in economics and finance , a taleb distribution is the statistical profile of an investment which normally provides a payoff of small positive returns , while carrying a small but significant risk of catastrophic losses .

the term was coined by journalist martin wolf and economist john kay to describe investments with a " high probability of a modest gain and a low probability of huge losses in any period . "

the concept is named after nassim nicholas taleb , based on ideas outlined in his fooled by randomness .

according to taleb in silent risk , the term should be called " payoff " to reflect the importance of the payoff function of the underlying probability distribution , rather than the distribution itself .

the term is meant to refer to an investment returns profile in which there is a high probability of a small gain , and a small probability of a very large loss , which more than outweighs the gains .

in these situations the expected value is very much less than zero , but this fact is camouflaged by the appearance of low risk and steady returns .

it is a combination of kurtosis risk and skewness risk : overall returns are dominated by extreme events ( kurtosis ) , which are to the downside ( skew ) .

more detailed and formal discussion of the bets on small probability events is in the academic essay by taleb , called " why did the crisis of 2008 happen ? " and in the 2004 paper in the journal of behavioral finance called " why do we prefer asymmetric payoffs ? " in which he writes " agents risking other people ’s capital would have the incentive to camouflage the properties by showing a steady income .

intuitively , hedge funds are paid on an annual basis while disasters happen every four or five years , for example .

the fund manager does not repay his incentive fee . "

