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The assumption that anything true is knowable is the grandfather of paradoxes.

William Poundstone

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William Poundstone
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: March 29
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Knowable
Paradoxes
Paradox
Grandfather
Assumption
True
Anything

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Average isn't so hot at the race track given those steep track takes. Average is pretty decent for stocks, something like 6 percent above the inflation rate. For a buy-and -hold investor, commissions and taxes are small.
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People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we don't really decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that yields the higher utility, he says. We make do with guesstimates and a vague recollection of what things are “supposed to cost.”
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Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway.
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Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.
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At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox.
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Kelly was aware that there is one type of favorable bet available to everyone the stock market.
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Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.
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In The Tricky Art of Co-Existing, Sandi Toksvig navigates life's little dilemmas with wit and not-so-common sense. You'll learn the strange history of common courtesy and the one true secret of social success: how to not drive everyone around you crazy.
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The best paradoxes raise questions about what kinds of contradictions can occur-what species of impossibilities are possible.
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The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails.
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The engine driving the Kelly system is the law of large numbers. In a 1713 treatise on probability, Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli propounded a law that has been misunderstood by gamblers (and investors) ever since.
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Are there any mythical beasts which aren't simple pastiches of nature? Centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, griffons, chimeras, sphinxes, manticores, and the like don't speak well for the human imagination. None is as novel as a kangaroo or starfish.
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A bit is worth 10,000 basis points.
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In real conversations, we are always trying to outguess each other.
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Bernoulli's real contribution was to coin a word. The word has been translated into English as utility. It describes this subjective value people place on money.
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The story of the Kelly system is a story of secrets - or if you prefer, a story of entropy.
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There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon's insight to Einstein's. Others found that comparison unfair - unfair to Shannon.
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The best strategy is one that offers the highest compound return consistent with no risk of going broke.
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Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero.
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Paradox is thus a much deeper and universal concept than the ancients would have dreamed. Rather than an oddity, it is a mainstay of the philosophy of science.
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