Conversations with Tyler - Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Self-Education and Doing the Math (Plus special guest Bryan Caplan)

Episode Date: May 23, 2018

Though what Taleb was really after was a discussion with Bryan Caplan (which starts at 51:50), the philosopher, mathematician, and author most recently of *Skin in the Game* also generously agreed to a conversation with Tyler. They discuss the ancient Phoenicians and Greco-Roman heritage of Lebanon, philology, genetics, the blockchain, driverless cars, the advantages of Twitter fights, how to think about religion, fancy food vs. Auntie Anne's pretzels, autodidactism, The Desert of the Tartar, why Taleb refused to give a book tour, inverse role models, why math isn't just a young man's game, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Click here for the full transcript where Bryan Caplan interviews Nassim.  Recorded May 2nd, 2018 Other ways to connect Follow us on Twitter and Instagram Follow Tyler on Twitter  Follow Nassim on Twitter Follow Bryan on Twitter Email us: [e-mail] Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox. 

Hey, everyone, a few announcements before the show. First, this episode featuring Nassim Nicholas Talab is immediately followed by a bonus segment. The bonus segment features Talab and Brian Kaplan talking about Kaplan's latest book, The Case Against Education. So that will play right after the conversation with Talab. And of course, if you haven't checked out Brian Kaplan's conversation with Tyler, it's also right there in your podcast app. Second, you tell of fans will know he wrote a book called Anti-Fragile, which is about things that gain from disorder. Audio recording systems do not gain from disorder, and ours failed for this live event. That means you're going to be hearing a backup audio recording, which unfortunately is of lower quality.

If you're having trouble following along with the audio, I'd encourage you to click in the show notes to the transcript and enjoy the conversation that way. Lastly, this episode does contain some explicit language, so if you're listening with kids around, you might want to pop in the earbuds for this one. We'll be back in two weeks with Tyler's conversation with David Brooks. It sounds much better, I promise. Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.

Learn more at Mercadis.org. And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit Conversations with Tyler.com. We're very honored today to have with us the great Asim Nicholas Talu. In regards of the Hall of Famer Ernie Banks from Chicago, we used to always say, let's play two

when there was the possibility of a double header. So Nasim Nicholas Talov has been gracious enough to agree to this tool event where first he and I will converse and then he will talk with Brian Kaplan. And just to be clear, as always, this is the conversation with Nassim Nicholas Talib, I want to have, not the one that you want to have. So to start with the very basic question. On page 7 of the Black Swan, you mentioned the 1975 Lebanese Civil War as having been a black swan of sorts.

And if we think back to the earlier history of the region, the growing role of the PLO in the country, the end of the Eisenhower, doctrine, which meant maybe the U.S. would not intervene. The prior conflict in 1958, ongoing differences in birth rates with more Muslims being born. Wasn't it, in a sense, actually fairly predictable and not a black swan? How do you see the history of their own country in this way? No, it's what I surprise everybody. It might have been predictable, but not at that scale for several reasons. The first one is that nobody understood the effect of modern weapons, because previous conflicts were more local, which was the first, you know, and more confined. You didn't have artillery, and then things died down quickly.

And then you have another thing that these idiots brought in the PLO and after 1973 to Lebanon. As a way that in Lebanon wanted to stay neutral with Israel, sort of like neutral, but in Gates would say, okay, you guys can fight frontier, but we're not going to fight Israel. So, and didn't realize that these guys were the first thing, you know, the rules were trying to take over to place. So the imbalance came not from within, but came from a huge number of armed Palestinians in Lebanon that disrupted the balance and caused immediately as a reaction the Christians to go in, you know, get on. What's the role in the Phoenicians in your thought? Well, I mean, the recent thing circulating that the Phoenician doesn't exist, and which is not true, I think, no, I mean, visibly, of course, they didn't call itself Phoenician but canonized, which is like the Greensman exist.

Then there's some kind of confederations. You had some people given confederations among them, among the states, the small little unstate in city states with their hinterland. And then we know that they, genetically, the Phoenicians seem to have come from Anatolia, largely. And they're, you know, Anatolia just the same place the Greek came from. So there is a connection that we'll just discovered a year ago. And maybe in five years from now, we'll have a clear review, you know, rewriting history based on ancient DNA. But that would understand the people. Why was it that Phoenicians really sort of like had some kind of great working relationship for the Greeks?

It looks like they were similar, maybe the same grandparents. And also there's some mysterious thing. Why is it that the only people who were in Athens who were not methic foreigners? The methic is basically a B. You can't both. So the only one who were not metric for the Phoenians were people from silent. And so there's some kind of, so this is why I like to call these people Greek or Phoenician. Modern version of the Phoenician, Greek of Phoenians.

And of course, now we know from DNA that the DNA of the past 3,700 years hasn't changed much. Of the local population, for the ancient one. I was talking with Eric Weinstein recently, and I suggested the following to him, that the way I read your work, on one hand, it was trying to explain what happened to Lebanon. So it's a very regional concern, but you're also trying to put forward a vision of what an alternative Lebanese history would look like, a Phoenician one. And that positive program was the under-discussed part of understanding your work. And you're trying to lay out how Lebanon could be seen or could be a Phoenician culture in the future. It is a nice of Mediterranean culture.

And it is very easy to convince people. in fact of textbooks writing the opposite. Let me tell you what happened. In 1860, the Christians in Lebanon did not write in Arabic. They wrote in a character called Garshuni. The American University in Beirut came in and tried to recruit Mazul in Denmark at the time it was called Syrian Protestant College. And they couldn't convert Mazal, so they decided to prefer Christians.

And they translated the first translation of the New Testament, or actually the Bible. actually the Bible, the whole thing, into Arabic, they thought was done by a surgeon, the Boston surgeon, called Van Dyke. That had been done 500 years earlier and failed. So this Arabization that started in 1860s in Lebanon, when the Turks were around, that is a distortion of history, a perception, away from the Ottoman Empire, which was all the place had been, you know, a thousand years under Greek Romans. So trying to move it closer to Arabia. And people bought the narrative because the Christians wanted to be non-Muslim, yet had the same rights.

So they invented themselves a genetic story that they came from Yemen. They came from a tribe called Melugasan. So the Christian invented themselves some kind of story. Yeah, the Phoenicians were here, but the Arabs kicked them out. And we the Christians come from, and it's talked about genetic books, that the population had the move, and effectively it's the same people. I see that you have Charles Corne, Characombe, with the opposite narrative, the Western narrative, that we are Greek or Roman.

