Nassim Taleb: What People Don't Understand About Ebola - Business Insider - 0 views
Spurious Correlations - 0 views
Don't fear Ebola, fear fear itself | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - 0 views
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There is no question that America’s physical, economic, and social health is far more at risk from the fear of Ebola than from the virus itself.
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People worry more about risks that are new and unfamiliar.
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People worry more about risks that cause greater pain and suffering.
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The Precautionary Principle - 0 views
Nassim Taleb: my rules for life | Books | The Observer - 0 views
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the "non-natural" has to prove its harmlessness
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A clerk in a large company is fragile as he has only one source of income. A taxi driver is antifragile. A banker is fragile. A prostitute is antifragile.
Trials and errors: Why science is failing us (Wired UK) - 0 views
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Because scientists understood the individual steps of the cholesterol pathway at such a precise level, they assumed they also understood how it worked as a whole.
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In general, we believe that the so-called problem of causation can be cured by more information. Scientists refer to this process as reductionism.
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although people talk about causes as if they are real facts -- tangible things that can be discovered -- they're actually not at all factual. Instead, Hume said, every cause is just a slippery story, a catchy conjecture, a "lively conception produced by habit".
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Blame Nobel for crisis, says author of Black Swan | Reuters - 0 views
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"I want to remove the harm from these economic models. And the Nobel is not helping. They should be held partly responsible, if not largely responsible, for the crisis,
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a list of Nobel prize winners who make his blood boil. They include: Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Robert Merton, Myron Scholes, Robert Engle, Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller
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Forecasting methods, which he discusses in detail in his book, create a false sense of security or, worse, send people in the wrong direction. Universities then compound the problem by teaching these Nobel-approved ideas as orthodoxy.
Free market has turned us into 'Matrix' drones - 0 views
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A leading economist has likened the nation's acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality.
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aims to disprove what he sees as economic myths, including the idea that people are paid what they are worth, that the "trickle down" effect of increasing wealth among the rich helps the poor, and that education makes countries more prosperous.
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"Another myth that needs to be busted is the idea that we can discuss economics without any moral implications,"
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The wisdom of Nassim Taleb | Hunter-Gatherer - 0 views
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"A good aphorism is a tool that help people make sense of the world in simple and easy to remember ways. Enter Nassim Taleb: former financial trader, author, philosopher, and now, aphorist. Nassim is on Twitter exclusively writing aphorisms. Many of his aphorisms concern paleo. I've included a selection below. Have a look, and vote on your favorite in the comments."
The 15 most persuasive explanations for the economic crisis. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slat... - 0 views
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Liberal analysts, by contrast, are more likely to focus on the way Greenspan's aversion to regulation transformed pell-mell innovation in financial products and excessive bank leverage into lethal phenomena.
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Paul Krugman, who noted in one interview: "Regulation didn't keep up with the system."
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excessive reliance on mathematical models like the VAR and the dread Gaussian copula function, which led to the underpricing of unpredictable forms of risk
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This Is How the Media Amplify Our Terrorism Fears | World | AlterNet - 0 views
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people don't evaluate risk in any rational way -- they don't base their sense of danger on the actual statistical likelihood of being harmed by a given activity
Carbon pricing is planetary Russian Roulette - The Ecologist - 0 views
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How do you price the tonne of carbon that, once burned, tips the balance and triggers catastrophic, irreversible global warming?This question is phrased to give scope for only one answer: there is no price and therefore carbon markets are pointless.
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how effective is pricing in carbon markets?
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There is no mechanism for pricing in this situation because the outcomes are so asymmetrical: extinction or cash.
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FT.com / World - Class of '83 author recalls 'likeable' guy - 0 views
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The insider trading scandal is potentially embarrassing for Wharton, whose MBA degree is ranked the best in the world by the Financial Times. Business schools have been squirming recently as the financial crisis thrust some of their alumni into the unforgiving gaze of an angry public.