User Is Content » investing

Nassim Taleb on the Financial Crisis

John — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:26:24 +0000

From EconTalk.org (Includes full transcript).
Direct link to mp3 interview
Nassim Taleb talks about the financial crisis, how we misunderstand rare events, the fragility of the banking system, the moral hazard of government bailouts, the unprecedented nature of really, really bad events, the contribution of human psychology to misinterpreting probability and the dangers of hubris. The conversation closes with a discussion of religion and probability.

Keep tabs on what Nassim Taleb is up to over at BlackSwanReport.com

TVO’s ‘Big Ideas’ – Another treasure trove.

John — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:38:27 +0000

TV Ontario produces a lecture format show featuring heavy thinkers. You can subscribe here. I’m posting links to a particular show I found especially illuminating on the subject of micro-financing and a new book, ‘A Billion Bootstraps‘ by Eric Thurman. Here’s the mp3 lecture but check out TVO’s Big Ideas Past Episodes page – hundreds of hours of pro audio lectures from the likes of Deepak Chopra,and Naomi Klein, as well as many you’ve not heard of before.

Bloomberg: CPI Inflation Data is a “Lie”

John — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 07:57:39 +0000

We have long railed against the absurdity of the CPI data. The ridiculous adjustments, the lack of correlation between CPI prices and reality… More

A SHORT COURSE IN THINKING ABOUT THINKING

John — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 07:54:44 +0000

A “Master Class” By Danny Kahneman
Danny Kahneman along with Amos Tversky won the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for their discovery of behavioral economics. I learned about them through reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s “Fooled By Randomness” and then Daniel Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness” I’ve become very interested in cognitive biases- as I understand them, built in tendancies to make bad choices. The idea is that by studying how humans tend to make errors in judgment we can learn to make better decisions. The “Start Here” link is to a Daniel Gilbert SXSW lecture which is extremely informative and entertaining.