taleb distribution

the practice of bad driving has what i call a taleb distribution , after one of the themes in nassim nicholas taleb’s brilliant fooled by randomness . a taleb distribution has the property that many small profits are mixed with occasional large losses . overtaking on the inside is an activity with a taleb distribution .
the comments on page 231 on the gaussian distribution remind me of this story where even galton got confused about the tails of the distribution as applied to human height .
that rule only applies to normal distribution . so you would have made an assumption .
we can identify two huge problems to be solved . first , many investment strategies have the characteristics of a “taleb distribution” , after nicholas taleb , author of fooled by randomness . at its simplest , a taleb distribution has a high probability of a modest gain and a low probability of huge losses in any period .
>
the realization that the normal distribution is not the only way to model data
.
the positive square root of the second central moment of the density distribution function will keep being that .
benoit mandelbrot argued that financial markets follow a distribution much more similar to the cauchy distribution ( specifically the levy distribution ) rather than a gaussian . the problem of course is that the cauchy distribution is pathological in that it doesn ' t have a mean or variance , you can calculate similar properties for it ( location and scale ) , but it doesn ' t obey the central limit theorem so in practice it can be very strange to work with .
statistical economists or analysts always said that the normal distribution is a simplification and that this simplification has its own problems .
realization by who ? if you understand the normal distribution you had damn well better know that there are other probability distributions .
however , a single individual can be richer than the poorest 2 billion humans . so wealth follows a scale independent distribution .
the issue was not just that these distributions displayed taleb characteristics : these market activities were devised with taleb characteristics in mind .
i have several times in this column described the taleb distribution of regular small profits interspersed by large losses . taleb distributions are the basis of the carry trade – which exploits interest rate differentials – and many types of statistical arbitrage . taleb distributions are exploited by traders in hedge funds and at proprietary trading desks .
there are other , less abstruse examples . drinking more than is good for us has a taleb distribution . so does smoking – after all , most smokers do not get lung cancer .
holy grail distribution is a missing piece in almost every investment portfolio seeking protection from tail risk events combined with positive average returns .
exactly . i ' m astounded that this basic fact - that financial modelers have been using the wrong distribution for decades is not being denounced . for example , the capital asset pricing model ( capm ) which assumes that returns fall on a normal distribution .
of what you wrote , but i think you should reread your reply to taleb with as much scrutiny as you read taleb .
there are business lessons to be drawn from the bad habits of french drivers . we need to beware of activities whose outcomes have a taleb distribution – many small gains punctuated by occasional large losses .
realization by who ? if you understand the normal distribution you had damn well better know that there are other probability distributions .
kay goes on to add that governments yesterday as well as today appear to creating responses that are once again premised on the tailgating distribution .
people rarely check how closely their data conform to the standard distribution ; indeed , many people blindly apply the standard deviation to their data regardless of its distribution ! the resulting number is often more obfuscatory than helpful , to the extent that it crowded out more useful summaries .
in other words , we ' re using the normal distribution as the workhorse because considering other distributions is , well , inefficient / unproductive .
the name holy grail distribution captures both the difficulty of finding a strategy with these characteristics and the unique value it provides to an asset allocator .
the truth is that most times we don’t know the probability distribution at all . because the world is not a predictable casino game — an error nassim taleb calls the ludic fallacy — the best we can do is guess .
taleb has a good point about people mistakenly interpreting standard deviation ( sigma ) as mean absolute deviation ( mad ) . i like that he gives some conversions ( sigma ~ = 1 . 25 * mad , for normal distribution ) .
it is hard to deliver returns with holy grail distribution using only replication and generally available asset classes ; such returns have to be
engineered
. at the same time , allocation to investment instruments and strategies with holy grail distribution of returns may provide clear benefits of diversification and protection from periodic market - performance shocks .
well , frequentist methods are taking the blame for the most recent financial crisis , such as assuming a normal distribution when the empirical one is fat - tailed .
perhaps the bayesian methods will take the blame in the next financial crisis . such as the error in estimating a non - stationary distribution and quantifying the uncertainty .
[ … ] out scott locklin’s brutal takedown of our favorite blowhard , nassim taleb . the only part i disagree with it where locklin calls taleb [ … ]
i didn’t read taleb carefully enough to know whether he was targeting only quants .
compute - intensive statistical tests , which are data - driven and make fewer assumptions about the underlying distribution , can give tighter confidence intervals and detect statistical significance better .
can we escape the taleb problem ? understanding risk is the prelude to managing it . we know instinctively that the tailgating driver is not really smart – and nor is the high - yield bond trader . taleb exploits his distribution by looking for its opposite : trading strategies in securities markets that offer frequent small losses and occasional large gains .
however described , it is the same thing : a distribution of returns that produces frequent small profits punctuated by occasional very large losses . a high proportion of trading – and business – strategies in financial markets have this tailgating characteristic . i call it the taleb distribution , after the author of fooled by randomness ( an earlier , and better , book than the more widely read black swan ) , which gives numerous instances .
taleb ' s favorite topic is the
black swan event
which is something that the normal distribution , and the idea of standard deviation , don ' t model that well . in a normal distribution very extreme events should only happen once in the lifetime of several universes . of course assuming variation inline with a gaussian process is at the heart of how the black - sholes model calculates risk / volatility / etc .
i sometimes think that progress in the 21st century will be summed up as :
the realization that the normal distribution is not the only way to model data
.
a distribution built from mad will more closely resemble the reality of the s & p returns , and will create more robust models . there are many examples of this .
additionally , i will mention that we do not need normal distributions to make special the idea of standard deviations . in fact , it is the geometry of probability - the fact that independent random variables have standard deviations which
point
in orthogonal directions - which causes the normal distribution to be the resulting distribution of the central limit theorem .
gee , d’ya think so bub ? maybe i should go have some acupuncture done to harmonize my narcissism . taleb as schindler ? how about taleb as jesus sufferin’ christ ?
very nice ! i did have his books on my reading list . but this whole discussion definitely puts me closer to the
waste of my time
side of the distribution .
i never heard about taleb distributiom , is my first time sounds interesting . . . .
the fact you largely resort to attacking straw men rather than taleb’s actual arguments says everything .
i was initially very curious about your post . finding a substantive argument against taleb’s thinking is actually quite difficult to track down . imagine my disappointment when i discovered your post was mostly an ad hominem review of taleb the man rather than an measured analysis of taleb’s ideas .
ltcm had lots of small up months and a few large down months . this is not detected by the sharpe ratio as it assumes a symmetry in the distribution of returns . – nnt
what is more , his idea of black swans is not original , every experienced investor is aware that stock returns don’t follow a predictable distribution , that the end outcomes are extremely uncertain .
the pareto distribution , better known as the 80 / 20 rule , states that 80 % of the effects come from 20 % of the causes . for example , in most businesses 20 % of clients will generate 80 % of the income , 20 % of clients will generate the most customer service requests and so on . taleb argues that we’re moving to a 99 / 1 distribution , away from 80 / 20 . this shift has profound implications for our economy and society .
on page 240 , taleb writes that gauss , in using the normal distribution , “was a mathematician dealing with a theoretical point , not making claims about the structure of reality like statistical - minded scientists . ” i don’t have my stigler right here , but i’d always understood that gauss developed least squares and the normal distribution in the context of fitting curves to astronomical observations . sure he did lots of pure math , but he ( and laplace ) were doing empirical science too .
you have provided an interesting comment to taleb , but there are several things you are missing .
thank god somebody else out there sees that taleb is as mad as a bag of bats .
people ask why people get the heckles up about taleb , and it isn ' t actually about taleb at all . it ' s about the , for lack of a better phrase , taleb
fan boys
. bizarre that such a thing exists , but people like having their prophet .
taleb distributions are good when you have experienced only the upside . a taleb distribution led to the crises in the lloyd’s insurance market . excess - of - loss policies – t he lmx spiral – insured other syndicates against losses of unprecedented magnitude . the underwriters pointed out that they had taken in premiums for many years and paid nothing out . you do not have to be as smart as taleb to see the flaw but you do have to be a little smarter than the feltrim and gooda walker syndicates .
yet , taleb’s writing makes all those assumptions . if you can fill in the missing steps , then you will find that taleb provides a strong argument for why and how we got to this point .
thank you . i don ' t think it is intellectually honest for taleb to omit this fact .
> also he alludes to his paper with goldstein . it is clear form goldstein and taleb ' s manuscript that that taleb is not just throwing these arguments to talk trash about practitioners of statistics . they
many apparently successful traders and business people are still on the upside of their taleb distribution . they are accidents waiting to happen . it puzzled me for years that so many organisations believed they were making money out of proprietary trading in securities markets . these businesses were trading mostly with each other : since there is no perpetual motion , where did the money to fuel the system come from ? from taleb distributions .
what taleb failed to mention is that , once properly understood , standard deviation has distribution interpretations that can be much more useful than mad . for example , if the data is approximately normally distributed , then there is approximately a 99 . 99 % probability that the next data observation will be < = 4 * sigma .
taleb , the non - experts , expert non - expert . or something . too jokes , anyway .
this is actually what i expected to read :
the standard deviation is useful because with the average and the standard deviation , one can fully characterize a normal distribution . however , the standard deviation is less useful a statistical summary the farther away from ' normal ' you get , and in reality , there is no such thing as a normal distribution , as a true normal distribution is defined on the entire real number line from negative infinity to positive infinity . reality always provides some bound , and it ' s often quite distorted from guassian . for instance , a ' normal ' distribution averaging 2 with a standard deviation of 1 . 4 , bounded by 0 , is quite non - gaussian in many important ways ! ( not least of which is that you ' re going to have to do something to replace the missing probability . . . )
great article btw . i used to adore taleb’s fbr , but that was before i entered the world of finance and trading . taleb tends to repeat the obvious , and so tbs didn’t do too much for me .
his essential black - swan point is that extreme uncertainties cannot be parameterized by any distribution , that we fool ourselves when we translate “uncertainty” into “risk” as characterized by any distribution . it’s a good point , it’s as old as the hills , but it’s a good point…the rest of black - swan expounds on the biases that comform us in parameterizing risk ; e . g . , excel has cells for numbers , so the numbers must mean something
the normal distribution is fantastic in that it does appear frequently in nature , is very well behaved , and has been extensively studied . however a great amount of future progress is going to come from wrestling with more challenging distributions , and paying more attention to when assumptions of normality need to be questioned . of course one of the challenges of this is that the normal distribution is baked into a very large number of our existing statistical tools .
it’s an argument that’s well known , and pretty much irrelevant . as aaron brown put it , “ ( taleb’s book ) reads as if taleb has never heard of nonparametric methods , data analysis , visualization tools or robust estimation”
second , absolute nails sentiment that taleb engenders , i”ve read his books and i’ve listened to him , but he never seems to get beyond the obvious ( fat tails , gaussian distribution…yes…we know that…thanks… ) he didn’t convince me that he actually is a true quant with a meaningful , progressive self - critique . this makes sense of the posturing .
but please , keep buying china inc . more money for guys like taleb once the markets come crashing down again .
