At the risk of indigestion — though with a fitting break since the last serving — we reach the final course that has left the Knackered Hack out to lunch with Nassim Nicholas Taleb for so very long. One of the quant-professor-turned-essayist’s most digestible dictums is “don’t run for trains”. So, in full keeping with the Slow Food movement, this nutritional saga continues, unhurried yet inexorable, to its wafer-thin mint conclusion. Continue reading ‘caveman lunch with taleb – part 3′

Taleb on Journalism, Blogs, and TV

Back in his days as a mathematical options trader, Nassim Taleb used to watch financial TV with the sound turned off. That way he could remind himself that the journalists and pundits — with their endless commentary and market predictions — were more noise than substance. He made that confession in his second book, Fooled by Randomness (2001).

As a former financial newswire journalist, with some 15 years’ Fleet Street experience, I have found his indifference to the fruits of my toil a little unnerving. But, there are some grounds for hope. Taleb has also written that journalism is important because it’s the way we find out about the world. But every time I’ve heard him speak, he is always quick to mention that he doesn’t read newspapers — so one should not ask what he thinks about the news, a Google IPO, or whether US real estate is in a bubble.

Real-time journalism has mushroomed since Fooled by Randomness was published, and besides the plethora of news providers, there are more blogs and self-appointed experts out there than you can shake a stick at. So I felt safe with the assumption that Taleb would still be screening out unnecessary sound and fury, that he’d be dismissive of this new technological Tower of Babel. But as he tucked into his Tandoori chicken, The Black Swan author told me that he’s actually an avid reader of blogs. Continue reading ‘Caveman lunch with taleb – part 2′

Marketers say that people need to see or hear about something three times before they respond, for instance, by making a purchase. I think this may be a myth because it doesn’t work with my children: if I’ve told them once, I’ve them a thousand times…

But no matter. Here at the Knackered Hack we like looking for lost causes ready for a comeback, as part of our “curious study of broken things”. And it looks like the church organ is ripe for resurrection, on the basis of Continue reading ‘will doctor who regenerate the organ?’

Believe it or not, resolving the issue of the “chippiness” of your chocolate chip ice cream is an exercise in complexity. There’s a variety of ways to approach it: some good, some bad. The optimum outcome is ensured if the testing panel is represented by different, but relevant, points of view.

Scott Page, Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science and Economics at the University of Michigan, explained in an address to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts (RSA) in London today how Ben & Jerry’s determined the volume and size of chips in their chocolate chip brand. Laying out a range of options in a large room, the testers placed tubs of rising chip size along one axis, and tubs with an increasing number of chips along the other axis. The grid produced all the various options in between. From a complexity theorist’s point of view, the resultant scores should look like a rugged landscape, with peaks of preference forming across the matrix pointing to the best combination.

But, as Page said, chippiness was only one way of looking at the problem. Continue reading ‘how “chippy” do you like your ice cream?’

The ability to be anxious is hard-wired into us. It is part of the natural survival mechanism that prepares us for fight or flight. In a recent issue of Peak Performance newsletter, sports psychologist Dr Costas Karageorghis describes how sporting competition promotes similar psychological and bodily responses because there is often a threat posed towards the ego and self-esteem. But look at the list of symptoms that Karageorghis ascribes to anxiety and it is clear how crippling the condition is in other areas of life where even straightforward as opposed to elite performance is required.

Here is just a list of cognitive symptoms of anxiety:-

Continue reading ‘don’t make me anxious’