Nassim Taleb emphasis. Nassim Taleb - books, biography, quotes and photos. Education and scientific degree

Which of our contemporaries influences the development of culture and technology? In the updated “Icons of the Era” section, we will talk about artists, designers, writers, musicians and other creative professionals who are changing the world right now. Our hero this week is Nassim Nicolas Taleb, author of Black Swan and Antifragile. financial consultant and a philosopher of science, who taught people not to be afraid of chance, not to trust horoscopes and famous economists, and also to win by taking big risks.

Nassim Nicolas Taleb

(Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

trader, economist and writer

From Lebanon to Extremistan

“My presence on earth is the result of a series of extremely improbable events that I tend to forget,” Nassim says in Chapter 8 of Black Swan, a sentence that deserves its own interpretation on a service like RapGenius or a philosophy seminar. Although hip-hop would probably be more suitable. Black Swan, Taleb's most popular work, which went through three editions and translated into 37 languages, sounds like a real rap album. Nassim talks about a society that every minute finds itself on the verge of a real disaster, using himself as a reference point and reference example. This is his innovation: Nassim takes on the “weak” reader, and the challenges begin with the most innocent moments of the biography, which Taleb examines at the beginning of “Black Swan”.

"Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb

Nassim Nicolas comes from an Orthodox family, is fluent in seven languages, his grandfather was Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon, and at the age of 15, Nassim swung a piece of asphalt borrowed from the road at a policeman. The future writer had his own reasons for this.

Lebanese Muslims, having enlisted the support of Palestinian militants, decided in 1975 to carry out a radical coup: to create “ nation state”, united by religion and did not imply the presence of a strong Christian community. The authorities did not expect that the clashes between the Muslim and Christian sides would develop into something more. Nassim's grandfather was personally responsible for pacifying local skirmishes - in one of which Nassim bullied law enforcement officers.

Nassim served his sentence for the offense, reunited with his family and went to the United States. The hostilities in Lebanon, which were estimated to last only a few days, lasted for 17 years. During this time, Nassim returned to his homeland several times, and each visit to Lebanon gave him the idea that big events were happening unnoticed, upsetting the delicate balance of the system and incapacitating many participants.

Wharton School of Business

In 1983, after receiving his MBA from the Wharton School of Business, he came to several useful conclusions:

Titled economists cannot always explain the results of their decisions; They attribute successes to their skills and intuition, and failures to circumstances.

Don't invest in securities, the fate of which is discussed publicly, this means that the information contained in them has already been used to the maximum, and they are of no value.

Incredible and grandiose events deserve attention, the probability of which is close to zero, but promises no less incredible profits.

These findings allowed Nassim to give up reading newspapers and watching TV, justified his passion for classics like Michel Montaigne and Voltaire, and also gave him the opportunity to focus on real trading, which he was engaged in from 1984 until the mid-2000s. To use his own terminology, he managed to escape from the everyday world, in which everything is subject to cycles (the so-called Mediocristan) into the world of extremes and actions that allow you to live according to the principle of “make or break” (respectively, Extremistan). And this seriously inflamed him.

Smoothing out the platonic
fold

“I was not made for shouting on the stock exchange, I was much more interested in exotic futures,” Taleb admitted in an interview. His first book, “Dynamic Hedging,” addressed to traders and economists, was dedicated to working with them. Protect investors from financial risks, which is hedging, Taleb learned in difficult conditions. Like Gorky, he allowed life to be his university: in 1985, he managed to make a successful deal with Plaza Accord futures contracts and earn a serious sum, the receipt of which he could not explain to his superiors.

More precisely, he didn’t want to - at that moment Taleb the thinker began to prevail over Taleb the player, and the thinker understood that “I don’t know” sounds more honest than attempts to explain what lies beyond the rational. Colleagues who worked with him at the end of the 80s recall: “He drove our retail trader crazy. Nassim could have said, “Tim, listen, sell some.” Tim would answer: “How much?”, and Nassim would remark: “Well, so that it turns out polite.” It was like, 'Oh, I don't know how much, but I know it's time to sell.'" Many traders hated him.

There was a reason: not every Wall Street worker could afford this style of trading. Anyone who had knowledge could work with a similar inner attitude more expensive than money. Taleb lost interest in finance on Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6%. That day, many companies went bankrupt, and many of Taleb’s acquaintances committed suicide. He earned about $40 million. As he later admitted, he earned 97% of the capital he earned during his life that day, having lost faith in money as an end in itself.

Since then, he has adopted the style of bidding that is beautifully described by Malcolm Gladwell in Blowing Up! , published in 2002. At that time, Taleb was in his third year of managing own company Empirica, which brought investors half a billion dollars in 2000 and confirmed Nassim's ability to handle possible risks: “There was no<...>and active trading because the options held by the fund were selected computer program. Most options would only come in handy if the market was going through something dramatic, so Taleb and his team mostly sat and thought. What’s happening is more reminiscent of a school classroom than a floor with traders.”

Thanks to Black Monday, Nassim understood the main thing: incredible events can change the fate of markets, and improbability lies in the impossibility of prediction. Having concluded that experts should not be trusted in such conditions, Nassim realized that the market, like society, does not develop along a given line. He suggested that by blindly trusting ourselves to predictions, we begin to accept what we see as reality. Taleb also got to the concept of the “Platonic fold,” which, in his understanding, is “the line where the Platonic way of thinking comes into contact with chaotic reality and where the gap between what you know and what you supposedly know becomes dangerously obvious.” .

So, after 20 years of trading, a couple of dizzying deals and one civil war, Nassim Nicolas Taleb found himself in a gap between the “almost known” and the unknown. And I found there - the Black Swan.

No "because"

In 1992, Taleb left Wall Street and decided to find himself. To do this, he went to the Chicago stock exchange and drilled into the “pit” - a space fenced with ropes in which hundreds of traders frantically shout and trade. He went to the very heart of the stock exchange - the place that was usually shown in movies about Wall Street in the late 80s - and traded there for a good year and a half. “I was standing and bargaining when one guy said: “Get lost, this is my place.” I suggested that he leave himself. He instantly became furious and began to choke me, saying: “You must disappear.” I said, 'I'm not going to disappear.' So he lost - he couldn’t force me to leave.”

After a certain time, no one, it seems, could force it. In the mid-90s, Taleb was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, although he was not even a heavy smoker. Cancer was defeated, and after that his belief in the subordination of risks began to flare up.

Benoit Mandelbrot

A few papers on economics later, Taleb met the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who was also interested in the reasons why markets defy forecasting and traders' minds defy expansion. Taleb was fascinated by him: at first he reviewed his work in professional publications, and then even wrote a joint study with Benoit, dedicated to the risks. In Mandelbrot, Taleb was attracted by his dedication to science, not to the academic environment: Benoit did not pursue recognition, he was attracted by financial troubles and those fields of knowledge in which mathematics, physics and economics formed a strange triumvirate. Until Mandelbrot's death, Taleb was his companion, student and protector; He dedicated his most popular work to him.

Five years earlier, with the release of his non-fiction Fooled by Randomness, Nassim had begun to find himself on lists of top public intellectuals, the best authors of the 21st century, and so on. After which he began to zealously clear himself from these lists. On his official website, Taleb briefly states: “I no longer accept awards, Honorary Doctor of Science titles, do not appear on the list of the best, and so on, and so on.”

Meanwhile, he finds himself in them even more often - since 2006, since the release of the book “Black Swan”. A year earlier, the company Empirica, which had not brought significant income to investors since 2000, ceased its activities: the system, aimed at existing in a “platonic fold,” was significantly “smoothed out” by September 11, 2001, which greatly influenced fate American market.
Taleb finally quits trading, gets a teaching position at New York University and begins writing his most important books.

In them he reports that:

We will never be prepared for sudden events that shake up our picture of the world; but by learning more and practicing new skills, we will expand the limits of our ignorance and improve our chances of survival.

People who trust statistics will always lose in a world that requires risk-taking.

Sitting with your hands folded will only lead to the joints in your hands starting to ache.

Our desire to tell each other instructive stories is just one of the ways of thinking economy. A way to warn, but in no case tell a scheme for becoming successful.

Antifragile by Nassim Taleb

He defends these (and many others) theses in “Black Swan” and “Antifragile”, which are interesting to read. The main thing is not to make hasty conclusions - they will lead to the construction of a set of rules that will definitely turn out to be incorrect.

He is in harmony with himself, his financial situation and the level of ignorance that he constantly strives to increase. You don't know any more.

Timeline

Taleb receives 15 days in prison for (unconfirmed) threat to a police officer during the Lebanese riots. Civil war begins in Lebanon, Taleb's family is deported to the United States.

Receives an MBA from the Wharton School of Business (according to the Financial Times, the best MBA education in the USA).

Earns his first big “accidental” capital on futures contracts Plaza Accord.

As the chief trader of CS-First Boston bank, he survives Black Monday and earns his first fuck you capital.

Leaves Wall Street, becomes a stock trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, works in the pit.

Published the book “Dynamic Hedging”, a must-read for practicing traders.

Publishes the book Fooled by Randomness.

Becomes a professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University.

The entire body of his work was devoted to explaining the reasons why economic systems, susceptible big risks, are not subject to planning.

In fact, he created the “theory of black swans” - events that can be rationally explained in retrospect, but which cannot be foreseen before they happen. According to Taleb, all significant discoveries that have happened in history are “black swans”. Humanity does not know how to predict its future: because detailed forecasting would presuppose its earliest occurrence.

Nassim was one of the financiers invited to the Economic Forum in Davos (2010) as a consultant; He also privately conducts seminars on risk management for economists, financiers and financial advisors government institutions. Taleb's views influenced not only ordinary readers, but also employees of the US Federal Reserve Service.

Philosophy of science

In public speeches and written works, Taleb constantly refers to his spiritual teachers: Henri Poincaré, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper and Benoit Mandelbrot. Nassim managed to make relevant the work of the so-called “practical scientists,” who were indignant at the academic wars for a professorship and preferred to spend every minute of their lives on research. He also voiced a credo that it’s hard not to subscribe to for the best of teachers: “If your lecturer needs time to prepare, it’s better to leave before the lecture starts. Every scientist must share knowledge that has been gained from natural curiosity and tested in practice.” If you don’t see such teachers in philosophy, economics and other humanities, Nassim recommends either going to work or going to a scientific library.

Psychology

According to Taleb, it's worth:

Enjoy stressful situations - they force you to accumulate new skills and information.

Practice logical thinking rather than immediate awareness (as his twitter confirms).

Don't do boring things (“If I'm bored writing, I stop halfway through a sentence. When I got bored with trading, I left Wall Street.”)

Nassim's simple maxims are difficult to apply in reality, but they are clear and sobering.

What can be found on sale

449 rub.

A textbook on developing stress resistance and mental flexibility; a book, a good third of which is devoted to explaining that “antifragility” is not “elasticity”. This work is more controversial than Black Swan and is written much more restrained. The largest and most important work (according to Taleb himself)

Categories:

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• Born on January 1
• Born in 1960
• Born in Lebanon
• Mathematicians

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Date of birth: 1960 Place of birth: en: Amioun, Lebanon Citizenship: USA Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Arabic: نسيم نيقولا نجيب طالب‎‎) essayist, mathematician and trader. His interests include epistemology... Wikipedia

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One of the most famous philosophers of our time told RBC about the most terrible threats to humanity, the influential class of “intellectual idiots” and the new book he is working on

Nassim Taleb (Photo: BBI)

Nassim Taleb is an American journalist, economist and trader. Taleb's book “Black Swan” brought him worldwide fame. Under the sign of unpredictability,” published in 2007. According to Taleb, almost all events that have significant consequences for markets, global politics and people's lives are completely unpredictable. Thus, traditional risk management, which is used government bodies and the company turns out to be useless. The theory gained popularity against the backdrop of the unfolding financial crisis of 2008, which became a living illustration of Taleb’s reasoning. The Times newspaper called Taleb the most outstanding thinker in the world, but he is far from a theorist: on Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when Dow index Jones fell by 22.6%, Taleb earned about $40 million from trading shares. Nassim Taleb told RBC why he respects Vladimir Putin, what he expects from Donald Trump and why he doesn’t like journalists.

“Theorists rarely become rich”

— The other day you wrote on your Facebook account: “Observation about modernity: too high tempo change turns out to be fatal." This is a common fear: people are afraid that an influx of migrants, changes in culture, the destruction of old gender roles, etc. will lead to the collapse of Western civilization. Are we really headed for collapse?

— Development in itself is beneficial and inevitable, the only question is how we adapt to it. If society does not adapt quickly enough to change, it will collapse. But too rapid an adaptation turns into regression: society begins to lose the good things it had before the changes began. Before you implement new reforms, you must make sure that the previous ones worked. But main problem, associated with globalization, is not migrants and the destruction of customary foundations. One of the biggest disappointments of our era is that globalization has not led to intellectual diversity and has not given rise to a pluralism of opinions. On the contrary, we see that the whole world is beginning to behave like centralized system: society is clustering, a division into “ours” and “yours” arises. Instead of the proclaimed freedom of opinion, a situation is created that resembles life in a totalitarian state: there are official opinions that you must share, otherwise you become an outcast.

- In other words, open society turned out to be an unfulfilled dream and we live in a world divided between high-brow readers of The New York Times and simple-minded viewers of Fox News?

- Without a doubt. History is full of examples where society was divided into groups that were at war with each other for absurd reasons. In Byzantium, people were divided into political parties depending on whether they supported the “blue” or “green” team at the hippodrome, and they regularly gathered to carry out massacres. This is no worse or better than those religious groups that destroyed each other simply because they adhered to different theologies. All this is deep in human nature. But if such polarization occurs on a planetary level, it is dangerous. And, of course, it largely arises thanks to the work of the media.