We had the school in Beirut, Burrita school of Beirut, that for 500 years made or break laws, is the only place where laws were made in the Roman Empire. We are Greek Roman Empire. We are Greek Roman rule, away from the 150 years of the realization. And if you look at, if you look at Lebanon, you realize that 150 years of Arabizing the peasants had no effect. Exactly. You're Greek Orthodox by background, and if I were to ask, how do the Maronites fit into your schema? So there's a longstanding tension between these groups.

It seems to me often that the Greek Orthodox would actually side with the Muslims wanting a more stable. Lebanon, suspicious of the Crusades, suspicious of the Marines. What's your take on this? I'm glad you asked me, because finally someone understood the problem of the say, I'm sorry about the sultans, you know, when a lot of people, you know, when a lot of people, a lot of faction in Constantinople and the 1400s. You know, the Turks were already in the area surrounding Constantinople for 250 years before it was not. So, and a lot of the, initially, the Turks came in as a Byzantine Empire.

And they were very upset at the Russian, when they called themselves Caesar, is what do you mean Caesar? We are, you know, the Sultan is the continuation of the Byzantine Empire. And there was that tension, east-west. And this man sets itself to a religion. And let me explain what I saw. The coastal Levant was monstrously Hellenized, except for Beirut, which was Latinized, because the language of Beirut, I mean, people have to see that they used Latin,

and because it was school of law, but the rest was Greek, and the countryside spoke Aramaic. So that's the fact. And if you see the religion schisms, they map to Aramaic speakers versus one of the Israelites as a first schism. that earlier, of course, you had the historians as a schism. And you look at the line of how people had this schism in Asia Minor, and you see that these schisms were entirely rhythm by ethnicity. Sort of like the English, the Protestant versus Irish. It's the Irish, I think of them along these lines.

And, of course, the Byzantines were very suspicious, and they saw Islam as effectively it was not really unrealistic thought, Because if you look what happened, there's 500 years under the Ottomans, Serbia, is course, Greece State Orthodox, Romania Orthodox. These parts are Orthodox. So the idea, when you look at the world, the division, East-West, Christianity, not Christianity, it's thought that at the time those three blocks, there were the French, the Eastman's the Rome, it's called the Rome, and then there were the Eastern Arab.

So this is, and of course, and then progressively when you had the heresy, people would go to Rome because the enemy by enemy. So the Maronites and give them to tell the story beautifully how they came down to Tripoli to do a deal with France. When with the crew of the Crusaders to do a deal with Rome because of, you know, they wanted to move away from that. So the tension is not the intention that is modern. It is a tension with one between the Maronites and the Greek. orthodox is the attention that has been there forever. Let me give you a dearly one. And I want more comment that it's something, since we're talking about it first, I don't know

interested in Saint-Therner's. If you look at, I understand a few things, that you have historians, basically the Syriacs, the Orthodox are not Macedonia. You look at these people, the Syriac speakers who absolutely hated the Greeks, just like the cops hated the Byzantines. People forget them. Before the Arabs, once were in Levant and nothing else. So before they came by, you had two generations of Persians in Lebanon.

The Persians came and they brought them historians. Historians are similar to Marana, different heresies, and they brought them with them to Zoroastrians. And then they left the Persians or kicked out by the Byzanties. Those who stayed were Zoroastrians and historians, right? By some mysterious things, you find Zoroastrianism as a Shiite Islam born in Lebanon and converting the Persians, the same place where these guys were brought in. And the Shiites were in Lebanon, so it seems to me that the population of Zoroastrians who came,

because the Byzantine hated Zoroastrian and Husser and Hussians, and they stayed, or at least a religion, came in. And there's a big connection because of Russia is not she happens on. So let me give you just a fairly subjective impression I have reading your latest book, Skin in the Game. So there's this longstanding tension with the Maronites. You also have a very interesting discussion of why, in terms of Christology, Christ must in some way be at least part of man for God to have skin in the game. And I read that almost as your part of intellectual reconciliation, that the new element for your big vision of what Lebanon sort of could have been and maybe will be,

that you finally found a way of integrating the Maronites into your basic story that you yourself are willing to accept in India. Right. The first one is I was convinced until about seven years ago that the Maronites were migrants who came to Lebanon from them. Because effectively their language, the third language, the language is not Aramaic, but Syria. And the brand, that of course came. But it turned out, in fact, it's only the religion. The DNA is as vocal as it can be. Humanized are the descendants of the Phoenicians.

So on the Shiites in Lebanon. We Greek Orthodox and the Sunnis have a little more Greek or stuff like that. So that seemed to me. When I realized that, I realized that there were an apoptimists. So it was already something. So second point, now let's talk about skin and the game. As I was watching, to connect to this, as I was watching Donald Trump debate the other, the guy's wicks.

I was certain he was going to win. I couldn't figure out why. I was so convinced he was going to win, at least set stage in the primary. And it turned out, figured out, I said, yes. People love. And then people, turn out that I had heard the day before. the news that were effectively not that correct, that he lost more than a billion dollars on money.

I thought about it, I said, okay, is there anything more that shown a scar? You know, at least not real, that you guys are just like pencil pushers or whatever. So I thought about it, I said that the skin and again, exhibiting risk-taking is effectively what makes you, elevates you over the red. And it's traditionally you exhibit a scar for a kind of,

and kept the station coming from war. So effectively, it didn't hurt in Armin. I was a practitioner coming from trading. The trader who lost a lot of money, at least is real. It's not like a bad thing. So I realized immediately that, and then I thought about it, I couldn't fit that, had trouble figuring out, why is it, which makes absolutely no sense to Muslims.

And it makes no sense to anybody who's not Christian. But it makes so much sense to you if you're Christian. So why is it that makes so much sense to have a trinity? And then the Christ, is he God? Well, it's sort of like God, but he's not God, right? So you want to figure it out. Then you figure it out. If I go to the circus and I have a fellow walking on a tightrope with a parachute,

I'll ask for my money back. You see, that's how it works. So the Christ was sufficiently meant to have skin and again and sufficiently God to be God. The story that appears to be absurd that is necessary because it can't come back to the Trinity, no matter what they tried. Let me try comparing you to another best-selling Lebanese author. Are you the anti-Kalil-Gibran?

You both have books of sayings. You're both in a sense offering sermons from exile. Both moved to America. But he was Maronite. His influences are maybe Bahia and the Sufis. And you're in a sense doing everything in reverse and rebelling against him. I mean, you think that Gibran is kind of no way to stop for Remarthe. Yeah, Jebron is not a serious.

