Sunday, November 16, 2008

Video: Nassim Taleb on Newshour with Jim Lehrer

PBS video highlighting the outlook of Nassim Taleb, who famously predicted the "black swan" event that we are now experiencing.

I would highly recommend checking out Taleb's book Fooled by Randomness - it's a very insightful, interesting read about the weakness of financial "certainties" - and was written before the financial world melted down.

Warning: after watching this video, you may be tempted to jump out of the nearest window. Please watch from a 1st story location, or even better, the basement of your house.

2 comments:

  1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Taleb "predicted" this. He said that certain events happened much more frequently than most people think. Given his personality, however, I don't doubt that he takes credit for predicting it, whether he did so or not.

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  2. Good point - "predict" was probably not the right word. Like you said, he was talking up the possibility of this type of "black swan" event, while the good times were rolling along.

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