here you go, on surf report, the video: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1462184#post1462184 enjoy, surf
Colbert was hilarious. Taleb: Take Google, September 911, the rise of the internet, Harry Potterâ¦They were unexpected and no one saw them coming, and after they happened, oh yah, it was so explainable by historians, scholars and academics, but before they happened, they were so unexpected. And guess what? These eventsâ¦they run the world. [The internet was predicted in several publications in the 1980âs. Harry Potter â an event that runs the world?] [Later] Colbert: So you sayâ¦911 could not be predicted. Taleb: It is very very hard to predict these events [He probably never heard of the July 2006 intelligence report that stated that Bin Laden was determined to strike within the United States of almost identical title] Colbert: â¦Iâm glad to hear that, because that means the 911 Commission was a waste of time. Because we shouldnât have investigated why it happend, right? Taleb: You need you need [sic] to investigate to see if it is predicatable or not⦠Colbert: But why? Why investigate something that canât be predicted, because there is nothing to learn from it. Taleb: No, after the fact, Okay, you have to look atâ¦uhâ¦first of all you can learn something from the event, itâs not like you canât learn at all. Colbert: Okay Taleb: But 911, 911, what Iâm saying is that its there is so many events like 911 that could have taken place, you see, so, its just to see if thereâs responsibility, is there any vigilance or no vigilance. This is why we investigated 911. Colbert: ..Is Iraq a Black Swan? We couldnât have ever foreseen it would go poorly, we would never have known that was not going to go well⦠Taleb: No, wars, wars, yah, listen, wars since Napolean [only since Napolean? This guy needs to learn some history]â¦we learned that warsâ¦wars are more and more unpredictable, more and more complex, the link between action and consequence becoming fuzzier, and I think that the war in Iraq was a mistakeâ¦we should have seen that it could have led to these dire consequences. [Taleb tripped over his own hubris] Colbert: We should have but we didnât, therefore we couldnât. [More] Colbert: It seems like youâre essentially saying the future is unpredictable. Taleb: No, Iâm saying, yes, my idea in the book is to show two things: number one that the future is rather unpredictable, it is dominated by Black Swans and these black swans are not predictable, and the second point that is quite central, is that we humansâ¦all right?...try to concoct stories [like his 911 story, his Iraq story and his Napolean story] to convince ourselves that the future is more predictable than it actually is⦠Colbert: The future is essentially not predictable. Taleb: Yes, itâs not. Colbert: By that logic, doesnât it mean that in the future you will be able to predict things, because you are predicting that you cannot predict things?
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The entire premise of his book is that certain rare events are unpredictable and we have no way of statistically modeling them yet they have an impart on people's lives. No ****. Is that a surprise? He gives examples of these events and their impacts as well as commentary but there is nothing profound or revolutionary to justify all the media attention it is getting.
I will only say this one more time. I'm not trying to be rude, but I suspect there is a reason (you're intelligent, so I don't mean to imply otherwise) you're not grasping the most fundamental point regarding Taleb : He built a profitable, option only, trading strategy based on unpredictable events.
Of course everyone gets that Taleb CLAIMS he has built a successful strategy with OOM options, and by the way, that is not revolutionary, except perhaps to him. What everyone doesn't get is why there is no evidence to that effect. Reports of audited returns reported in a credible source. Hot air and self-reported returns are not credible sources. As for the media attention, that is what PR firms are hired to do: they blitz the talk shows and get reviews published to push books. If the book can sustain itself after the PR budget runs out, it will be a black swan.
"Ask Paloma" is your only response? That isn't the same as audited returns reported in a credible source. But for what it is worth, ex-Paloma people said that Taleb washed out in trading and was removed to do research. But I am sure you will want to claim they are pasting the poor guy. They didn't provide audited returns to make their case, either, so it just makes Taleb seem pitiable, since they seem so happy to bring it up. Apparently there are no audited (and I mean from a credible accounting firm) returns available for Empirica, either. Again the only "evidence" of a successful strategy is hot air.