The book was recommended by statistic and finance professors of IUB during college years. It wan't until after graduation that I started to read it, and its interesting stories certainly refreshed my memories of joys i had in statistical and finance classes. But as reading progressed, the book unveiled profound thoughts of the author: the evolution of human's understanding of risk and risk management.
Throughout the book, a few figures representing classic theories are given adequate exposure to readers. John Graunt established the doctrine of statistics; Daniel Bernoulli found it was imperative for a person to have probability and utility analysis in decision making; Abraham de Moivre discovered normal distribution from observation of numerous distributions of random events; Francis Galton invented regression analysis. But classic theories entail limitations. For instance, the tendency to overly rely on regression is nowhere recommended in this book. Instead, the author attributes president Hoover's failure to predict the Great Depression to excessive reliance on historical regression to forecast the future; the same attitude is given to Public's prediction of stock price in 1950S which was based on past regression and thus omitted future upward trends.
In later chapters, new theories mostly prevailed in post-WWII era emerge. Chaos theory, which challenges the regression and normal distribution theory in academic field, failed to dorminate the industry's practice in the same way as it opponents did. Another theory is Black-Scholes model, which has been used extensively for derivatives and real option valuations in derivative and stock markets. Thus, an inference from the book would be that the evolution of risk theories reflected the evolution of American economy, a transformation from manufacturing economy to service economy, in which the nature of risk has changed.
The book also raises a philosophical question of whether humans are really risk averse. The answer, according to the author, is no. Humans are not risk-averse, but loss-averse. Everyone is a loss prevention practitioner, and loss aversion guides each's daily actions. This contention is true on the ground that humans are motivated only by pursuit of happiness or avoidance of disguit. Fear of loss and uncertainty is one example of the later.
But our understanding of risk conquers the fear of unknown and leads us to accept uncertainty of life and probability in daily decision making. Such tolerance and scientific measurement of risk allow human to predict and live lives with a sense of security, which then makes religion obsolete in certain spiritual and psychological aspects. Science replacing religion to deal with fear of uncertainty is what the title "Against the gods" implies.
Against the Gods - a review of history of risk
《与天为敌》热门书评
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风险的历史——必读投资书籍
26有用 2无用 雪宝 2012-03-26
每次看到《against the gods: The remarkable story of risk》出现在我视线范围内,我就不经意的想起莫里斯·克莱因的《古今数学思想史》。中译本《与天为敌》实际上就是对于赌博或者概率一部简洁而优雅的历史智慧树,在我心中的地位,不亚于上面提到的克莱因的《古今数学思...
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风险管理简史
15有用 0无用 Stigrex 2009-03-22
“当一个国家的资本发展成为赌博活动的副产品时,那么它将不会产生好的结果”,而另一方面“如果人的本性对于碰运气毫无兴趣的话,仅仅依靠冷静的计算,人们就不会进行过多的投资(创造)活动。”赌博——一种承担风险的本质——从人类存在之日起就已经是一种盛行的娱乐活动,人类总是沉溺其中,因为在赌博中我们直接面对命...
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尽人事,听天命
14有用 1无用 碧落花飘香 2009-08-06
内容:★★★★☆翻译:★★★☆☆排印:★★☆☆☆装帧:★★★☆☆这本书讲述了人类探索风险的历史进程。在风险探索的早期,人们仅仅将注意力放在客观存在的风险上,用数学的方法进行计算。随着历史的发展,人们开始意识到,即使了解了客观存在的风险,也不能解决人们面对风险时所遇到的问题,这时,科学家们开始注意到了...
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与天为敌还是认识自己
9有用 1无用 greenhands 2008-11-08
人类的发展就是人类对自然和自身社会组织的探索。在探索中遇到各种不确定,成功和失败是我们的代价。当我们一次次突破,一次次创新,认为我们正在创造一个新奇迹,历史由我们探索而改变时,突如其来的预期变化,让我们目瞪口呆,让我们回到从前。 我们从发明简单计数符号,运用统计分析、博弈理论的不断升华到计算机上...
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内容极赞,按捺不住,先嗥一嗓子
5有用 1无用 fats 2008-01-03
回答了困扰我很久的几个问题:统计中随机和确定的本质区别;correlation和因果关系的关系;CAPM中为何risk以此方式度量且从对不确定性的处理过程中感受到从认识论而不是本体论的角度处理因果关系的威力对我而言一次重大的思想变革读者尽管打没用哈,不是正二八经的书评ps:我看的英文电子版不对翻译作...