Plus, the other thing is he was 20, 30 invaded us two times. Byzantine outposts and they'll come in Vegas. So maybe you want to do some psychology on that. But I'm really, Jebron has never been in high standing in my, you know, I mean, a lot of people are in high standing from the area, but now Gibran. Let me try, question a reader in email to me. I quote, what advice would you give to the timid and unconfident? Does one seeking conventional employability and respect out of lack of imagination or lack of confidence deserve only contempt?

How does one be in the world meaningfully if you're not? The point is that we are imperfect and the way you can function best is accepting we're imperfect. This is why we have theology, on perfection you can find it. Incidentally, to go back to the idea of being orthodox, This is a way for us, humans, to rise above our condition of human, right? And it's given to its openness, it's equal opportunity for everyone. So if you consider that we are imperfect, and the way really you can do your reason for self-sacrifice, then you're a life for the sake of becoming more human.

He took risk and he suffered. Of course, it was a bad outcome. That was the idea. And sort of, I didn't talk about theosis too much. I just mentioned one footnote, that it's sort of like you understand that the way that we're not in here to accumulate one. We're in here to mostly to sacrifice, to do something, right? And the way you're doing it by taking risks.

Some people take risks and some people labor in the fields. But you have the option of doing either one or the other. But my point is you should never have someone rise in society if he or she is not taking risk for a situation. sake of others here. That's one rule. And the second one, you should never be public intellectual if any statement you make doesn't entail a stake, which is a fact that comes with, in other words, you should never have any risk. And then you can accept inequality that the person who's unequal is taking risks, because that would make things rotate. For example, if someone becomes a billionaire,

Okay, it's fine, it's unequal, but you've got to keep taking risks. You cannot be locked into a frozen upper-class condition and, you know, that use your situation to use the government. That's a good thing about America. It's a rotation that you have. When it comes to childbearing decisions, do men have enough skin in the game? Well, I mean, I don't know if we can divide things so narrowly because men have no life expectancy. So visibly, lower life effect. But today in Washington.

And of course, you have more criminals. And I have incarceration. So you have high rates. So maybe not in the bearing of a trial, but then do something else that's dangerous. Let me ask you another question about religion. Is volatility including exchange rates is a problem? Volatility as an issue.

So when it comes to religion, again, I wrote in here, we don't know what, because people start comparing the religion, the thing is it'll define. There are some religions, there are religions. Some religions are just bodies of laws. Judaism and Islam are not religions like Christianity is a religion. The exact opposite, and let me define, explain. The foundation of Judaism was law, right?

But it was municipal. I mean, it was for a tribe. It was law, you should not, so what is this, okay. And then, and Islam, the same word in Arabic means law in Hebrew. in Hebrew, but not in Syria, which is a Semitic language used by Christian, which, okay, when they used two different words, one knows, deemed for religion. So why is it so? Because the Islam and Judaism are laws. It's law. There's no distinction between holy and profane. Whether it's Christianity is not law. Why is it law? Simple reason. You remember the Christ said, well, this is

Caesar, this is not Caesar. Because with the Romans, had the law. So you're not going to make the law because they already have the law, and very sophisticated law in that. Christianity was, with Christianity, it was born the separation

of church and state. See, it's a secular, so effectively, a secular religion that says that when you go home, you do whatever you want. So, of course, Christianity had hiccups,

we have theocracies, a few, and it was old cosmetic. Like, for example, when you have the codes, whether theodos is a Christianian, or take Christianian's code, you look at it,

You see, just cosmetically, say, we bless it by the grace of God, two pages, sorry, the rest is intact. The Roman law. So when we talk about religion, so when people are talking about Salafi as well, it's not a religion that says that Mormon Christianity is a religion. It is a body law. It's a legal system. It's a political system.

It's a legal system. So people are very confused when they talk about religion. The comparing thing they're not the same. And effectively, when I say that I'm Christian, very different from saying I am whatever something else. And the same thing retates, and I say sometimes it describes ethnicity, being Greek Orthodox and more than something else. Or saying or being Serbian versus Croatian.

Sometimes religion becomes an identity, sometimes law, sometimes very universal. And so sometimes, the hidden thing you have pagan tendencies hidden under some kind of takia that you see in minorities in mastic religions like alaweis, rules, other... So comparing religions naively, silly, is verbalistic and leads to things like saying, well, he has the right to exercise his face. Some faith should not have the rights to be exercised like Salafis or extreme jihadism, because

because they're not a religion, they're an ecosystem. There's a political party that wants to ban. If you go with that, you know, you're repeating the circumstances. How is the Aramaic language influenced or how to structure your thought? I mean, zero. I mean, I picked it up later, but I think. But it's always interesting to this kind of, I'm built some philology. And I discovered two or three things when we're not skin the game.

I discovered that there are two kind of people, and hopefully we'll talk about it again with Brian. people who come from practice, people who come from theory. And we have, on this planet, we have linguists who absolutely don't know what the fact, sorry. So I noticed that in the description of categorization of languages, linguists are not fluent in the languages, they're categorizing. And it makes a huge difference. So I think the Levin team is close to Aramaic,

but linguists don't accept it because they have their metrics that don't work, but if you use statistical methods, then you realize that it's Aramaic. I'd like to toss out the names of just a few countries or regions, and you tell me whether or not you think they're anti-fragile. Singapore. Singapore has size going for it. So you're defining, it's like, you're saying we're talking about a city. The city state.

Isn't it a vulnerable city state that relies on our protection? We don't always care? Who's going to be? One thing I've learned from history, you know, take the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians, they really have an army or didn't have an army. Well, at some point had some army that children when I say it's not economically viable. Why? When you come to invade them, unless we never could knowzer, supposedly in history,

books say that he was very nasty, but it takes place. And the genetics actually goes. And a guy comes in, comes in very bloodthirsty, comes to you. And you tell them, listen, what do you want? You kill us all. You get nothing. What are you going to get? Just, we'll give you 5%.

All right? So what do you want? Five percent is something? or 100% of nothing. So that's how the Phoenicians operated. So someone would come in. I mean, they had a hiccup with Alexander. One pound tired of the hiccup with Alexander.

But they hadn't had an problem on both sides. But other than that, we haven't had. So it worked very well as a system of the Solucids to conquer the Phoenicians, right? The Phoenian, the Phoenicians came in. They said, okay, the system at the time was patronage. You come in, you're a facile state, and then you say, what it is. So, and then you guys are a bit caring, you understand. I live in New York City, so I have two options. One, pay the state, with all of this,

that's going to go 50-some percent, taxes, and they almost get nothing. Or you go to the mafia now, you give them 2%. I think that you want done, 2%. So that's exactly what happened. So think about the defense budget, if it were run for the mafia, all right? So the guy would come in, so at the system at the time, was the system, what you say conquer the imperial methods everywhere, including the Ottomans, before them the Roman, before them the Celocides and the autonomies who had more integration. The whole technique was, it's very clear. And remember that government role in GDP was at the turn of the century in France.