— The phrase of the year was “fake news.” Even Trump won the sympathy of voters largely due to the fact that he chose the image of a fighter against media propaganda. Why is the media now perceived by many as evil?

- Because they create a situation in which people live in two different worlds. For example, almost everything CNN reports on the conflict in Syria is a lie. I felt this when I was in Aleppo: with your own eyes you see one thing, in the news - something completely different. Who lies - your eyes or the TV channel? The trouble is that an intellectual monoculture has now formed among Western journalists. If you try to show what is really going on, you will be labeled a “Putinist”, which means you will not get work on the main American channels. This is the inquisition of our time, which punishes opinions that differ from the official one.

Nassim Taleb (Photo: BBI)

“Their viewers are what I call “intellectual idiots.” In fact, it’s incredibly difficult to fool a redneck. If you're looking for someone to fool, your best bet is someone like a New Yorker reader. This person reasons like this: if I am an intellectual (and I undoubtedly am an intellectual), that means I understand what is happening in the world. He despises rednecks, considering them incapable of critical thinking. At the same time, he does not realize a simple thing: any person who does not feed himself with intellectual work is by default an expert, since his profession is directly related to the real world. For example, a plumber is an expert on how to lay pipes and so on. Their experience is based on interaction with everyday life, and they have a very critical mindset towards dogma. Educated people, on the contrary, are more likely to start with crazy ideas that have no relation to reality. And the more time and energy you devote to studying macro issues, be it macroeconomics or global politics, the higher the chances of ending up in macro shit.

- Why is this happening?

- Because an educated person receives information mainly not from the outside world, but from other people - from magazines, social networks, from various authorities. The most terrible pathology of our time is the loss of contact with reality. When I made money trading on the stock exchange, I often came across a special type of traders who calculated some kind of scenario on the computer, and then were confident that in reality everything would be the same. The best question that knocks them off their aplomb is: “How much do you have in your bank account?” Because theorists rarely become rich: a person is able to make sound decisions only if he is involved in reality. There is now a whole class of pseudo-experts - incompetent people who think they are competent.

— It seems to me that people as a whole are not trying to build a coherent worldview, but are seizing on individual loud ideas. For example, I know quite a few who are against government intervention in the economy and at the same time for the expansion social programs. As if one does not contradict the other.

— Yes, people use slogans. For example, some people say that they are feminists, and then you see that they prefer to hire men. Others exclaim: I am against racism and social inequality! But ask them when was the last time they invited a Pakistani taxi driver to dinner. The honest answer is: never. It's still the same life in two different worlds - in a conversation with other enlightened people you are not a racist, but in real world you are afraid of migrants. And things get much worse when this duality comes into politics. Why are the politicians of our time so irresponsible? Because they are not threatened by the consequences of their decisions. In the book I'm currently working on (Skin In the Game. The Thrills and Logic of Risk Taking). - RBC), I defend the opinion: adequate decisions are made only when a person “risks his own skin.” Now politicians run their countries and the world as a whole as if they were playing a computer game: the risks are zero, which means the decisions will be inadequate.

"Whatever global problem no matter what the bureaucrat does, he doesn’t take it to heart.”

— What are the main threats to humanity in the near future? Is a new global crisis or a major war awaiting us?

“I don’t think that in the near future we will come to a real, “hot” world war. War is good for some states and some companies, but not too many of them. More often than not, powers that can truly afford to wage war prefer to wage it by proxy.

Two terrible threats to humanity have nothing to do with wars or economic crises. The biggest risk is new epidemics. The media underestimates this danger and rarely makes noise about scientific publications that bacterial resistance to antibiotics is growing, or that new strains of viruses are emerging. This neglect makes epidemics one of the most likely candidates for new black swans. The second threat is neo-Luddism. Progress does not bring people what they would like, and many turn into ultra-conservatives and begin to fight science and social reforms. This trend is clearly visible in the Islamic world.

— What is the biggest opportunity that cannot be missed now?

“These are movements from below that oppose the totalitarian “official opinion.” For example, those that we are seeing now in Catalonia. Yes, it did not lead to the emergence of a separate state. But in the example of Catalonia, we see an attempt by people to express an opinion that is not imposed by the state. More movements like this are needed because they lead to decentralization, the opportunity to try maximum quantity different options for administrative structure and choose those that suit the people themselves.

— In a fragment from your new book published on the Internet, you compare Russian leader with Western heads of state and conclude: “Looking at Putin’s confrontation with other leaders, I realized that domestic (and sterilized) animals do not stand a chance against a wild predator.” What is the reason for this conclusion?

