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The Blank Swan: The End of Probability, by Elie Ayache
Get Free Ebook The Blank Swan: The End of Probability, by Elie Ayache
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From the Author
The current crisis has led us to a conceptual impasse regarding the financial market. No prediction model can apply to the market, someone like Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, would say and derivatives, which are the product of the most sophisticated brand of financial mathematics and engineering, should be banned. I claim that the way of the market falls outside probability and prediction, and for this reason it should be preserved.Probability has to be discarded and a new category has to emerge instead, which will mediate contingency. This new category is something called "price." While probability mediates abstract possibilities, or pure metaphysical fictions, price mediates concrete and real contingencies, which typically take place in a market.Philosophers and financial academics alike seem to be missing the point. Philosophers of contingency and the event are for the most part of leftist obedience. They believe that the crisis signals the end of capitalism and Wall Street.In fact, the market has nothing to do with Wall Street or with the investment banks. Market-making is a creative activity. The market is a category of thought that is independent of ideology. It replaces probability altogether and discarding the market, like the philosophers of the radical change claim we should do, is like discarding probability!As for financial academics, they aren't in the least interested in learning about the onto-genesis of the market, or the very investigation that I have attempted in this book. They deal with prices and values as if they were numbers and mathematical functions. How can they listen to someone who claims that the price only looks like a number but doesn't "compute" like one and that one needs to very carefully examine a long thread of philosophy of the event and of contingency, extending from Bergson to Deleuze to Badiou and Meillassoux, in order to understand what's inside a price ?* * * * *Simplest ideas are sometimes the most revolutionary and, consequently, the most difficult ones. Here is the simple idea that my whole book revolves around: If contingency is truly to be considered absolute (as in Meillassoux), then it should no longer be thought in terms of possibilities (what, in probability theory, we call "states of the world," or in metaphysics, "possible worlds"). It should be thought absolutely, independently of any "system of coordinates" represented in possibility.In Meillassoux, contingency comes even before existence, before the ontology of existing things, let alone states. I find astonishing that no one seems to be worried about the medium where such contingency-without-possibility, if it must be conceived at all, could be "represented." Not to mention the metaphysics, or even the mathematics, where it could find an expression.It is very hard to think of a contingent thing without representing in mind the possible other things that it might be. Philosophers are trained to form and develop just these kinds of "impossible" thoughts. All I am saying is that - with all due respect to the philosophers - this conception of absolute contingency finally finds in the market of contingent claims (and in its translation in the "mathematics of price") the adapted category of thought.My point is simply that philosophers might be missing a whole new way of writing philosophy. Just think what the real amazing implications would be if we were truly to start writing and thinking without the idea of probability and prediction! As for the financial and economical experts, they might be missing the opportunity to elevate their field above the level of human or political science. --Book synopsis
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From the Inside Flap
"The Blank Swan is neither Black, White or Blank, but a very original book written about derivatives and financial markets. It will certainly make you think about derivatives instruments and markets in many new ways." –Dr Espen Gaarder Haug, Trader, Thinker and Author of Derivatives Models on Models "Ayache's writing is a very interesting combination of the completely mad and the entirely sane, with the non-crazy just neatly outweighing the insane." –Dr Nina Power, Senior Lecturer in Philosphy at Roehampton University, co-editor of Alain Badiou's On Beckett (Clinamen) and author of One-Dimensional Woman (Zero Books).