So having being, you're not part of the integration, you're not for military homeless. And so the idea of Singapore or someone who invested in Malaysia decided to say, They go to Singapore. They've got to do with it. They got nothing. To go to Singapore, tell them they only want 10%, and then they break it down to 3%. Who is in Russia?

Fragile or anti-fragile? I did something, a did study on countries when we wanted to look at, they're using metrics in this style of predicting stability of countries based on past. Me is this absurd. For example, if you take,

because the metric, tell you that Sondon said that took a set of countries, same government for 40 years, 40 government in 40 years, which country is more stable? Two sets of countries on the right, one on the left. They said the one that has the same government, same families, actually, people here in this town at the Woodson Center. So countries on the right were Syria, and a way for a second shoot and drop. And the other one was Italy, and last time I checked until you were still standing. So the idea of countries that are, have a very,

too much stability becomes, have zero volatility. You're smoothing to cover things up, right? Or if you have, or if you, for example, someone has employed, who has a very stable salary because he or she is employed as employment, and basically you can't do anything,

whereas someone has a little volatile income is more about. In these countries, in these countries had effectively, the two properties. One, they took a lot of heat. This was very, very, very, very, very, Armenia, brooms through that phase. So, country that, I mean, so this makes me believe that they can take another economic crisis, any crisis, and survive. They have proof the ability to survive. I'm not sure of France.

They had the same disruption. Erdogan's Turkey, fragile or anti-fragile. I'm going to Turkey. But what you see on a, the Turks are very happy because they're going to Turkey. because they got washing machines, they got stuff, and they attributed to where they're associated with gross, not so much with religion. PLL, fragile or anti-fragile?

PLO. Ballast, you liberation, okay? Yeah, I mean, yeah, they were anti-fragile. When they were in Lebanon, they had nothing to lose. So this is why they had no skin in the game. That's true, that was the idea. But we had not so they engaged in civil war. In Lebanon today, every time someone sneezes

in downtown Beirut, people are afraid civil war, okay? But they don't realize that everyone is down to here in real estate. So nobody has any interest in the New Egypt War. It's not like since 1975 or 1973. What's it like as in six Syria refugees? There's a very nice, there's Sunnis and they, my mother hates Assad and they love us, the fights between my mother and one of them went to Syria and to vote for Assyria on the Mold is. So I think so I want I do as I talk to him to know what's going on. Siblings and the, he's violently,

his Sunni violently, why he said, and he religious Sunni. He said because at least you get it. So for him, Assad was a stability. And effectively for a lot of Syria. So you've got to look at Syria from Syria, not Syria from Saudi Barbaria finance lobby is here. You get a different story.

People want stability. But one lesson I learned from Syria that he's complaining. He said, you know, his cell phones. I go here in Lebanon. This guy sell it for $200, this guy, $20, $20, $40. He said, Syria's perfect. Same price everywhere. So the boss has indoctrinated people to the point of maybe no return. But, I mean, people understand, met you a lot of Iraq, you like Saddam to come back

after what they saw. What they saw. So the idea that they all have a goal. part of the same. The analysis, if you're on the grounds, you don't have this theoretical thing. This guy's an asshole. You guys like scissors, right? You look at both sides of scissors. That when you have silverware, you have two findings, they have, so you take the least

as well becomes only one portion. So the idea, I mean, Assad blew up, his father blew up by 1982, voted for Troisbury in the January. And they came in and go up our house. So I have a hatred for Assad's family. But at the same time, I just realized. have a bigger agent for the jihadis and for the clients of Obama. So this is how we got to analyze it comparatively, not naively.

I have a series of quick questions to ask you about the topic of wisdom. I'll just shoot these out. Feel free to pass if you don't want to address them. First, what is the biggest mistake people make when they go to the gym? Is they exercise too much? What's the best way to find and consume, dark chocolate? I think that's one thing that somehow I lost a taste for chocolate. But the best way to find them consumed is not those labels, you know,

the fancy thing made by food farmers probably bit in Brooklyn. If you were here today, what would you ask of America? Well, you would think of Trump. What can we learn from Sufism? I have a branch of Islam that effectively peaceful. If you know that, so that's very convenient. destroyed by funding. The number of Sufis, Ottoman Sufi,

the big triple 11th. It was Sufi. Not Sufi, because of funding from Saudi Arabia, you indoctrinate two generations, that's it. How do you find the right mentors in life? I don't know, but I know how to find interest mentors. How do you do that? People know they know something.

There's a fellow I worked with, and I knew that. He was a complete failure. to the last person. So what was there was something wrong? He was always got into detail. The details, only one set of detail. You cannot get into more than one set of detail. So that's one thing I learned.

And then also by inverse role models, people don't want to be like, you're willing to have an instinct to know with all people. Look at what they've done, what they do, and then you complement, you do a reverse interpretation. And it works.

What's the best thing to do on an airplane? You don't need. That's the, the, the fellow because usually two-35 people, number one makes you look forward, you know, to opening your computer and it kills time like nothing. I have no idea, but one thing for sure that's working with cryptocurrency is that it's forcing those fox here in Federal Reserve to understand that they don't have monopoly over our lives. All right. So that's one thing. Okay. So they are scared.

Really if I use somewhere, decide it to pollute in some ways a quite non-robust system, maybe under small probabilities. Okay. The systems get robust. It was a letter of credit. Okay. And we're practicing letter credit at two level. The first one, you know, the recent one since, you know, commerce for five hundred years. And of course, over time, you find that you debug it so long you don't have a lot of transaction on one single boat.

And then you figure out if it doesn't work that someone will rig something with the, you know, a trick that would have other flaws. But so we'll probably be parents. And if you take earlier, the blockchain would resemble Phoenician mode of trading. Programmefinition will call your mother if you don't go to the merchandise. Right. So the whole idea that the minute, the whole, the concept of receipt of merchandise, or coupled with the receipt of merchandise is a brilliant idea.

So this is why, I mean, at some point we will discover the flaws of blockb... There are plenty of flaws, of course. Are they fragile or anti-fragile? Semi-sophobic. The problem is locally, it draws so long that we don't know how Sephardic Carrier and brothers have been caught. You know, the sum, it's like a flocks of birds, being differently from the sum of birds, like Marcus being differently from individuals.

