3 ms·

Not OP, but survivorship bias, mostly. He's maybe not wrong, but he's also not very rigorous in his arguments.

nl 9y ago
This. Also, the unacknowledged inconsistency of his arguments is ridiculous: ~"Unpredictable events happen more frequently than people expect. I'm 100% right about this prediction of the future and you are an idiot if you disagree".
- dmichulke 9y ago
  I think he meant rather: - it's hard (impossible) to predict population statistics from a sample with size 1, ceteris paribus. Over the short term, you have sample size 1 for rare events, over the long term ceteris paribus doesn't hold. - people "coerce" everything into a normal distribution in order to get a handle on things which is of course wrong if the thing you look at is not normally distributed. Finance comes to mind.
  - nl 9y ago
    Sorry the two sentences in the quasi-quote are separate things. The first sentence is his book 'Black Swans' and the second is his Twitter feed. I should have made that more clear.
- newlyretired 9y ago
  I just finished all 3 of Taleb's major books, and I took a slightly different interpretation of his Black Swan concept. I am very interested in reading criticisms of his that focus on the material -- most that I've read thus far discuss his writing style, or lack of rigor. (The second is certainly a valid criticism, but I'm looking to engage with his ideas, not the man himself or the broad scientific validity.) Taleb's Black Swan concept is that unpredictable events happen more frequently than people expect, and have an outsized impact on the outcomes of a model. Events that are not predictable are not included in the predictive model. Take the frequency of event and exclusion from the model, add in asymmetric results (small changes to input parameters can lead to huge changes in outcome), and that's his theory. Is that accurate? What are the issues with that?

nl 9y ago

This. Also, the unacknowledged inconsistency of his arguments is ridiculous: ~"Unpredictable events happen more frequently than people expect. I'm 100% right about this prediction of the future and you are an idiot if you disagree".

dmichulke 9y ago
I think he meant rather: - it's hard (impossible) to predict population statistics from a sample with size 1, ceteris paribus. Over the short term, you have sample size 1 for rare events, over the long term ceteris paribus doesn't hold. - people "coerce" everything into a normal distribution in order to get a handle on things which is of course wrong if the thing you look at is not normally distributed. Finance comes to mind.
- nl 9y ago
  Sorry the two sentences in the quasi-quote are separate things. The first sentence is his book 'Black Swans' and the second is his Twitter feed. I should have made that more clear.
newlyretired 9y ago
I just finished all 3 of Taleb's major books, and I took a slightly different interpretation of his Black Swan concept. I am very interested in reading criticisms of his that focus on the material -- most that I've read thus far discuss his writing style, or lack of rigor. (The second is certainly a valid criticism, but I'm looking to engage with his ideas, not the man himself or the broad scientific validity.) Taleb's Black Swan concept is that unpredictable events happen more frequently than people expect, and have an outsized impact on the outcomes of a model. Events that are not predictable are not included in the predictive model. Take the frequency of event and exclusion from the model, add in asymmetric results (small changes to input parameters can lead to huge changes in outcome), and that's his theory. Is that accurate? What are the issues with that?