trip to the northern and the Canadian rockies
it's not a competition, but Banff wins.
theme
notes
51 posts
tennis parlays are mild randomness
Dustin Brown beating Rafa does not spill over into other matches
volatility drag in action
real world example of our insidious friend volatility drag
the man of the cliffs
documentary about Purunga, a traditional cliff fisherman in Peru.
a handful of basic ideas for The Idler
these ideas belong to the world of tinkering rather than to the realm of grand philosophical principles.
financial crisis headlines (Oct 7, 2008)
just some notes I took while things were unfolding in September and October 2008
number 1: ensemble vs. time
a first attempt to disentangle the (on the surface) simple question "what is the expected return?"
the idler capital
the most apt name for an investment endeavor.
wild randomness
an easy to visualize example of wild randomness
samuel johnson on parental responsibility
on our moral obligation to ensure our children's well-being.
when you get too close, you only hear the noise
In the presence of randomness, high-frequency observation obscures signal. Why Djokovic's 55% point wins reveal less than his 88% match record.
black blood that kept drippin'
I am no stranger to you. I was born in Troy, and the blood you see is oozing from no tree...
virgil is the prince of the poets
in The Aeneid, we find a seamless fluidity that is indifferent to the translator
how is it that such an occurrence can occur?
so there it was: Emerson filled the remaining $15.06 needed on top of the cheap plastic pretend play doctor kit... how is it possible?
Thucydides, Book 4
a petition to preserve Spartan dignity in misfortune takes us back to Solon's warning
history's first (and grandest) funeral oration
an answer, perhaps the answer, to "what we fight for?", "what we die for?" and, most importantly "what we live for?"
"daily standard deviation of 1% moves 1% a day" - not so
In the financial markets, the definition of volatility is assumed to be standard deviation. However, in practice, people seem to either forget the definition or completely substitute it with the mean absolute deviation. For example...
placing high-confidence bets in mediocristan and winning
life in Mediocristan is quite enjoyable. It reminds me of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria. The ocean is nearby, and the climate is pleasant. Never too cold, never too hot.
shorting stocks based on fragility
On principle, therefore, a small short position is in order. Small because we cannot time markets, and small because it's an expression of a philosophical view, not an attempt to make fuck you money with one trade.
dying a good death and reading antifragile
against my (acquired) skepticism of anything published in the last 50 years (exceptions: Kazuo Ishiguro's novels, The Selfish Gene), I picked up Nassim N. Taleb's Antifragile.
when you cross the street, you remove data
more data--such as paying attention to the eye colors of the people around when crossing the street--can make you miss the big truck.
what we talk about when we talk about correlation
in day-to-day meetings and coffee chats, no big deal, but when it comes to making investing or hedging decisions, beware.
the day I finished The Rambler
in every man's life, however splendid or modest, there are episodes that mark one's journey as a reader or as a person. Reading Samuel Johnson's essays is both a personal and a reader milestone.
the victim card on Christmas Eve
for what would so soon destroy all the order of society, and deform life with violence and ravage, as a permission to every one to judge his own cause...
beware the ambition of petty accomplishments
the ambition of petty accomplishments, in which we believe we’re advancing, but a wiser perspective offers the opposite diagnosis.
how we value the things we value
the assignment of prices by the invisible hand of the market reveals how we value certain things in relation to other things. This unveiling is quite amusing some times, harrowing in other occasions.
can't get no satisfaction (on satiety)
”The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.” (The Rambler, No.2, March 1750)
the misery of sovereign power
a sword is perpetually suspended over our head. We dread our very guards, we distrust our companions.
book list for the new year (2024)
the guiding principle has been, and will continue to be, to seek knowledge and beauty in books that have been tested by time. Exceptions are granted in areas of technical knowledge (e.g., physics, computer science)
on wittgenstein's ruler
one distinction between what Taleb writes in Fooled by Randomness and what Wittgenstein gets at in Tractatus is that the former deals with the practicalities (and sarcasm) of daily life, whereas Tractatus is onto the ontological, epistemological, and linguistic.
behave philosophically
when they debate some topic, they do not attempt to follow the reasoning of that which they are debating, but simply try to have the audience concur with what they are presenting.
parenting principle #1
raising a child is perhaps the most complex journey of all, but success is likely governed by few principles. And this is one of them.
cheerfulness under ill-health or other misfortunes
"Maximus was my model for self-control, fixity of purpose, and cheerfulness under ill-health or other misfortunes. "
prayer (kavafis)
the sea engulfed a sailor in its depths. Unaware, his mother goes and lights a tall candle before the ikon of our Lady
a quote from Hitch
this quote from Christopher Hitchens resurfaced today (thanks to readwise). What an elegant way to sum up one's moral compass.
more selfish gene
but if we reorient our view from the survival machine's to that of the gene, then it makes perfect sense that some molecules do not code for anything.
the journey to ithaka
give it first to Homer and then, 2600 years later, to Kavafis and you get something that rises above all of us.
the darjeeling limited (river and funeral scene)
when you realize that all your grand problems are imaginary
48 signals
i recently read a post by Jason Fried of 37signals.com about ascribing depth to flatness and generating irrelevant data. “… I can’t help but think it’s generating data that’s incompatible with the actual situation. Being asked to rate…
don't sabotage the trip before reaching your destination
the lesson is: when going places for or with Kai, don’t attempt to sabotage the trip before reaching our destination.
what i talk about when i talk about running | murakami
our bodies weaken, our minds become more contemplative. At first, we try to reverse the makings of time. We then hope to avoid them, but it's a futile enterprise. Our running pace declines no matter what we change in our training regime
the selfish gene | richard dawkins
this is the first book that I have finished from the re-reading list I compiled a while ago. And this is the book, the one I would take with me to a prolonged quarantine, and the one I’d give to all my friends if I knew they were going to…
"surely you're joking, mr. feynman!"
i finished reading Surely You’re Joking on the last day of November and it is definitely one of the most amusing, pleasurable, and inspiring books I’ve read. Feynman won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his contributions in the field of quantum…
the remains of the day | ishiguro
ok. Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in 2017 and I’m happy to report that I was a bit ahead of the curve. I had already read Never Let Me Go and gifted four copies of the book to people dear to me. Never Let Me Go is definitely high on the…
the end of faith | sam harris
i picked up this book because it promised to express a bold position not only against religion in general but, given the state of affairs since 9/11, Islam in particular. Sam Harris’s unforgiving appetite for logical rigor and…
meditations | marcus aurelius
marcus aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors, wrote one of the final classical books of stoicism. The Greek title, Ta Eis Heauton, simply means “To Himself”. Someone, somewhere, sometime used “Meditations” as the title, and it…
norwegian wood | murakami
our perception of time is not linear, but logarithmic. It feels as if every new day were shorter than the previous day. Today, at 40, each year passes almost unnoticed and I struggle finding a significant event to stamp on every single…
byzantium: the decline and fall
and then, gradually and inexorably, the fire begins to fade, and worse: the flames are not extinguished by themselves or by the Islamic powers of Asia but by their Christian brethren of Europe
byzantium: the apogee
this is volume II of III of the history of the Byzantine Empire. This volume, unlike the first one, covers a relatively short period of time: from the year 800 with the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of the Western Empire to Easter…
byzantium: the early centuries
"our civilization has never adequately acknowledged the debt it owes to the Empire of the East," writes John Julius Norwich in the introduction of this magnificent book. In very rare occasions, historians rise to the level of the history…
the odyssey
It was a long overdue debt with “literature.” A checkmark on a list of titles that the scholarly-bent reader thinks is required to enter the dignified club of literarte.