Nassim Taleb in the NYT
Apr. 20th, 2004 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoI see, poking around his web site, that Nassim Nicholas Taleb, one of my favorite writers about statistics and risk (Fooled by Randomness), had an op-ed in the New York Times a little less than two weeks ago on the 8th.
Good stuff. Go, read.
"The greatest flaw in the (9/11) commission's mandate, regrettably, mirrors one of the greatest flaws in modern society: it does not understand risk. The focus of the investigation should not be on how to avoid any specific black swan, for we don't know where the next one is coming from. The focus should be on what general lessons can be learned from them. And the most important lesson may be that we should reward people, not ridicule them, for thinking the impossible. After a black swan like 9/11, we must look ahead, not in the rear-view mirror."
Good stuff. Go, read.
"The greatest flaw in the (9/11) commission's mandate, regrettably, mirrors one of the greatest flaws in modern society: it does not understand risk. The focus of the investigation should not be on how to avoid any specific black swan, for we don't know where the next one is coming from. The focus should be on what general lessons can be learned from them. And the most important lesson may be that we should reward people, not ridicule them, for thinking the impossible. After a black swan like 9/11, we must look ahead, not in the rear-view mirror."
