Solomon's Cairn

[Edit: The Book Review Contest has ended, and I particularly recommend you read the gold medalist, Lars Doucet’s review of Progress and Poverty, which I take a look at here ] This was the book review I submitted for Scott Alexander's book review contest. Sadly, it was not a finalist, and now that the runners-up have been released, I reproduce it here. If you enjoy the review, do give it the rating you think it deserves on the Runner-Up Votes , and check out some of the other non-finalists ( Runners-Up A-R , Runners-Up S-W ). Also worth noting, I submitted my own review before Scott published his , and I preregistered this book for review last year when the contest was announced.  I. Prologue Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder , by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, seems to have anticipated my project of reviewing it, and took pains to make it difficult for me. Writing on the book’s structure: Someone in the business of “summarizing” books would have to write four or five separate des

Over the course of the pandemic, I've been slowly convincing my parents to adopt rigorous epistemological standards, mostly around speech, but also with betting. Just this week, my mother and I made a weight loss bet, precommitting to pay $25 to our least favorite politicians if we fail to meet prescribed goals. It's a slow process, and I record this anecdote to demonstrate.  A scant few minutes ago, my father commented on the lost reputation of pandemic-period darlings, namely Andrew Cuomo and Anthony Fauci.  Dad: I guarantee that Fauci is going to lose his position in the next twelve months. Me (ears perking up at the sound of a 1.0 probability ): You guarantee? Dad (knowing how this conversation goes): I have a 99% certainty that Fauci will be fired or leave his position in the next twelve months. Me: What position? Dad: Whatever the hell position it is. Me: Alright, let's bet, 1:99 odds.  Dad: What? No! Me: You said you were 99% sure, so you should be willing to bet tha

I wrote 'An Open Letter on Love' during the height of rioting and violence in the United States. At the time, I didn't want to risk ire (online or from family) by writing explicitly about those events, and settled instead on exhorting people to love one another. I later posted it on LessWrong, where it got much less attention than I wanted, and I subsequently slunk away from the site. Now that I am working on returning there, I've decided to repost it here, and follow it with a look at the comment it got. It is reproduced below as it appeared on LessWrong in October.  ----------- This post originated as an open letter to my own family this past June, later republished on a political community blog. It was born out of a dissatisfaction with how Love is popularly conceived of, as a vague positive force one pays lip service to, rather than a concrete and potent phenomenon. Religious texts are cited, but are not in conflict with secular wisdom on the matter. Not especially

I've delayed writing on this blog for an entire two months. On reflection, this was a bad idea which I will be rectifying at once.  I delayed in order to compose a suitable first post, a post which would encapsulate the blog's purpose in a pithy manner. After all, Scott Alexander did it . Twice . I suppose that tips my hand. This is a blog about whatever this blog is about. Probably a mix of rationality, metarationality, amateur philosophy, statistics and cultural commentary. My biggest inspiration in blogging is Scott, followed by David Chapman, Jacob Falkovich, and Robin Hanson. They mark the heights I strive to reach.  Solomon's Cairn is a partial anagram of my name, Nicolas Roman. In the Hebrew tradition, King Solomon was a wise and mighty monarch, last to rule over his kingdom, and later associated with occultism. A cairn is a pile of stones stacked atop one another, used both to indicate places of ceremonial importance and to mark trails through difficult terrain devo