diff --git a/2025-12-16.md b/2025-12-16.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e54bd58 --- /dev/null +++ b/2025-12-16.md @@ -0,0 +1,17 @@ +--- +id: +aliases: [] +title: 2025-12-16 +tags: + - authorship/original + - destiny/permanent + - status/draft + - type/daily +--- +# 2025-12-16 + +## 2025-12-16 09:20 + +[Probability Management](https://www.probabilitymanagement.org/) + +[Handbook of Decision Analysis | Wiley Online Books](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118515853) diff --git a/fooled-by-randomness.md b/fooled-by-randomness.md index db4ad10..6ee8e8c 100644 --- a/fooled-by-randomness.md +++ b/fooled-by-randomness.md @@ -15,7 +15,13 @@ This is the commentary companion to [[taleb_2001_fooled-by-randomness]]. ## Critiques -### "Logic Without Statistics" +### Intellectual Insecurity + +So far I've gotten the distinct impression +that statistics hurt Taleb's head, +and he is intimidated by academics. + +#### "Logic Without Statistics" FbR uses few citations, relying on the strength of Taleb's logic alone, by his own stating. @@ -38,7 +44,20 @@ when _Taleb_ is wrong, I question the foundation of all his arguments. Less politely, I wonder why I'm listening to him just make up justifications for what he already believed. -### Qualitative Probability +So far I'm lead to believe what Taleb means by "logic" +is only anecdotes and aphorisms. +He wants to be Plato, but he comes off as "this came to me in a dream". + +> [!quote] Chapter 2? (pp.) +> Scientists can not meaningfully describe the probability of black swans +> because it would require observing the future. + +> [!quote] Chapter 2? (pp.) +> Accountants don't care about probability, +> if they did they wouldn't be accountants, +> and if they were they would make an error on your tax returns. + +#### Qualitative Probability Taleb loses me in the introduction when he states that he defines _probability_ qualitatively. @@ -47,3 +66,56 @@ when he states that he defines _probability_ qualitatively. of the terms **uncertainty**, **probability**, and **risk**, Later it's clear he what he means by probability is **uncertainty**. + +> [!quote] Chapter 2? (pp.) +> Certainty is something likely to occur in the largest number of possible worlds, +> uncertainty concerns what is unlikely to occur in many possible worlds. + +#### The Black Swan + +**The black swan**, or the unforeseen event, +is the idea that no quantitative risk management is possible +because of the possibility of a single loss +that would negate all previous gains. + +Hubbard points out that Taleb's position is paradoxical. + +> [!quote] [[hubbard_2020_failure#A Note About Black Swans]] +> ...he is assessing the validity of using historical examples +> by using _historical examples_. + +Besides its credibility, the suggestion reeks of intellectual insecurity. +It is very convenient to dismiss the whole of statistics based on logic alone, +much more so to dismiss the tests used to prove the validity of statistical methods. + +### False Lucky Fools + +Taleb repeatedly conflates legitimate lucky fools +with people with ideas he doesn't like. + +> [[hubbard_2020_failure]] +> does a much better job of explaining "lucky fools" +> (see [[the-failure-of-risk-management#Red Baron Effect]]). + +#### Nero Tulip vs. John + +Taleb uses the story of Nero Tulip, +an incredibly cautious investor, +and his success over his risk-loving rival John +to promote the idea that modern quantitative methods +(as John is presumed to represent) +are inherently flawed. + +One of many problems with this presentation +is that John is described as young, inexperienced, +and of low intelligence. +John is a typical lucky fool: +there is no indication that he has any strategy, +much less that he is practicing modern portfolio theory. + +If I mistake Taleb's intent, +and the story was only meant to convey +that experienced, conscientious, and cautious decision-making +can lead a person to success, +then I'm not sure who he's arguing against. + diff --git a/hubbard_2020_failure.md b/hubbard_2020_failure.md index 0bd8689..caa51fa 100644 --- a/hubbard_2020_failure.md +++ b/hubbard_2020_failure.md @@ -150,6 +150,257 @@ For commentary see the companion #### A Note About Black Swans +The *exsupero ursus* fallacy is reinforced by authors of very popular books +who seem to depend heavily on some version of the fallacy. +One such author is former Wall Street trader and mathematician Nassim Taleb. +He wrote *The Black Swan* and other books critical of common practice in risk management, +especially in (but not limited to) the financial world, +as well as the nonquantitative hubris of Wall Street. + +A heretic of financial convention, he argues that Nobel Prize--- +winning modern portfolio theory and options theory (briefly mentioned in chapter 5) +are fundamentally flawed and are in fact no better than astrology. +In fact, Taleb considers this prize is itself an intellectual fraud. +After all, as he rightly points out, it was not established in the will of Alfred Nobel, +but by the Royal Bank of Sweden seventy-five years after Nobel's death. +He even claims that once, in a public forum, he riled up one such prizewinner +to the point of red-faced, fist-pounding anger. + +Taleb bases a lot of his thesis on