Taleb on Black Swans, Fragility, and Mistakes

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/05/taleb_on_black_1.html

by pelle • 16 years ago

23 6 16 years ago

davemabe• 16 years ago

My favorite quote on Nassim Taleb's writings:

Taleb’s writings are filled with certainty, anger, and immodesty, having the Godelian impossibility of someone shouting 'I am the most humble!'

Spot on. From http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/review-of-talebs-blac....

hassy• 16 years ago

From the linked article:

Taleb’s style is to severely criticize experts and authorities--lots of 'morons', 'idiots', and 'fools' out there--while implying that both he and his reader or listener are exempt from their many biases.

A third of Fooled By Randomness (published before Black Swan) is about accepting that you are biased, there's nothing you can do about it, your rationality is limited. And then trying to deal with it - accepting your biases in the small and spending your precious rational thinking on the big stuff (e.g. where you invest your money).

I only skimmed the rest of that article, but that was enough to spot at least two other sentences which show that the author didn't really spend time trying to understand Taleb's ideas and is being ticked off by Taleb's irreverence and love of opinionated aphorisms.

hjkl• 16 years ago

I agree: so much of the criticism regarding Taleb's books seems to be that he's arrogant. However, I don't understand how it's arrogant to say that people are bad at predicting the future, which I think is his main point.

ThomPete• 16 years ago

The book is simply great. The arrogance people refér to is called skepticism towards bs

neilk• 16 years ago

Did I hear correctly? Taleb is betting on hyperinflation?

Talk about burying the lede.

Taleb on Black Swans, Fragility, and Mistakes

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