Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

Rogue Medic's picture

Black Swan

You write "lucid fallacy," but it is ludic fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludic_fallacy

we are "not well adapted to the present, post-alphabet, intensely informational, and statistically complex environment." I'm not convinced of this, and think Taleb's argument doesn't give the unconscious, which can handle multiplicity just fine, thank you, enough play--or enough credit.

I think that he made that quite clear with the examples of the black swan, the turkey, and later the bankers demonstrated it with the sub-prime crisis. He wasn't stating that these things are impossible to anticipate, since he had been warning of this type of problem for years. He was stating that it is easy for otherwise intelligent people to ignore the problem, as he gave plenty of evidence in the book.

Did he abuse the LTCM (Long Term Capital Management) geniuses too much? Nope. That is the reward for hubris.

He does point out that the experts in this field (LTCM) were completely blind to the earlier black swan problem they brought on themselves. These black swan problems will be repeated endlessly. There will be slight variations, that will allow the perpetrators to convince themselves that, It's different, this time.

Some people may avoid these problems as obvious problems. Still, there are many experts, who will demonstrate that their brains are blind to this complexity.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
1 + 7 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.