So when you have a flocks of drones, Typically, it's one computer running all these drones. If one computer ran all the such driving cars, I think it's a great idea to ourselves to drive. If someone in a car is responsible, if someone is, either someone I can sue or someone I can, you know, blame if something great, who is in a vehicle, not setting a sub-computer, not some anonymous person.

And should we someday just all collectively turn our back on social media? No, because social media is Lidde. And let me tell you what, Lidde means that there's things that are robust to time, there are like some basins that are already talking about. No, no, no. Okay, the book is 500 years old under this form and maybe several. So the Lindyb is that they're robust to time. Now, it so happened that we accept

the people receive news without being conveyors of news. Nuclear family, receiving information and not transmitting. So that was the news. There was a little bit of alteration in the process. Social media. So I, like there was a false element. I learned yesterday in Saudi Arabia, there was a coup or something, but you can figure out that there are some people who can trust, other you can trust.

And those you can trust, we quickly identify them, for those who cry wolf. And so social media is bringing us back to a naturalistic environment, because, say, in Athens, the newsroom was a barbershop. So social media is great in that respect. And I love it because I didn't, I don't have you, I refuse to have. I haven't booked or at least. I did one in love. I said, what? I said, okay, find other authors. By setting some people.

So there was no book review in the US. And then we told a cell list of times to exist as an author. Twitter is sufficient. Twitter. Final segment, I have a few questions on what I call the Nassie Nicholas Talat production function. So you've written a few times that you've described yourself as an aesthetic in some ways. How did you become an aesthetic early in your life? A.

A-C-E-I-C-E-I-C. Yeah, you mean like up the mountain, you mean that. So I have known that aesthetic, but I discovered, okay, so let me give you an anecdote in a book. One day I went, we realized the three-star mission I read, that's work was not controlled by the outside of pizza, the same meal, right? Except that, but it's a good at the game. So you discover that your preferences are people are happier in small quarters than

Merrill Street. I'd rather eat with someone else a sandwich provider than, then, And so it's the same, the thing they discovered little by little, that even from a hedonic standpoint, okay, this sophistication effect of burden. But aside from that, there is something also that from the beginning you realize that that the hedonism, like pursuit of pleasure for pleasure of sake, there's something about it that's doing something productive in a sense of link with something that I think that fits a sense of honor. feel good. What books influenced you early in life, say before you were 15 years old? The book I kept reading is the desert of the Etape december. So even before you were 15, before 15, I read the Dostoevsky.

There's a scene that maybe at 14 when I read it, is the prince, Michigan was given a story. It's actually, it was autobiographical for Dostoevsky. He said he was going to be put to death. And as they woke him up and were taken him to the execution place, he decided to live the last few minutes of his life with intensity. And he devoured life. It was so pleasurable. And promised himself if he survives to enjoy every minute of life the same way.

Okay. And he survived. In fact, it was a similar problem with execution and so seriously. And effectively, that says the guy survived. And the lesson was he no longer than that. It was like preferences of the moment he could carry out late. He forgot about the Eryoroszky when I was in kid. And then I'd become obsessed with this question.

And what was your favorite part in the Bible? It's too many names of the Bible. So it's a final question. Yes. What is it that you do in your moments of solitude? And that pleases you or that's a form of work. It believes anxiety. No, no.

I only develop anxiety when I go to fancy restaurants. With, with, when I don't know something right, but I don't have a, that math is, a little age, like math less than math is young men. It's more and more enjoyable, so there's always something to solve. And usually the beauty of that, that's totally unpredictable. It takes between one minute and one day. Based on, you know, your own upbringing as a boy, if you were giving him through the age of 18, What would be the takeaway you would offer from your own life experience up to that age?

Become an auto-do-do-bye-back. Don't waste time trying to get... Remember, the stuff I read by myself. Remember, stuff were given to me in time. But I discovered that I wanted to be a writer as a kid. So I realized that to have an edge of the writer, you can't really know what people know. We've got to know a lot of stuff that they don't know. So I started reading books.

And effectively, you know, and... And I've also read books with some instinct that would be helpful 20 years from now. So therefore, it's not the latest non-fiction, Bessar. So I read a lot of stuff. And I think that I would recommend it the same. Read as much as you can. And folk are trying to get the lowest possible passing grade you can in school. And don't study stuff like history because it's got to be revised.

All these important things like chemistry is I think probably the only thing you can pick up. school that's useful. Steve Nicholas Talon, thank you very much. We now welcome to the stage, Brian Kaplan, of our Ronald George Mason University. Brian and Steve Nick Musilip will converse. I simply will open it up by handing it over to Brian. Actually, this whole event started with two tweets by Talib. First tweet begins very promisingly.

Excellent argument by Brian Kaplan. You missed something central. Convexity of trial error. and heuristic learning. I sort of wrote anti-fragile using Keeley's argument and transcending it. Would love a discussion slash debate to Tyler County. And then when I said, I'd be happy to do this and I was willing to go to New York, then Nassie wrote back second tweet, I will go to D.C. if you agree to read anti-fragile, including the appendix.

So put it on agreement. I have read Indie Fragile, including the appendix. And now I can see several possible central things I've missed. But since I've actually got you here, what specifically did you have in mind? The first thing I wanted to discuss was something I called the Green Lumber Fallacy. And let me tell you something about what I described. There's a book called What I Learned, Losing a Million Dollars. And the fellow, Green Lumpur Hallows, Chemistry, This, the Weather Better, and that fellow or Judas Siegel, Jeremy Segal or Joey Segal or something like that.

And that fellow, one day, the narrator who lost all the money, correct, that fellow who was discovered didn't know that green lumber was not lumber. So the lesson is that from the outside, Segal knew nothing about lumber. He knew a lot of stuff that revealing. Is that something I missed? Yeah, because the stuff that they, the point is that they're hidden secret. discovered within a profession. That's an introduction. The second one is a convexity. You're overweight a person you can find who wears a jacket. A recipe.

Finishing everything. The chemist, or my chemists here, NIH and all that sort. The chemists working on equations only. And the other people, the fat-to-gressed people, would be, there was a following. You take an existing recipe to the recipe. If you have an improvement, you just give the food to the... Who's got to get... Because that's close to my first guess about why you had your mind. Exactly. Yes.

Yeah. So my first guess was actually, you agree with the traditional academic curriculum isn't very useful. And learning by doing is. There are two things I said. And then I missed the chance to explain why learning by doing. That sounds... I'm not blaming you about it. Use your argument for society to improve people.

