Ep. 218: Nuno Reis, PhD - On Uncertainty, The Dangers of Probability Dogma, and more

The All Things Risk Podcast

Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Nuno Reis to the show. I came across Nuno via his LinkedIn posts on uncertainty and in particularly around something called Bayesian Analysis or Bayesian Thinking. If you’ve never come across the term, Bayesian Analysis is the mathematical interpretation of probability. And it underpins so much of our world - and increasingly so because many AI models are built on Bayesian Thinking.

Nuno is quite critical of how Bayesian Thinking is applied – because we can never remove the human from the numbers and the models. He says that an embrace of Bayesian Thinking – useful as it is, has become an unhealthy dogma. And – that resonated with me particularly because as I looked at Nuno’s background I saw someone saying this who is a trained mathematician with a PhD in Mathematics in String Theory and did a postdoc at Oxford. He worked in the financial sector during the Global Financial Crisis where he sees parallels now in the worlds of AI and related areas.

So, I invited him to the show and we had a great conversation that covers not only the topics of Bayesian Thinking, the financial industry, but also the topic of uncertainty, lots of philosophy and running. I hope you enjoy it and find it insightful. Here is Nuno Reis.

Show notes:

Nuno on LinkedIn

Nuno’s free book, Beyond Luck

Bayesian Thinking

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