— I am a Christian from Lebanon, and my attitude towards Putin is largely connected with this detail of my biography. If Russia had not intervened in the Syrian conflict, Lebanese Christians would already be dead. But I had something else in mind - the difference in the approaches of states to the war in Syria. The Western powers treated her like bureaucrats. Whatever global problem the bureaucrat deals with, he does not take it to heart. His interests and risks lie in a completely different game - career, he wants to keep his job and earn political dividends. For the peoples living in the region, this approach is disastrous. History teaches us that nations that entered into an agreement with bureaucrats then had only to suck their paw (Taleb used the phrase suck cock, but we cannot translate it due to Roskomnadzor restrictions. - RBC). Lebanese Christians are disgusted by the callous approach of Western bureaucrats to their problem. At the same time, they see that Putin is really involved in the problem: he intervened in the conflict, knowing full well what kind of criticism this would all turn out for him. And this willingness not to be a sheep and make decisions at your own peril and risk appeals to them.

— How do you evaluate the work of Donald Trump?

— Trump is not the president who was elected for a constructive program. He was elected in the hope that he would shrink the overgrown government, and he did roll back some of the programs and laws passed by lobbyists. His strength is that he is a businessman and perceives the country as a big company. He sees where expenses can and should be cut. But foreign policy Trump has demonstrated an unpleasant metamorphosis. Before his election, he openly said that Saudi Arabia was sponsoring terrorism and was going to pursue a very tough policy towards it. Now he has become best friend of this country. It was completely unexpected.

“The richer the company, the faster its employees become slaves”

— In your new book you write that permanent work is the new slavery. If this is the case, why do employees agree? A hundred years ago, a person understood that if he lost his job, he could die of hunger. Today at developed country he can live on benefits or find a more lenient employer.

— I talked with many economists and eventually came to the conclusion: what more to a person pay, the more he feels like a slave. This is a kind of method of manipulation on the part of the employer: a person must feel that he is overpaid, then he will be afraid of losing his job. That is why the richer the company, the faster its employees become slaves. But slavery benefits all companies without exception. Another thing is that some of them “enslave” rudely - for example, they impose beliefs on employees that contradict their ethics.

— Is there a chance that new technologies will put an end to slavery? For example, Uber and Airbnb replaced full-time employees with freelance contractors.

“Their experience is applicable in a very limited number of areas: very few companies could operate relying only on contractors. The effect that new technologies have on society is generally exaggerated. Did they bring social media to the fact that we stopped communicating in person or watching TV? Will Uber displace private vehicles? In the United States, tragedies that occurred due to the fault of car owners and restrictions on the use of private vehicles are constantly discussed. And during my last visit to Moscow, I encountered terrible traffic jams, although Uber is already in full swing. No new technology will save you from all problems. Will Airbnb lead people to stop living in their apartments and start traveling around the world, changing dozens of homes a year? No. Of all the technologies that promise to change the world, I only believe in new energy. Simply because I use it myself. My house is completely self-sufficient and runs on solar energy, and I drive a Tesla.

— What is your impression of Russia? What problems are visible to the naked eye?

— Russia always inspires, it is a deeply intellectual place. I often visit Russia, and every time I am struck by one feature of your people: they often work not for money, but for the sake of some abstract idea. I don't know if your people owe this Soviet Union or this tradition dates back to pre-revolutionary times. But your state and companies must do a lot to somehow use this potential. There are a lot of Russian mathematicians working in New York companies. Why are they forced to leave their homeland? Why can't you use their talents for yourself? This is something you need to think about most seriously.

- How can you keep people? Our officials in best case scenario operate with economic considerations in the spirit of “now Country's GDP He will grow up and live well.” But the correlation between the quality of life and the formal state of the economy is false.

— Politicians and economists love beautiful numbers and false correlations. It's like doctors telling people about the dangers of cholesterol. In reality, unless the levels are off the charts, there is virtually no correlation between cholesterol and your health. What makes people happier? I think that for Russia the solution could be the same decentralization of management. I’m not talking about political, but about operational decentralization - people should have the opportunity to make decisions that affect their lives, to participate in management at least locally. This will be good for business and for life in the country as a whole.

Nassim Taleb (Photo: BBI)

— Now many companies, including in Russia, are obsessed with efficiency, their managers are introducing new methods of work. But employees continue to complain that they are being burdened with meaningless tasks. Why is this happening?

— In any company, one of the variants of the Pareto principle works: 80% of the work is done by 20% of employees, and of these 20% of employees there are 20% of them, who provide 80% of their output. I would advise companies to focus not on new methods, but on people - finding the right employees and giving them more opportunities.

