Nassim Nicholas Taleb - "What we are seeing worldwide"

facebook ^ | March 8th | Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[dennisw]

What we are seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking "clerks" and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think... and 5) who to vote for.

With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30y of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, microeconomic papers wrong 40% of the time, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating only 1/5th of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats wanting to run our lives aren't even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. I have shown that most of what Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types call "rational" or "irrational" comes from misunderstanding of probability theory.

[OwenKellogg]

The Black Swan Theory ...

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.

Black swan events were discussed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2001 book Fooled By Randomness, which concerned financial events. His 2007 book The Black Swan extended the metaphor to events outside of financial markets. Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments as "black swans";undirected and unpredicted. He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the September 2001 attacks as examples of black swan events.

"What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.

Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'.

Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme 'impact', and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

[cherry]

and its not like these “over educated” arses are educated in anything but nonsense and feel good mumbo jumbo..

[Pelham]

Good call

Trump IS the Black Swan

[untenured]

Maybe I am misunderstanding it, but the implication of this view seems to be that we shouldn’t make so many rules, not that we should give different people the authority to make them.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

That doesn’t surprise me. These know-it-alls couldn’t find their own behinds with both hands and a flashlight.

[bgill]

terminally stupid people without commons sense

These days, there is hardly a day that goes by I don't run into a terminally stupid moron with no common sense. I'm far from perfect but too many grown adult human beings make you wonder how they manage to tie their shoes.

[rawcatslyentist]

"What we are seeing worldwide"

Is the ancient hand of the evil one taking his wrath upon God's children. His time is short before his long hot swim.

[uncitizen]

A guest on a radio show made the point about these people: “if their mistakes are due to stupidity you would think they’d occasionally make a mistake that is in our favor”.

[metmom]

ping

[Grampa Dave]

“its not like these “over educated” arses are educated in anything but nonsense and feel good mumbo jumbo..”

Their laws enrich them and their lawyer buddies and increase the rat power at all levels of government.

[Grampa Dave]

“I’m far from perfect but too many grown adult human beings make you wonder how they manage to tie their shoes.”

Soon in California, they will get tax paid help to strap on their Tevas and get them into self driven Uber vehicles to go protest against those of us paying taxes to enable them to live their parasitic lifes.

[Grampa Dave]

My wife and I were fortunate to have loving and self reliant grandparents, who passed those traits on to us and to our now adult children.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Agreed. I am interested in his

macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology,
microeconomic papers wrong 40% of the time

”Microeconomics” is AFAIK economics as Adam Smith founded the field. That is, or should be, a science.

“Macroeconomics,” OTOH, is socialist fantasy such as the Philips Curve - not science but, literally, sophistry - mere pretense that what socialists want to be true, actually is true.