the fact that the impact of chance +is unappreciated by mostly everyone. +He sees the most significant events in history as being completely unforeseeable. +He calls these events *black swans* in reference to an old European expression +that went something like "That's about as likely as finding a black swan." +The expression was based on the fact that no European +had ever seen a swan that was black---until Europeans traveled to Australia. +Until the first black swans were sighted, black swans were a metaphor for impossibility. +Taleb puts September 11, 2001, stock market crashes, major scientific discoveries, +and the rise of Google in his set of black swans. +Each event, he argues, was not only unforeseen +but *utterly unforeseeable* based on our previous experience. +People will routinely confuse luck with competence +and they will presume that the lack of seeing an unusual event to date +is somehow proof that the event cannot occur. + +Managers, traders, and the media seem to be especially susceptible to these errors. +Out of a large number of managers, +some managers will have made several good choices in a row by chance alone. +This is what I called the Red Baron effect in a previous chapter. +Such managers will see their past success +as indicators of competence and, unfortunately, +will act with high confidence on equally erroneous thinking in the future. +Taleb recognizes the problems of overconfidence researched by Kahneman and others. +Indeed, Taleb says Kahneman is the only Economics Nobel Prize winner he respects. + +I think part of Taleb's skepticism is refreshing and on point. +I agree with many of Taleb's observations on the misplaced faith in some models +and will discuss this further in the next chapter. +I might even include Taleb as one source of inspiration +for identifying new categories of fallacies +(and giving it a Latin name in order to sound official). +Taleb coined a fallacy he refers to as the *ludic fallacy*, +derived from the Latin word for "games of chance." +Taleb defines the ludic fallacy as the assumption that the real world +necessarily follows the same rules as well-defined games of chance. + +Now, here is where Taleb errs. +He doesn't just argue that risk management is flawed. +He argues that risk management itself is impossible +and that all we can do is make ourselves *antifragile*. +I think he is just using a very different definition of risk management--- +which even he uses inconsistently. +No matter what he calls it, he is promoting a particular set of (vaguely defined) methods +that have the objective of reducing risk. +This reduction in risk will require resources. +Using the definition I propose in [chapter 6], +determining how to use resources to reduce risk is part of risk management. +He actually contradicts himself on this point +when he promotes redundancy as a method of becoming antifragile +and refers to it as the "central risk management property of natural systems." +So, yes, we are both talking about risk management. +He focuses on particular approaches to it, but it is risk management just the same. + +Confusion and inconsistency about whether managing fragility is, in practice, +part of managing risks is not the only problem in his thesis. +Taleb commits every form of the *exsupero ursus* fallacy +throughout most of what he writes. + +Specifically, +(1) he presumes the lack of perfection of one model +automatically necessitates use of the other regardless of relative performance, +(2) he commits the anecdotal fallacy +when looking for evidence of relative performance, and +(3) he presumes that a given model was even being used +when he identifies them as the culprit in major risk events. + +In an interview for *Fortune* Taleb claimed, +"No model is better than a faulty model." +Again, having no model is never an option. +One way or another, a model is being used. +Taleb's model is simply his common sense, +which is, as Albert Einstein defines it, +"merely the deposit of prejudice laid down in the human mind before the age of eighteen." +As with every other model, common sense has its own special errors. + +We've seen the research that shows overwhelming evidence +of the flaws of unaided intuition compared to even simple statistical models, +and Taleb offers no empirical data to the contrary. +Taleb does briefly mention the work of Meehl but dismisses it. +Without making any mention of the huge numbers +of conclusive results by Meehl and his colleagues, +Taleb claims the entire body of research is invalid +by claiming "that these researchers did not have a clear idea +of where the burden of empirical evidence lies" +and goes on to suggest that they lacked "rigorous empiricism." +He offers no details about how more than one hundred peer-reviewed, +published studies by several researchers veers from the required rigorous empiricism. + +Kahneman, who actually is a psychologist like Meehl, +would apparently disagree with Taleb on Meehl's methods. +Taleb considers Kahneman a significant influence on his work, +but who does Kahneman consider to be a significant influence on his work? +Meehl. +I wouldn't presume to speak for Kahneman +but I wonder if he might point out to Taleb +how the burden of proof was accepted and met overwhelmingly by Meehl, +whereas Taleb's evidence merely amounts to, at best, +selected anecdotes of shortcomings or entirely imagined straw man arguments. +Taleb even sometimes cites the work of Phil Tetlock +to support some other point he makes +but never references Tetlock's enormous twenty-year study +where he concluded that it was "impossible" +to find a domain where humans clearly outperformed algorithms. + +Instead of relying on large controlled studies, +Taleb commits the error of arguing that single events +effectively disprove a probabilistic model. +He uses the apparent unforeseeability of specific events +as evidence of a flaw in risk analysis. +The implication is that if quantitative analysis worked, +then we could make exact predictions of specific and extraordinary events +such as 9/11 or the rise of Google. +When arguing against the use of various statistical models in economics +he states that "the simple argument that Black Swans and tail events +run the socioeconomic world---and these events cannot be predicted--- +is sufficient to invalidate their statistics."[^09-12] +Yes, the rare events---black swans--- +are individually impossible to predict precisely. +But unless he can show that his alternative model (apparently his intuition) +would also have predicted such events exactly, +then he commits *exsupero ursus* when he says imperfection alone +is sufficient to prefer intuition over statistics. + +In addition to Kahneman, +it is worth pointing out others whose work Taleb cites to make a point but who, +if you actually looked at what they are doing, would contradict Taleb. +For example, Taleb says he admires the mathematician Edward Thorp, +who developed a mathematically sound basis for card counting in blackjack in the 1960s. +Now, if the objective of card counting was to predict every hand, +even the most extraordinarily rare combinations as Taleb would seem to require, +then Ed Thorp's method certainly fails. +But Ed Thorp's method works---that's why the casinos quit letting him play--- +because his system resulted in better bets on average after a large number of hands. +Taleb is also a fan of the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, +who used the mathematics of *fractals* to model financial markets. +Similar to Thorp and Taleb, +Mandelbrot was equally unable to predict specific extraordinary events exactly, +but his models are preferred by some +because they seem to generate more realistic patterns +that look like they *could* be from real data. + +If anecdotal evidence were sufficient to compare model performance, +one could simply point out that Taleb's investment firm, Empirica Capital LLC, +closed in 2004 after several years of mediocre returns.[^09-13] +He had one very good year in 2000 (a 60 percent return) +because while everyone else was betting on dot-com, he bet on *dot-bomb*. +But the returns the following years were far enough below the market average +that the good times couldn't outweigh the bad for his fund. + +Similar to the news pundits rejecting Nate Silver's findings +or the sportscasters rejecting the methods used by the Oakland A's, +Taleb merely shows that it is possible to find an error in a model +if one looks hard enough. +Again, the question is not whether to model (intuition is a model, too) +or whether one model is imperfect (both models are imperfect) +but which measurably outperforms the other +and does so in many trials not just single anecdotes. + +Finally, Taleb makes the error of presuming what methods +were actually being used when he blames them for an event. +He argues, for example, +that the downfall of long-term capital management (LTCM) disproves options theory. +Recall that options theory won the Nobel Prize for Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, +both of whom were on the board of directors for LTCM. +The theory was presumably the basis of the trading strategy of the firm. +But an analysis of the failure of LTCM shows that a big reason for its downfall +was the excessive use of leverage in trades---an issue that isn't even part of options theory. +That appeared to be based on intuition. + +Taleb also states that the crash of 1987 disproved modern portfolio theory (MPT), +which would seem to presume +that at least some significant proportion of fund managers used the method. +I find fund managers to be tight-lipped about their specific methods, +but one fund manager did tell me how +"learning the theory is important as a foundation +but 'real-world' decisions have to be based on practical experience, too." +In fact, I found no fund managers who didn't rely partly, if not mostly, on intuition. +Finally, if we are looking for explanations of the mortgage crisis, +neither MPT nor options theory had anything to do with the practice +of giving out mortgages to large numbers of people lacking the ability to pay them. +That was more of a function of a system +that incentivized banks to give risky loans without actually accepting the risk. + +Finally, Taleb seems to make a variety of other points +that, similar to the previous points, seem so inconsistent +he ends up undermining the point he makes. +For example, explaining the outcomes +in terms of the narrative fallacy committed by others +is sometimes itself a narrative fallacy. +Arguing