The shadow mean is the true mean of the data-generating process, which is often substantially higher than the empirical sample mean for fat-tail distributions; for warfare, the shadow mean is approximately three times higher than what historical records show.
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Nassim Nicholas TalebEvidence Quote
“when we talk about things that are open-ended and fat tailed okay visibly most observation will be below the mean MH so when you compute the mean it's going to be biased down yeah from uh empir what they call empirical observation yeah so the empirical distribution is not empirical and that's what is central for us... if you're talking for Wars even without surviv sh bias which is another story we have a uh the process that vly ner than what we observed about three times”
Created: 8/11/2026, 7:44:21 AM
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