In general, this book is full of repetitions, and so it can easily get boring to read. The book shud have been 50-100 pages shorter, then it wud have been much better.<\/p>\n
Aside from that, the book is okay. I wudnt particularly recommend reading it, but i wudnt particularly recommend not reading it either. Altho in general one shud not read mediocre books without reason. Time is limited, so one shud read the highest quality material one can find.<\/p>\n
Fooled by Randomness – Role of Chance in Markets and Life PROPER<\/a><\/p>\n Part I is concerned with the degree to which a situation may yet, in <\/span><\/p>\n the course of time, suffer change. For we can be tricked by situations <\/span><\/p>\n involving mostly the activities of the Goddess Fortuna – Jupiter’s <\/span><\/p>\n firstborn daughter. Solon was wise enough to get the following point; <\/span><\/p>\n that which came with the help of luck could be taken away by luck (and <\/span><\/p>\n often rapidly and unexpectedly at that). The flipside, which deserves to <\/span><\/p>\n be considered as well (in fact it is even more of our concern), is that <\/span><\/p>\n things that come with little help from luck are more resistant to <\/span><\/p>\n randomness. Solon also had the intuition of a problem that has obsessed <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n science for the past three centuries. It is called the problem of induction. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I call it in this book the black swan or the rare event.<\/strong> Solon even <\/span><\/p>\n understood another linked problem, which I call the skewness issue; it <\/span><\/p>\n does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too <\/span><\/p>\n costly to bear. <\/span><\/p>\n Wat. Problem of induction is not the same as the black swan fenomenon. Altho they are somewhat related.<\/p>\n Nero holds an undergraduate degree in ancient literature and <\/span><\/p>\n mathematics from Cambridge University. He enrolled in a Ph.D. <\/span><\/p>\n program in statistics at the University of Chicago but, after completing <\/span><\/p>\n the prerequisite coursework, as well as the bulk of his doctoral research, <\/span><\/p>\n he switched to the philosophy department. He called the switch “a <\/span><\/p>\n moment of temporary sanity”, adding to the consternation of his thesis <\/span><\/p>\n director who warned him against philosophers and predicted his return <\/span><\/p>\n back to the fold. He finished writing his thesis in philosophy. But not the <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Derrida continental style of incomprehensible philosophy (that is,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n incomprehensible to anyone outside of their ranks, like myself).<\/strong> It was <\/span><\/p>\n quite the opposite; his thesis was on the methodology of statistical <\/span><\/p>\n inference in its application to the social sciences. In fact, his thesis was <\/span><\/p>\n indistinguishable from a thesis in mathematical statistics – it was just a <\/span><\/p>\n bit more thoughtful (and twice as long). <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I like where this is going. Except that im inclined to think it is incomprehensible to them as well, they are just deluded into thinking that it isnt.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The failure rate of these scientists, though, was better, but only <\/span><\/p>\n slightly so than that of MBAs; but it came from another reason, linked <\/span><\/p>\n to their being on average (but only on average) devoid of the smallest bit <\/span><\/p>\n of practical intelligence. Some successful scientists had the judgment <\/span><\/p>\n (and social graces) of a door knob – but by no means all of them. Many <\/span><\/p>\n people were capable of the most complex calculations with utmost rigor <\/span><\/p>\n when it came to equations, but were totally incapable of solving a <\/span><\/p>\n problem with the smallest connection to reality; it was as if they <\/span><\/p>\n understood the letter but not the spirit of the math. I am convinced that <\/span><\/p>\n X, a likeable Russian man of my acquaintance, has two brains: one for <\/span><\/p>\n math and another, considerably inferior one, for everything else (which <\/span><\/p>\n included solving problems related to the mathematics of finance). But on <\/span><\/p>\n occasion a fast-thinking scientific-minded person with street smarts <\/span><\/p>\n would emerge. Whatever the benefits of such population shift, it <\/span><\/p>\n improved our chess skills and provided us with quality conversation <\/span><\/p>\n during lunchtime – it extended the lunch hour considerably. Consider <\/span><\/p>\n that I had in the 1980s to chat with colleagues who had an MBA or tax <\/span><\/p>\n accounting background and were capable of the heroic feat of discussing <\/span><\/p>\n FASB standards. I have to say that their interests were not too <\/span><\/p>\n contagious. The interesting thing about these physicists does not lie in <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n their ability to discuss fluid dynamics; it is that they were naturally <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n interested in a variety of intellectual subjects and provide pleasant <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n conversation. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I cud not agree more about fysisists! Thats one reason why i like them. Generally clever and curious people, even if they read far too less to match up with me, and lack rigour in filosofical discussions. Mostly due to no training at all (no logic, no critical thinking etc.).<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Another analogy would be with grammar; mathematics is often <\/span><\/p>\n tedious and insightless grammar. There are those who are interested in <\/span><\/p>\n grammar for grammar’s sake, and those interested in avoiding solecisms <\/span><\/p>\n while writing documents. We are called “quants” – like physicists, we <\/span><\/p>\n have more interest in the employment of the mathematical tool than in <\/span><\/p>\n the tool itself. Mathematicians are born, never made. Physicists and <\/span><\/p>\n quants too. I do not care about the “elegance” and “quality” of the <\/span><\/p>\n mathematics I use so long as I can get the point right. I have recourse to <\/span><\/p>\n Monte Carlo machines whenever I can. They can get the work done. <\/span><\/p>\n They are also far more pedagogical, and I will use them in this book for <\/span><\/p>\n the examples. <\/span><\/p>\n I agree 100% with this view of math. A tool, somewhat interesting in itself, but MUCH MORE interesting when it is applicable to something that interests me.