The, you know, the Romans, the black swan is to back the... The next one is dedicated to the Romans. So I understand that the engine that I made was that rather the monocardial are stupid, and what they count slightly better than the previous thing, aggressively don't travel there. So the root of suggesting education is you send people, you make people work as nurses and then they go to medical school. And effectively, I spoke to a lot of doctors and they think it's a good idea

because they're afraid of medicine being out to theorize, becoming to theorize. becoming putsy rise. You make people and then you go study economics. We're living longer so this idea of front-ploding education makes no sense. So there are plenty

countries where you don't have to get an undergraduate degree to go to medical school, right? In the US, first you do an undergraduate degree then you go to medical school. Sounds like you were saying better to be a practitioner for four years and then they'd go to medical school and just skipping an undergraduates. Not skipping undergraduates.

Think about that model. I know because we folks, And then it's called math. I've got to learn, right? So that one factor. That was it. But the idea doesn't work.

You should try and practice that theory. That's the wrong way. So now what do you think about people who make the following argument, only you can decide whether it's a true black swan argument, but people might put it forward as their version of black swan argument. So a lot of people say, well, sure, virtually all of these subjects that you're learning in school are useless. But there were positive black swans.

Once in your life, an academic subject you studied is going to turn out to be absolutely crucial. In one example of this, there was a guy who said, well, look, actually French was really important. It was totally worth the time because one time I was at Charles de Gaul airport, and if I hadn't spoken French, I would have missed my flight. And we will, so you spent three years studying French to avoid one mis-flight. That seems like pretty free. But anyway, but you can imagine someone giving something like that saying, sure, almost all the subjects are no good. But there's one, you're going to get one positive black swan out of your whole education. education. That alone makes it a more argument that's more potent. You're spending how many hundreds of

hours studying something you're not going to remember later where you could spend that time to save stuff. There's something that it's a business. So like any business, so it's very hard that it's good for you. It's a reverse of medicine. These places have very low level of education. Total education had a huge amount of apprenticeship. This is knowledge. This works. And something formatted. So that's his argument. And the one he's Now we're looking at either to go deeper and to the alternative, a deep state of education sort of like that tries to sell you something for a quarter million dollars, that's worth nothing, right? In factually it's negative because of time we spend there.

And why we should have effectively knowledge. People who say, look, the reason why school is great is that there's going to be something to learn there that's going to be invaluable. Say, look, I agree that it makes sense to expose people with a variety of subjects, but it seems like it makes a lot more sense. who suppose them to 10 or 20 subjects that are actually likely to use, then 10 subjects that virtually know what Earth uses. So, you know, rather than saying let's have, let's make sure everyone studies poetry and art history and a foreign language in America and everyone learns a bunch of sports. Instead, like, why not make sure everyone spends a few weeks learning some plumbing,

a few weeks learning some electricity, a few weeks going and just learning some customer service. So they say, yeah, you like, you know, you do want to have a diverse menu and you don't want a 12-year-old into a career, everybody's well, but still far better to go exposed into a tasting menu of realistic options, rather than the tasting menu of pipe dreams, which is what seems to be a... Yeah, but mostly about... Yeah, but the root of that, my feeling, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, is the desire, what they call the liberal arts education, to aristocratists, because, again, let's talk about the great Roman work.

There are absolutely nothing practical about it. So things, the liberal education was what people learned to be in order to become a... And then you had the real... Look down and the English, when the upper class, of course, they didn't want to be working class, so they send their kids to learn that stuff. And this is what came to America. So education has put in two. You have technical education like law.

Engineering is really connected to the other ones because the Roman engineers did not use in geometry. And then we only started using... You see in geometry, there's years with built cathedral, it was like in geometry. And it was actually more robust. And you've seen geometry give you these ugly corners. Before, because there was no one of the right. It was more involved, was rule of thumb, and it was, so it's different.

So they had a separation segregation. So what you want to do is, if it's liberal education that's contaminating the rest, or is it the technical that's expectation of education we should be having. So you say, okay, this is the kind of thing you do that. It's important to become civilized. stuff you do to be civilized, feel civilized, and be able to have dinner with the vice president. These are the things you do to get your head in life. So your problem has been known the problem ever since, you know, we've had the Roman Greece.

So my most controversial policy proposal is just less. So educational austerity, spending less on education. I've noted that when someone says we need more money for education, The reaction is normally, yay, not what specifically you plan to spend the money on. On the other hand, when I said, let's spend less on education, the only reaction is precisely. What exactly do you propose to cut? Anyway, so not something the law of people are interested, but reading it through, I get the feeling that you might actually be willing to cousins. A draining of the educational swamp through cutting off some of their money.

You bet. I went to India once and I have no advice to do anyone. I don't understand. So I said, I've opened a thousand schools by one university. I opened that said that. Okay. And then sure enough, a year later, I see a headline Modi a speech saying, and actually I said that to Modi, right? Modi saying, we're rather open a thousand schools than a single university.

And then the focus on technical, what's the problem in India? Yeah, they have long-educated people with all sociology. Okay, it's nice, but it's the kind of thing for dinner with the DP at the World Bank and stuff. If you want to know how to electricity, how to do this point, coupled with complete misery with something in the middle, which is the technical schools. So, like a standard critique in the elementary education is that is also terrible. Teachers don't even bother showing up, very little learning going on there. Like a normal American reaction to say we need to go and get the Indian schools in order so that teachers show up and do their job. And my reaction is more of, given this has gone on for these decades, why don't we cut them spending first?

And then say maybe you can have some of the money back if you actually start doing your jobs. It's getting into the game. So I kind of get it. It better. It's good. It's good. You know, very young, spend three or four hours or something. I mean, just like, you know, if you're, how do people learn medicine in the old days?

It was a generational thing. and your father is a doctor and a lot of women in the health sector, and then you learn at this, you know, that's a professional state within families. And their secrets are transmitted, they won't get to the outside, which unfortunately we don't have because of the end, the problem is knowledge and education that it's always broad skills are that today the Roman head. Reading a book, I know like one thing we had in common is things that we've seen with our own eyes way heavily upon both of us. us. So, I mean, to me, like a lot of my extreme negativity about education actually comes not only from my own education, when I go to back to school night, when I go to parent teacher night, and I just think, well, if you were to go and tell these people, tell you, you know, teach your kids to go and learn how to do something, would I trust these people to carry out that

order? And my ex says, no way, these are touchy-feeling people who do not want to think about anything in terms of practical results. They don't like the idea of their being. oh, like a test, like, did he learn it or not? Instead, for so many of the teachers that I saw, it really is all about the experience and you enjoy the experience, where I'm there saying, no, it's not just about the experience,

about do you know something at the end? Can you do something? Can you show me? And don't say that it can't be measured. If you really knew something, you could come up with a test of measuring. I think that the idea, again, that if we go back to the Asians, the feedback is peer review,

not feedback from reality. So in other words, a carpenter has a feedback from his clients or her clients. Whereas a macroeconomist has only feedback from Paul Krugman, so it's basically closer. So there is a, when you want to learn something, and this is why, I mean, 80 years, there's a fundamental problem with probability.

