ABranco comments on Rationality Quotes: October 2009 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 October 2009 04:06PM

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Comment author: ABranco 24 October 2009 03:13:44AM *  12 points [-]

It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear. —Nicholas Nassim Taleb

(i.e.: don't forget to put, in your utility functions, the damn appropriate weight of those highly-improbable-but-high-negative-impact tragedies!)

Comment author: sark 24 December 2010 04:55:21PM 2 points [-]

It is really the improbability of black swans that we underestimate, not their impact. The tails are fatter than we think.