Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

The Times (UK) has an article on Nassim Taleb, and while it talks about his work, the more interesting bits have nothing to do with Taleb’s work.

What I find particularly interesting (and in some ways, rather profound) is Taleb’s philosophy on life, which he sums up at the very end.

Taleb’s top life tips

1. Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
2. Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
3. It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
4. Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.
5. Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
6. Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.
7. Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
8. Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants… or (again) parties.
9. Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
10. Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

Something to think about.

Today, I was hanging out with some of Beck’s friends (who, ironically enough, are detectives at the Cincinnati PD) and I absent-mindedly forgot my copy of Fooled by Randomness at the local Starbucks.

I went looking for it and asked the people at Starbucks if they’d seen it around. Sean, the ever-insightful barista, returned the book with a quip –

“You’ve gotta watch out for that random chance when things go wrong, man.”

Indeed.

Is it me or does it seem like there is something to be said about Taleb’s rants against the traditional practices of Wall Street traders and progressive betting in Blackjack?

The fact that progressions cannot overcome expectation is also rather interesting, given the way some institutions work.