it would be nice to think taleb’s contribution to intellectual discourse is a net positive . i don’t agree , obviously .
to reiterate , there ' s nothing wrong with the normal distribution . we ' re not about to retire addition or subtraction just because there are
plenty of people who don ' t really realize
there ' s more to math .
could you sketch out why similar statements couldn ' t be made about mad ? my ( possibly flawed ) intuition is that the expected proportion of observations within n \ * mad should be similarly independent of the parameters of the normal distribution .
the standard deviation and assumptions of normality are so useful because of the central limit theorem . that is , if you have many iid variables which have finite standard deviation the sum will converge to a gaussian distribution as the number of variables increases .
if taleb’s arguments were obvious in the way you suggest , clearly there would not be a market for them . simple .
i understand from the papers that taleb is now in a big fight with merton . i agree with him on that .
for five years until 2004 spitznagel and taleb ran empirica , a hedge fund very similar to universa that in its short tenure generated low double - digit returns . after taleb became seriously ill the duo shut the fund . taleb has since given up money management to teach risk management at polytechnic institute of nyu in brooklyn , write books and advise foreign governments on his theories .
i disagree with your comparison of taleb to popper . popper would write things which occasionally made sense . feyeraband and taleb seem to be more of the “makin’ raspberries” school of disputation . throwing kuhn in there … at least kuhn eventually repented of his sins .
taleb’s antics are what he sells . nobody actually cares about his criticisms of specific models : it’s rare that he actually makes any . were taleb out there criticizing actual quant models , you know , by naming them , then stating in clear unequivocal terms where they don’t work and why , and maybe even points out a useful alternative , i would be a taleb fan . hell , in that event , i would be a taleb sahabah ; companion to the prophet . instead taleb goes on television and the ft and blurts out that “nobody knows nuthin . ” as such , the just argument against a stupid head is a clenched fist .
i also like how a lot of the people attacking taleb here , are making exactly the mistakes he describes in his books .
as of late on new year ' s day , i have still not heard from taleb via email . just too busy .
nassim taleb on the notion of alternative histories — “the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome . ”
if data is drawn from a laplace distribution of the form p ( x ) = exp ( - | x | ) , the mean absolute deviation is more informative than the standard deviation , but if its form is close to the normal , p ( x ) = exp ( - x ^ 2 ) , the standard deviation is more important . so whether to use the mean absolute or standard deviation depends on the distribution of the data . there is a field called robust statistics that looks at this question .
taleb’s books introduced me to seneca and stoicism and a whole area of a psychological biases that i hadn’t really spent much time considering or thinking about beforehand or reading . other books cover these areas better . for stoicism , actually reading seneca’s letters or marcus aurelius’s meditations is better than reading taleb’s version of it . for psychological biases , actually reading daniel kahneman is better than reading taleb . it sounds like in the areas where you agree with taleb with finance or math , you think a person would gain better understanding elsewhere .
the central limit theorem shows us that unimodal data with lots of independent sources of error tends towards a normal distribution . that description is a good first - pass , descriptive model for lots and lots of contexts , and standard deviation speaks well to normally distributed data .
i just have a simple question for taleb’s defenders . i’d love to know where he has offered more than the following two ideas :
aug . 16 — nassim nicholas taleb , adviser at universa investments , sat down for an interview with erik schatzker tuesday evening in new york . taleb , famous for his assessment of risk , says there are greater risks out there than nuclear war with north korea .
the holy grail distribution has a positive mean to justify the instrument ' s permanent role in the asset allocation framework . its positive fat tail , which is
co - located
with the left tail of other instruments , adds protection to investment portfolios during tail risk events .
odd enough . i think he’s smeared buffet and charlie munger as “lucky” before , though i may be confusing taleb with burton malkiel here .
this article is based on paper taleb published in 2007 . if you want to test yourself , submit yourself to experiment in page 3 :
key point number one in this memo is that the future should be viewed not as a fixed outcome that’s destined to happen and capable of being predicted , but as a range of possibilities and , hopefully on the basis of insight into their respective likelihoods , as a probability distribution .
i don’t have a problem with your comments about taleb , because he’s never interested me enough to pay attention to what he has to say .
taleb the philosopher observes that when it comes to the preservation and perpetuation of life , negative advice is more useful – the thou shalt nots .
your post was in reply to someone asking about taleb ' s black swans so i assumed you were talking about 2008 in reference to that .
nassim nicholas taleb , fooled by randomness : the hidden role of chance in the markets and in life , new york : texere , 2001 .
this is hardly a matter of trust , anton . scott has pointed you in the direction of the relevant academic literature as regards taleb’s revival of the long - shot lure . and if you want to know what an expert in extreme value theory thinks of taleb , you can read this :
of course taleb would not offer a useful alternative . he says repeatedly that there is no useful alternative . throw them all away ! ! ! !
i just came across this taleb interview made in february 2008 , about taleb’s view on simons . taleb says verbatim answering the 4th question ( about buffet ) : . . the only two people i think who are not lucky ; there is soros and then there is the other gentleman from renaissance . simons , he is not lucky . he is beyond . there is no exposure to uncertainty on his models . ” the video is here : urltoken
that ' s not interesting ? i think the difference between theory and practice is intensely interesting , and taleb has a lot to say about it .
no . it is the ideology of dissing taleb . obviously i am not his paid spokesperson . but please argue to the merit of his arguments .
more interesting will be how the fda takes into account the arguments that taleb and co put forward . expect fireworks in the coming weeks and months .
many economists and , by direct extension , financiers thought they had quantified all forms of risk . by quantifying all forms of risk , you can compute the first derivative . taleb and scores of others argued that all risk cannot be quantified . taleb made this argument long before the publication of black swan .
ahhh taleb… you got to hand it to taleb , he has a huge head for heights , but has he really got those “street smarts” he so oft speaks of ? its quite obvious that the success of dynamic hedging had an funny ( ha ) effect on him . barking mad ? definately maybe .
what about bank’s debt converted into equity ? ? ! ! ! this was after all the quantitative easing , only taleb transferred the concept to individual consumers .
maybe taleb is in fact the genius he sets out to prove himself to be . after all , he did come up with a seemingly valid formula :
for the most part , taleb criticizes everything but he never offers any solutions . his observations when they make sense are trivial , like tails are fat .
[ … ] scott locklin on nassim nicholas taleb . akpc _ ids + =
126 ,
; popularity : unranked [ ? ] [ … ]
actually , taleb has explicitly stated that the 2008 financial crisis was not a black swan nor does he claim to be able to predict any of them .
it is sad that taleb does not see the value in the standard deviation ; standard deviation is far more natural , and more useful , than mad .
still , i think that non - parametric methods are much more valuable as a solution to dealing with non - normal data than what taleb is proposing .
> the problem of course is that the cauchy distribution is pathological in that it doesn ' t have a mean or variance , you can calculate similar properties for it ( location and scale ) , but it doesn ' t obey the central limit theorem so in practice it can be very strange to work with .
a key difference between these types of risks is the statistical structure of their impact . this structure is either dependent on scale or independent of scale . an example of a scale - dependent distribution is the weight of an adult human which is generally never greater than about 10 times the weight of an average human .
also he alludes to his paper with goldstein . it is clear form goldstein and taleb ' s manuscript that that taleb is not just throwing these arguments to talk trash about practitioners of statistics . they report findings of an experiment with multiple groups of applied statisticians . i ' ll quote from it [ 1 ] :
another solution to the problem of hedging tail risk events is to have a complementary strategy with a performance pattern that helps reduce the impact of market performance shocks . an instrument with a returns distribution featuring a positive mean and a fat , right ( positive ) tail that is realized just when traditional portfolios take a hit .
the black swan book ? really , it’s like taleb found a way to fill his publisher’s ink cartridges with crap before having the manuscript sent to the printers .
excellent ! another entertaining piece of fiction . much shorter than the first , but since i’m a complete unknown and taleb is well - known that’s only appropriate .
there is no snark in my post : i am outright calling taleb a false prophet who is guilty of exactly the things he criticizes in fooled by randomness .
by the way , i studied some stock rates to see taleb ' s arguments , a thing i normally wouldn ' t do . see my blog above .
tagged with black swans , delta hedging , implied volatility , nassim taleb , nickels in front of a steamroller , options , vix , volatility , volatility arbitrage .
i don’t think the essential criticism is that taleb is hysterical . ( his hysteria may be a marketing tactic ) . i read the argument as : taleb affirms quantitative nihilism . ( i am not myself sure , i just read that as the argument . like i said , i am here for the writing clinic… ) .
and you are basing that statement on… . hahahaah ! please enlight us on your specific sources of how you know that and why taleb is lying about his profession .
i am yet to see anybody who thinks that standard deviation is mean deviation . it ' s taleb though . baseless assertions insulting groups of people are his craft .
gladwell plays into the comparison about as much as the editors of cosmopolitan would play into it if niederhoffer and taleb had shared the cover of an issue of cosmo .
[ … ] nassim taleb : clown of quantitative finance « locklin on science – as such , taleb is merely setting himself up as some sort of heretical alpha monkey of the quants for stating the obvious , the misleading , and occasionally the gratuitously wrong - headed and untrue . – lol heretical alpha monkey of the quants [ … ]
i hold bush responsible for all of this…taleb’s book is entertaining . where is the book from india that talked about reddy adn his ideas . that’s the book we needed .
< plus , it’s not like jim simons has time to write financial times < articles . he’s too busy making money more or less proving people like < taleb wrong .
taleb did not claim the banking crash to be a black swan ( unpredictable ) . it was completely predictable and he has said as much . you probably overlooked that .
i’m having a tough time deciding which is right on this , you or taleb . could you please tell me your net worth so i can compare it to his ?
i will say though , taleb reader ' s are surely great words with friends or scrabble players . you just can ' t help picking up a few new words .
i am wondering if you have a lot invested in concepts and techniques that mr taleb is suggesting are broken . there is certainly a tone of defensiveness about your post .
rely on predictions of events that are unpredictable - so faulting him for predicting or not predicting this and that means one does not really understands what taleb is talking about .
he is saying it ' s not useful for real world things and people are just confused . what you wrote is reasonable view . what taleb writes isn ' t .
the true hero is not taleb , but reddy , the master of india’s banks , who kept sanity during an insane time . india and china are doing fine , thanks very much , due to their restraint and maturity . taleb’s point is simply to identify the flaw in quant models that kept regulation from doing its job in the last decade .
i think that taleb is extremely interesting . well , maybe not taleb himself , but the phenomenon of taleb . post the crisis , he’s such a great example of everything he criticised pre the crisis , one wonders whether anyone in the audience at his popular lectures ever reflects on this contradiction . rare events : before the fact , hard to predict ; after the fact , easy to explain . but how ingenious to be able to sell this insight whilst simultaneously declaring that one predicted a rare event , and explaining how ?
good to see an fairly anti - taleb post picking actual holes in what he says – as someone who is definitely pro - taleb ( his books have changed my outlook on various aspects of life ) i have often tried to find holes in his logic and never have been able to – i am not convinced this post changes that but definitely got me thinking and one of the few anti - taleb posts ( well at least not fawningly positive ) that doesnt really resort to playing the man instead of the ideas .
yes , and capm is based on the gaussian also , as is most everything in first year quantitative finance . that doesn’t make these models useless any more than other statistical models based on gaussians when we know the process ain’t normal . hell , the entire concept of “statistical distribution” itself is kind of a lie : everyone knows financial processes are markov .
