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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

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb February 07, 2014 Friends, this subject is for discussion, with back-up if you can: It seems to me that IQ tests favor turkeys. Standard tests of “fluid intelligence” that require the subject to complete a sequence favor a certain class of people who can rapidly detect naive patterns, and penalize those who are natural skeptics with richer imagination. In real life patterns are more complicated and having an ingrained skepticism that slows down inference is an invaluable asset. So my speculation is that it is OK to do well, but not to do very well. Consider the seemingly elementary sequence: a-b-a-b-a -?- [complete ]. Naive pattern matching would give [b] as solution. But in real life ecologies the sequence could have a more complex pattern, a-b-a-b-a-b-b (there is a repetition of the 6th letter) or meta-patterns to consider. These take time to examine and someone smart would need to fight to repress his imagination. So those who do well, but not great, should be much smarter than those who do better. Let us debate. Does it make sense?

    THE NO-BS MEDIA My dream is for someone to publish a SuperRigorous No-BS Newspaper, that is, something providing the news based on empirical relevance, that is, completely devoid of sensationalism. It would be based on the causal and nonanecdotal (i.e., empirical) validity of the information: for instance a hurricane killing four people would not be reported as 7000 people die every day in the U.S., thousands from less sensational –but equally tragic –causes. No terrorism on any day would be reported unless it exceeds death from diabetes (which would be a disincentive for terrorists). Financial market events would only be reported if they exceed 3 mean deviations. The paper would be 0 length on some days, and very long on others. I personally do not need it but it would be mandatory for government; it would make decision-makers and bureaucrats aware that the news is not information. It would separate the news from the entertainment. Hopefully it would make people who like anecdote switch to the New York Post away the disguized pseudointellectual piece of manure called the New York Times (or French Le Monde). For the NYT is the most harmful piece of junk as their BS is dressed in intellectual garment… Anything that bankrupts the NY Times is good for America.

    THE LEBANESE WAR THAT DOESN”T HAPPEN. Please show this your Lebanese friends who are scared to come visit their families in Lebanon. The casualty rate from bombs in Lebanon over 2013 was ~2.5 per 100,000 people. It remains < a tenth of crime in NY in the 90s, <20th of crime in Brazil, etc. Outside bombs the homicide rate is very low. Why? Simply, a bomb is immediately noticed by the press, series of isolated crimes don't make the newspaper. Antony Veich wrote: "in the case of Belfast the press usually stayed at The Europa, so the IRA took the bombs to the hotel… 28 times." Sadly, people in 2014 make more irrational decisions than they did in 1900. Visible risks are not really risks. The other good news is that everyone is worried about "future risks". The risks in Lebanon are not hidden. They are open for everyone to see, and nobody is wondering why in spite of all these incidents the war DID NOT happen? Every bomb that does not cause generalized warfare makes the system more robust to war (see Antifragility). In 1975 the Palestinians had nothing to lose from civil war. Same with Syria. Today all parties have skin in the game, and are deep into real estate in Beirut

    BARBELL & LOGIC: A logical error in dealing with the notion of “average” is to think that, in a conflict in which we are outsiders, the middle ground is likely to be right, instead of considering that each side has a 50% probability of being 100% right, and the middle ground is the least likely to be correct. We make such mistakes in intellectual life but not in naturalistic settings. When you tell people that a woman has 50% percent probability of being pregnant, (50% of being not pregnant) but 0% probability of being half-pregnant, they get it. Replace “pregnant” with “right” and see that you are likely to make the error. This leads many to avoid barbells by having only “moderate” risks or “moderate” opinions. The only time I got angry with Robert Shiller was when, in 2006, he said that I was “sort of” right (about the risks in the system) but was too extreme and needed “moderation”. Actually philosophers know about fallacy in the “argument to moderation”: