It’s mild evidence against the “top level math talent will be able to identify bubbles before they burst” hypothesis, but only mild because I don’t think Madoff was transparent enough to be obviously unstable in the way that the housing market was.
How would we go about making it such that someone who contemplated perpetrating that sort of fraud would be very likely to conclude, “Nah, there’s no way that would work; if I tried that, I’d just end up in prison like Madoff”?
Considering that the wikipedia article about Madoff didn’t exist until the scandal was unveiled … probably. (I checked the Wikipedia history when I first heard about it in Dec 08, check the history for yourself. )
Hindsight bias?
It’s mild evidence against the “top level math talent will be able to identify bubbles before they burst” hypothesis, but only mild because I don’t think Madoff was transparent enough to be obviously unstable in the way that the housing market was.
Yeah, it’s a cheap shot. Madoff fooled a lot of people, and detecting fraud takes a different skill set.
How would we go about making it such that someone who contemplated perpetrating that sort of fraud would be very likely to conclude, “Nah, there’s no way that would work; if I tried that, I’d just end up in prison like Madoff”?
Trump up the trials, studiously avoid mentioning the obvious fact that there’s a bunch of people living large on top of a Ponzi scheme right now.
Considering that the wikipedia article about Madoff didn’t exist until the scandal was unveiled … probably. (I checked the Wikipedia history when I first heard about it in Dec 08, check the history for yourself. )