For anyone interested in geopolitics, economics, finance, or philosophy, this is the place. Here I collect (as I discover them) the most insightful freely available visual content on all these subjects and more…
Basics of Option Pricing (Intuition)- Robert Shiller
The intuition of “I, Pencil” by Leonard E Read
Robert Shiller (shared the 2013 Nobel prize with efficient markets theory pioneer Eugene Fama) speaks on asset prices; playing with random noise and AR1 processes to see what works
Shashi Tharoor at the Oxford Union: Discusses Drain of Wealth and other phenomena to build a case against colonial England
IQ works only via negative- the correlation is a statistical swindle that’s quoted with high confidence
Ray Dalio discusses ‘Principles of a Changing World Order’. Edit: More recently, I read the book and the depth of analysis makes it clear how he can consistently beat the market. Bridgewater’s backtesting and strong history driven approach seems very compelling
George Orwell- Eric Blair- ‘s last interview on record. A reminder to every free person, that their autonomy and quality of life is a gift not a guarantee
Cliff Asness, succesful hedge fund manager, on Quantitative Investing. Humble and intellectually stimulating
The most important few minutes of content for a college statistics student to watch.. people that study stats with me at University know I go on about this every now and then. The law of large numbers and central limit theorem fail in Extremistan.
Strongest Defence of Monarchy I’ve found – and it comes from an American anarchist. I strongly recommend Hans Hermann Hoppe’s book – Democracy the God that failed
Milton Friedman’s Quantity Theory of Money is the most intuitive price level heuristic and the most effective if one wants simplicity in their formulation. In the real world, I do hold that there can be deviations in theory
If boredom is a BS filter, as Nassim Taleb claims, Robert Shiller rarely bullshits. More relevantly, Shiller’s points are pertinent. Understanding “narrative economics” can provide deep insight into what seems to be misbehavior in asset prices and the economy at large
Mohnish Pabrai on the “Dhando” business. It works the same as a convex investment. Small errors and high upward payoff. In business it’s Dhandho ventures like the Patels’ Motels. In finance, it could be Dhando away from the money options…
Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails- I think it’s going to be a classic in practical statistics. Taleb’s been a long-term intellectual influence and his illustration of a mediocristan and extremistan in real-world statistics is the world-view changing insight to gather
Hitchens is my favourite intellectual- even if most definitely not the most insightful. His sheer oratory and quality of rhetoric put him up there. He will not bore. If I were offered a coffee with any one person from all of history- Hitchens would be up there on my list of possible candidates
Finding things that gain from disorder… i.e. barbell strategising
Hayek’s ‘Constitution of Liberty’- helped shape my political philosophy. A quote by HB Phillips in the Definitive Edition that’s stayed with me…“Our attitude towards such matters should depend on whether we consider civilization as fixed or as advancing. . . In an advancing society, any restriction on liberty reduces the number of things tried and so reduces the rate of progress. In such a society freedom of action is granted to the individual, not because it gives him greater satisfaction but because if allowed to go his own way he will on the average serve the rest of us better than under any orders we know how to give.”
^ A standard presentation of the 19th century robber baron meme and a summarisation of Burt Falsom’s arguments in ‘The Myth of the Robber Barons’. You don’t have to be a crazy Anarcho-capitalist to see how the robber baron story is overdone and lacks nu
