ICCF-25 - Presentation Videos (almost all).

Quote from JedRothwell

There is a book titled "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Taleb. It was on the best seller list for a long time. I was unimpressed by it

Same here. I read Taleb's book when it was first published - and thought it was badly written, repetitive, and missed some of the real issues as to why people are surprised when the world doesn't fit their own particular mental models.

Maybe it was just because, as a child, I fed black swans in the local park

The concept certainly precedes Taleb - and I still don't think he actually understood it.

But the phrase has entered the public psyche. George Miley even wrote a book subtitled "A technologist’s search for a Black Swan".

Quote from Frogfall

Same here. I read Taleb's book when it was first published - and thought it was badly written, repetitive, and missed some of the real issues as to why people are surprised when the world doesn't fit their own particular mental models.

Maybe it was just because, as a child, I fed black swans in the local park

The concept certainly precedes Taleb - and I still don't think he actually understood it.

But the phrase has entered the public psyche. George Miley even wrote a book subtitled "A technologist’s search for a Black Swan".

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Believe it or not, his other books are even worse. Antifragile is unreadable.

Quote from orsova

Antifragile is unreadable.

I will give it a miss!

Getting back to my mother's reaction to hearing the gunshots at the White House, she told me that story as a warning. Her message to me was: "You and I assume things are prosaic, and we are usually right. But sometimes we are wrong." Beware of assuming you are right. Beware of assuming there is nothing new. Sometimes those hooves you hear really are zebras!

She liked to quote Damon Runyon: "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

The difference between probability and truth seems to get a lot of people into a pickle.

A good way to highlight the difference is with the Monty Hall Problem.

(And I'm sure your mother, JedRothwell would have had no trouble understanding this correctly.)

Just a note that several of the videos are not available at the ICCF25 Vimeo website, but are, oddly enough, available at the SSF Youtube channel.