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Product details
Hardcover: 496 pages
Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 17, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0470725222
ISBN-13: 978-0470725221
Product Dimensions:
6.9 x 1.3 x 10 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.2 out of 5 stars
23 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#473,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
On page 196, the author has a quote: "I, too, seek an unreadable book ... a book incapable of being read straight through, even, to bring reading to stop" That this quote should so absolutely summarize this book, cannot be by chance. Trying to read The Blank Swan straight through is a frustrating experience and needlessly so in my view which is the reason I rated it 3 stars. As it stands, it is a book that needs to read in small quantities and not in chronological order, but I believe this is how the author intended it. Further too this point, there are a few aspects of this book that make it very tiresome to read. First, it is highly repetitive. On a banal level, the author refers to "the last part of the book" about 50 or more times in the first two parts of the book (there are four parts). In some cases, the author will start a paragraph saying "As will be shown in the last part of the book", only to finish the paragraph "(see the last part)". These are are not word for word quotes, but capture the meaning. The book is also repetitive in that it addresses the same topic from a very slightly different point of view multiple times. This means you have to read essentially the same thing over and over again, only at the end to get 90% of the same message. As a historical process, it's clear to see why the book feels so repetitive, because many of the chapters were published separately before coming together as a book.To continue to the content of the book, I think the effort is worthwhile, for those predisposed, to understand what is being written. It is mostly a book on philosophy and not the markets or derivatives. But it does make a few points about the market which can help someone gain insight into its behavior. To speak to the philosophy, the book borrows most of its foundation from Gilles Deleuze and to a lesser extent Quentin Meillassoux and Alain Badiou. The author may say the latter are more important to his work, but to the user of this philosophy rather than the creator, the work of Deleuze in my view is more important. A problem with the book arises here because the philosophical concepts are not well explained. They assume a knowledge not only of Deleuze et al themselves, but also of philosophy in general. This means the book inhabits a nebulous middle ground in terms of its intended audience.The meaning in all this is that a reader of this book should expect to have to read several other books in order to really understand what the author is talking about. Herein lies my biggest criticism of the content of this book. If you take the time to read Deleuze, Meillassoux, Badiou; and to add one to the list, Bergson; and also to read a few of their popularizers such as De Landa, your time will have been better spent than reading this book. There just isn't enough synthesis here to make the whole of The Blank Swan, better than the sum of its parts which is these philosophical works.In light of the above criticisms, I have still given the book three stars. The reason is that there is a lot here and forming a full picture of it could in fact take a year or more at my pace. I fault the author for making the reader really assemble the concepts in the book themself, but better to have what is here than nothing at all.In need of summary, let me end the review with a few comments. This is not a simplistic book, it will take much mental effort and time to get anything out of it. In addition, it can be tiresome to read because it is needlessly repetitious. Certain investor types will get something out of it, but not a specific formula for a particular investment strategy. On the other hand, this book with change my portfolio and what more can be said? I hope this helps a little in judging whether to read the book. It's probably some time before a full review of this book can be written, at least by me.
It's one of those books which will quoted by a certain strata of people who don't read anything except the look of intimidation in the face of confused 'philistines'. It's a rather good analysis of the 'there' in the nothing there there phenomenon prevalent in a commodity driven mercantile system that's running out of things to make, sell and especially: say. I.e. the 'art world'. Fun reading if you have a sense of humor.
I just started reading it and found it very interesting. I am a big fan of Taleb and his endorsement made me buy this.The basic premise of the book is that Price of stock or an option cannot be based on probabilities but based on contexts. So probabilities are meaningless since contexts keep changing.So in lay man terms if a stock is at $50 based all the available information creates a unique context and assigning probabilities is only valid for that context.Now macro or micro economic variables change then we have new contexts created and original probabilities are meaningless then you need to create a new set of probabilities to model the new scenario.These contexts keep changing a lot then these probabilities keep changing hence becomes meaningless thus the name blank swan.But the writing style is very difficult and need to read to few times to sink in.
It may be difficult to read but the pay-off is big, and coming back to it is always refreshing. I agree with the author that the impact of his ideas will be felt only with the passage of time but that time will come surely. Highly recommended.
