A Big Little Idea Called Ergodicity (Or The Ultimate Guide to Russian Roulette)
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Highlights
- The probabilities of success from the collection of people do not apply to one person.
- In non-ergodic contexts the concept of âexpected returnsâ is effectively meaningless.
- Many âirrationalâ behaviors or âcognitive biasesâ are actually individuals realizing that a system is non-ergodic and not optimizing for expected value.
- Antifragility is a function of combining a multitude of entities so that each one of them is non-ergodic but the ensemble is ergodic.
- frequently correlated than anti-correlated.
- Vladimir Lenin put it âThere are decades in which nothing happens and weeks in which decades happen.â
A Big Little Idea Called Ergodicity (Or The Ultimate Guide to Russian Roulette)
Metadata
Highlights
- In an ergodic scenario, the average outcome of the group is the same as the average outcome of the individual over time.
- In a non-ergodic system, the individual, over time, does not get the average outcome of the group.
- A way to identify an ergodic situation is to ask do I get the same result if I: 1. look at one individualâs trajectory across time2 2. look at a bunch of individualâs trajectories at a single point in time If yes: ergodic. If not: non-ergodic.
- If you graph an antifragile system, there is limited downside and unlimited upside. Going to cocktail parties is antifragile â you can only lose a bit of time (limited downside) but you could meet someone who will change your life (unlimited upside).