Nassim Taleb thinks real estate will be the first thing to collapse

[lombardo]

He starts talking about it just after 7 minutes.

 

[Burbujista]

10 minutes ago, lombardo said:

He starts talking about it just after 7 minutes.

 

Well, he has always said that accumulated debt is really risky and that the system is ultra fragile... He is clearly one of us. Are you surprised that he said this?

[simvastatin]

I have read his books and don’t rate him, the gist of him is that a few times you will get a black swan event

how can someone be a celebrity for that 

[thewig]

12 minutes ago, prozac said:

I have read his books and don’t rate him, the gist of him is that a few times you will get a black swan event

how can someone be a celebrity for that 

To be fair this very site here has predicted sixty eight of the last four black swans ?

[Burbujista]

16 minutes ago, prozac said:

I have read his books and don’t rate him, the gist of him is that a few times you will get a black swan event

how can someone be a celebrity for that 

Well, you are not a good reader then... because he doesn’t focus on the black swans, he focuses on how to prepare for them and even spotting  them in advance not be a sucker.

[simvastatin]

9 minutes ago, Burbujista said:

Well, you are not a good reader then... because he doesn’t focus on the black swans, he focuses on how to prepare for them and even spotting  them in advance not be a sucker.

You cannot prepare for a substantial black swan event only minor ones

[the_duke_of_hazzard]

15 minutes ago, prozac said:

You cannot prepare for a substantial black swan event only minor ones

I just tried reading Black Swan and I thought it was really badly written, like a bright student on amphetamines trying to get everything they can think of on the page. Apparently Fooled by Randomness is much better.

[LittlePig]

4 minutes ago, the_duke_of_hazzard said:

I just tried reading Black Swan and I thought it was really badly written, like a bright student on amphetamines trying to get everything they can think of on the page. Apparently Fooled by Randomness is much better.

Skin in the game is very thoughtful.

[simvastatin]

2 minutes ago, the_duke_of_hazzard said:

I just tried reading Black Swan and I thought it was really badly written, like a bright student on amphetamines trying to get everything they can think of on the page. Apparently Fooled by Randomness is much better.

One of main black swan events was the flooding of New Orleans.

the history books have been rewritten, New Orleans was flooded by bush Jnr because he sent the equipment that would be used in the event of a hurricane to Iraq so not really a black swan event 

[Burbujista]

1 hour ago, prozac said:

You cannot prepare for a substantial black swan event only minor ones

You clearly haven’t read “Antifragile”, but can actually benefit from them.

[longgone]

2 hours ago, thewig said:

To be fair this very site here has predicted sixty eight of the last four black swans ?

?

my first batch of baked beans is nearly expired in the survival larder. 

[bear.getting.old]

Nasem who>?

[reddog]

I like him, but his ideas can usually be written in a essay rather than a book.  He tends to write his idea in the first chapter, and then give many examples spread over the subsequent chapters.

Edited November 6, 2018 by reddog

[simvastatin]

9 hours ago, Burbujista said:

You clearly haven’t read “Antifragile”, but can actually benefit from them.

I have read one and a half of his books and think, all he is saying is common sense I don’t need to read his books for that

[BorrowToLeech]

11 hours ago, prozac said:

I have read his books and don’t rate him, the gist of him is that a few times you will get a black swan event

how can someone be a celebrity for that 

Yep, massive bullshitter. 

Edited November 6, 2018 by BorrowToLeech

[winkie]

The risks are always there, so the high and growing debt burden is not a risk, of course it is.....can it be managed, desperately trying to at the moment, still having to borrow but with low interest rates and moderate inflation.... consequences of a consequence beyond control.....falling real estate back to where should have been if not for the emergency measures, much higher inflation, falling stock market and bonds because of emergency recovery rate rises......all this kind of talk was being branded about just prior to the last financial episode ten years ago, next time it will be different......all he can think of as protection is holding gold and fertile growing land....and an insurance policy to protect a falling market......sick that in your pipe and smoke it.?

[Si1]

36 minutes ago, prozac said:

I have read one and a half of his books and think, all he is saying is common sense I don’t need to read his books for that

He does make the point that it is common sense that he gleaned from everyday wisdom, but that he's trying to call out the liberal elite on lacking precisely that.

It's probably academically more important as it formalises this common sense.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Si1

[BorrowToLeech]

20 minutes ago, Si1 said:

He does make the point that it is common sense that he gleaned from everyday wisdom, but that he's trying to call out the liberal elite on lacking precisely that.

It's probably academically more important as it formalises this common sense.

No, it’s less academically relevant, because nothing he says is new. 

And the ‘liberal elite’ he’s complaining about is largely academia who he’s complaining about precisely because they don’t take him seriously. 

That, I think, is why he is popular. He is railing against academia for personal reasons but people read into that a crusade against the political elites that they dislike for political reasons. 

It’s the same with his ‘prediction’ of the credit crunch. He predicted a different crisis, which didn’t really happen, but he’ll take credit for calling out the one that did.

