A reader writes:
“Hi Michael, First off, I wanted to thank you for your outstanding books (I have read and own both) and your site and regular newsletters and podcasts. I really am a big fan, and appreciate the knowledge that you’ve dedicated yourself to sharing with us all! I’m hoping to get my hands on a copy of ‘Broke’ next time I’m in the US (I live in South Africa, but travel extensively internationally on business). Though I have a huge interest in trading, and I trade a small account of my own capital, I work in the information security field, and my day job entails leading a team of penetration testers - essentially, ethical hackers. We get paid to assess security controls in networks and applications, among other things. So I’m paid to find holes and break stuff. After many years in this industry, as a leader (I’ve spoken at many international conferences, and provided hands on training to Fortune 500’s, government, military), I see us getting worse, not better. I believe the fundamental issue is a similar one to that affecting investors and traders - a very poor understanding of risk, and a tendency to want to over-complicate and obfuscate everything, and an overflow of false “experts”. Without getting into too much detail in this email, I recently gave a 20 minute keynote at a local information security conference, discussing the psychology of risk and why we are inherently wired to fail. In this talk, called “Getting Punched In The Face” I drew parallels from my experience with competitive combat sports, gambling, trading and finally, information security, to demonstrate why many of our natural inclinations and assumptions are flawed. You may be interested in this talk. I’d be interested in your thoughts - as a keynote it was very high level and for the 20 minute slot I couldn’t delve into much, but the talk was fun.”
His video:
ZaCon09 - Getting Punched in the Face - Nick Arvanitis from ZaCon on Vimeo.























