Tag: Risk

[YouTube] Building Antifragile Systems: Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Debt, AI, and the New Global Order

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At Visa GCC Connect 2025, bestselling author of The Black Swan and Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, issued a stark warning: the real fragilities aren’t hidden, they’re in plain sight. From soaring Western debt to AI disrupting white-collar professions, Taleb argues that global power is shifting back to the East, with China and Africa on the rise. His advice: systems cannot be engineered top-down. True resilience comes from entrepreneurs, risk-takers, and bottom-up innovation. Speaking at Visa GCC Connect 2025, Milan, Italy.

[Substack] Medical Mistakes with Probability, 2

On By In Academic, General, Statements

Abstract: risk factors for LDL/ApoB underestimate the risk factor for Lp(a) positive subjects and overestimate for Lp(a) negative ones, a case of base-rate fallacy.

I am just using basic probabilistic logic here.

Risks factors for ASCVD from LDL (or ApoB) levels are computed for a general population which includes people with low and high Lp(a) levels. Now if having a high Lp(a) increases the cardiac risk over the baseline (up to 2-3 times!) and the proportion of subjects with high Lp(a) is between 15 and 28% of the population, then, necessarily, those with low Lp(a) will have, for a given level of LDL, a considerably lower risk and many might be treated unnecessarily.

The risk factor for nonLp(a) can be ~ 30% lower! Statins don’t come for free. There are hidden and less hidden side effects.

Continue reading on Substack – open.substack.com/pub/nntaleb/p/medical-mistakes-with-probability-284

[Substack] Medical Mistakes with Probability, 1

On By In Academic, General, Statements

Max Heart Rate

When you do a stress test, say the Bruce Protocol, the administering doctor relies on something called the “age predicted maximum heart rate”, usually 220 minus your age, or some formula slightly more complicated but equally unrigorous. Once you reach that point, they stop, depriving you of potent information — at low risk since they are monitoring via live ECG your cardiac strain. In fact, such an estimation based on age, no matter how complicated its computation, appears to explain only 20% of the variation between individuals. I believe that explained variations are even smaller for, clearly, in the graph above, to the right, samples above 55 are sparce and the expected maxima would be considerably higher.

I noticed this myself as I am easily able to reach the 170s without feeling strain, guessing the effective max would be in the 180s (next test, but would require some live ECG for caution).

Continue reading on Substack – open.substack.com/pub/nntaleb/p/medical-mistakes-with-probability

[YouTube] How to Look at the Risks of Covid Vaccines?

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How to look at the risks of Covid vaccines, why they are much lower than you think. We never had a larger monitored sample size in history and it allows events that on average show up later to manifest themselves very early on. Rationale: It takes a long time in a casino for someone to win 8 times in a row. But if 8 billion people played at the same time you would certainly witness a minimum of such events every day.

Uncertainty, Certainty and what to do when there is Systemic Risk

On By In Twitter, Videos

Third conversation between Nassim Nicholas Taleb & Yaneer Bar-Yam about uncertainty, certainty and what to do when there is a systemic risk; what not to do when a truck is headed your way. How acting early would have cost less? They also discuss:

  • John Ioannidis recent post “we are making decisions without reliable data”
  • Why we should make decisions without reliable data & use precautionary principles
  • How the costs would be so much smaller if we would have acted earlier.

Jan 26 Coronavirus Paper (PDF) – Joseph Norman, Yaneer Bar-Yam, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Systemic risk of pandemic via novel pathogens – Coronavirus: A note, New England Complex Systems Institute (January 26, 2020).

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