Life as an Artificial Lifeform

Its week of fALks favorites reapearing. My favorite mathematician - yes I have such a thing - is Benoit Mandelbrot since the day he coined the butterfly effect and made me play endlessly with mandelbrot "Apfelmänchen" on my Commodore Amiga 2000 endlessly applying new formula alterations and watching the 12 MHz 7,09 MHz processor due its duty (yes it was slow). Said man is the mentor of Nicholas Taleb - an author whos book "The Black Swan" I almost got once but then didn´t and since then regret not having read said book as it was forecasting the current and all future financial collapses. Good thing for boingboing for linking an interview with the two men explaining in a bit too little but good enough detail why the current crisis is so scary - yes maybe the sack of rice falling over in China had to do with it in the end. Oh yes the greatest mathematician of modern times says that its quite possible that we are in a worse position then in the Great Depression.

Some info from Wikipedia about the book (linked above):

Why do people tend to neglect rare events? Partly because humans underestimate their ignorance in most situations—the effect of unexpected events is far more significant than people often imagine. Taleb argues that the proposition "we know" is in many cases an illusion—the human mind tends to think it knows, but it does not always have a solid basis for this delusion of "I know".

Taleb also questions the authority of experts. The "truth" behind science is limited to certain areas and methods, and in many areas having an academic degree and presenting oneself as a scientist is irrelevant. Indeed, authority can stifle empirical experience which, so many times, has proven to have a sounder base for accuracy.

Extreme events do happen and have a big effect. Examples abound, including September 11th. The Internet with its various effects was scarcely anticipated, and it is a development that has had a significant effect. The effects of extreme events are even higher due to the fact that they are unexpected.