Power laws, extremely simplified.
Category: Statements
Nassim on CNBC Squawk Box: Bitcoin is a ‘gimmick’ and a ‘game,’ says it resembles a Ponzi scheme
“Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Friday criticized bitcoin as a “gimmick,” telling CNBC he believes it’s too volatile to be an effective currency and it’s not a safe hedge against inflation.
Basically, there’s no connection between inflation and bitcoin. None. I mean, you can have hyperinflation and bitcoin going to zero. There’s no link between them,” Taleb said in a “Squawk Box” interview.
Link to the interview: cnbc.com/2021/04/23/bitcoin…
[YouTube] Correlation measures are misused in the presence of nonlinearities
A VERY SIMPLIFIED TUTORIAL (VERY SHORT)
Correlation measures are misused in the presence of nonlinearities.
(How a measure of unintelligence can give the illusion of high correlation with performance.)
Correlation measures are not supposed to be used in the presence of nonlinearities. When 2 variables correlate half the time (in a symmetric way around the mean), correlation will not be 50% but will show ~90%. Part of debunking IQ studies. If IQ works for disabilities but does not correlate with success, there is an illusion of correlation because of the biases in the metric.
Nassim on CNBC Squawk Box: Global coronavirus response a case study of government incompetence and denial
In a “Squawk Box” interview, Taleb specifically pointed to the importance of coronavirus testing. While countries have improved their capacity since the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, Taleb said there has been a failure to develop quick, efficient testing at a scale that can cut off chains of transmission early. It also has the least economic cost, he said.
Link to the interview: cnbc.com/2020/11/02/…
[Medium] Religion, Violence, Tolerance & Progress: Nothing to do with Theology
If you think you will change the behavior of religious people by modifying the theologies, you are committing the standard Weberian fallacy. It is not about the religion; it is about clusters of people who happen to have that religion and their culture.
Continue reading on Medium: medium.com/incerto/religion-violence-tolerance-progress-nothing-to-do-with-theology
[PODCAST] SophieCo Visionaries with Sophie Shevardnadze: Nassim on Covid-19 bringing socialism to America
The Covid-19 pandemic came as an external shock, almost unprecedented. How can we navigate the uncertainty of the post-pandemic future? We talked to the author of bestselling books ‘The Black Swan’, ‘Antifragile’, and ‘Skin in the Game’, risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
SophieCo Visionaries is an Interview show on RT hosted by Sophie Shevardnadze where she talks to people who look beyond today and see the bigger picture.
Link to Podcast – soundcloud.com/rttv/sophieco-visionaries-nassim-taleb…
Link to Transcript – rt.com/shows/sophieco-visionaries/497321-taleb…
[Medium] Lebanon: from Ponzi to Antifragility
About two years before the recent collapse, at a dinner, a then (slow thinking) member of the Lebanese parliament kept bugging me for an economic forecast. There was already some anxiety in the air. My answer was that we were facing imminent financial disaster, but that it was not necessarily bad news, long term. Why? Because such a total collapse could lead to natural responses that are better than the one we would have spontaneously, going from patching bad stuff to patching worse stuff. The lira was artificially kept too strong for any industry to survive and the financial system (the Ponzi) was sucking up all the money and destroying the economic substructure. But my point was that the (unavoidable) collapse would lead to an adaptation, the weaning from chronic foreign “loans” and, possibly, a huge bounce. De-financializing the country was a necessity, and people never do that spontaneously. Nothing was going to be fixed without a collapse. Was I optimistic? pessimistic? He was trying to figure out what I was saying and couldn’t get it as it did not fit his elementary static classification.
Continue reading on Medium: medium.com/@nntaleb/lebanon-from-ponzi-to-antifragility
[Medium] The Masks Masquerade
Incompetence and Errors in Reasoning Around Face Covering
SIX ERRORS: 1) missing the compounding effects of masks, 2) missing the nonlinearity of the probability of infection to viral exposures, 3) missing absence of evidence (of benefits of mask wearing) for evidence of absence (of benefits of mask wearing), 4) missing the point that people do not need governments to produce facial covering: they can make their own, 5) missing the compounding effects of statistical signals, 6) ignoring the Non-Aggression Principle by pseudolibertarians (masks are also to protect others from you; it’s a multiplicative process: every person you infect will infect others).
In fact masks (and faceshields) supplemented with constraints of superspreader events can save us trillions of dollars in future lockdowns (and lawsuits) and be potentially sufficient (under adequate compliance) to stem the pandemic. Bureaucrats do not like simple solutions.
Continue reading on Medium: medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade