« Comparative stock market performance | Main | From the department of similes that make no sense »
March 15, 2009
How did I miss this?
I'm a big fan of Nassim Taleb, and I think he's done us a good service by highlighting the importance of model misspecification and rare-event risk in financial trading strategies. But in Falkenblog's piece Taleb Blames VAR, Merton, Scholes for Crimes is a funny and substantive take down of the most extreme criticisms that Taleb provides. I think at some level Taleb must agree with Falken, in his book Fooled by Randomness, he buys treasuries, not bullets, rural land and bullets, so he must have some beliefs about America's ability to survive as a modern economy and since he doesn't spend all his money, some confidence that we aren't all about to be wiped out by an asteroid. As others have remarked, to maintain his status as a media darling he has to somewhat parody his probably more nuanced personal beliefs. It seems as though almost everyone who stays in the spotlight long enough does that. Just think what it has done to brilliant people like Krugman and reasonably smart ones like Gore.
Something to be concerned about if perhaps you are considering becoming a public intellectual or forecaster.
Posted by OneEyedMan at March 15, 2009 11:04 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)