I last read this book in June 2016. I don’t know if I took poor notes, or if Taleb goes off on many tangents. 4 years later, I’m not sure what the takeaway is.
The problem of induction: a turkey cannot possibly predict what happens on the afternoon before Thanksgiving.
But if we observe all turkeys in the US, won’t we notice that they’re more likely to die right before Thanksgiving? Zooming out to the bigger picture invalidates Taleb’s point.
Statements presented as science may not be as rigorous as they seem. Finding confirmation is easy.
We are suckers for narratives. Hindsight attributes causality where none was apparent, e....
Couples know that a third to a half of all marriages fail, but surely not them! 94% of Swedes believe they are better drivers than 50% of Swedes.
The more detailed your knowledge of empirical reality, the more you mistake noise for signal.
I don’t quite follow…
When dealing with policy, the worst case is far more consequential than the forecast itself. Also, the longer you wait, the longer you will be expected to wait....
Notes Mediocristan vs Extremistan: In Extremistan, one single observation can disproportionately affect the outcome.
Universa, a hedge fund made to exploit black swans, made 3,612% in March 2020 amidst the coronavirus crisis. Taleb is an advisor on the fund. However, on a ‘normal’ day, Universa is always losing money.
If finance were Gaussian, then the 2008 crash (more than 20 std) would take place every several billion lifetimes of the universe....
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