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Naive empiricism, terrorism & Ebola.

N N Taleb's Probability Questions · 51.6K views · 2017-02-14 · 10:08

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

HN cites it when arguing that different risks follow different distributions and should be judged by growth rates and tails rather than current counts.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2017–2021

Topics

Probability & game theoryData science & statistics
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nassim talebextreme value theoryterrorismriskblack swan

What people said

nmca · 2021-02 · Recommendation

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 vs covid is a terrible, terrible comparison because again we have good priors on growth but they are mind-bogglingly different functions of time.

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s3nnyy · 2017-10 · Recommendation

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 the odds of you being killed by it. And that is what - rightfully - scares people. Example: Before 9/11 the chances of being killed by terrorism was let's say 0.000000.....1%. After 9/11 the chance SUDDENLY increased a hundredfold. That change in probability never ever happened in the distributions of car-accidents, being shot in the US or falling ladders.

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nmca · 2021-09 · Reference

I think Taleb has a point on this topic - the concern is about a forecasted growth rate, not about the current rate. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by N N Taleb's Probability Questions , played through YouTube.

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