the most popular pop - writer in quantitative finance at present is nassim taleb . his latest screed in the financial times is what spurred me to write this post . the article wasn’t entirely written by taleb - though i guess the other guy is his fund partner , so it is no surprise that it suffers from all the mush headed absurdity of taleb’s other articles and books . i won’t pick on the other guy ; or even mention his name : he’s got a job to do , and he has the good manners to not make himself a public figure . taleb , on the other hand , is sort of the paul feyerabend of quantitative finance . like feyerabend , he is well read , a good writer and quite charming . like feyerabend , taleb seems to earn his daily bread by showing up and being kind of witty . finally , both feyerabend and taleb are very much against method . this means , effectively , they’re both intellectual nihilists . feyerabend thought we couldn’t know anything for various reasons too silly to get into right now . taleb thinks all of quantitative finance is nonsense and we should do away with quants . i am guessing the former’s delusions had something to do with drinking the same berkeley tapwater in the 1960s which made everyone else believe in crazy things , but taleb was a trader , and it’s a common prejudice of traders to dislike quants for cutting into their p / l .
if you want to make that argument , then you need to look at popper . indeed , taleb’s writing and logic are much closer to popper than any of the relativists .
the problem that taleb is generally referring to in financial models ( and those are the published models , not proprietary models ) is that they use statistical concepts founded from physics .
i don ' t agree with your ' vile idiot ' statement but i mostly concur with your thoughts . i hope that you don ' t let taleb affect your senescence .
the appeal of any popular mountebank is best summed up by p . t . barnum : there is one born every minute . had taleb been an honest writer , he might have educated his readers on the concept of “sample bias . ” but if taleb were an honest writer , nobody would read his stuff . smugness is a lot cheaper than understanding .
i guess i share taleb ' s problems with models . even before i read taleb i would say to myself
the map is not the territory
, particularly with regard to software abstractions . i think the space between the model and reality is where you find a lot of interesting things ( including the ability to make a lot of money ) .
second , in regard to conglac2009’s ( michael’s ) comment , taleb shouldn’t be requiring , or expecting , ft readers to read his prior books before reading an op - ed piece .
here ' s taleb on mandelbrot :
[ he ] had perhaps more cumulative influence than any other single scientist in history , with the only close second , isaac newton .
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over the past few months i’ve been forming a thesis about where the world is heading . much of my thinking comes from seven important books . two of the most important authors who have influenced my thinking are nassim nicholas taleb and jaron lanier . many of the ideas that follow are theirs . and when taleb’s and lanier’s ideas intersect , you get very interesting hypotheses .
“taleb thinks all of quantitative finance is nonsense and we should do away with quants . i am guessing the former’s delusions had something to do with drinking the same berkeley tapwater in the 1960s which made everyone else believe in crazy things , but taleb was a trader , and it’s a common prejudice of traders to dislike quants for cutting into their p / l . ”
yeah , i could make up a whole story “filling in the blanks” about how taleb actually is the clever monkey he says he is . or i could make up a whole story “filling in the blanks” of how we’re not in an economic crisis . or i could just concentrate on what taleb actually said in both his books , essays and his wacky financial times article .
“non - normality is why i’ve made myself a minor expert in kernel regression . if i had listened to taleb , i’d have thrown up my hands and gone back to physics . ”
“there are far more successful and long lived funds , as i have already pointed out which trade the inverse of the taleb “swan strategy” at very high sharpe ratios . ” – scott locklin
scott locklin can be peer reviewed right here on the internet , sparky . i don’t get paid to make fun of taleb for a living : though it sounds like a fun job .
i really tried to get through
the black swan
and taleb ' s writing struck me as so pretentious and self - involved that it made it impossible for me to finish .
i actually love taleb ' s books ( black swan , antifragile ) . and i work with
data scientists
, most with ph . d . s , many in statistics .
you ' re late ! taleb began publishing his arguments years ago and continues to publish . you ' re way behind . read his papers and read his books in the following order :
i was a senior quant at renaissance ( simons ' outfit ) working on options among other things . what ' s annoying about taleb is the overtones that every one else in the business is a moron . does he really think that simons believes market moves are normally distributed ? indeed i wrote a paper internal to renaissance on the distribution of tail area moves . taleb seems to think that these can ' t be modeled , but i have never understood his reasons for thinking that . there is a whole area of statistics (
extreme value theory
) which seemed to me to apply well to financial data . our data in renaissance yielded quite good models , which i ' ve no reason to think have broken down with the market crash .
« the world has lost trillions » the world has made and then lost trillions of paper gains and then losses . « through the hands of risk managers and courtesy their models based on gaussian distribution and other quantitative techniques . » courtesy of their using whatever mathematical technique looked likely to underestimate risks and lead to higher papers profits and cash bonuses by requiring less than prudential reserves .
once we ' ve considered that little exercise above , we can almost deduce what taleb distribution is . it describes a situation that has very steady , consistent gains but has a hugely skewed risk / reward profile . so we can transfer this idea to trading forex , for the purpose of any calculations we will assume that the round trip cost of trading eurusd equates to 1 pip after commissions - of course this will vary with market liquidity . this strategy is commonly employed by major hedge funds and is commonly referred to as
picking pennies up ahead of a steamroller
nassim taleb criticized pinker’s arguments a few years ago , arguing that pinker didn’t take proper account of the statistical nature of war as a historical phenomenon , specifically as a time series of events characterized by fat tails . such processes naturally have long periods of quiescence , which get ripped apart by tumultuous upheavals , and they lure the mind into mistaken interpretations . pinker responded , clarifying his view , and the quotes above come from that response . pinker acknowledged the logical possibility of taleb’s view , but suggested that taleb had “no evidence that is true , or even plausible . ”
it ' s a useful metric when treated carefully , but it is rare to encounter it treated carefully . science courses would be well - served to stop teaching it in favor of a stronger emphasis on multiple distributions . ( multiple distributions are usually touched upon , but implicitly our curricula overfavor the gaussian distribution and end up accidentally implicitly convincing students its the only one . )
this has nothing to do with taleb and everything to do with genuine intellectual inquiry . if academics were thinkers rather than followers , it would be possible to prevent the gross abuse of paradigms .
author of ' the black swan ' and ' fooled by randomness ' former trader nassim nicholas taleb illustrates the concept of the ' barbell strategy ' - a risk hedging strategy robust to losses .
assume these experiences were drawn from the bell - shaped normal distribution on which such claims are generally based . if i were to write down as a percentage the probability that goldman sachs would encounter three 25 standard deviation events followed by a 20 standard deviation event , the next 15 lines of this column would be occupied by zeros . such things simply do not occur . so what did ?
people have a natural bias to look at returns and not to look at possible losses ,
says taleb .
if you reduce big losses , your overall returns will be higher .
however , taleb is not a relativist nor is he logical positivist , which is what most economics faculty are . he is a falsificationist . in my limited experience , most research methodologists are falsificationists .
i also agree with taleb that ducks are occasionally black and that water is generall wet . that doesn’t make the rest of what he says less idiotic . go back and read what i wrote .
[ … ] had thought that truly great polemic was dead and gone . i was wrong . it’s directed at nassim taleb , the black swan guy and here’s a sample : mountebanks [ … ]
like taleb , you remain unable to name one of them models , or suggest a useful alternative . stating that “models sometimes don’t work” is as useful as “sometimes boats sink . ” stating where they don’t work , why , and how to fix them is useful . taleb is not useful , relevant or even much of anything beyond a third rate charlatan who impresses the rubes with big words .
a central challenge of strategy is that we have to make choices now , but the payoffs occur in a future environment we cannot fully know or control . a critical step in embracing uncertainty is to try to characterize exactly what variety of it you face—a surprisingly rare activity at many companies . our work over the years has emphasized four levels of uncertainty . level one offers a reasonably clear view of the future : a range of outcomes tight enough to support a firm decision . at level two , there are a number of identifiable outcomes for which a company should prepare . at level three , the possible outcomes are represented not by a set of points but by a range that can be understood as a probability distribution . level four features total ambiguity , where even the distribution of outcomes is unknown .
on sept . 10 , 2009 former trader and bestselling author nassim taleb did something that he very seldom does : he wore a tie . taleb has oftentimes publicly expressed his distaste for the blood - constraining artifacts , as well as for those who tend to don them , so the lebanese - american let the world know that was a very special day for him by betraying a sacred personal disposition .
[ … ] 21 , 2009 scott locklin dismisses taleb in a recent post . i won’t get into the quant debate , as i’m not qualified to judge , but i will pick up [ … ]
while i am not a taleb fan ( he had his own black swan and became exactly the reviled expert his own books warn us about ) , your hostility in this case seems out of place .
description : author of ' the black swan ' and ' fooled by randomness ' former trader nassim nicholas taleb illustrates the concept of the ' barbell strategy ' - a risk hedging strategy robust to losses .
if you are scratching your head in utter confusion , do not worry . i will continue to delve into this topic with examples and pictures so that we can all grasp the basics . the general idea for the strategy is that options inherently trade at an implied volatility that is higher than realized volatility on average . some academics ( nassim taleb ) believe that options trade at a higher implied volatility because black - scholes assumes a normal , bell shaped , distribution in stock returns . we can all agree that stock returns are anything but normal after going through the extreme volatility of 2008 . in fact , during the 4th quarter of 2008 the s & p 500 had moves in excess of + / - 5 % during 25 % of the trading days . if we assume that the s & p 500 has a long - term standard deviation of 20 % on average , then a 5 % daily move is in excess of 4 standard deviations . in a nutshell , equity markets are fat - tailed , meaning that observations that are far away from the mean happen much more frequently than a normal distribution can account for . nassim taleb would argue that these “black swan” events more than wipe out the small profits from selling options .
another problematic example comes from taleb’s disdain for mathematics in economics . he has misstated his case . a minority of economics , finance , and marketing faculty believe that economics has become nothing more than calculus . taleb’s disdain comes from falsificationists’ philosophy . there are two types of theories : theories that have been disproved ( e . g . , newtonian physics ) and theories that cannot be disproved given current research methods .
funny , i’m pretty sure the sharpe ratio does pretty well at noticing that taleb’s fund is a massive pile of suck . feel free to pick any other performance metric : yearly returns , cumulative returns , sortino ratio , bias ratio ; doesn’t matter : his fund still amounts to “capital assets destruction model . ” wheras betting against taleb’s dumb strat is a good business , and tail risks can apparently be managed .
> taleb doesn ' t point one situation when mad works better than sd ( i pointed out some where sd works better than mad ) he also doesn ' t address obvious problems which such substitutions create .
you state that
standard deviation tells you how volatile measurements are
. but taleb shows how financial markets are non - gaussian and have
fat tails
and gives the data and the supporting arguments .
though , i do not fully agree to the second part of your analysis as i think you miss taleb’s point . – a black swan event is by definition unexpected . the best we can do is hedge against those events . when taleb says one shall be long on options , it is only a matter of the capped loss they provide ( even if the payoff may be lower than selling options ) . you may make less money than in shorting implied volatility , but you are hedged against a potential black swan . you’re saying taleb being wrong does not make sense at that particular point , as you’re target is different .
for nearly more than 50 years , going back to lewis fry richardson , it’s been known that the cumulative distribution of wars by size follows a rough power law , the number of events larger than size s being proportional to 1 / s raised to an exponent α . this is also an approximation , of course , because there is an absolute maximum possible size for a conflict — it can’t be more than then entire population . hence , the power law form can only hold over a certain range . to take this into account , cirillo and taleb also rescale the data to take into account the finite size of the human population .