Nassim Taleb was born in 1960 in the Lebanese city of Amiun. In the 1970s, his family was deported during the civil war. In the 1980s, Taleb held senior positions in brokerage companies London and New York, then founded his own hedge fund, Empirica Capital. As a scientist, Taleb worked at the Courant Institute mathematical sciences(New York), London Business School, Oxford University, etc. He is the author of the books “Dynamic Hedging”, “Fooled by Randomness”, “Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability" and "Antifragility. How to benefit from chaos." His Black Swan spent 36 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller list. The book has been translated into 40 world languages, and its circulation in 2011 exceeded 3 million copies. In 2015, Taleb co-founded the Real World Risk Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing new risk management techniques.

Nassim Taleb will speak in Moscow at the Synergy Global Forum on November 27-28, and at the end of March 2018, BBI will organize his two-day program in Tbilisi.

• University of Paris
• Paris-Dauphine University
• Wharton School of Business
• University of Massachusetts Amherst [d]

He held various senior positions in brokerage firms in London and New York, and also worked on the stock exchange. After that, he founded the Empirica LL-S hedge fund, which specialized in futures transactions and options sales.

Author of the books “Dynamic Hedging”, “Fooled by Randomness”, “Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability", "On the secrets of sustainability. In the footsteps of the black swan" and "Antifragility. How to benefit from chaos."

Ideas and theories

Research and theories of randomness

Calling himself an "empirical skeptic," he believes that scientists, economists, historians, politicians, businessmen and financiers overestimate the power of rational interpretations of statistics and underestimate the influence of unexplained randomness in these statistics. Thus, Taleb continues the tradition of skepticism followed by Sextus Empiricus, Al-Ghazali, Pierre Bayle, Montaigne and David Hume, who believed that the past does not allow us to predict the future. Taleb is a follower of Karl Popper and argues that theories cannot be considered proven and can only be used conditionally.

Currently engaged in research in the field of philosophy of chance and the role of uncertainty in society and science, with an emphasis on the philosophy of history and the study of the role of important accidents (which gave the term “black swans”) in determining the course of history. It is important to note that “black swans” are not necessarily negative events or disasters, but also random luck. In his opinion, people do not notice these events, considering the world to be a systematized, understandable and ordinary structure.

Taleb calls this phenomenon the “Platonic Fallacy” and believes that it gives rise to three distortions:

• narrative fallacy: an event is described after the fact in such a way that it does not seem gratuitous;
• gambler's fallacy: assimilation of the randomness system of a game to the unsystematic randomness of life. Taleb considers this a mistake in the modern approach to probability theory;
• inverse statistics fallacy: the belief that events in the future are predictable through the study of events in the past.

Accident is a reflection of mainly external, insignificant, unstable, isolated connections of reality; expression of the starting point of cognition of an object; the result of the intersection of independent causal processes and events; form of manifestation of necessity and addition to it.

Of great importance in Taleb’s scientific work is the criticism of the application of the Gaussian normal distribution curve to economic, financial and many social phenomena. Taleb proposes the mathematical theory of fractals by Benoit Mandelbrot as a more complete reflection of the picture of the world. With the caveat that fractals will not allow you to accurately predict events and phenomena, but at least they bring greater clarity to the understanding of ongoing processes. It also suggests that Mandelbrot's mathematics of chance makes many black swans gray.

In his opinion, modern media “create a situation in which people live in two different worlds.” “For example, almost everything that CNN reports on the conflict in Syria is a lie. I felt it when I was in Aleppo." “The trouble is that an intellectual monoculture has now formed among Western journalists.”

Criticism

Aaron Brown, author, financial analyst and professor of finance at Yeshiva and Fordham universities, said that "the book shows that Taleb had never heard of nonparametric methods, data mining, visualization tools, or robust estimators." Still, he characterizes the book as "essential reading" and encourages statisticians to ignore the insults but gain "important philosophical and mathematical truths." In the second edition of The Black Swan, Taleb responded that “one of the most common (but unhelpful) comments I hear is that some solutions can be derived from “hard statistics.” It's interesting how using these techniques can create information where there is none."

Although generally approving of the book, Westfall and Hilbe pointed out in 2007 that Taleb's criticisms are "often unfounded and sometimes outrageous." Taleb, writes economist John Kay, “describes writers and professionals as frauds or fools, mostly fools. His writing is full of irrelevance and colloquialisms, reading like a conversational essay rather than an argumentative thesis. But it is an extremely entertaining and easy read. However, there are serious issues underlying his anger and bullying. Risk management models in use today exclude the very events they are against. These models are given a complex technical view… Financial analysts wrap corporate management and regulators in an illusory sense of security.” Berkeley statistician David Friedman called statisticians' efforts to refute Taleb's position futile.