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n One conceivable way to discriminate between a scientific intellectual <\/span><\/p>\n and a literary intellectual is by considering that a scientific intellectual can <\/span><\/p>\n : usually recognize the writing of another but that the literary intellectual <\/span><\/p>\n would not be able to tell the difference between lines jotted down by a <\/span><\/p>\n scientist and those by a glib non-scientist. This is even more apparent <\/span><\/p>\n when the literary intellectual starts using scientific buzzwords, like <\/span><\/p>\n “uncertainty principle”, “Godel’s theorem”, “parallel universe”, or <\/span><\/p>\n “relativity” either out of context or, as often, in exact opposition to the <\/span><\/p>\n scientific meaning. I suggest reading the hilarious Fashionable Nonsense <\/span><\/p>\n by Alan Sokal for an illustration of such practice (I was laughing so loudly <\/span><\/p>\n and so frequently while reading it on a plane that other passengers kept <\/span><\/p>\n whispering things about me). By dumping the kitchen sink of scientific <\/span><\/p>\n references in a paper, one can make another literary intellectual believe <\/span><\/p>\n that one’s material has the stamp of science. Clearly, to a scientist, science <\/span><\/p>\n lies in the rigor of the inference, not in random references to such <\/span><\/p>\n grandiose concepts as general relativity or quantum indeterminacy. Such <\/span><\/p>\n rigor can be spelled out in plain English. Science is method and rigor; it <\/span><\/p>\n can be identified in the simplest of prose writing. For instance, what <\/span><\/p>\n struck me while reading Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene3 is that, although <\/span><\/p>\n the text does not exhibit a single equation, it seems as if it were translated <\/span><\/p>\n from the language of mathematics. Yet it is artistic prose.<\/span><\/p>\n I like this! I really<\/em> want to read Fashionable Nonsense<\/em> aka. Intellectual Impostures<\/em>, (review here<\/a>). But i cant find a fucking ebook version. It is SO annoying to read paper books. They are not easy to quote and discuss!<\/p>\n And paper books are ridiculessly overpriced. Especially textbooks.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Randomness can be of considerable help with the matter. For there is <\/span><\/p>\n another, far more entertaining way to make the distinction between the <\/span><\/p>\n babbler and the thinker. You can sometimes replicate something that can <\/span><\/p>\n be mistaken for a literary discourse with a Monte Carlo generator but it <\/span><\/p>\n is not possible randomly to construct a scientific one. Rhetoric can be <\/span><\/p>\n constructed randomly, but not genuine scientific knowledge. This is the <\/span><\/p>\n application of Turing’s test of artificial intelligence, except in reverse. <\/span><\/p>\n What is the Turing test? The brilliant British mathematician, eccentric, <\/span><\/p>\n and computer pioneer Alan Turing came up with the following test: a <\/span><\/p>\n computer can be said to be intelligent if it can (on average) fool a human <\/span><\/p>\n into mistaking it for another human. The converse should be true. A <\/span><\/p>\n human can be said to be unintelligent if we can replicate his speech by a <\/span><\/p>\n computer, which we know is unintelligent, and fool a human into <\/span><\/p>\n believing that it was written by a human. Can one produce a piece of <\/span><\/p>\n work that can be largely mistaken for Derrida entirely randomly? <\/span><\/p>\n The answer seems to be yes. Aside from the hoax by Alan Sokal (the <\/span><\/p>\n same of the hilarious book a few lines ago) who managed to produce <\/span><\/p>\n nonsense and get it published by some prominent journal, there are <\/span><\/p>\n Monte Carlo generators designed to structure such texts and write entire <\/span><\/p>\n papers. Fed with “postmodernist” texts, they can randomize phrases <\/span><\/p>\n under a method called recursive grammar, and produce grammatically <\/span><\/p>\n sound but entirely meaningless sentences that sound like Jacques <\/span><\/p>\n Derrida, Camille Paglia, and such a crowd. Owing to the fuzziness of his <\/span><\/p>\n thought, the literary intellectual can be fooled by randomness. <\/span><\/p>\n I agree, except that i dont think Paglia is that bad. Altho, she does appear to like The Second Sex <\/em>according to Wiki<\/a>, she gave a pretty nice interview along with Summers<\/a>. I find it difficult to dislike someone who is labeled an \u201cantifeminist\u201d initually. I skimmed her Wikiquote page<\/a>, and it doesnt appear to have (m)any nonsense quotations like Derrida and others.<\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps Taleb has confused her with some other feminist writer? Surely, there are lots of insane ones.<\/p>\n –<\/em><\/p>\n It is hard to resist discussion of artificial history without a comment on <\/span><\/p>\n the father of all pseudothinkers, Hegel. Hegel writes a jargon that is <\/span><\/p>\n meaningless outside of a chic Left-Bank Parisian cafe or the humanities <\/span><\/p>\n department of some university extremely well insulated from the real <\/span><\/p>\n world. I suggest this passage from the German “philosopher” (this <\/span><\/p>\n passage was detected, translated and reviled by Karl Popper): <\/span><\/p>\n Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the <\/em><\/span><\/p>\nPre-chapter 1 – SOLON’S WARNING<\/h3>\n
Chapter 1 – IF YOU’RE SO RICH WHY AREN’T YOU SO SMART?<\/h3>\n
Chapter 2 – A BIZARRE ACCOUNTING METHOD<\/h3>\n
Chapter 3 – A MATHEMATICAL MEDITATION ON HISTORY<\/h3>\n
Chapter 4 – RANDOMNESS, NONSENSE, AND THE SCIENTIFIC INTELLECTUAL<\/h3>\n