the confusion of tongues is a 2014 multi-narrative comedy film written and directed by james fair .

the film stars an ensemble cast , which includes sadie frost , gemma atkinson , ewen macintosh , kate o'toole , paul henshall and katie sheridan .

the story follows a group of birmingham residents who descend upon a local pub in order to win a lucrative pub quiz .

the confusion of tongues

on the foreground : the people of the world , punished by the confusion of the tongues for their disobedience to god .
the confusion of tongues is 90 minute comedy film that will be shot and edited in 72 hours
.
confusion of tongues tips us into the middle of a nightmare . is the only way out of the trauma to re - experience it ?
strickling , j . e . 1974 legendary evidence for the confusion of tongues , creation research society quarterly 11 : 97–101 .
' give it to me ! ' - a limited edition dvd of the ' confusion of tongues ' , with handwritten letter from one of the directors .
{ * * yonge ' s title , a treatise on the confusion of languages . }
to trace the perception of tongues in the church from inception until modern times .
the following are the results of a detailed study of the doctrine of tongues from inception until 1922 . the results are drawn from the gift of tongues project which had a fourfold purpose to :
stephen finlay , confusion of tongues : a theory of normative language , oxford university press , 2014 , 278pp . , $ 65 . 00 ( hbk ) , isbn 9780199347490 .
orr , james , m . a . , d . d . general editor .
entry for ' confusion of tongues '
.
international standard bible encyclopedia
. 1915 .
ferenczi , s . ( [ 1933 ] 1994 ) . confusion of tongues between adults and the child . in final contributions to the problems and methods of psychoanalysis ( pp . 156–167 ) . london : karnac books .
the confusion of tongues is a movie starring gemma atkinson , ewen macintosh , and kate o ' toole . a polyphonic story following a day in the life of a group of birmingham residents before they compete for the prize money at their local pub quiz .
my conservative estimate tallies about 150 million people consistently practising the christian rite of speaking in tongues throughout the world .
to add to this confusion , there was my experience on radio the other week . take a listen to this short clip :
one of the most misunderstood passages in the old testament is the genesis account of the confusion of tongues at the tower of babel . this is typically viewed as an effort to explain the origin of earth’s many diverse languages , their having arisen from a single primal tongue . we read in genesis 11 : 1 - 9 that
it is my opinion that this observed “inappropriate or garbled speech” is a contemporary example of what the book of genesis calls “confounded speech . ” the confusion of tongues at the tower of babel can thus be demystified . it was a rather widespread natural disturbance that had nothing to do with the creation of new languages .
in comparison to the detailed articles posted within the gift of tongues project , few footnotes will be given here , and some ancient authors and minor movements will be ignored . one can find substantiation at the gift of tongues project webpage . links to the gift of tongues project pages will be highlighted throughout . the results are subject to change as new information comes forward .
this changes things considerably , instead of acts 2 : 4 reading as other tongues the proper reading is other languages . the other tongues creates ambiguities that never existed in the greek . other languages immediately starts to clarify a difficult subject .
these are the sons of shem , after their families , after their tongues , in their lands , after their nations .
these are the sons of ham , after their families , after their tongues , in their countries , and in their nations .
it would not be fair to translate the church fathers on the subject using tongues instead of languages . it significantly changes the nuance of the text when it is done .
a crew of 44 students and recent graduates will be aiming to shoot , edit and screen a 90 - minute feature film titled , ‘the confusion of tongues’ in just 72 hours which will feature a high - profile cast , including gemma atkinson , sadie frost , kate o’toole and ewen macintosh .
“the confusion of tongues” doesn’t end with just end with a collaborative effort on the filmmaking . we have found ( and are still seeking ) any artists who wish to be a part of the film . we are working with local artists for them to contribute any work and perhaps write original pieces for the film itself .
the confusion of tongues is a farcical comedy set over one day in birmingham , intertwining the stories of various characters linked by their desire to win the jackpot at a local pub quiz . the cast will comprise emerging and established actors , who will be revealed at the official launch event at the spotted dog at 7pm on friday 30th may .
after an exhaustive approach of locating , digitizing , translating and analyzing two - thousand years worth of texts , the results of the gift of tongues project has found one of the main challenges to solving this debate is overcoming the embedded ignorance of history .
speaking in tongues is an inherent part of the present pentecostal and charismatic identities . this practice is one of the key features that distinguish them apart from other christian movements .
the actual results can be found at the gift of tongues project . most readers have found the actual project source texts , principally in greek and latin , along with the analysis too complex and desire to read a shortened version . this series of summaries is concerned with the big picture on how the doctrine of tongues was transmitted through the centuries , not the details .
there are two known cuneiform accounts that deal with the confusion of language and undoubtedly derive from the tower of babel episode of genesis 11 . the earliest , probably from the early third millennium ( kramer 1970 : 108 ) , is part of longer epic called “enmerkar and the lord of aratta . ” in it , “the spell of nudimmud” is quoted , which deals with the confusion of language . according to the spell , there once was a “golden age” when everyone spoke one language . the god enki , leader of the gods , put an end to this era by confusing the speech of mankind . the critical passage read ,
a good example of a renewalist speaking in tongues is found in this video clip of the late kenneth hagin . he was a highly respected and influential pentecostal preacher in the mid - 1900s .
kramer , samuel n . 1968 the “babel of tongues” : a sumerian version , journal of the american oriental society 88 : 108–11 1970 enki and his inferiority complex , orientalia 39 : 103–10 .
the old testament story of the tower of babel tells how nimrod built one of the first cities after the flood ( remember noah ? ) . he built a tower into the sky to get his people closer to god , using all the resources that he had at his disposal . once god saw how people were determined to equate themselves with himself , he destroyed the tower and created a ‘confusion of tongues’ , the bible’s explanation for why we all speak different languages today .
what is the tower’s purpose ? it’s a “bridge” that would reconnect us back to source . , . our dna… and through the confusion of language and the distortion of concepts , the “rulers / anchors” control us , humanity , and do actively prevent our true progress…
the christian rite of speaking in tongues has been controversial , especially over the last one - hundred years . speaking in tongues is a practice expressed by renewalists . renewalism is the fastest growing christian faith in the world . many have tried to explain this rite through experiential and psychological terms , but few have attempted an extensive study through historical literature .
we ' re making a farcical comedy feature film called ' the confusion of tongues ' based in birmingham uk . what makes this project special is the fact that it will be filmed and edited in 72 hours , commencing on thursday 17th july at 9am then finishing at 9am on sunday 20th . it will then be screened in the largest cinema screen in birmingham , ‘the giant screen’ on the sunday night .
this work traces the perception of tongues speaking through the centuries . perception is not necessarily reality . on many occasions , the work will reference the perception with no remarks about the integrity of the event or person . this is up to the reader to decide .
the “arrest response” produced by [ electrical ] stimulation in the [ brain’s ] posterior frontal region . . . consists in the arrest of voluntary movement and may show additional features such as post - stimulation confusion , inappropriate or garbled speech . . .
this summary is the result of the gift of tongues project which is designed for the advanced researcher . the gift of tongues project has attempted to identify , collate and digitize the source texts in the original greek , latin , with some syriac , french and a sprinkling of a few other languages . english translations have been provided with almost every text , along with my own analysis . the gift of tongues project differentiates itself from others because the source texts available on the website allow for you to research and draw your own conclusions . all the legwork is already done . all one has to do now is read instead of the time consuming and never ending task of finding the source files . better yet , the majority is digitally searchable .
' the confusion of tongues ' characterised the polarised dimensions of the closing ferenczi / freud communication , and extended to problems of psychoanalytic formulation and publication . there were manifest and latent issues which remain of historic importance . ferenczi was dying and assumed freud was dying when he wrote this classic essay , so relevant to contemporary psychoanalytic thought and controversy . denying and sometimes acknowledging his progressive , fatal illness , ferenczi made enduring contributions to the understanding of child abuse and trauma while severely traumatised . concepts of trauma and countertransference were amplified and expanded . freud remained remarkably creative while physically declining with oral cancer ; ferenczi manifested progressive and regressive trends , fostering both sublimated innovation and wild analysis . psychoanalysts tended to avoid , for half a century , confronting the problems of the ill , impaired , and dying analyst . the clarification of ' the confusion of tongues ' continues in contemporary psychoanalytic discussion and debate . the paper presaged a widened interest in the analyst ' s analysing functions , unconscious communication , countertransference , and the interplay of reality and fantasy inside and outside the psychoanalytic situation .
) is the pivotal key word for the doctrine of tongues in the original greek text . this word is the central theme found in paul’s address to the corinthians and luke’s description of the first pentecost . this noun is further used by later greek ecclesiasts and authors on the subject .
boscawen , w . st . chad 1876 the legend of the tower of babel . records of the past 7 : 129–32 . 1877 the legend of the tower of babel , transactions of the society of biblical archaeology 5 : 303–12 .
