In domains like price or contagion where there are no physical limits to the size of the variable and the process is multiplicative, you cannot rule out a thick-tail distribution and must assume fat tails, unlike bounded systems like height.

causalpending

Speaker

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Evidence Quote

if you don't know anything about the process or the process is in multiplicative uh concern multiplicative uh phenomena such as contagions pandemics or simply processes that don't have limit to their to their movement like for example a price you and I can sell you know buy from one another this at the a billion dollars okay there's no limitations there's no physical limitation m to the to a price therefore you could be an extremist stand

Source

Nassim Taleb — Meditations on ExtremistanJoseph Noel Walker
Created: 8/11/2026, 7:44:21 AM

My Notes

Loading notes...