Nassim Nicholas Taleb publishes essays on risk, probability, finance, politics, and strength training, drawing on his books like Skin in the Game.
HN commenters cite his 'Intellectual Yet Idiot' essay often, and one praises his thinking while saying his books are harder to get into.
The phenomenon described here is one of many side effects of what I think is the greatest disturbance in the zeitgeist since at least 9/11: the disintermediation of information itself.
We live in an era where authorities of all kinds are under greater scrutiny than ever before, because the Internet's made it so much easier for everyone to learn about and discuss what they're doing. And to believe that we know better than them. The mass media gatekeepers who once shaped public opinion are still present but have a fraction of the influence they had in the 20th century.
Nassim Taleb discussed this recently from a more political angle: https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577#.ju4yyfr3y
But it is really the same thing. From the post-Snowden privacy movement to Brexit to the Trump campaign to "the destructo-critics" referred to in this article, all of these things are a product of people becoming more informed about what authorities are really doing, getting pissed off about it, and taking action.
You can make your own value judgments about whether all of these things are good or bad (we surely know what the predominant opinions will be among HN's audience of left wing tech people: pro-Snowden, anti-Brexit, anti-Trump, pro destructo-critics). But I think the overall trend is good. And intensely destabilizing to society, in no small part because even as we approach this information equality, wealth inequality is soaring.
I think one important thing…
I love Nassim Taleb as an academic and philosopher. I think he has a Peter Thiel like quality of being able to thinking differently, but in a very applicable way.
Nassim Taleb the author though I really can't get into, and to be fair he's had so much success that this is probably my fault.
If you want to get the most out of his work then read his medium blog. Most of his pieces are written in easily digestible formats.
https://medium.com/@nntaleb
I've re-started trying to read the Black Swan about 10 times and IMHO if you just read the first 3 chapters then you'll get about 95% of what you would if you had read the entire book.
I think the problem with his books that I have is that he considers himself not just an author but a modern day philosopher, and with that comes a level of rigor in his writing that brings me back to my measure theory and real analysis courses.
If you really want to read his books, then start backwards.
Antifragile is awesome, but still very wordy, and builds on top of all his other works. It almost seems to be the culmination of the idea's he's been writing about since the black Swan.
As a side note, for anyone who wants to learn about options trading with a focus on how a trader would view them, ie from a mathematical perspective, then check out one of his first books...... Dynamic Hedging of Options.
http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471152803.html
As a second side note........
His latest concept of “Skin in the…
Comments on a couple of the selections:
- Grit - I can see why it's caught on, it's pretty well-written and informative, but it's not one of the stronger books in the genre and I don't think it will stand the test of time. I recommend The Willpower Instinct - by Kelly McGonigal and Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise - by Anders Ericsson in its place.
- The Rent Is Too Damn High - Matt Yglesias is an intellectually dishonest pundit and I recommend staying away from anything he publishes. He's a leading representative of what Nassim Taleb calls the Intellectual Yet Idiot[1]. He deleted 3000 tweets praising Obamacare that look bad in retrospect[2][3]. He's also mentioned directly in the Podesta emails as a pundit to be "cultivated."[4] This article from 2011 [5] points out numerous examples of his sloppy reporting and intellectual dishonesty where he doesn't own his mistakes, deletes critical comments, etc.
1. https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577#.yl36fsi5i
2. https://twitter.com/BuffaloBlueBear/status/791208690598682624
3. https://twitter.com/JimmyPrinceton/status/791127776388583424 (check the whole thread)
4. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31954
5. http://www.chequerboard.org/2011/02/matt-yglesias-the-one-man-mistake-factory-or-i-laugh-at-the-inferior-intellect/
"We all think this is stupid, except for the one or two busybodies who call the cops."
Your comment reminded me of Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins."
https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.z32ueeqto
Re-reading the article his idea of 're-normalizing' explains what is happening here with our society's view towards unattended children. It's different than the explanation from the parent study, but seems complementary not contradictory.
TIL (!). I deadlift (amongst other things), as I believe it's a fundamental movement (what Dan John calls "pick heavy stuff off the floor").
Here's a writeup Taleb did about strength training (whether I agree or disagree in totality is a separate issue, but we can all agree to 80% and disagree on the rest):
https://medium.com/@nntaleb/strength-training-is-learning-from-tail-events-7aa2c074569d
And this is why Trump's win was so confusing for many citizens if the US--too stuck in their bubble to understand the rest of the world and its happenings. See also Nassim Taleb's essay on the Intellectual Yet Idiot class:
https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577