in those days . . . the people entrusted [ to him ] could address enlil , verily , in but a single tongue . in those days . . . did enki . . . estrange the tongues in their mouths as many as were put there . the tongues of men which were one ( jacobsen 1997 ; cf . kramer 1968 , 1970 ; cohen 1973 ) .
although the longest shoot i’ve worked on was 15 hours , and i was in a coma for three days afterwards but it was amazing ! so expectations for this shoot are high ! sorry , got carried away and i didn’t introduce myself ! i’m amy ! one of the production assistant on the 72 hour project’s new film ‘confusion of tongues’ . i’ll be posting on here , twitter and facebook during the shoot , i’ll be bring you all the news from the shoot plus interviews from the cast !
at the end of the 72 hours we will take a few hours to get some sleep and encode the film ready for uploading for downloads . we ' ll watch the film in the giant screen at 6pm on sunday 20th july and once it is finished , the link for the download will be available for our audience . the film will then be taken away to be tidied up outside of the 72 hours and prepared for life upon the festival circuit much the same as any other film . ' the ballad of des & mo ' had a successful 18 months touring the world , we hope the same will be true of ' the confusion of tongues '
stephen finlay ' s confusion of tongues ( cot ) is an ambitious book . its first half advances a unifying semantics for normative words , including ' good ' , ' ought ' , and ' reason ' . in the second half , he argues that this semantics , combined with a single pragmatic principle , can explain the uses of such expressions of special interest to ethicists . cot ' s engagement with these topics is rich and complex .
- - mind
the gift of tongues project and this summary believe that pentecostals and charismatics have brought positive contributions to the greater society , and have made the world a better place . the purpose of this examination is not to attack or denigrate their character . the goal is simply to find the truth of the matter . nothing more .
it is thought that on the site of the tower of babel the kingdom of babylon had its beginning . the babylonian meaning of babel is “gate of god“ ; but , the meaning in the hebrew is “confusion“ - - and it was called that after god scattered the people by confusing their languages . it is significant that babylon , that great empire so renowned for its great wealth , pride , pomp , and all that is the opposite of the kingdom of god , should have had its beginning in the evil heart of nimrod . “an evil man out of the evil treasure [ of the heart ] bringeth forth evil things“ [
thankfully the internet age came along . museums and other institutions have posted many manuscripts online . better manuscripts are now available than the ones found in mpg . the ability to do digital searches with google’s search engine reveals even more texts . the gift of tongues project is one of the direct benefactors of the digitization of libraries , museums , and institutions .
base of the ziggurat at babylon , thought to be the location of the tower of babel described in genesis 11 .
– a term given for those who emphasize miracles , supernatural occurrences , and oftentimes speaking in tongues within the christian’s everyday life . really , it is an umbrella term for pentecostals , charismatics ,
the renewalist faith , with its emphasis on holiness , mysticism , independence , and easy adaptability to different cultures , is the fastest growing segment of christianity in the world . their christian mystic framework along with its distinctive theology of speaking in tongues makes a historical study imperative .
and with every living creature that is with you , of the fowl , of the cattle , and of every beast of the earth with you ; from all that go out of the ark , to every beast of the earth .
bonnke’s demonstration is not as obvious as hagin’s . he mixes regular language and charismatic , excitable speech between short outbursts of tongues - speech . the audience is energized but not surprised by this presentation . this is quite common in renewalist circles .
unto shem also , the father of all the children of eber , the brother of japheth the elder , even to him were children born .
this is a typical example , though speaking in tongues is not always done in a sunday service . it is practised more frequently in weekday services , prayer sessions , pastoral settings , and special events .
this work is broken up into a three part series . part 1 traces the evolution of pentecost from the first to seventeenth - centuries which is inclusive of catholic perceptions . part 2 focuses on the protestant perceptions which has three distinct doctrinal frameworks . part 3 is an in - depth look into the corinthian tongues saga .
what do renewalists presently believe speaking in tongues to be ? there is a general agreement that speaking in tongues is a supernatural phenomenon — one that cannot be measured or defined by science . some renewalists call it a heavenly language that only the individual , god , and a special interpreter understands . others say it is a private prayer language or a form of exalted worship . there are those who just shrug their shoulders and say it is simply a god thing that defies explanation . a handful may say speaking in tongues is the spontaneous ability to speak a foreign language . most renewalists believe that speaking in tongues is a deliberate outcome of a controlled mind – in other words , they are not crazies or kooks whose erratic behavior is in an uncontrolled hallucinatory state . they are regular people like the helpful neighbor across the street , the taxi driver , teacher , dentist , nurse , plumber , politician , lawyer or construction worker . renewalists are found in all walks of life .
this does not mean all those defined as renewalists emphasize this doctrine and practice it . the same pew study further demonstrates that no more than 53 % of renewalists speak in tongues in any country they examined . in most instances , it is less .
in utopia ( 1516 ) , thomas more imagines an apparently perfect island society in which citizens share a common language and way of life . it is a text riddled with ambiguities , paradoxes and verbal games : ‘utopia’ itself translates as both ‘no - place’ and ‘good - place’ . the book has repeatedly frustrated readers’ attempts to decipher its message . confusion of tongues : art and the limits of language brings into dialogue artists who – in ways similar to more – explore the power of language to complicate and withhold meaning . as viewers , we are invited to imagine through and beyond the spoken and written word , to think and re - think , to look and look again .
and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth , and upon every fowl of the air , upon all that moveth upon the earth , and upon all the fishes of the sea ; into your hand are they delivered .
therefore is the name of it called babel ; because the lord did there confound the language of all the earth : and from thence did the lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth .
] ) . it is on the basis of this text that the reasonable premise is given that nimrod was the guiding personality in uniting the people into the work of building the tower of babel . he perhaps was one of the first dictators in the world .
for it is written , i will destroy the wisdom of the wise , and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent .
people will always be inspired by the pentecostal narrative described in the book of acts and the mysterious tongues found later on in the new testament epistle called i corinthians . those accounts have propelled many ardent students of the bible and the christian faith to reproduce this phenomenon in their lives . the passion for a new pentecost has cycled for twenty - one - centuries . how communities and persons perceived , practised and passed - on the right throughout these centuries is the goal of this study .
and god saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth , and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually .
a good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things : and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things .
no fear of god an unbiased study of the book of genesis should convince anyone of the depravity of the unregenerate heart , and the desperate sinfulness of men when they are left to their own devices , without interference by god . the sin principle came into the soul of man as a result of the fall in the garden of eden . no good works that man can do will remove it . the threatenings of neither god nor man will turn a sinner into a righteous man . no amount of good resolutions will avail to remove sin from the human soul . only through the blood of jesus christ as it is applied to the soul will sin be removed from the souls of men .
this finding was not anticipated at the start . the project assumed at the beginning there was little christian literature throughout the centuries to build a case . rather , there is a substantial corpus of ancient christian literature on the subject . the discovery about the abundance on the subject has created two rival stories . the first allows the building of a compelling narrative on the doctrine of tongues throughout the centuries . the second is the narrative about the ignorance of christian literature over the last two centuries and how it has contributed to the modern definition . both play an important story in the modern definition and i am not sure which one is more important . they share a complex interplay that is difficult to untangle .
and the arvadite , and the zemarite , and the hamathite : and afterward were the families of the canaanites spread abroad .
close up of the baked bricks and bitumen mortar of the ziggurat at ur . “they used brick instead of stone , and tar for mortar” for the tower of bible ( gn 11 : 3 ) .
and the lord came down to see the city and the tower , which the children of men builded .
perkins , ann l . 1949 the comparative archaeology of early mesopotamia , chicago : the university of chicago press .
luke is vague on the actual mechanics and certainly short on details . this leaves his pentecost and subsequent tongues narratives with many unanswered questions ; did every inspired person speak in a single different language and together they were speaking the languages of all the nations ? was it one sound emanating and changed during transmission so that the hearers heard their own language ? if it was a miracle of hearing , what was that sound ? were the people conscious of what they were saying or were they completely overtaken by a divine power and had no comprehension about what they were speaking ? was it a heavenly , non - human or prayer language ? did this miracle continue after the first - century ? how did this tongues - event get passed down to the next generation ? did it become part of the church liturgy ?
as a person who attends a charismatic church and involved in these type of communities for decades , i wanted the results to parallel their experiences . unfortunately , the findings did not allow for this . everyone who approaches the 2000 year narrative on speaking in tongues has to allow history to speak for itself – not to rewrite history to justify contemporary experience .
