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    • ABOUT TALEBIBLIA

    Talebiblia is a fan site devoted to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, created by Smiljana Skiba. It features a compilation of Taleb's most intriguing social media screenshots and interviews for readers to enjoy and explore. The website provides a resource for anyone looking to gain insights into Taleb's works, whether they are a dedicated reader or a curious newcomer.

    Please note that Talebiblia is an independent website and is not affiliated with Nassim Nicholas Taleb in any manner.

    Many thanks to Lucia Simeoni and Ashok Atluri for their invaluable assistance in creating and maintaining this website.

    To stay up to date with Talebiblia's latest developments, follow Smiljana on Twitter @MasaSkiba

    Asides

    Friday Quiz. What is the unconditional mathematical expected duration between departure and time to destination between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing? How about a flight between Rio de Janeiro and Paris? ANSWER: Infinite. A very tiny probability of crash makes the unconditional expectation infinite. All other answers with finite duration are conditional on the plane eventually making it to destination.

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb April 19, 2014 SKIN IN THE GAME & FASTING FOR LENT – I recommended to a friend who had a health problem to fast intermittently as frequency is more consequential than food composition (by Jensen’s inequality). Then I realized that I violated the ethics of Skin-In-The-Game by not doing so myself so I started last week to step-up the duration between meals (except for water and black coffee): 19, 20, 24,… and I just finished 48 hours. In a way it was easier to eat nothing than comply by the grueling Orthodox lent, just bread and vegetables. I can report that much of the benefits in the literature are indeed there; one feels great not eating, and, strangely, also after eating. There is no loss of energy, but I can’t lift as heavily as usual, while paradoxically feeling detectably lighter walking up the stairs or standing up from a couch. Mental clarity and allergy for economists and BS operators are unimpaired. But most at the end, one feels reborn… Will celebrate Happy Easter /Rebirth of Adonis in another post.

    I apologize for the absence but 1) I didn’t have any idea worth writing about that I haven’t already discussed somewhere, 2) wasn’t bothered by any public figure or corporation (s.a. Monsanto or Nestlé) to the point of anger, 3) read nothing of note, 4) do not find it elegant to show pictures of my past vacations or the table in some FatTony restaurant on Facebook. (Note: I was asked by many where I was so this is to explain that I am not playing doctor mysterious).

    All the education in the world will not compensate for a logical fallacy, of the style: “All members of the Smith family are tall; he is tall *hence* he is a member of the Smith family”, the central error in Fooled by Randomness (and the main reason for underestimation of luck). — For, I am unhappy to report, many people make it in real life, along with its variations. Further, this is not just journalism: I saw it made just so frequently by PhDs (in the GMO and Pinker debates) that I am totally disgusted: better be a truck driver with logical abilities, than a PhD with such elementary defects. Indeed it is so prevalent in social science it is not even funny. — Finally, I find it horrifying that people make it here on this page (these people are now gone). Forget all the complicated stuff, focus on the elementary, the basic, for Baal’s sake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

    LINDY FOR THE DETECTION of MODERN BULLSHIT. It is a (sort of) truism that we make the mistake of thinking of the past in terms entire made in the present, making the mistake of propagating backwards such notions as “religion”, “values”, “Gods”, “success”, “happiness”, “ambition”, “meaning of life”, and attribute it to motives of action, when these either didn’t mean much for people in the middle ages and antiquity or had different significance for them. For instance, for Semites, religion meant “law”, didn’t have the spiritual dimension we attribute today; it didn’t care of the notion of “belief” (and Christianity didn’t have a word for it other than “trust”). For pagans, Gods were cultural artifacts… For Romans, freedom meant not being a slave and *having no debt*. — What I am now trying to do, in a systematic way, is the opposite operation, that is, to reexpress the present entirely in terms that an ancient person would have grasped, that is, to propagate the mentality forward, while incorporating modern gains in ethics such as “equality”, social justice, etc. — So using Lindy as a bullshit detection mechanism, I can eliminate modern notions such as “success”, “achievement”, etc., those that do not have a moral dimension.

    Rest in Peace, Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Historian, Luminous Mind. — He is the author of this passage on the contrast between the true scholar and the professor: “There is nothing more striking than the contrast between images which show the intellectual in the Middle Ages and the humanist at work. The former is a professor, caught up in his teaching (…) The other is a solitary scholar, in his calm chamber, at ease in the midst of the private, luxurious room where his thoughts can move freely about. The former shows the tumult of schools, the dust of classrooms, the collective worker’s indifference to beauty, The latter shows all is order and beauty, Luxe calme et volupté” I wish you eternal “Luxe calme et volupté”, Jacques Le Goff.