Atheists and the Stock Market - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/02/04/Future_Has_Always_Been_Crazier_Than_We_Thought

Bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb gives his take on beliefs, religion, and stock market analysts.

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The Future Has Always Been Crazier Than We Thought with Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses his book, The Black Swan in relation to predicting the future, learning from the consequences of the unknown, and the power of randomness.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an essayist, belletrist, and researcher only interested in one single topic, chance (particularly extreme and rare events, the "Black Swans" i.e. outliers); but it falls at the intersection of philosophy/epistemology (skepticism; knowledge about the dynamics of history; inferential claims), philosophy/ethics (stoicism facing random events; theories of nonhedonic happiness), mathematical sciences (probability theory, statistical physics), social science/finance (opacity & incomplete information in economics), and cognitive science (the mental biases making us "fooled" by randomness). He mainly derives his intuitions from a 2-decade long and intense practice of derivatives trading ("nondull" activities with plenty of randomness).

Taleb is currently a researcher at London Business School. He the Dean’s Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Fellow in Mathematics in Finance, Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University (since 1999), and research fellow, Wharton School Financial Institutions Center, and Chairman, Empirica LLC.

Taleb held senior trading positions with trading houses in New York and London and operated as a floor trader before founding Empirica LLC. His degrees include an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris. He is the author of Dynamic Hedging, Fooled by Randomness, and The Black Swan.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• atheism
• athiests
• stocks
• markets
• investing
• wall
• street
• belief
• faith
• god
• church
• religion
• hitchens
• dawkins
• harris
• foratv
• fora.tv
• fora
• tv

[TechnocracyNow]

Economics is not science. Science does not concerns itself with either values or opinions, and money is a value. Axiology is the study of values.

Investigate Technocracy Inc. for more information about a science based social synthesis.

[Radicalindifference]

DUH !! What kind of people go to doctors ? Come on it should not be difficult for an economist .Yes sick people .A truly shameful use of statistics by someone who should know better

[Shannmeister]

I have great regard for Mr Taleb but at 0:08 he says he doesn't believe in beliefs but at 0:37 he says he is orthodox. He is a bit of an enigma but that is what adds to the attraction of his argument. I do agree that you can't be dismissive of things like religion and not of the stockmarket. It is an imperfect mechanism where the the herd mentality adds fuel to the boom and bust cycles we go through.

[koolanator]

So the origins of faith healing and homeopathy was the result of failed attempts at science in the 1800's and earlier!? Those ignorant "scientists" F*ed it up for all of us!!! Bastards!!! ha-ha.

[TechnocracyNow]

@SaveTheWheat The machine is built simply to accelerate in response to this one operation. This is a useful lesson to digest. No machine, no group of machines may be properly operated except as specified by their design. America's idle factories, her wanton destruction of food supplies while her citizens remain undernourished are results of trying to operate a system by other criteria.

[TechnocracyNow]

@SaveTheWheat But machines must be operated in accordance with their design. If you wish to speed up your automobile, you must press the accelerator pedal. Into this problem enter no abstract considerations whatever, such as, is it ethical to speed up an auto this way, or is this the best of all possible ways of doing it?

[TechnocracyNow]

@SaveTheWheat These are all illustrations of scientific predictions. Some of these predictions, as you well know, are more exact than others, but they are all based on the same fundamental principles of reasoning from the basic facts. When more facts are known, more accurate predictions can be made. That is what is meant by the most probable; not that by this method one knows exactly what will happen, but by it's use he can determine more nearly what will happen than by any other method.

[TechnocracyNow]

@SaveTheWheat

In tossing a coin, how does one know how many times heads will turn up? How does an insurance company know how many people will die next year? How does a geologist know where to drill for oil? How does the designer of a building determine how many elevators will be required? How does the weather bureau predict what the weather will be tomorrow? How can the astronomers predict to within a second an eclipse of the sun 150 years hence?

[TechnocracyNow]

@SaveTheWheat Science is in a dynamic sense, essentially a method of prediction. It has been defined as being the method of the determination of the most probable.

[SaveTheWheat]

@jayjaygeebee

Gaining skills, creating products, providing services.

[SaveTheWheat]

@TechnocracyNow

It absolutely IS a science. Morality is a branch of science as well. He is saying that to believe in profit from the stock market, you must be superstitious. Because all profits are in that case is some special equation that breaks down when looked at. The truth is that YES the electron is still there even when you're not looking at it, and YES, the tree makes a sound. Every time.

[staranjela]

good work here