If an optimist and not God or some more intuitive evolutionary process had designed the human body, we would have one not two kidneys, as we do not actually need both of them.
The mathematical formulas and algorithms put in place by banks to monetize every millisecond milli-transaction and squeeze profits out of them and our ever-increasing interconnectedness mean that a small unforeseen event now ripples around the world faster than the next banker has the time to take out his Blackberry and check the markets. In fact, says Taleb, it was precisely the access to a Blackberry in the hands of investors and bankers around the world that allowed for the crash in the first place.
Interconnectedness and technology has made us more fragile, not more robust. Walking too fast, instead of strolling at a leisurely pace, has proven deadly as we missed so much along the way, passing by too quickly, while the bubble was growing ready to burst. But this latest financial crisis is not that unusual, and it is not just a repeat of the Great Depression, but rather something worse, as we are now less robust than we were back then, and more interconnected in ways that allow this lack of robustness to ripple around the world so quickly that the Ponzi schemes collapse all at once.
Nobel prize-winning economists, hired by hedge funds and banks, were stamped with authority that allowed them to create his mess in the first place.
Taleb even claims on his website, www. Taleb has been criticized, but he tells it as he sees it, whether or not everyone agrees. Yet he falls somewhere between academic and finance guy, his approach to both is philosophical.
In the end, Taleb said, risks can indeed still be taken but they must only be taken by those financial groups robust enough to withstand heavy losses from Black Swan-type events. And we must protect those who are not able to protect themselves.
Society at large should not be paying for and saving too big to fail banks nor any financial groups that take risks for which they are not designed. Taleb and I said goodbye down Boulevard Saint Germain and I watched as he walked slowly back towards his hotel to take a nap.
As he walked very slowly yet with a determined pace, back towards the heart of the Left Bank and St. I then discovered to my great shame the following. I had spent my life thinking about randomness; I wrote three books on dealing with randomness one technical ; I was prancing about as the expert in the subject of randomness from mathematics to psychology.
And I missed something central: living organisms whether the human body or the economy need variability and randomness. What's more, they need the Extremistan type of variability, certain extreme stressors.
Otherwise they become fragile. That, I completely missed. Taleb 26 Organisms need, to use the metaphor of Marcus Aurelius, to turn obstacles to fuel. Brainwashed by the cultural environment and by my education, I was under the illusion that steady exercise and steady nutrition were a good thing for one's health --not realizing that I was falling into the rationalistic arguments; the Platonic projection of wishes into the world. Worse, I was brainwashed while having all the facts in my head.
From predator-prey models the so-called Lotka-Volterra type of population dynamics , I knew that populations will experience Extremistan-style variability, hence the predator will necessarily go through periods of feasts and famine. That's us, humans --we had to have been designed to experience extreme hunger and extreme abundance.
So our food intake had to have been fractal. Not a single one of those promoting the "three meals a day", "eat in moderation", idea tested it empirically to see if it is healthier than intermittent fasts followed by large feasts4. But Near Eastern religions Judaism, Islam, and Orthodox Christianity knew it, of course, with the fasting days --just as they knew the need for debt avoidance. I also knew that the size of stones and trees was, up to a point, fractal I even wrote about it in Chapter 16 --our ancestors had to face most of the time very light stones to lift, mild stressors, and, once or twice a decade, encountered the need to lift a huge one.
So, where on 4 There is a sociology of science dimension to the problem. The science writer Gary Taubes convinced me that the majority of dietary recommendations about lowering fats in diets stand against the evidence --I can understand how one can harbor beliefs about natural things without justifying them empirically; I fail to understand beliefs that go against both nature and scientific evidence.
Taleb 27 Earth does this idea of "steady" exercise come from? Nobody in the Pleistocene jogged for 42 minutes three days a week; lifted weights every Tuesday and Friday with a bullying but otherwise nice personal trainer, and Played tennis at 11 A. Saturday mornings.
Not hunters. We swung between extremes: sprinted when chased or when chasing once in a while in an extremely exerting way , and walked about aimlessly the rest of the time. Marathon running is a modern abomination particularly when done without emotional stimuli. This is another application of the barbell strategy: plenty of idleness, some high intensity.
The data shows that long, very long walks combined with high intensity exercise outperforms just running. I am not talking about "brisk walks" of the type you read about in the Science section of the New York Times.
I mean walking without making any effort, except of course to kill boredom. What's more, consider the negative correlation between caloric expenditures and intake: we hunted in response of hunger; we did not eat breakfast to hunt, which had to accentuate the energy deficits.
If you deprive an organism of stressors, you affect its epigenetics and gene expression-- some genes are up-regulated or down-regulated by contact with the environment.
A person who does not face stressors will not survive should he encounters them. Just consider what happens to someone's strength after he spends a year in bed, or someone growing up in a sterilized environment who, one day, takes the Tokyo subway where riders are squeezed like sardines. Why am I using evolutionary arguments? Taleb has been criticized, but he tells it as he sees it, whether or not everyone agrees.
Yet he falls somewhere between academic and finance guy, his approach to both is philosophical. Continue reading. Common Questions This is a sample question. Undergraduate Graduate Online Learning. Student Life.
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