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We’re going to list a series of questions on this page, and then you can click on the lead to go to a forum dedicated to that question. If you have an idea for a suggested question, please contact Dave.Wilson(at)delmio.com
1. Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls the bell curve That Great Intellectual Fraud. Did you ever take (or teach) a class that put the bell curve to work? Did you find it helpful? Or do you agree with Taleb? CLICK HERE TO ANSWER.
2. Have you ever had a personal Black Swan, that is, an event that was completely unexpected, one that changed things in a dramatic way, and one that in retrospect, you maybe could have seen coming? CLICK HERE TO ANSWER.
3. Would you rather live in Mediocristan or Extremistan? CLICK HERE TO ANSWER.
4. Taleb all but predicted the mortgage crisis and subsequent credit debacle in his notes (page 225 in our copy) when he criticized as “phony” JPMorgan Chase’s recently introduced RiskMetrics, which was intended to help “manage” risk. Most bankers didn’t see it coming until it was too late. Does that make it a Black Swan? CLICK HERE TO ANSWER.
5. Are you more akin to Dr. John, the quiet, conformative “nerd” who thinks inside the box, or Fat Tony, whose motto (with a Brooklyn accent) is “Finding who the sucker is”? CLICK HERE TO ANSWER.
6. Stalin is quoted as saying, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” Do you think that plays into the Black Swan mindset? CLICK HERE TO ANSWER.
