Articles for tag: cost, catastrophic, impact, lessons, stupidity, tail, lives, consequences, finance, probaility, history, tail risk, risk

Lavageddon!

Some will be afflicted by the Semmelweis Reflex to immediately reject this post and linked reports. Others will bawl, “I could be run over by a bus – so what?” Well, read this excerpt first if you’re still here – from Nature Journal 17th Aug 2022: Huge volcanic eruptions: time to prepare. Over the next ...

Prevention without prediction

Bandwagons of people believe that in order to prevent some terrible event happening, one must be able to predict what is likely to happen. In a social media world, crowd sentiment wins. Thankfully there is a reality beyond the confines of craniums! I will avoid going back into my thoughts on prediction and risk, in ...

Probability, Prediction and Risk

I am overviewing my thoughts related to the two concepts ‘probability’ and ‘prediction’. The main reason why people want predictions, is to avoid risk materialising. Yes – I know some people would like a sound prediction for winning numbers on the next Euromillions jackpot. If you’re that type, move on swiftly. But look – life ...

Saving energy if you want to

If your name is Rip van Winkle, you would not know that there is an energy crisis on over the last couple months. That was brewing for over a year but the war in Ukraine made it more prominent. It would have happened anyway but that’s a different story. I’ve seen my diesel bill jump ...

The harshness of the existential void

Meaning and purpose are important aspects of human life. I don’t think many will disagree. It becomes intolerable for many people when these two things are absent. Meaninglessness and purposelessness are very difficult to cope with. I’m a bit afraid to alert anyone reading this that there is a YouTube vid down below, because I ...

The nature and danger of belief

I should have been spending time on Netflix – but over the last few hours (near midnight on 22nd Jan 2022), I came across the video below (which could disappear). It is about Dawkins among a panel and a bunch of people in the audience. This triggered me to explore – again – the nature ...

Is the future real?

The word ‘future’ has important meaning to human beings. I’m not about to do a thesis on what the word ‘future’ means. Look up for estimated reading time, if you have a dog to bathe. And I’m not interested in whether any particular reader has a dog or not! Definition A popular definition is to ...