Nassim Taleb Has Been Eating Raw Animals For 300 Million Years And No “Study” Is Going To Stop Him
When last we checked in on philosopher, risk manager, and delusions of grandeur personified, Nassim Taleb, he was roaming the great savannas and getting drunk on fermented mare's milk or, as he calls it, "Genghis Khan’s champagne."
By his own account, this was apparently an effort to drink walk in the footsteps of the ancients on the way to becoming an honorary grassland warrior.
But as Taleb noted in a tweet presumably sent from a wind-swept tent in Eurasia, gettin’ all tanked up on G
A true circle jerk shit post. Lindy effect stands.
If you’re going to attack the man, at least back it up with anything substantial… or at least be funny.
He might be a narcissist but he always provides a well-reasoned basis for his beliefs, some of which you reluctantly agreed with here.
Just because he disagrees with an expert? Also, Quartz is pretty lame; talk about republishing something and pretending like it’s new.
Nassim is brilliant, and “Fooled By Randomness” should be required reading for intro level prob and stats courses.
But for readers who might not keep up with current events, he became a standing joke a long, long time ago.
Nobody takes him seriously anymore.
Hence why he is so much fun to lampoon.
Well glad to read you’re in the know on the ‘standing joke’ and I am sure you’ve read all of Nassims’ technical papers that provide the theoretical and mathematical framework for his thinking, so you probably see how his criticisms on these studies relate.
But yes, ‘no one’ takes him seriously anymore, probably because not many people knew how to take him seriously to begin with. Unless you can assess the technical basis of his thinking (you probably can’t) you’re better off trying to figure out why he might think differently than you.
Deferring to an average opinion about him will really just reinforce how ignorant his detractors are. I think that’s the problem with the way people react to him, his true believers and his detractors both don’t fully understand his technical papers and the result is diametrically opposed but equally ignorant opinions, for most people.