It's so obvious that very government doubt. Every trader knows, but no decision science or no psychologists, No, because they're not risk-taker. So you had split into these two things, learn from a professional who has done the stuff. You don't go learn from people, do it, okay? And if you want to, so in the old day, you're supposed to be an auto-lite act under a tutor. So none of this classroom high after that. That's a liberal education where you're still, I mean, the English, the office camera system still had deeds where you're self-directing, you're all learning.

was for a cross case because it makes you read a lot of interesting. Maybe it goes through these phases. So we have to reform education to turn people into auto-lidact. Plus, there's another thing. Two classes of people. It's going to gain one of my educators because it's selective. Scientism. I tell you the science is settled and stuff like that.

But these people have a mindset that science is scientists. Because they don't know enough science, all they know is how to communicate. And that is the problem. So you're learning, you're realized that you're not learning from someone without science, learning from someone who transmits science. And I tell you now, I was lucky that I didn't have a good math teacher when I was a kid. I started zooming out because then I would become mathematics. I'm self-taught teaching, the way they teach you mathematics,

is really to deter you from lucky mathematics. So you probably don't get this a lot. But when I was reading anti-fragile, I often kept thinking, my God, he's such an optimist. I can't believe that he thinks the world works this well. Yeah, no, I'm an author. Yeah, yeah. Yes, like this is. Like when you said, look, you can either learn from peers or reality.

I mean, how about the thing that usually happens, which is that you are learning from a person who doesn't even know the subject they are teaching, which is what I see happening in so many classrooms. You know, like, when I see history teachers who know less history than the better students in the class, and these are the teachers. And I'm going to say, look, I mean, like, I'd rather that they have someone that, you know, someone you're talking about, someone who only knows what they know in books, but at least they know that. So I'd rather have that person teaching the class. Yeah, what's happened now more and more in education, but how do you become a professor in tenure? It's by writing some kind of garbage about something. So, so you think that.

So, for example, I was trying to read something about it. It was all on Wikipedia and all the commentaries was about gender study approach. I don't want the theory. I wanted the facts, and you can't get the facts. So we end up with a lot of people, in fact, today this generation, because of the competition, competitive environment in a closed circuit, that basically don't know anything about humanities. All they know are the theories, you're sure about this, this,

and the post-colonial approach to this and that. And for example, when you start arguing with people who studied about something called the Eastern Studies, you shouldn't exist as a discipline. Let's assume they start talking about colonialism, 21 and a half years in a lot. explain to me the colonialism. They say, well, they don't even know the basic facts. Because the more that they have a ratio of theories and by words,

is someone that's good at Marxist's interpretation of this and this is the post-chapter world, right? And they don't know the facts. So this is why you can't rely on these instructors, to teach you the humanities because you don't get tenure from knowing the facts, you get tenure from inventing some post-structural theory of baking beans and, mid-sassanite the Persia. That's how do you get your opinion. So these guys are different. In other words, wouldn't it be a big step up if we replace current academics

with equally idly tower academics who just have a command of the facts? Yes. But how do you select for these? Well, based in Europe, for example, they have a separation between researchers. Those are supposed to know that you're going to become that's lower middle class, right, for researching and leave a salon. So this is how we stand in front of course. And you get so people who instruct

history lessons, know actually some history. You don't have that. So one argument that I made is that almost every student has an intuitive understanding of the signaling model that I'm defending in my book where I say, the main thing you're trying to do is impress employer is not actually the material. And here's a passage out from any fragile

that is very signoid friendly. So, quote, I wasn't exactly not in the Dydex since I did get degrees. I was rather a barbell autodinect. As I studied the exact minimum necessary to pass any exam, overshooting accidentally once in a while and only getting in trouble a few times by undershooting. So would you say that you headed into an understanding of the signaling model?

Yeah, I know that you have... Getting the stamp of your forehead. Exactly. And I decided to come to work, you know, decide to come to school in America. Why this is it was very difficult to bid. Sometimes I say, okay, let me try. What do you have to do?

You have to take this test. So what do you do? Best GMAT or something like that, scores. So you go in and you spend it until you buy a lot of coffee. You lock yourself up for it. Then you go take the test. Business school is mostly a way to meet people unless you went to time. It was a waste of money.

There's some things for petty dancing or stuff like that. So at business school, you have no skills. Basically, there's a signaling that you discover, but I didn't need the signaling. Very consistently, yes, you agree. You may even still meet where you are today? No, no. Civil War Lebanon. So you have anxiety. It's very scary to be pushing from the area, particularly at the time.

So this is why I want to make it. So you want to get the degrees, you want to do this, you want that, or buy a nice soup. So all the signaling, you have to cover the signaling, and on top of that have the skills. So this is, that was what pushed me. And effectively, I am certain that I discovered another thing, that the Pathamad's interest in this way to me.

You're so much in trouble. You have to think, you learn a lot of stuff, and you don't know how it got the result. And you show to mathematicians they don't believe you did it. And then you did it. Burning on smoke at the entire computer time. So you push to do a lot of stuff under necessity, necessity. Necessive rather invention. And the stuff you do under these pressure, regulate something, and putting them in a classroom

and giving them credentials, it got to be something else. Plus, there's another thing about you that I disagree with you at one point. It's good. It's a good memory for people who want to be doing. It's a good metric for people who want to become employees, people who create partisans, the Bill Gates, the Steve Jobs, you know, these are the people who make the engine work and the other people. For these people, again, I mean, you're going to look at these people as a disproportionate, part of the sample.

Now, my idea, IQ, and I remember when I want to hire a trader, you would not quiz them on something, because you know they all have engineering, so you have some kind of availability. So they all, you know, the SAT test and done it, right? GR.E. So what do you get? You tell someone, listen, I want a French suit. This is this size, this bottle, this size, and you have an hour to go get it in New York City. For example, that's the kind of test with good people to see if they can go find that suit.

You have a project which I want you to get me this, this, and you have an hour to do it, or two hours, right? And to see how people, first of all, how people get confused at your request. And these are the real life you best. Or possibly test to common sense. Psychologists actually do have a whole separate set of common sense tests, which are interesting because common sense is something where people keep improving into their 50s. Unlike IQ, we're actually, these sub-kinds are getting worse. So these tests are actually pretty interesting. There's tests like your current race down on a mountain road in the middle of the snowy night.

