Talk:Ludic fallacy

Notability.

References for the article etc. will be here in a few days.

I added references. More of their way. IdeasLover 07:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

"Uncertainty of the nerd"? Where's that coming from? Is that actually Taleb's words as well? --Khazar 13:48, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Taleb's wording indeed. YechezkelZilber 02:56, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

What the heck is GIF? Frankly I dont believe this belongs here. Does this entry meet the criteria for a fallacy? It seems too vague as it is currently worded. It is self evident that unknown factors cannot influence utility calculations. This has nothing to do with statistical theory per se.

GIF is acronym for "Great Intellectual Fraud". see in the text.

The issue has nothing to do with the theoretical side of probability theory. It is about the practical - too common - use of statistical theory and its application where it is irelevant (or very inexact and practically off the mark). Your claim about the unknown and utiity calculation is exactly about this point - one cannot do utilities etc. based on the fantrasy that he knows everything. Utility stuff is good when used with caution or for theoretical purposes. But in practice one needs to know actual utilities not twicely differentiable Pratt-Arrow curves! (I suspect I am not clear enough. So I will clarify if you think I did not made my point)YechezkelZilber 22:54, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

The definition here needs to be more clearly explained. Although Taleb has a definition on his Black Swan Glossary and in his book, you need to read the whole chapter (or at least the first 4 pages of it) to simply get the definition.

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In Taleb's words, ludic fallacy (or "uncertainty of the nerd") is the "manifestation of the Platonic fallacy in the study of uncertainty; basing studies of chance on the narrow world of games and dice. A platonic randomness has an additional layer of uncertainty concerning the rules of the game of real life.

The second paragraph has quotes from NNT's book and glossary, but that doesn't help explain the idea. "The uncertainty of the nerd" is meaningless unless you give the narrative of Dr. John and Fat Tony. The "ludic fallacy" is simply using our current culture's idea of games and gambling as equivalent to randomness as seen in real life. We are guilty of the ludic fallacy when we equate the chances of an event that has occurred to us as equivalent to that of flipping a coin. This is simply because we know the odds of getting a heads or tails (50 percent chance), whereas we can't begin to compute the odds of us missing the train (all we REALLY KNOW is that the odds change depending on other events, i.e. strikes, earthquakes, etc. This leads to Popper, falsification, and the idea that it's easier to say what I don't know than what I do). When we compare the train event to flipping a coin what we are saying is there was only a 50% chance of missing the train. We fall for this fallacy because "we like known schemas and well organized knowledge - to the point of blindness to reality."

I've re-factored the example section in the vein of the train example, as an example should be more straightforward for the viewer who hasn't read the book.--Herda050 06:49, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure the example is appropriate. Anyone saying "it was a coin flip" for the train story. does not mean the technical 50/50 gamble. An example where people take the technical stuff seriousely would be more appropriate (maybe the one I gave originally). One may look over in the book and take the example from there (Should be chapter 9 or so "the ludic falacy") YechezkelZilber 02:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by YechezkelZilber (talk • contribs)