
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: "What America does best is..." - byrneseyeview
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/play.html?pg=6
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eugenejen
I have to agree with him on that. I joked to my mother before that: the East
Asians culture takes failures as disgrace and encourage "Failure is not
optional" mindset, but U.S. culture takes it more lightly and as long as one
can learn from mistakes and not cover them up. That's why high tech inventions
are mostly happens in U.S.

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ntoshev
If the probability for black swans cannot be estimated, how do you identify
the possible black swans (to position yourself accordingly as Taleb advises)?
I think he swept this under the rug.

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byrneseyeview
You can't identify Black Swans; you can just assume that a lot of assets are
priced as if they don't exist. So you could do what he was doing as of a year
or two ago, and bet that oil will go to $10. Or $400. These are cheap bets,
and he doesn't expect them to pay off -- but if he also bets that housing will
double again or drop 20%, and that treasuries will yield 1% or 20%, and that a
third party candidate will be elected to the US presidency, and that the US
will experience net emmigration within ten years, and that global temperatures
will decline over the next fifty... make enough of these very, very cheap
bets, and you wind up with positive exposure to all the future events you
didn't think of.

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ntoshev
So you are not betting on black swans themselves, but you are betting on their
results. Thank you for this insight.