His criticisms were mostly technical, modelling issues. The credit crunch was caused by much more mundane corruption and hubris.  The problem wasn’t a failure to predict the future, it was a failure to even try, since the major players were incentivised to favour short term greed and the dominant ideology gave the green light to that kind of behaviour.  

Oh, and this website’s existence demonstrates that it wasn’t a ‘Black Swan’.  It was just another credit fuelled boom and bust.

Edited November 6, 2018 by BorrowToLeech

[Si1]

Just now, BorrowToLeech said:

No, it’s less academically relevant, because nothing he says is new. 

And the ‘liberal elite’ he’s complaining about is largely academia who he’s complaining about precisely because they don’t take him seriously. 

That, I think, is why he is popular. He is railing against academia for personal reasons but people read into that a crusade against the political elites that they dislike for political reasons. 

 

Academic citation to prove me wrong. I dare you.

[BorrowToLeech]

1 minute ago, Si1 said:

Academic citation to prove me wrong. I dare you.

I can’t even imagine what you’d like me to cite?

[Si1]

16 minutes ago, BorrowToLeech said:

I can’t even imagine what you’d like me to cite?

So you're wrong then. Thanks.

(I mean he may be talking a nonsense, but he really has published peer reviewed papers outlining this, with hard maths to precisely define his ideas. And this is research that does not previously exist in the academic literature. At all. So your assertion that it isn't newly informing academia of these ideas [academically relevant] (no matter how much common sense they entail) is categorically incorrect.)

Edited November 6, 2018 by Si1

[darkmarket]

15 minutes ago, BorrowToLeech said:

Oh, and this website’s existence demonstrates that it wasn’t a ‘Black Swan’.  It was just another credit fuelled boom and bust.

This is the main problem with Taleb's big idea. He concentrates completely on probability, he never examines a coordinated system involving finance ministries and central, investment and retail banks. He doesn't raise the possibility the algo traders were well aware of the long-tail risks, and their managers were equally aware the taxpayer would inevitably bail them out, perhaps because that would make him less special.

He also went onto CNBC and shilled a long EUR short USD position around a year ago, never mentioned it since.

On the other hand, he is respected academically for his work on probability, his opposition to untested genetic editing seems sound for the same reason he was right about long tails elsewhere, and he's involved with Universa, suggesting his investment record deserves respect too.

[zugzwang]

1 minute ago, BorrowToLeech said:

No, it’s less academically relevant, because nothing he says is new. 

And the ‘liberal elite’ he’s complaining about is largely academia who he’s complaining about precisely because they don’t take him seriously. 

That, I think, is why he is popular. He is railing against academia for personal reasons but people read into that a crusade against the political elites that they dislike for political reasons. 

It’s the same with his ‘prediction’ of the credit crunch. He predicted a different crisis, which didn’t really happen, but he’ll take credit for calling out the one that did.

His criticisms were mostly technical, modelling issues. The credit crunch was caused by much more mundane corruption and hubris.  The problem wasn’t a failure to predict the future, it was a failure to even try, since the major players were incentivised to favour short term greed and the dominant ideology gave the green light to that kind of behaviour.  

Oh, and this website’s existence demonstrates that it wasn’t a ‘Black Swan’.  It was just another credit fuelled boom and bust.

Taleb is a kind of anti-Soros. Both of them were talking about the central significance of radical uncertainty in finance and economics long before the GFC. Both of them have gone on to obscure their original arguments somewhat by wrapping them in a broader cloth, politically and philosophically. I prefer to think of a black swan in the narrowest of terms i.e. the unpredictable behaviour of a stochastic instrument like a derivative when subject to a liquidity drought.

[BorrowToLeech]

1 hour ago, Si1 said:

So you're wrong then. Thanks.

(I mean he may be talking a nonsense, but he really has published peer reviewed papers outlining this, with hard maths to precisely define his ideas. And this is research that does not previously exist in the academic literature. At all. So your assertion that it isn't newly informing academia of these ideas [academically relevant] (no matter how much common sense they entail) is categorically incorrect.)

Hard Maths ?

Here’s a summary of just one tiny element of Taleb’s ********, as tackled by grown ups:

https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/sum2016/entries/induction-problem/

For an even more specific example:

”

"Consider a turkey that is fed every day," Taleb writes. "Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race 'looking out for its best interests,' as a politician would say.

"On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 

something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief."

Here's Taleb's famous chart. 

 

This is basically the book's entire message wrapped up in one graphic.”

”

Which is just:

“The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.” - Bertrand Russell

Edited November 6, 2018 by BorrowToLeech

[Si1]

7 minutes ago, BorrowToLeech said:

Hard Maths ?

Here’s a summary of just one tiny element of Taleb’s ********, as tackled by grown ups:

https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/sum2016/entries/induction-problem/

For an even more specific example:

”

"Consider a turkey that is fed every day," Taleb writes. "Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race 'looking out for its best interests,' as a politician would say.

"On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 

something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief."

Here's Taleb's famous chart. 

 

This is basically the book's entire message wrapped up in one graphic.”

”

 

“The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.” - Bertrand Russell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrelevant_conclusion