London Talk

September 2004, London, FW Bookstore. Courtesy www.wilmott.com

After the cocktail party a prominent topologist drove me to a restaurant in Hammersmith right on the river. We got lost. When we got there the restaurant was closed.

1- Introduction. Should I buy the second edition? How I can make them incrementally more boring and technical.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city001.mp3

2- Question on traders and stoicism. Stoicism as cognitive therapy v/s stoicism as genuine philosophical position. Why I am interested in the condition of us not knowing what makes us tick. Cognitive impenetrability. Weather and happiness. Hedonic psychology. www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city002.mp3

3- Why some strategies do not get easily arbitraged away. The stupidity & advantages of the capitalistic system with public shareholders.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city003.mp3

4- Lottery tickets and inconsistent behavior. Insensitivity to probabilities. Availability heuristic.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city004.mp3

5- How to convince yourself that your boss is an idiot. How to deal with unjustified “shame”. Hormonal system and recurring events. Mother nature knows little of central limit. How probabilistic outcomes help you seduce people of the opposite sex. www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city005.mp3

6- Are you a lucky individual? Yes, because God created finance professors.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city006.mp3

7- The double treadmill effect. Utility function and path dependence to others. The effect of pecking order. www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city007.mp3

8- Someone with a Russian accent asking a question on fat tails.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city008.mp3

9- Do Stoics do Monte Carlo? Stoics understood Kahneman-Tversky way before. Seneca was both a Stoic and rich. www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city009.mp3

10- How do you evaluate traders.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city010.mp3

11- Philosophers and probability. On the link between volatility and epistemic confidence.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city011.mp3

12-Another Russian asking a complicated question. Why most people obsessed with wealth turn out to be unhappy. Why temperament is more important than wealth.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city012.mp3

13- Why it is better to study finance to learn about Human Nature than the opposite.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city013.mp3

(to be continued)

14- What is the theory behind fat tails?

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city014.mp3

15- Housing boom? I have no clue.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city015.mp3

16- Fallacy of aggregation: from individuals to markets. Paternalistic libertarianism.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city016.mp3

17- Information. We are not natural statisticians. The mathematics of hormones.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city017.mp3

18- Happiness in Poland. The return of Nero Tulip. Utility and probability. The happiness of pigs.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city018.mp3

19- Working for my obituary. Seneca was a grain scalper.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city019.mp3

20- Richard Dawkins does not work for Starbucks. The proximate and the ultimate.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city020.mp3

21- Capitalism & the survivorship bias. Thank the restaurant owner for being an idiot.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city021.mp3

22- Trading and entertainment. Advice and charlatans. There is no such thing as an expert. Absence of evidence and evidence of absence.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city022.mp3

23- Understanding and accepting randomness.

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city023.mp3

24- Will there be Dynamic Hedging 2? What did Fooled by Randomness do to people?

www.fooledbyrandomness.com/city024.mp3

26- Party noise.