like this are just funny bait anyways.

>> No.14978996

>>14978953
sounds kinda dishonest if he's trying to discredit medicine by mentioning how things were done in medieval times. bloodletting for example is a completely harmless practice so it's the same as doing nothing; i have no idea where he got any notion tht it caused 'many deaths'.

>> No.14979105

And the upshot of all this is "localism"? Really gay and unambitious. The Arabs never were a real imperial people.

>> No.14979142

>>14978996

You don’t even have to go back to medieval times. Malpractice could be considered a leading cause of death as of modern times as well, but that’s besides the point it’s just one heuristic in the book. Not sure where you came up with the idea that it is harmless and equivalent to doing nothing especially with all of the chances for human error involved.

>> No.14979380

>>14978618
>>14978159
>>14978018
>>14978996
The scientific method is an actual spook, if you can't notice the issues unique to industrial society that Kaczynski highlights you're a bugman constantly stuck in vacillation because muh rationality

>> No.14979415

>>14978996
he's not trying to discredit medicine. in fact he goes out of his way i antifragile to point out medicine as a field which has improved dramatically in recent times in its rejection of rationalism and embrace of empiricism. most of the criticism of old medicine is actually to show how modern medicine ie better and how such a development has not happened in other important field like (((economics)))

>> No.14979440

>>14976737
shut up cracker

>> No.14979447

>>14979380
kaczynski is far removed from your nonsense, he's a pragmatic loon

>>14979415
well i will read it to see if it has any merit though you've left me unconvinced, nonetheless thanks for clarifications

>> No.14981284

>>14975582
read the fucking book before you address ideas that are wholly incorporated in it holy shit bro

>> No.14981856

>>14975162
Well u know he did write very impressive proofs for it. If you are at the higher maths u should check it out actually makes sense. Antifragial is the better book as it provides heristics where blask swan identifies the problem.