Wanabi Stoic

  Hi friends. Here is a continuum of my 2020 learnings. As the pandemic afforded a lot of time to read and learn, there is a lot to share. I am writing in parts viz: RANDOMNESS This is incomplete knowledge, uncertainty. The knowledge in the ancient world doubled in 1500 years and now, the information doubles in 1 year. With this explosion, the randomness has increased exponentially. How do you deal with it? By being convex to it. Hone your edge, take a few bets in life with asymmetric payoffs ie small losses but huge gains if you won. That's exactly what a venture capitalist does by betting on multiple ventures. With vast information asymmetry, you just can't know which horse will win the race. And you have to play your stakes to succeed. The luck factor also becomes all-important and often underrated. And the business of prediction is the worst to be in. Invest in preparedness to profit from uncertainty preferably with open-ended payoffs. The most important events in my life m

                                                      NEERAJ MAHAJAN FRAGILITY It is sensitivity to disorder, chaos. Fragile breaks down easily like a weak-willed/ bodied man, a porcelain cup. a mirror, a weak structure, or anything. The more complex a system, the more fragile it is. Human bodies, Government systems, Economic systems, airline industry, city traffic are very fragile. They are fraught with so much uncertainty that we shouldn't mess up with them. The worst is the bureaucracy that takes big decisions without skin in the game that transfers the tail risk ( an extremely rare risk of very high impact) to the public at large. A very contemporary anecdote is the Inundation of the Indian Stock market by free flowing trillions of dollars being printed by the Federal Reserve and the record-breaking indices. I bet when FED relents, millions of gullible Indians will lose their shirts in stock markets because poor India has sunk deep into recession coz of Lockdowns. Again, fragi

    MY LEARNINGS OF 2020                           NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB My quest for learning led me to Taleb. The Pandemic afforded me spare time to read vociferously and I bought Incerto series of Taleb. My teacher Sanjay Bakshi ( @Sanjay_Bakshi) recommended Taleb and I am grateful to him for his kind advice. Taleb has made me an autodidact, changed the way I view life, risk, return inter alia. In the literary world, this practitioner has no prior comps.  Key lessons are : 1.SKIN IN THE GAME 2.HAMMURABBI, S  LAW 3.POSITIVE CONVEXITY BIAS 4.NEGATIVE CONVEXITY BIAS 5.WITTGENSTEIN RULER 6.OPTIONALITY 7.DISTINCTION BETWEEN NOISE AND INFO 8.THE GENRE OF STOICS 9.TOURISTIFICATION IN ALL SPHERES OF LIFE 10.THE BLACK SWAN 11.EXTREMISTAN 12.MEDIOCRISTAN 13.BARBELL 14.TRADING OPTIONS  15.STRESSORS IN LIFE 16.ANTIFRAGILITY 17.THE GAUSSIAN CURVE 18.OVER OPTIMISATION 19.IMPORTANCE OF BUFFERS 20.HEURISTICS 21.HOW TO THINK IN MULTIPLE ORDER EFFECTS 22.INVERSION 23.VOLATILITY 24.RANDOMNESS 25.GREE

NEERAJ MAHAJAN Unknown Sparrow Hi, I am Neeraj Mahajan and I love writing on anything that excites me.  Twelve years ago, post-Lehman Brothers collapse, DLF Ltd . ( Indias biggest RE developer) launched a beautiful Group Housing Capital Greens in the Heart of Delhi. I fell for it and paid immediately by writing a cheque for rupees 500000( five lacs INR ). My recession-scarred psyche jarred me to withdraw from it which I did. But, it could not detach me from the enticing landscaping, lush green layouts, magnificent flora in the project. My heart yearned for it. After some soul searching, I decided to take action.  Asia's largest surface wastewater drain Najafgarh crisscrosses Delhi and my pricey residence in Ashok Vihar lies right in its front. Ammonia, Carbon, Foul gases emanating from the drain pollutes everything in its vicinity. The drain Blight is pervasive and its socio-economic cost is very difficult to quantify though exorbitant which I will discuss later. The Silverlini