a more contemporary example is reinhard bonnke . bonnke is a german - born evangelist whose work in africa , especially nigeria has earned him the rank of one the top preachers of all time in respect to audience reach . the example here is his public speaking in tongues at a large indoor gathering somewhere in asia . his christ for the nations website claims over 55 million documented decisions for christ under his ministry .
these are the families of the sons of noah , after their generations , in their nations : and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood .
doré based his tower of babel on the minaret of the great mosque of samarra , in present day iraq . the minaret is 52 m high and has a spiralling cone .
i will ascend above the heights of the clouds ; i will be like the most high .
the word tongues , which is seldom used in our modern language to specifically mean a modern , regular or contemporary language , is usually understood to be something out - of - this - world , unusual or even weird . sometimes it is used a synonym to language , but rarely in contemporary literature is it a predominant descriptor .
may the men of this twenty - first century consider that the day is fast approaching when the world is again going to be joined in a common cause , under the leadership of the evil genius of satan . the antichrist , the false prophet , and the beast will rule the world in a trinity of evil . the world will bow to their will , and god will be defied by this government of tyranny . but god shall again confound the peoples of the world as effectually as he did when he confounded the builders of the tower of babel when he confused their speech .
nimrod and great babylon the tenth chapter of genesis , often called the table of nations , lists the generations of noah . here is chronicled the names of the tribes from which sprang all the nations of the earth . god recorded these in his word in evidence that he had not yet finished dealing with them . his plan of salvation was eventually revealed to include them all .
this of course begs the question , “what could have been the natural source of such provocative stimuli in the distant past ? ” check out the reference below .
1 . were the people righteous or unrighteous after the flood ? 2 . how do we know that the descendants of noah were familiar with the event of the flood ? 3 . what common purpose did the people of the earth have ? what united them in this purpose ? 4 . who was nimrod ? and where was his kingdom , babel , founded ? 5 . what does babel mean ? 6 . why were not the people who built the tower of babel afraid of god ? 7 . why did the lord confuse the speech of the people ? 8 . why did god stop the building of the tower of babel ? 9 . does god intervene in the affairs of men today ? why ? 10 . why did not god destroy the builders of the tower of babel as he did the antediluvians
it is not unreasonable to suppose that noah told the story of the flood many times to his grandchildren , and their children and that the story of the flood was well known to the generations of noah . also the earth for many generations bore fresh and vivid evidence of the deluge that had swept the earth of all its wicked inhabitants . how great a warning this must have spoken to the descendants of noah of the folly of forsaking god ! but the bible records that it was not long before they , too , had forsaken and refused the ways of righteousness and turned to their own self - sufficiency .
he taketh the wise in their own craftiness : and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong .
this exhibition is a response to utopia 2016 : a year of imagination and possibility , a year - long programme of events and exhibitions at somerset house celebrating the 500th anniversary of the publication of thomas more’s utopia .
an objective reading of the biblical account reveals only that the tower - builders’ speech was “confounded . ” the passage in the eleventh chapter of genesis reads in part :
oxford university press is a department of the university of oxford . it furthers the university ' s objective of excellence in research , scholarship , and education by publishing worldwide .
and the beginning of his kingdom was babel , and erech , and accad , and calneh , in the land of shinar .
perhaps one could argue 800 words when you throw in the defense of the experience by peter in acts chapter 2 and the three other instances throughout the book of acts . perhaps paul could be credited with writing about pentecost if his coverage in his first letter to the corinthians contains a parallel , though part iii will show these are not connected . why all the fuss over 206 words ? if it was so important , why didn’t luke go into much greater detail ? this would have spared the modern day reader such a confusion . the clarification is going to take over 10 , 000 words and the parsing through a magnitude of documents found throughout the centuries to explain those few written words two thousand years ago .
now these are the generations of the sons of noah , shem , ham , and japheth : and unto them were sons born after the flood .
cohen , sol 1973 emmerkar and the lord of aratta , ph . d . dissertation , university of pennsylvania .
seely , paul h . 2001 the date of the tower of babel and some theological implications , westminster theological journal 63 : 15–38 .
i . ( 1 ) as to the preceding topics , what has been already said will be sufficient . we might next proceed to consider , and that in no slight or cursory manner , the philosophical account which moses gives us of the confusion of languages ; for he speaks in the following manner :
and all the earth had one pronunciation , and there was one language among all men . and it came to pass , as they were moving from the east , that they found a plain in the land of shinar , and dwelt there . and one man said to his neighbour , come , let us make bricks , and let us burn them with fire ; and they had bricks for stone , and asphalt for mortar . and they said , come , let us build ourselves a city , and a tower whose head shall reach to heaven ; and let us make for ourselves a name , before we are scattered over the face of all the earth . and the lord came down to see the city , and the tower , which the sons of men had builded . and the lord said , behold , all mankind is one race , and there is but one language among them all ; and they have begun to do this thing , and now there will not fail unto them anything of all the things which they desire to do . come , let us go down and confuse their language there , so that each may not understand the voice of his neighbour . and the lord scattered them from thence over the face of all the earth , and they desisted from building the city , and the tower . on this account , the name of it was called confusion , because there the lord confused the languages of all the earth , and from thence the lord scattered them over the face of all the earth .
{ 1 } { # ge 11 : 1 . }
so the lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth : and they left off to build the city .
if biblical archaeology is defined loosely as “the study of the ancient things related to the bible , . . .
he disappointeth the devices of the crafty , so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise .
this event sent by god was the ultimate cause of the early separation of mankind , their dispersal throughout the earth , and their division into races and nations .
one of the primary areas of the near east where civilization began is the tigris - euphrates river valley , comprising portions of modern syria and iraq . this region , the fertile valley between the two rivers , has been known since the times of the ancient greeks as mesopotamia , literally “the land between the rivers . ” this area of course was the home of many peoples familiar to us from general ancient history and the old testament , such as the assyrians and babylonians . before these peoples a group known as the sumerians , the creators of classic mesopotamian culture , inhabited the southern part of the valley . how and when did civilization start in this region ? in order to at least partially answer this question , we will need to examine both written and archaeological source material . the earliest of that archaeological material comes from cultures in the valley that did not as yet know the art of writing .
metaethicists have long been interested in the meaning of the words ' good ' , ' ought ' , and ' reasons ' . many are persuaded that , although we might analyze one or another of these words in terms of the others , there ' s no breaking out of the circle of normative concepts when explaining the meaning of such words . this has led to the prominence of three main kinds of metaethical view . nonnaturalists explain the irreducibility of the meaning of normative words by claiming that normative words denote sui generis normative properties , supervenient on but not identical to natural properties . a posteriori reductive naturalists explain this irreducibility by claiming that normative words express different concepts from words characteristic of description of the natural facts , but they propose ( or at least hold out hope for ) a substantive empirical reduction of the properties denoted by these words to natural properties . expressivists explain the irreducibility by claiming that normative words play a fundamentally different role in expressing our mental states to that played by words expressing representations of pieces of the natural world .
stephen finlay is associate professor of philosophy at the university of southern california . he is the author of a number of articles on metaethics and moral psychology . originally from new zealand , he lives in pomona , california with his wife and three daughters .
a polyphonic story following a day in the life of a group of birmingham residents before they compete for the prize money at their local pub quiz .
next , he argues that other ( more robustly ) normative uses of ' ought ' also evaluate the probability of their prejacent proposition given contextually fixed background conditions plus the assumption that some end will be achieved , but the determination of the relevant end is much more complicated . i won ' t go into many of the nuances about how finlay thinks this works at the interface of semantics and pragmatics of normative discourse , except to note two things .
mesopotamia , literally “the land between the rivers
was the home of many peoples familiar to us from general ancient history and the old testament , such as the assyrians and babylonians . before these peoples a group known as the sumerians , the creators of classic mesopotamian culture , inhabited the southern part of the valley . how and when did civilization start in this region ?
a christian apologetics ministry dedicated to demonstrating the historical reliability of the bible through archaeological and biblical research .
there is , however , a rich tradition in moral philosophy of insisting that moral ends aren ' t like this . aristotle argued that living morally isn ' t a state of affairs plausibly conceived as an outcome of actions like telling the truth , paying one ' s debts , helping the needy , etc . rather doing these sorts of things is , on the aristotelian view , the immediate actualization of the ongoing activity of living morally . can finlay ' s view make sense of that idea ?
the other records , transmitted orally for countless generations , are inconsistent . some speak of “strange speech , ” others of new languages .
