I am working my way through Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Black Swan, and I am hearing my own half-formed thoughts and developing ideas already expressed! With statistics, examples, counter-narratives and an engaging style. I should have picked up this book sooner, and I will probably buy a copy so I can mark it up myself with notes. Taleb brings up a few ideas I have already been pondering: the human tendency to seek narrative explanations, the dismal way we evaluate risk, the difficulty people have of dropping out of their cultural, and indeed possibly biological, frames of thinking.
I disagree with him on the ability and utility of forecasting, but I am in complete concurrence with his requirement that professional predictors keep a record and go back and evaluate their records.
Since this is supposed to be an "outlook" of sorts, I will have to come up with a list of things that I think I am capable of predicting, and track them.
One of Taleb's arguments dovetails neatly into Goodhart's law and Campbell's law. As soon as a big investment player uses a strategy, it becomes apparent, and is no longer counter-systemic. This suggests two options: make moves so opaque as to be incomprehensible - which may be easier if you just make it hard to think about - or be so little as to be beneath notice.
I can't wait to get through <i>Antifragile</i>, which I have also been thinking about: the tradeoffs between robustness and efficency, the way interconnected networks respond to damage. How can we build robust, resilient systems? This, I think is the great question of the 21st century. We will answer it, or die.
CCBY-NC-SA4.0
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Saturday, May 31, 2014
True Detective
We moved across the country, and the place we're living in now has HBO On Demand. So I started watching True Detective. There's been quite a bit of discussion on the 'Net about it (here and here for starters) and I watched and felt like my head cracked open.
Like I was mainlining the truth of the Universe.
After one episode, I could tell you who killed that girl, and the others like her. And why they may have caught the killer, but another DB, similar fashion, showed up.
The girls are outputs of a fucked-up set of interlocking interconnected systems that people have made, trapped, built, woven and imposed upon the world. I'm not slipping into Rust's nihilism, which is a covering for his essential woundedness. People made these systems, and people carry out these actions, and these stories have meaning for the people that do them, because story and meaning are the frameworks through which we view our lives.
But these girls are just as dead as if they OD'd, or were in a car accident, or had a brain aneurysm. Only nobody gives a shit if those things are cause by structural failures like those imposed on the landscape of South Louisiana.
There is some kind of structure or system in place that is killing these girls, and it was built by the powerful for the powerful, and as long as it doesn't, on balance, hurt them, it will continue.
Incidentally, I was annoyed by the preacher and the task force for crimes with 'an anti-Chrisitan connotation.' Deer antlers and bound women, placed bodies and little woven nests? That is old, deep stuff. That is Venus of Willendorf, cave paintings, Our Lady Underground type stuff. Way older than Christianity.
Like I was mainlining the truth of the Universe.
After one episode, I could tell you who killed that girl, and the others like her. And why they may have caught the killer, but another DB, similar fashion, showed up.
The girls are outputs of a fucked-up set of interlocking interconnected systems that people have made, trapped, built, woven and imposed upon the world. I'm not slipping into Rust's nihilism, which is a covering for his essential woundedness. People made these systems, and people carry out these actions, and these stories have meaning for the people that do them, because story and meaning are the frameworks through which we view our lives.
But these girls are just as dead as if they OD'd, or were in a car accident, or had a brain aneurysm. Only nobody gives a shit if those things are cause by structural failures like those imposed on the landscape of South Louisiana.
There is some kind of structure or system in place that is killing these girls, and it was built by the powerful for the powerful, and as long as it doesn't, on balance, hurt them, it will continue.
Incidentally, I was annoyed by the preacher and the task force for crimes with 'an anti-Chrisitan connotation.' Deer antlers and bound women, placed bodies and little woven nests? That is old, deep stuff. That is Venus of Willendorf, cave paintings, Our Lady Underground type stuff. Way older than Christianity.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Learning to Swim
It was my mother's family who taught me to swim.
We would go to the Sea, and stand on the shore, looking out over the gray-blue ocean. I remember my uncles and cousins teaching us how to wade out, how to shuffle our feet, how to judge the rush and pull of the waves.
As a child, I would stand on the edge of the waters, watching the waves race up the sand and running just in front of the advancing foam. As I got older, I ventured out farther, and they taught me to ride the waves. First to let a wave pull me off the sea floor, then how to float and swim over them - then how to dive under breakers, avoiding the churning water.
And they taught me to feel the currents, to look for discoloration, to look for waves that moved wrong. That was the riptide, and you could feel it swirling around your legs, beckoning at first, then insistent. They taught me not to fight it, but to ride it out. To swim parallel, to escape, and to call for help.
They taught me that Ithere would always be someone to help, but I would have to call out.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
We would go to the Sea, and stand on the shore, looking out over the gray-blue ocean. I remember my uncles and cousins teaching us how to wade out, how to shuffle our feet, how to judge the rush and pull of the waves.
As a child, I would stand on the edge of the waters, watching the waves race up the sand and running just in front of the advancing foam. As I got older, I ventured out farther, and they taught me to ride the waves. First to let a wave pull me off the sea floor, then how to float and swim over them - then how to dive under breakers, avoiding the churning water.
And they taught me to feel the currents, to look for discoloration, to look for waves that moved wrong. That was the riptide, and you could feel it swirling around your legs, beckoning at first, then insistent. They taught me not to fight it, but to ride it out. To swim parallel, to escape, and to call for help.
They taught me that Ithere would always be someone to help, but I would have to call out.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Creative Commons
What Is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a copyright system that promotes "the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools."
What does it mean for the site?
Everything on the site is under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): Human readable, legalese, unless otherwise marked. Every post should be be marked anyway.
Why CC?
Because the locked-up nature of the copyright system in the United States is stifling creativity and destroying the public goods that make up our culture.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Creative Commons is a copyright system that promotes "the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools."
What does it mean for the site?
Everything on the site is under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): Human readable, legalese, unless otherwise marked. Every post should be be marked anyway.
Why CC?
Because the locked-up nature of the copyright system in the United States is stifling creativity and destroying the public goods that make up our culture.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)