THE VIDEO SHELF · fat-tailed risk
Naive empiricism, terrorism & Ebola.
Nassim Taleb argues that evidence on terrorism risk presented in media is statistically naive, using extreme value theory without math to separate fat-tailed risks like Ebola and terrorism from thin-tailed ones.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN cites it when arguing that different risks follow different distributions and should be judged by growth rates and tails rather than current counts.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- N N Taleb's Probability Questions
- Topic
- fat-tailed risk
- Format
- commentary
- Level
- intermediate
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2017–2021
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
I will give an alternative explanation why people fear terrorism: Falling from a ladder also kills more people than terrorism, right, but this is not what people are afraid of. Watch this to understand that we're talking about two different distributions: [VIDEO] Terrorism SUDDENLY increases …
s3nnyy on Hacker News · 2017-10
In Ask HN: UK Startups – Are You Thinking of Leaving the UK Because of Brexit?No it isn't, in this case. I think Taleb has the best summary of this, for all his flaws: [VIDEO] In short, risk due to coconuts vs sharks is a valid comparison because we have good priors about growth rates, and they are similar. Coconuts …
nmca on Hacker News · 2021-02
In Covid-19 and the political economy of mass hysteria [pdf]
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.