that "experts" don't know so much is not supported by quoting other experts. +He argues that rare events defy quantitative models, +but then gives specific examples of computing rare events with quantitative models +(he shows the odds of getting the same result in a coin flip many times in a row +and argues the benefits of Mandelbrot's mathematical models +in the analysis of market fluctuations). + +Taleb criticizes the use of historical data in forecasts +but apparently sees no irony in his argument. +He looks at several examples in which history was a poor predictor. +In other words, he is assessing the validity of using historical examples +by using *historical examples*. +What Taleb and others prove with such examples +is merely that what I will call a *naive* historical analysis can be very misleading. +Taleb demonstrates his point by using the example of a turkey. +The turkey had a great life right up until Thanksgiving. +So, for that turkey, history was a poor indicator. +So how is Taleb able to see this problem? +He simply looks at the larger history of turkeys. + +All he is doing is using what we may call a *history of histories*, +or *meta-historical analysis*, to show how wrong naive historical analysis can be. +The error in historical analysis in a stock price, for example, +is to look only at the history of *that* stock and only for recent history. +If we look at all historical analysis for a very long period of time, +we find how often naive historical analysis can be wrong. + +Taleb's own "experience," as extensive as it might be (at least in finance), +is also just a historical analysis---just a very informal type +with lots of errors in both recall and analysis, as shown in [chapter 7]. +No thinking person can ever honestly claim +to have formed any idea totally independent of previous observations. +It just doesn't happen. + +Even Taleb's ludic fallacy seems to be a fallacy itself. +Sam Savage calls it the "ludic fallacy-fallacy." +As Savage describes it, we cannot rationally address real-world problems of uncertainty +"*without* first understanding the simple arithmetic of dice, cards, and spinners." +Of course, Taleb is right when he says we shouldn't *assume* +that we have defined any problem perfectly. +That certainly would be an error, and if that were Taleb's point, that would be valid. +But, again, whether a particular model is perfect is not the right question. +The most relevant question is whether a probabilistic model---even a simple one--- +outperforms the alternative model, such as intuition. + #### Major Mathematical Misconceptions #### We're Special: The Belief That Risk Analysis Might Work, But Not Here @@ -182,6 +433,14 @@ For commentary see the companion #### Using Data For Initial Benchmarks +##### It's Been Measured Before + +##### You Have More Data Than You Think + +##### You Need Less Data Than You Think + +##### A Reference Class Error: Revisiting the Turkey + #### Checking The Substitution #### Simple Risk Management diff --git a/lighting-controls.md b/lighting-controls.md index 18d4d1a..bc4b47c 100644 --- a/lighting-controls.md +++ b/lighting-controls.md @@ -11,7 +11,33 @@ title: Lighting Controls --- # Lighting Controls -## Technologies +## Occupancy/Vacancy Sensor Technologies + +* Passive Infrared (PIR) +* Ultrasonic +* "Dual Tech" (PIR and ultrasonic) + +## Switching/Communication + +* Occupancy +* Vacancy +* Daylight + +### Line Voltage + +120--347VAC + +### Low Voltage + +24V Class 2 control circuit + +### Digital + +Digital Light Management (DLM) + +[[twisted-pair-cable]] + +## Dimming Technologies * Triac (Line voltage dim) * Analog (0-10V dim) diff --git a/multi-family-dwellings.md b/multi-family-dwellings.md index f0404fa..0c11ebd 100644 --- a/multi-family-dwellings.md +++ b/multi-family-dwellings.md @@ -30,7 +30,8 @@ title: Multifamily Dwellings > but this term is ambiguously understood. > > The question _does not_ apply -> to hotels with three or more suites with full kitchens. +> to hotels with three or more guestrooms with full kitchens +> (often called "suites"). > Such hotels are always multifamily dwellings. Whether hotel rooms are dwelling units diff --git a/the-failure-of-risk-management.md b/the-failure-of-risk-management.md index 92a9c34..02b9700 100644 --- a/the-failure-of-risk-management.md +++ b/the-failure-of-risk-management.md @@ -105,6 +105,16 @@ equal to the mean squared error of their forecasts. ### Luck Looks Like Skill +Individually improbable events +become likely with increased sampling. + +This the unstated other half of the **law of large numbers** + +> How many success stories +> are simply cases of winning a coin flipping tournament? + +#### Red Baron Effect + > [!cite] Chapter 7 p.154 (pp.) > Hubbard describes a study which concluded that, > given the number of German pilots and their overall victory/defeat figures, @@ -116,12 +126,6 @@ to overvalue competence and undervalue luck in the role of achieving improbable accomplishments as the "Red Baron effect". -This the unstated other half of the **law of large numbers**: -improbable events become likely with increased sampling. - -> How many success stories -> are simply cases of winning a coin flipping tournament? - ### There's Always Enough Data > [!quote] Voltaire