- This topic has 18 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 17 years, 7 months ago by
.
- Posts
Read this, and weep with laughter and amazement, folks:
<!– m –>http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b … t=0&page=1<!– m –>
For me, the best find ever on the Internet.
I’ve always maintained that bookmakers are exceptionally-sophisticated stockbrokers.
We’ve discussed his books on here before- Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan, works of genius both.
You’re kidding, Wallace! I’ll check, anyway. More fool me….
I didn’t know that, carvilleshill. It’s priceless, isn’t it? I’d like to have seen the correspondence. How long ago was it? Would it still be retrievable?
I wonder if I’ve got a colour-blindess problems, Wallace. I keep mistaking black swans for white ones – even geese.
A Black Swan won today at 999/1!
I keep hearing examples like this. I disagree. When Taleb describes Black Swans, I understood them to be not only improbable, but so completely improbable that you could have never have expected them based on all the knowledge that you have had available to you.
You’re kidding, Wallace! I’ll check, anyway. More fool me….
I didn’t know that, carvilleshill. It’s priceless, isn’t it? I’d like to have seen the correspondence. How long ago was it? Would it still be retrievable?
I think this was the thread;
https://theracingforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=70859
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
That wasn’t the thread I had in mind Grayson’s, but what a thread! One of the best on here ever and had completely passed me by, thanks!
Have resolved to visit the damp and dusty systems shed more often!
BTW Corm that thread must be saved for posterity.Thanks a million from me, too, Grayson. So far, I’ve just had a quick look at the first page of posts and noticed the references to football. When I read theTaleb article on Timesonline, I was reminded of something someoe on here, I believe wrote, i.e. William Hills saw: "Never bet on anything that can think"!!!!! Imo, economics and finance are not even "social" sciences, but, rather, anthropology/sociology directed at human behaviour in the sphere of trading. Of course, statistics can contribute to our understanding even in the sphere of anthropology/sociology, but only peripherally. the dynamics are human; in this sphere, mostly fear and greed (an insight I believe of someone working in that sphere .
RobinfromIreland, I think you are completely wrong. Academics are notorious for demonstrating a searing, breath-taking logic. Unfortunately, they are equally notorious for basing their scintillating arguments on laughably false assumptions.
Also, don’t underestimate their need to follow the estabishment’s favoured academic agenda. EVEN IN THE FIELD OF EMPRICAL SCIENCE, now that Oxbridge and Ivy League are increasingly relying on funding by big businesses and corporate (mis)Governments.
As for the Arts, the slavish following of the latest fashion in literary criticism, for example, is beyond pathetic. For instance, I don’t know about now, but in the sixties T S Eliot was the Man for Shakespeare. Yet he had as much chance of understanding Shakespeare as the Man in the MOOn, because he was so pusillanimous, incomparison with Shakespeare’s magnanimity. What he did have in spades was his incredible genius for evocative, even haunting words and metaphors.
Had he lived in an earlier epoch, its merit would have been vitiated by the limitations on the themes he could have addressed. Great and noble themes are not within the scope of a man who had his wife committed to an asylum, apparently on specious gounds (if I remember correctly).
RobinfromIreland, I think you are completely wrong. Academics are notorious for demonstrating a searing, breath-taking logic. Unfortunately, they are equally notorious for basing their scintillating arguments on laughably false assumptions.
Descartes would turn in his grave…
You got that right, Aragorn! Did you know that it takes a whole generation of scientists to die, before a new paradigm is accepted? In fact, imo, at least a century.
A few months ago I was having to point out to a lad who was a top science student in his school that in quantum physics, in fact, at the macrocosmic level, too, the paradoxes proliferate, the deeper the physicists are able penetrate; mechanistic science is only apt for studying on physics at the workaday level of the human world. It seems science at the extremes is becoming increasingly a matter of the management of paradoxes, which, of course, a priori, defy our logic.
Of course!
But don’t you like Taleb’s quirky, contrarian truculence! I read it and wept. for laughter. Especially George Soros’ son’s somewhat irreverent take on his father’s explanation of his acumen. But so many others. How about his last tip:
"10 Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them."
in quantum physics, in fact, at the macrocosmic level, too, the paradoxes proliferate, the deeper the physicists are able penetrate; mechanistic science is only apt for studying on physics at the workaday level of the human world. It seems science at the extremes is becoming increasingly a matter of the management of paradoxes, which, of course, a priori, defy our logic.
The great mistake made by scientists (in the broadest sense) down the generations has been the unseemly conferring of truth on a theory by stating "we now know" rather than a wise and cautious "we now think we know"
Thanks for the article Grimes
‘Fooled by Randomness’ is an intriguing and enlightening read; Mr Taleb certainly thinks he knows
Pleasure, Drone. I haven’t even read his books, yet.
To be candid, from a betting point of view, I don’t think his insights would be of the remotest use to me, but if that’s not one original, yet enormously intelligent mind, I’ll be hornswoggled.
I’m a great admire of George Soros, too, but I have to say his son’s comments on his father’s recently delivered words of wisdom creased me up. And as for his explanation for his father’s genius being pretty much due to his back suffering bad twinges…! Though I suspect he meant that at a deeper level, his autonomic intelligence was prompting,warning him. (Well, I’ve re-read that bit, and he says as much).
Anyway, I’m just going to read that article again. I’m really glad you and others who, like me, hadn’t come across his exotic discursions before, enjoyed the article as much as I did.
Sorry. I was getting muddled up. The Soros anecdote and one about a Victor Niederhoffer are in this article:
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.