this summary fills in the blanks of the historical record that have , up until now , been neglected .
and the whole earth was of one language , and of one speech . . . . go to , let us go down , and there confound their language , that they may not understand one another’s speech . . . . therefore is the name of it called babel ; because the lord did there confound the language of all the earth . *
the second group of scholars is the professional philologists , the students of the sumerian language . many of these linguistic experts have never excavated , just as the archaeologists are not necessarily readers of sumerian . it must be remembered that these fields are highly specialized . e . a . speiser and b . landsberger , who insisted that many of the words in sumerian documents are not sumerian words at all , led the linguists and philologists in the early days . landsberger pointed out that this is especially true of words pertaining to agriculture , showing that the basic farming vocabulary and common farming techniques used in southern mesopotamia were the invention of non - sumerian people .
' end this madness ' : by taking one third out of the crowd funding total - you ' d be welcome to your pick of all the perks , plus invitations to represent the film at film festivals , and an option to have a front slide advert at the beginning of the film .
and the sons of cush ; seba , and havilah , and sabtah , and raamah , and sabtechah : and the sons of raamah ; sheba , and dedan .
so now we have that out the way , we can show you some of the images from yesterdays rehearsals , where there was a lot of development of characters ( even a character name change ) . a good portion of the discussion was on the comedic elements of the film , where pace and timing of a performance can be the difference between a gag getting a laugh , or it falling like a lead balloon . in a 72 , time is restricted so honing in on those comedic performances can be stressful . however , the 72 seems to be benefiting from an extremely talented group of actors and actresses , and everyone seemed happy with their performances and the development of the characters .
therefore their inhabitants were of small power , they were dismayed and confounded : they were as the grass of the field , and as the green herb , as the grass on the housetops , and as corn blasted before it be grown up .
note : the following article is part of series of articles / excerpts from “man and his planet – an unauthorized history” by james e . strickling . more articles of this series will be posted soon .
i shall employ an analytic method , seeking a metaphysical analysis of normative facts , properties , and relations by means of a conceptual analysis of the meanings of the normative words by which we refer to them . the result will be a form of analytic reductionism ( or
analytic naturalism
) , an explanatory reduction of normative properties ( etc . ) into complexes of non - normative properties by reductively defining normative words and concepts in entirely non - normative terms . ( p . 4 )
and the sons of javan ; elishah , and tarshish , kittim , and dodanim .
but olympus and ossa and pelion are the names of mountains . ( 5 ) but instead of these mountains the lawgiver represents a tower as having been built by these men , who , out of ignorance and wicked ambition , were desirous to reach the heaven . every alienation of mind , then , is grievous ; for even if every portion of the whole earth could be built over , a slight foundation is being first laid , and then if a superstructure could be raised in the fashion of a single pillar , it would still be an enormous distance removed from the heavenly sphere , and above all would it be so according to the tenets of those curious philosophers who have affirmed that the earth is the centre of the universe .
during the rehearsals james was scribbling notes and annotations on his a3 version of the script . this version of the script will then be photocopied and given to the editing crew to more efficiently translate james’ ideas into the edit . it also makes the editors job a little easier .
although the bible does not mention this issue , it is clear that , although ignored by the secular scholarly community , the bible does provide an answer to the sumerian problem . note some things told to us in the early chapters of genesis . genesis correctly places the seat of early near eastern civilization in southern mesopotamia . after the great flood , when all human life began to develop anew as descendants of shem , ham , and japheth spread from the mountains of ararat ( urartu of assyrian records ) , we find a large number of semitic and hamitic names having connections with place names in mesopotamia . in fact , the tower of babel was obviously built in the babylon region , as is demonstrated by its name and the fact that the bible tells us it was constructed in the plains of shinar ( sumer ) .
with only a year of experience behind me , working with the 72 hour project is probably the biggest job i’ve ever done . i know with most film positions you expect stress , a mountain of problems and lack of coffee ; but the excitement is overwhelming !
mesopotamian cylinder seal , upper left , on display in the british museum . of unknown provenance , it dates to ca . 2200–2100 bc . to the right of the seal is an impression of the scene carved on the seal ; below is an enlargement of the scene . the seal depicts a banquet with a sacred tree in the center and a man and woman ( ? ) reaching for fruit . on either side are serpents . bryant g . wood .
the second account conforms more closely to the genesis account ( strickling 1974 ) . dated only as “assyrian” ( smith 1876 : 160 ) , the legend tells of the destruction of a building on a mound in babylon by a god . the god also confounded the speech of the builders ( boscawen 1877 : 303 ; smith 1880 : 166 ) . the badly damaged tablet has been translated as follows :
nissen , hans j . 1988 the earliest history of the ancient near east , 9000–2000 bc , trans . elizabeth lutzeier with kenneth northcott , chicago : university of chicago press .
the earliest major culture 2 in mesopotamia is called the hassuna culture , named after the place where it was first discovered , the village of hassuna in northern mesopotamia . the hassuna culture dates to the [ conventional ] period 5500–5000 bc , and has been found at a number of places in the northern part of the river valley . it seems to have been mostly confined to the north . the hassuna people were agricultural , and were makers of pottery , even though they did not know the potter’s wheel . their tools were bone and stone ; there has not been any trace of metal work found at hassuna sites . reed and clay houses have been found , but only at the type - site of tell hassuna itself . the most common tools of the hassuna culture were wooden sickles with flint teeth for harvesting grain .
there are two key ideas at the heart of the project . first , alongside moral uses of ' good ' , ' ought ' , and ' reason ' , there are familiar nonmoral ( though perhaps weakly
normative
) instrumental uses and also recognizably nonnormative uses ; yet these words do not seem to be ambiguous between moral , instrumental , and nonnormative meanings . because of this , we should hold out hope for reductive analyses based on conservative extensions of the correct analysis of instrumental and nonnormative uses of these words . second , instrumental uses of these words are reductively analyzable in terms of how they are explicitly or implicitly related to ends via probabilities . so - - finlay hypothesizes - - we might unify the reductive analysis of these words by also viewing moral uses of these words as probabilistically related to ends , where because of the pragmatics of normative discourse it is often advantageous to leave the relevant end implicit .
and the sons of ham ; cush , and mizraim , and phut , and canaan .
and the children of aram ; uz , and hul , and gether , and mash .
and ophir , and havilah , and jobab : all these were the sons of joktan .
] ) . this is exactly what happened when the tower of babel was being built .
mellaart , james 1965 earliest civilizations of the near east , london : thames & hudson .
the light of day – 11pm , 10th july , town hall theatre . tickets : urltoken
drawing from elisabeth young - bruehl ' s psychological and psychodynamic study of prejudice as a starting point , this paper explores the phenomenon of childism—namely , the prejudice again children—from a rankian psychodynamic perspective . young - bruehl argues that childism is comparable to prejudices such as anti - semitism , sexism , and racism , and serves such purposes as the elimination of an individual ' s personhood , sexual exploitation , and the erasure of identity . adding to young - bruehl ' s analysis of the social and psychological causes and effects of prejudice against children , this paper will examine the nature and dangers of childism explicit and implicit in the writings of otto rank . we will examine the development of creative will in child maturation—a development that childist forms of prejudice may obstruct , inhibit , and compromise . we will see that young - bruehl ' s foundational writing on childism echoes many of the observations and writings of otto rank in regard to the prejudice against children , and how such prejudice deeply diminishes , undermines , and fractures our unfolding lives and creative will in a shared world .
walton , john 1995 the mesopotamian background of the tower of babel . bulletin for biblical research 5 : 155–75 . reprinted in bible and spade 9 ( 1996 ) : 77 - 96 .
xxi . ( 98 ) but he says that the world perceptible to the outward senses is , as it were , the footstool of god on this account : first of all , that he may show that there is no efficient cause in the creatures ; secondly , for the purpose of displaying that even the whole world has not a free and unrestrained spontaneous motion of its own , but god , the ruler of the universe , takes his stand upon it , regulating it and directing everything in a saving manner by the helm of his wisdom , using , in truth , neither hands nor feet , nor any other part whatever such as belongs to created objects ; for god is not as man , but the reason why we at times represent him as such , for the sake of instruction , is because we are unable to advance out of ourselves , but derive our apprehension of the uncreate god from the circumstances with which we ourselves are surrounded . ( 99 ) and it is very beautifully said by moses , in the form of a parable , when he speaks of the world as if it resembled a brick ; for the world appears to stand and to be firmly fixed like a brick in a house , as far as the vision of the sight of the outward senses can inform us , but it has a very swift motion , and one which is able to outstrip all particular motions . ( 100 ) for the eyes of our body look upon the appearance of the sun by day and of the moon by night as standing still , and yet who is there who does not know that the rapidity of movements of these two bodies is incomparable , since they go round the whole heaven in one day ? thus , indeed , the universal heaven itself also , while appearing to stand still , revolves in a circle ; its movements being detected and comprehended by the invisible and more divine eye which is placed in our mind .