Mar 7, 2024 – Generative AI brings enormous benefits and potential dangers to society if misused. Ben Hunt, a pioneer of large language models (LLMs), explains the pros and cons of generative AI in the context of discovery or, conversely...
Jul 20, 2023 – Ben Hunt, co-founder and chief investment officer at Second Foundation Partners and author of the Epsilon Theory newsletter, explains narratives as self-replicating organisms, much like viruses, which are...
Sep 27 – FS Insider speaks with Ben Hunt, cofounder and chief investment officer at Second Foundation Partners, also the author of the widely-read Epsilon Theory newsletter, where he explains how narratives should be thought of...
Apr 13 – Ben Hunt, author of the widely-read Epsilon Theory newsletter, discusses his extremely influential three-part series called Narrative and Metaverse where he explains how narratives need to be thought of and understood as...
Nov 27 – Well, just as shoppers hit the malls on Black Friday, global stock markets were hit by omicron—the newly named ‘variant of concern’ that has led to a fresh wave of travel restrictions. Though there’s still lots of information we don’t know...
Jul 8 – FS Insider welcomes Ben Hunt, author of the widely read Epsilon Theory newletter, to discuss the narrative machine, how it differs from Ray Dalio's conception of the 'Economic Machine', and why this is one of the most powerful frameworks...
Apr 7 – Ben Hunt of Epsilon Theory joins FS Insider for a fascinating discussion about the parallels between the language we use to describe viruses and how we talk about the spread of information on the internet...
By Ben Hunt – As much as I dislike the chickens on our farm, I love my bees. Do they sting? Of course, they sting. The swarm is a wild animal. But after a few painful years, I’m no longer a ham-handed goofball with my hives, and a morning...
In 1872, noted horseracing aficionado and San Francisco rich guy Leland Stanford (yes, of university fame) commissioned noted photographer and San Francisco smart guy Eadweard Muybridge to apply his path breaking technology of stop-action...
On December 30, the Washington Post published a story claiming that Russian hackers had “penetrated the US electric grid” through an “attack” on Burlington Electric, a Vermont utility. In a statement that night Vermont Gov...
Dec 29 – This is a special reprise edition of FS Insider which originally aired in September. Are econometric models like spells? No! According to Ben Hunt, author of Epsilon Theory, they ARE spells…just like those used by witchdoctors and...
I’ve written a lot about The Common Knowledge Game – here, here, and here – because it’s the game of markets, i.e., it’s the central contribution of game theory to understanding how markets work. I’ve also written a lot about...
The other week I was driving in downtown Los Angeles, late for an appointment. The road I needed to turn onto was just past the freeway overpass, but I got confused and turned onto the freeway on-ramp.
If you’ve ever played a team sport, you’ve experienced a game that was a mismatch on paper. Now usually that game goes according to form. The better team scores early and often, and the inferior team doesn’t sniff a win.
The central idea of "Essence of Decision" is this: the dominant academic theory to explain the world’s events is a high-level, rational expectations model based on formal economics, a theory that ignores the impact of bureaucratic imperatives and institutional politics...
Sep 8 – Are econometric models like spells? No! According to Ben Hunt, author of Epsilon Theory, they ARE spells…just like those used by witchdoctors and shamanic priests of old. Today, they are called the Gaussian Copula and...
Magical thinking is a term of art in both clinical psychology and cultural anthropology, and it refers to the common belief among both children and “primitive” societies (yes, intentional quotation marks there to show my arched eyebrow at...
Every successful institution, from a marriage to a superhero to a firm to a nation, needs an origin story. The origin story of arguably the most successful hedge fund institution of the modern world—Bridgewater Associates—is that of...
In 2008, the $10 trillion asset class of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) was entirely based on the Common Knowledge that it was impossible to have a nationwide decline in U.S. home prices. When that Narrative failed, the entire inverted pyramid came crashing...
Brexit is a Bear Stearns moment, not a Lehman moment. That's not to diminish what's happening (markets felt like a death in March 2008), but this isn't the event to make you run for the hills. Why not? Because it doesn't directly crater...
