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by IAmNotAFix
1559 days ago
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The low-order bits can have huge impact. This is what Nicholas Nassim Taleb calls "fat-tailed processes": processes which rarely yield occurrences outside nominal range ("tail"), but such occurrences have the highest impact ("fat"). This is the case for anything related to safety: seatbelt, smoke detectors, guardrail, vaccines, etc. And one could formulate ridiculous umeshisms when talking about fat-tailed processes: if you've never died in your car, it means you're caring too much about your seatbelt; if you never suffered from 3rd degree burns, it means you invested too much in smoke detectors; if you've never had smallbox, if means you waste too much time getting vaccinated; if you've never murdered someone, it means you're not having enough fun with knives; etc. So the general principle should be clarified as: _concentrate on the high-order bits, *iff the low-order bits don't matter*_. This is arguably the case for the examples given by the blog post, as missing a flight isn't really the end of the world. Still, it's a huge waste of time _on a single trip_, so you benefit from not caring about it only if you travel often enough. This shows than even in case where low-order bits aren't dramatic, they still need to be taken into account into a cost-benefit analysis. |
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