What do you do? And like smart 18-year-olds give answers to get them killed. Whereas like normal 50-year-olds give answers where they survive. And he's like, wow, right? So there is actually something this idea. No, there's, yeah. I think of getting the suit as part of the part of a lot of that is actually testing common sense, which is an important but actually a different kind of skill.

But that's a central skill you need than the... Yeah, it is more. There's a skill you need, how do you make it? So these are the tests that don't succeed. Yeah. That's a good question. So the original tests were actually written before their cell phone. So then it would, then it normally involved getting on the other side of the barrier and then walking carefully to a call box.

Rather, you know, it's winding mountain roads. So, like, a lot of people say try to wave down a car, but it's winding up a road, so they're getting hit by the car. So, again, on the other side of the barricade, and then very, holding, holding the barricade, walk. A pretty good answer to that. So you totally get a different question. So you, like, you know, it seems like you and I are very much on the same page on, you know, spread out, you know, you have valuing vocational education. There were a lot of academics who say, no, no, no, no, no.

Vocational education is no good because you never know if any vocation is going to be wiped out. So one of the referees said, oh, should we send them to go to typewriter repair school? That's not yet. And no, you shouldn't send a tight grade repair school. Now my answer here is, look, it's better to go and train people for things that seem likely to be useful, like plumbing, than to train them for things we know are not going to be useful like poetry.

So can we know anything about the book about where they caught me in 40 years. You said poetry will not be a big part of the economy. So, what do you think about this? There's a separation of things you do to become civilized. It's the things you do to make money thereon, and people conflate one for the other. And to come back, it was something you do to have an intellectual exercise. It was not required because it actually degrades the way they made. And conflating the two has actually...

There is the propaganda that we're getting. It looks like the race... But it was a bit of mathematics, stuff like that. So you separate these two by institutions that are completely insulated from one another. Things you do to become civilized, like known in the history of Scotland. And the things you do, we bring that back computer science. I know there's two classes that were useful for me, law, business law, and accounting. But then these are the need business go for them.

We can go get and doing something on people who are in a risk business. myself and a former Renaissance and a third person the three of us are taught and we're teaching people take a standpoint and the demand is due on a certificate that you can get

through a block and the risk business I treated like plumbing it's like being a plumber it has a lot of stuff and can only learn to be a plumber from a plumber can be insulated from the humanities

that think we can become civilized but it doesn't mean that we should eliminate poetry from they take piano lessons I can just interject with the question. I'd like a sentence from each of you of what you see is the biggest difference between you, because you agree on a lot.

But let me give you my one sentence take and what I've heard is the biggest difference. The extent to which you take a kind of shaped civilization for granted is different. To Ryan, you take it for granted. You don't think formal education is so much needed to produce it.

And the scene, you're taking it less for granted in a particular way and you still see some room for poetry, the human and so on, provided or treated the proper way and segregated from the actual doing of stuff. Exactly. Each of you give your take, that was my takeaway. That's exactly my take. I want to separate things you do to be civilized, the liberal arts, from things you do to be affected.

And this is why, I mean, I do a lot of mathematics, and some mathematics apply in math. And what I do it like I would with poetry. And so long as you separate these two, you have a barbell. this is this and this is that, and you separate the two of them, then you'll avoid the problems we have. And also, you have the professional stuff, the humanities or stuff talked by people who like that stuff. And I would say, I don't take civilization regret it at all. What I say is that it can't possibly be the case that education in liberal arts and humanities is causing civilization or sustaining it, because virtually no one acquires this knowledge.

So given that almost no adult can answer even basic questions about the stuff, I don't see how you can say the schools are saving civilization because they aren't achieving the goal that allegedly is required to sustain it. I actually agree with you. I think the school... On one point, the destroying civilization, as the destroying civilization, the classics, I think we should separate the horny and the profane,

the whole needs of the profane. And I think that they destroyed, translated the, or from Waldorfian as something useful, whereas before it was something woolly its old thing. And you notice that the reason the Pope presented, he said, that it's to increase the number of Catholics. So exactly the same thing is that it has separated the Holy under Prophate. Don't translate the vernacular for the wrong sake. It's like you go to church.

It's not for any because you're going to meet them. Likewise, so it has to separate these two. Closing stage from you, Ryan. So I just got one question left. I really desperately want to signal that I did read the appendix. So I have a question about the appendix. Yes, question and answer. All right.

Yes. So you wrote it's often easier to modify F of X than you get better knowledge of X. Now, when I was reading this, it seems like even the phrasing suggests that we should be weighing the relative ease of modifying FX and learning about an X case by case. So suppose we're talking about the possibility that something on your phone, that one day you're going to eat something legally poisoned. All right. Now, one thing you could do is take a lot of precautions against using poison.

You could hire a poison taster. Or you go and read up about what kind of you're going to eat something. foods are hard to poison. On the other hand, you could just go and say, hardly anyone today gets poisoned by, you know, this would lethal poison one of their foods, so low probability and I'm not worried about it. The latter reaction is actually my reaction. Am I wrong? So that should have I worried about me legally poisoned or not? Let me rephrase the X of X and X, and then you'll see that it was right and wrong. So when I say that there's a fundamental problem, probability in statistics, is that people,

you take X, X with what will the stock market do tomorrow? And you study the properties of X, instead of study F of X, how it affects you. You can have a payoff future. And so X is knowledge. Conflate the conflation of X. So, for example, if you take random events, if F of X is convex, you have optionality. You see, some people have optionality from random events. Some people have negative optionality.

One of them is knowledge. The other one is how it affects you when new is the linkage. It is what would happen if there's war. And the second one is the insurance contract, F of X. when Shun's company puts a clause, it closed my... So it doesn't affect them anymore. What it needs a statistician? The second one is a lawyer.

Either my understanding is that there's a conflation between the two. I'm not saying that we should ignore X or ignore F of X. I'm saying that we should know whether you're dealing with X or F of X. Whether I would deal it with a food composition or I would... So this is my answer. And put it in context of X, what it is. F of X, how it affects this. F of X is a dick name.

and exit the epistem. The ancient always, as society got rich, everybody wanted to reach education by imitating the aristocrats with the illusion that's going to help them get rich, whereas in fact it's the kind of thing you do when you're already rich. And this is where Alison Hulfe, educational things, are effectively the product of society that are rich and definitely not causative to wealth.

Thank you, Bill. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. And if you like this podcast, please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review. This helps other people find the show.