back to black swans (revelations?!!)

a convincing conference - with taleb and kahneman. more than inducing the idea that all the maths we are inoculated with is more or less useless, it convinced me (once again) that behavioral economics is a domain to discover.

moreover, it made me think about the moment when all these new theories (taleb's one included even if it is a theory about anti-theorizing) are being produced i.e. today. they are fortunately (??) sustained by the actual crisis but also come up in a moment where, i have the feeling, the theories based on tones of math reached their limits.

this idea may come in contradiction with my belief in maths' power, but it's not like this - i believe to be fooled, like any human, by what kahneman describes as being the need of humans for models to benefit from, even if they prove to be wrong. he tells, in fact, an old story of the swiss army, apparently, (i assume not to remember the exact story but the message remains quite straightforward): some soldiers where proud to have a map. but they met some other guys telling them: "this is not a map of the alpes but of the pyrenees". the explanation comes from kahneman: having a useless map contributes to confidence and builds people's reliability to go on. this is like with the financial models: people know they are not accurate (they don't consider the black swans) but they believe in them as we need predictions to go further.

thus, a must to be watched:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kahneman_taleb_DLD09/kahneman_taleb_DLD09_index.html

and, also, the website of the theory of behavioural economics who won the nobel prize: http://prospect-theory.behaviouralfinance.net/