Taleb and Nobel laureate Myron Scholes repeatedly exchanged critical comments, especially after Taleb's article with Espen Haug on why no one used the Black-Scholes-Merton formula. Taleb said Scholes was responsible for financial crisis 2008, and suggested that “this guy must be living in a nursing home playing Sudoku. His funds collapsed twice. He should be prohibited from lecturing anyone in Washington." Scholes responded that Taleb was simply “popularizing ideas and making money from book sales.” Scholes also argued that Taleb does not reference or cite previous authors and literature, and for this reason Taleb is not taken seriously in academic circles.

Haug and Taleb listed hundreds of studies showing that the Black-Scholes formula was not Scholes's at all. They argued that the economics community had ignored the literature of practitioners and mathematicians (such as Ed Thorpe) who had developed a more complex version of the formula.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Taleb said that he saw that no amount of criticism he received for Black Swan refuted his central point, which convinced him to protect his and his clients' assets.

Taleb's aggressive commentary against parts of the financial industry - such as a statement at Davos in 2009 that he was "glad" about the collapse of Lehman Brothers - has led to personal insults and threats against him.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a well-known trader and economist, whose views on the world economy are distinguished by their originality, an open person and very productive in literary activity.

Most people know him for his philosophical essays on economic topics, but he initially became famous as successful trader, and only then as an author of books.

His interests and activities also include essay writing, mathematics, statistics, and the epistemology of chance. His work is aimed at identifying randomness, probability and unpredictable events that can influence the course of the global economy. This man was one of the first to become seriously interested in the mechanisms of trade and financial instruments.

He managed to achieve the greatest results in trading derivative financial instruments, such as and, in the mechanisms and trading strategies of which he began to show serious interest. Thus, Taleb’s activities and biography will, first of all, be of interest to Forex and derivatives traders.

Trader biography

The life of Nassim Nicholas Taleb begins in 1960 in Lebanon in the town of Amion ( Amiun), where he was born into an Orthodox family of an oncologist. There were many prominent politicians in Nassim Taleb's family. The maternal grandfather and great-grandfather held the posts of deputy prime minister of the country, and the paternal grandfather held the post of supreme judge. Among the more ancient ancestors was the governor of the semi-autonomous Ottoman province of Mount Lebanon.

With the beginning Civil War in 1975, he and his family were deported, and he spent quite a long time in France, where he first completed his secondary education, and then graduated from the University of Paris and received a Ph.D. degree there.

At first, Taleb did not even think about trading, but wanted to become exclusively a philosopher, but when faced with the realities of life and realizing that it is quite difficult to make money with philosophy alone. He entered the Wharton Business School in the USA, from which he successfully graduated in the early 80s with a Master of Business Administration degree, after which his trading activities began. In his book “Black Swan,” the author describes his biography (especially its early stages), and also talks in detail about the feelings and motives that motivated him at certain points in his life.

Start of career and trading activity

After graduating from business school in 1983, Taleb began practical trading, working as a trader in various offices and banks. Already in 1985, a young and still little-known stock trader showed himself to be a good specialist with excellent command of analysis, as well as good logic and foresight, which helped him earn a decent amount on futures Plaza Accord. This deal was Nicholas Taleb's first major success.

However, he truly became famous only during stock market crash in the fall of 1987, when, as the chief trader CS-First Boston Taleb, who predicted the crisis and earned 40 million from itdollars, while most of his friends and other traders, directors and managers investment funds went bankrupt, and some even committed suicide.

Later, in some programs and interviews, he noted that it was in 1987 that he earned about 97% of all his money and at the same time lost faith in it as the main goal of life.

It was then that Nassim first began to have a desire to leave Wall Street, move away from active trading and devote himself more to literary activities and lecturing, but this was still far from being realized.

In the early 1990s, he moved from New York to Chicago for a while and, as an independent market maker, was involved in trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange ( Chicago Mercantile Exchange), now part of CME Group.

Throughout the 80s, 90s and the first half of the 2000s, Taleb worked as a chief trader in such famous financial structures How Banque Indosuez, Union Bank of Switzerland, BNP-Paribas, CS-First Boston, Chicago Mercantile Exchange; served as executive director at CIBC-Wood Gundy; He is also on the board of directors of companies such as Centaurus Kappa Fund, Centaurus Capital LP Alpha Fund and Silvercrest-Longchamp NonGaussian Fund, BVI.

Next important stage Nassim Taleb's career development included the creation in 1999 of his own hedge fund, specializing in futures and options trading. Empirica Capital LLC”, which already the next year enriched its investors by about 500 million dollars, which once again confirmed the talent and skill of its owner in terms of asset management (the fund’s return reached 65% per annum).

However, already in 2004, the fund was closed. At the beginning of 2005, Taleb himself commented on this event in such a way that he wanted to devote himself entirely to literary and scientific activity (“to become a writer and a scholar”), and also that he feared a recurrence of throat cancer ( “feared he might have a recurrence of throat cancer”).

