Gyroscopic Investing

Closest thing I can think of is Nassim Taleb. Essentially, when it comes to risk, we really have no idea what kind of crazy fat tail stuff will happen.

However I've found his analysis on how we can manage risk to be inconsistent. It's just far more interesting doom porn than most I've heard.

If anti-spy-state civil libertarian doom porn counts, Dan Carlin, Glenn Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill have really scary arguments about the state of our police/spy/nat'l-security state and all the structural problems this causes in government. If anything, this stuff might protect us from hyperinflation, as it assures US economic interests more so than pacifism.  So that's probably not what you're looking for.

moda0306 wrote: Closest thing I can think of is Nassim Taleb.

I'll second Taleb.  I've read everything he's written.  Not just the popular stuff - but also his math and trader and academic articles.

A fantastic thinker and pragmatist.  But... the man suffers a bit from the borderline of genius/crazy/ottoman empire.  I think he leans just a bit more on the side of genius.

His antifragility tome is a very good read.  Ironically, his solutions don't appear sane to me.  After digesting (and agreeing) with his magnum opus, I've been ever more convinced that the HBPP is a damn fine vehicle for the end of times...

Mark Leavy wrote:

moda0306 wrote: Closest thing I can think of is Nassim Taleb.

I'll second Taleb.  I've read everything he's written.  Not just the popular stuff - but also his math and trader and academic articles.

A fantastic thinker and pragmatist.  But... the man suffers a bit from the borderline of genius/crazy/ottoman empire.  I think he leans just a bit more on the side of genius.

His antifragility tome is a very good read.  Ironically, his solutions don't appear sane to me.  After digesting (and agreeing) with his magnum opus, I've been ever more convinced that the HBPP is a damn fine vehicle for the end of times...

As I have written before, I view Taleb as the guy in the middle of town jumping up and down telling everyone that lightning can strike anywhere at any time and that no one is safe, while Harry Browne is going door to door selling lightning rods using his friendly low pressure personality to lubricate sales.

Taleb is a performer, an entertainer, a storyteller, and he's a good one.  If you understand that, it becomes obvious that his prescriptions for how to deal with unlikely events probably won't work, but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that he can give you a good scare, and that's one of the reasons we watch TV in the first place.

A person who only sees pessimistic scenarios is ultimately as useless as a person who only sees optimistic scenarios--both get their egos tangled up in certain outcomes and their thinking becomes an exercise in validating their predictions, no matter how much reality bending is necessary to make them seem like they were right.  I am amazed that guys like Peter Schiff and Robert Prechter can be so wrong over and over and over, and people still listen to them, but they listen to them because they are entertaining, which has no relationship whatsoever to being right.

I read Taleb's first two books and enjoyed them in the same way I used to enjoy reading Stephen King.  It's just entertainment.

HSBC fears world recession with no lifeboats left
The world authorities have run out of ammunition as rates remain stuck at zero. They have no margin for error as economy falters

{image of Titanic}
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -left.html

Y'all know way more about this area than I, but Taleb presents ways of looking at things which I found helpful e.g.

1. when people say they are taking into account (whatever risk in whatever area of life) the reality is that they ain't.  and

2.  Some things e.g.  heights of people do fall into the bell curve  but other quantities e.g. income of authors do not.  And the importance of knowing that there are two categories.  Obvious, but things I hadn't thought about before.

Benko wrote: Y'all know way more about this area than I, but Taleb presents ways of looking at things which I found helpful e.g.

1. when people say they are taking into account (whatever risk in whatever area of life) the reality is that they ain't.  and

2.  Some things e.g.  heights of people do fall into the bell curve  but other quantities e.g. income of authors do not.  And the importance of knowing that there are two categories.  Obvious, but things I hadn't thought about before.

For me, Taleb's insights were stimulating, they just weren't actionable.

Here you go:

http://www.goldcore.com/us/gold-blog/

Libertarian666 wrote: Here you go:

http://www.goldcore.com/us/gold-blog/

New Rule:

If it has the world "Gold" twice in the site address, it's bunk.

JK.



Kinda...

A quick side note - Nassim Taleb is a fantastic name for anagrams, including
ABSENT ISLAM.

Desert wrote: I'm not looking to make fun of the arguments either; I just want to read and evaluate the best of this genre.

Harry Dent.

They're all gonna be wrong, though.  They all ignore self-interest as if only their specific narrative will happen unhindered and unopposed.