Before I write my review, know that I'm not some tenured professor of postmodern/continental philosophy or sipper of ultra-super-duper, non-fat, double-soy-mocha cappi-latte thingies in some Parisian cafe with other quasi-intellectuals. I'm a shockingly lazy 20-year-old full-time student (Spanish and Arabic major) who works two hourly-wage jobs and spends waaaay too much of his very limited supply of money on books. Everyone complaining about the difficulty of this book merely didn't give the patience the book deserves. I'll try to help these childish "mature grown-ups" a bit.After a very odd sequence of events, a sequence of "Black Swan" events in my life, I was lead to Taleb's 'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.' I loved it. I read Taleb's other two non-technical books. Loved them. I'm a HUGE fan of Taleb. The dude's my hero in more than one context, and having met plenty of celebrities and Rock stars, all of them boring and none worth my time, Taleb is one of the few "celebrities" I would actually gush over if I met him. Having said that, when I found Ayache's book, I flipped out, probably squealed like a little girl, and immediately ran home and started reading. Oh. My. God. Hard reading, but holy shiznit this book is awesome.The book's writing style is a bit difficult before you know how to read it, I admit, but having since had little chats with the author, I find the language is unavoidable. To help you out a bit, here are a few inadequate translations of terms:"Debt" = Belief in possibility, being bound to the past. Also goes by "ruins" and other names in the book, depending on which of the four parts of the book you're reading. I suggest reading Part 4 first."Equity" = Mediation of contingency, looking to the future. Also goes by (sort of) "writing," among other names. Equity and writing aren't necessarily synonyms, but until you see how they're used in the book, you can treat them similarly (due to their relationship) until you discover their relationship's dynamics."Conversion" = Going from debt to equity, from looking to the past to writing the future. The point of this book is the conversion."The market" = Loosely speaking, it means "reality," or perhaps our way of perceiving it. This is the hardest term to simplify or "translate," but how it's used in context of the book makes the term easy to understand."Price" = Again, loosely speaking, let's call it "effect of contingency on 'the market'." Let's call it the impact of the Black Swan event, for simplicity's sake.These are only a few of the book's terms, but the ones used the most. My overly simple translations are only to help those get started, and giving more adequate explanations would require me to write the entire BLANK Swan in this review, like Pierre Menard wrote the Quixote, right? The fact that I have to even (inadequately) simplify those terms is sad.Okay, so imagine some Black Swan event happens, the Black Swan being some context-changing event. The Black Swan causes us to panic, searching for the new context, the new way to understand reality and our role in it. Let's look at the market (the market-market, not Ayache's "the market" yet). The very job of the market-maker, the writer of options, is to be shoved into the correct (market-related) context by that event, by contingency. When something happens, he has to evaluate and reevaluate the prices of new options, a process that absolutely must be founded on the writing/publishing of "exotic" option prices, those of an order of complexity above the simple "vanilla" options whose prices he's trying to find. Basically, he has to write/create/publish the price of a not-yet-traded complicated option in order to find the correct price of the simpler option. So, in the crazy, "unexpected," high-impact event, the market-maker's writing is what shoves him into the right context, instead of running around like a chicken with his head cut off like everyone else does. Now look at this process in a broader philosophical context, and you'll start to get this book. This explanation is WAY simplified and therefore inadequate and unfaithful to the book, but if you understand this paragraph to some extent, then you can enjoy this book.The true genius of the book really hits you at the end, when Ayache explains that the market-maker's role, and you see that the whole book, the whole of 'The BLANK Swan: The End of Probability' IS the writing of the "exotic," the more complex. Let's call Taleb's 'The Black Swan' a Black Swan event, the ideas presented being the simple vanilla options needing a price. Ayache's 'The BLANK Swan' is the publishing of the more complex, not-yet-"traded" exotic options, the foundation against which we build this whole edifice of mediating contingency. THE BOOK IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT. It's really, really quite clever. Like. Really clever. Really.Now, I'm purty smart, sure. And my life's pretty good, being that I had the time to give this book some patience. I know three or so languages; I have two steady sources of income, my own health insurance; I know plenty about plenty in subjects like philosophy, linguistics, psychology, economics and markets, medicine, mathematics, even quantum physics; I play a few musical instruments; I have zero debt; pay my own bills (-I'm in college, so this is kinda impressive); got a cool car (GK Tiburon -very proud); I have no specialty in skill or knowledge, and I'm very comfortable in time and (mostly so in) finances (at least, for an easily bored college student). I had no experience in abstract postmodern/continental philosophy, Deleuze or Hegel or Massui or whoever, but I still got this book. To those who opened this book, got confused, and wrote that it's the author's fault, are you REALLY going to accept that you're dumber than a 20-year-old smart/\$$ who works two crappy hourly-wage jobs and drives an 8-year-old Hyundai? Of course not, so go pick up the book and BE PATIENT. Geez. The reviews of this book drive me nuts. It's like reading complaints dictated by toddlers.I wrote his at Ayache's request; he wanted someone who had the patience to understand the book help drown out the noise of impatient toddlers (my words, not his). But having got here and read the reviews, I ended writing this not for Ayache's sake, but rather for the sake of his book. It deserves the patience required, trust me. It's genius and, perhaps (to me) more importantly, really very clever.
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