Taleb at the Collective Dynamics Group — Micromotives

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Micromotives is a blog about behavioral decision making--how do people make decisions in the real world, not just in theory? What types of cognitive and psychological biases influence our thinking, both for better and worse? How do people really decide what products to buy, what stocks to invest in, or where to go for dinner? Insight into these processes can help us become savvier marketers, wiser investors, and better strategic thinkers. More fundamentally, a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of human reasoning will help us design processes and institutions which have the power to improve all of our lives.

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Taleb at the Collective Dynamics Group

After that last post on the Columbia Collective Dynamics Group I noticed that Nassim Taleb is giving an informal seminar to the group next Friday, Feb. 17th. I won’t be in New York then unfortunately, otherwise I’d love to go.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Dean’s Professor, Sciences of Uncertainty, UMASS at Amherst

Mild vs. Wild Randomness
The talk is on the nontrivial difference between Mild (Gaussian) and Wild randomness (non-Gaussian), its consequences for knowledge, prediction, and social fairness, and how it renders much of the statistical tools ineffectual. Related papers can be found on Taleb’s website: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/. Of particular relevance are /epistemologyfattails.pdf, /knolwedge.pdf, and /amherstclass/blackswanexcerpts.pdf (the last of which requires a username and password which will be included in the email announcement).

Anyone want to share access to that last file, which I assume from the filename is excerpts from Taleb’s next book, The Black Swan? Comments are open!

Previously: Columbia Collective Dynamics Group

February 11th, 2006

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