A note on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s website, www.fooledbyrandomness.com, mentions a coming addition to his seminal Black Swan:
PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM ON MEDIA HIATUS Nov 2009 to May 2010 with the 2nd edition of The Black Swan (and perhaps, hopefully, permanently, if the book publishers give me a break).
Bernanke’s farce was not a cause, but a nauseating trigger: I have more important things to do than keep throwing pearls before swine. I am fed up repeating the ideas of The Black Swan and the 4th Quadrant–I now let others work on the problems: Current research using the ideas of The Black Swan and 4th Q as a starting point. I am adding close to 100 pages to The Black Swan (much deeper philosophical material) for the paperback version (May 2010)
Meanwhile a Tweet from Taleb on Monday takes us to the following url:
One added section to The Black Swan http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/asperger.pdf
And so, we presume, follows Taleb’s deep philosophical thinking on matters post-crisis.
A clue to the disposition of the great thinker comes in the chapter’s title “Asperger and the Ontological Black Swan.” He begins:
Are nerds more blind to swans? Social skills in Extremistan– On the immortality of Dr. Greenspan
And sets the scene as follows :
I have spent considerable time away from the weight-lifting room repeating that a Black Swan for the turkey is not a Black Swan for the butcher. The same applies to the crisis of 2008, certainly a Black Swan to almost all economists, journalists, and financiers on this planet (which, predictably includes Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, the turkeys of Chapter 17), but certainly not to this author for reasons explained in Section I.
Some deep philosophical sputterings later, he concludes:
After this foray into the psychology of the dynamics of time and events, let us get into our central point, the very center of our program, into what I have aggressively called the most useful in the history of philosophy. The most useful, sadly.
For more pompously-penned prose, see here.
Any trouble understanding? Read here.
The great (media) unwashed perhaps click here, for the following Taleb Tweet:
I now take a hot bath after reading emails from businessmen or journalists; I then feel purified from the profane until the next email.
Related links:
The Black Swan battle is about to begin – FT Alphaville
Battle of the financial pundits – FT Alphaville