{"id":867,"date":"2022-02-27T22:36:12","date_gmt":"2022-02-27T22:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/?p=867"},"modified":"2022-02-27T22:36:12","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T22:36:12","slug":"the-black-swan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/2022\/02\/27\/the-black-swan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Black Swan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I finished this <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/B002RI99IM\">book<\/a> a couple of days ago. Very interesting. It is about how not linear or logical are philosophy, economics and life. About how we try to find logic\/causality to everything. How history only teaches what we have only discovered. How we can&#8217;t predict properly, and much less financial market using Gaussian and Bayeasian models when these are non-linar systems, how we should run away from &#8220;experts&#8221;, how the academy is built in a status-quo that can&#8217;t be refreshed.  It is intense, it touches a lot of subjects. And sometimes I feel I get it, and later on I am not sure. Examples like the turkey that is feed for 100 days, and very likely &#8220;thinks&#8221; that will last forever, until without knowing, Thanksgiving comes, are brilliant. Similar examples for Casanova (who survived any type of incident) and NYC (like Casanova but at city level).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A black swan is considered something very unlikely to happen that actually happens or similarly, that something very likely to happen, it doesnt.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book was written in 2007 just before the 2008 financial meltdown so its attacks to the &#8220;risk&#8221; management can&#8217;t fit better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It uses references from Daniel Kahneman who some years later wrote a great <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.co.uk\/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman\/dp\/0141033576\/\">book<\/a> about how we (badly) reason. And won a nobel prize in Economics&#8230; funny enough, that&#8217;s a prize who Nassim attacks a lot around the book. As well, I enjoyed the part regarding the application of chaos theory\/fractals from Benoit Mandelbrot (that I read from his <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.co.uk\/Mis-Behaviour-Markets-Fractal-Reward\/dp\/1846682622\/\">book<\/a>) in the markets. He mentions many other authors like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Karl_Popper\">Karl Popper <\/a>(whom I have never paid attention), <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9\">Herni Poincare<\/a>, etc. As well, he mentions <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kurt_G%C3%B6del\">Godel<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The entries about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Philosophical_skepticism\">Skepticism<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Empiricism\">Empiricism<\/a> are really great. From how started, how it is related to the black swans and how Medicine killed more people than cure them until not long ago. And when I was reading about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sextus_Empiricus\">Sextus Empiricus<\/a>, I wasnt sure if he was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U\">joking<\/a>, but I was really surprised by the discovery of this philosopher\/physician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think I need to read it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finished this book a couple of days ago. Very interesting. It is about how not linear or logical are philosophy, economics and life. About how we try to find logic\/causality to everything. How history only teaches what we have only discovered. How we can&#8217;t predict properly, and much less financial market using Gaussian and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/2022\/02\/27\/the-black-swan\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Black Swan&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":868,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions\/868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thomarite.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}