Nevertheless, already in 2007 he became an adviser to investment company Mark Spitznagel " Universa Investments L.P."and successfully applies his developments used in Empirica Capital, as well as the theories described in his latest book, “The Black Swan.” This allows him to accurately predict the future global financial crisis of 2008 in advance, and make decent money during the general economic downturn, which made Nassim Taleb a world-famous trading and investing guru ( Universa Investments provided returns of 65-115% per annum during the crisis years of 2008-09).

Since then, people have started talking about him everywhere as an expert with unquestionable authority, and financial publications and economic television channels vying with each other began to ask his opinion on certain issues, invite him on air and interview him.

Quote: The success of human endeavors, as a rule, is inversely proportional to the predictability of their results.

Nassim Taleb gave lectures and seminars not only in the USA, but also in many other countries of the world, including Russia. In interviews with various publications, he has repeatedly stated that, from the point of view of economic risks, he considers countries former USSR quite attractive for investment, unlike Saudi Arabia or even the USA, since at one time they already faced serious problems and were able to survive them, which cannot be said about the West.

In addition to his successful trading activities, which brought significant income to Taleb himself and his employers, as well as investors, he is also the author of five books that have become bestsellers not only among economists and traders.

The first of these works was “Dynamic Hedging”, published in 1996, then “” (2001), “” (2006), considered his most famous work, “The Procrustean Bed” (2010), and also “Antifragility” (2012), and all this without taking into account the mass of articles and interviews in world economic publications.

Main object scientific research Taleb was not herself world economy or trading in financial markets, as well as the ability to avoid them in order to successfully preserve and increase capital. And in this matter, his theories are radically different from the generally accepted ones, for example, he clearly proves that previously occurring events will not necessarily happen again in the future, even if they were regularly repeated before, which is a big stone in the garden of statistical forecasting methods.

Taleb is generally very critical of statistical data, considering them relevant only in certain areas of life and science. From the same famous book “Black Swan” the term appeared Ludic fallacy, which means " gaming fallacy" Taleb made it the main point in this book, the essence of which is that you should not get too involved in games to reproduce real situational models.

Roughly speaking, a trader in his work refutes the effectiveness of mathematical forecasts, and also insists on the lack of effectiveness when applying statistical models in different industries. According to his principles, statistics can still work, but the range of industries is quite narrow. It could be simplified diagrams, such as casinos, where the odds are easy to calculate and see.

It is precisely such events that have the maximum impact not only on the markets, but also on world history generally. They can be both favorable and unfavorable ( "black swan" with a plus or minus sign), depending on the subjective view of a particular person.

The author pays the main attention in his books to chance and probability, as well as their influence on life and financial markets in contrast to statistics and established patterns. However, randomness is different from randomness, and he also identifies an ideal statistical model based on Gaussian mathematical formulas, suitable, according to the author, only for those cases when all the chances are calculated in advance and possible options known in advance, but not for real chance “from life”, where absolutely everything can be uncertain. Gaussian mathematical model for statistics, he contrasts the Benoit Mandelbrot model and defines it as more suitable; the former reserves a place for solving a very limited range of problems and predicting accidents for casinos or in textbooks.

Among his “black swans” are not only positive sudden events that change the course of history, but also various crises in the form of natural disasters and catastrophes. It promotes the idea that people take such events for granted, believing that the world is a systematized structure, and this is wrong.

An interesting fact in the same book is the prediction about banking crisis. Having made such a statement in 2006, he earned millions of dollars from it in 2007-2008. Other large and private investors and traders began to listen to his concepts and earn the same money from it. It is not surprising that after such events Taleb gained worldwide fame.

In 2008, Taleb was awarded the title of professor in the field of financial risk analysis at the New York Polytechnic Institute for his outstanding achievements and accuracy in predicting crises.

The empiricist insists that it is because of the past that people cannot predict the future. That is why he criticizes those people who trust statistics so mercilessly. This quote from his book “Black Swan” is appropriate: “It’s harder to lose in a game in which you set the rules yourself.” His another term, “platonic fallacy,” gives continuation to three other distortions:

1. The consequences of the event are presented in terms of the absence of causelessness.
2. Equating the random course of an event with the uncertain accidents of life.
3. Future events can be predicted by the course of past events.

With all his activities and works, Nassim Taleb encourages people to try to benefit from various unpredictable events. His quote from the book:

« The first main postulate: throws do not depend on each other”, convinces us that in business and financial matters, success will be achieved by those who can adapt to conditions of uncertainty and even exploit it. People need to stop seeing the world as linear and orderly and respond differently to events in it in order to achieve success.

Fortune favors prepared minds.

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