>financial and mathematics background
>tested in the free market
>also uniquely able to read and promote the wisdom of ancient greeks, romans, and arabs
>unencumbered by political correctness
>conversational writing style
He seems the closest to a true 'statistical observer' rather than the much more common biased statistical fallacy promoters that are all over the place.
Other urls found in this thread:
Who is this bald faggot
I like him.
But I can't stand his Tough Guy Tony bullshit Socratic routines.
>'statistical observer'
too bad only rationalists have faith in statistics to get knowledge
who is this upside-down head semen demon?
Umberto Eco
NN Taleb is a popsci shitter whose best work is in the media of thinkpieces and microblogs
I am really starting to like Taleb. It's a shame his conferences and MOOCs on youtube are so poorly presented.
>be fat
>brag about deadlifting on Twitter
Black swan is good and that's it
He's based.
I've only read Antifragile but I think it has some really interesting ideas. He definitely understands some of the basic flaws that plague a lot of prediction models. I also think his idea of decentralized city-states as a way to limit fragility of economy is super-interesting, but probably not practical
>t. Faggot who doesn't work out
He's great. He's even better if your friends haven't read him and you just spout about the antifragile at every opportunity you get, exposing people to their fragile choices.
My life is better now that I don't make consciously fragile decisions
(is this why I can't love)
The great thing about the dude is that you only need to read his most frequent stuff, 'cause he's dedicated to his philosophy.
He even tells you when you don't need to read certain sections, so by all means, read the dude.
So is the Black Swan the only work worth reading from him?
No, read Antifragile instead. It incoporates the Black Swan anyway and is much more comprehensive.
i want him to fuck the shit out of me
I really like his stuff and antifragile was probably a literal anti self help book for me.
The master of middlebrow
I like Antifragile, but he repeated himself a lot.
And he seems like he would be insufferable to talk to. Some good ideas, though.
daddy is as handsome as he is based
All of his books are the same book. I don't mean that in a negative way, just a guy thinking more and more about the same thing.
Are these dubs fragile or antifragile?
You go from nothing to dubs but never from dubs to nothing right?
Anyone worth talking to is usually insufferable.
>insufferable
>worth talking to
pick one
kek
Proof that strong, healthy ideas come from strong, healthy bodies.
His piece about "the intellectual yey stupid" is spot on.
> “If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.”
I'd like him less if he didn't sound like a bad scam artist in every book, or subtly insult his audience in every lecture.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
He's just reducing like any good mathematician, but he does so in the most obnoxious and non-mathematical way possible, bonus if 60% of the audience becomes very offended.
Personally I think mixing statistics and society is bound to be a shitty endeavour. It's very hard to analyze a system you're a part of, much more if it's a complex non linear system. But he makes the best attempt I've seen so far (if not the most annoying one as well).
Before you become a mindless fanboy.
Read Falkenstein about Taleb.
>efalken.com
>Martin Gardner wrote a book called Fads and Fallacies. In the book he describes "cranks" as having five invariable characteristics:
> They have a profound intellectual superiority complex.
On his personal website, Taleb once described himself as being "an essayist, belletrist, literary-philosophical-mathematical flâneur".
>They regard other researchers as idiotic, and always operate outside the peer review
He prides himself on not submitting articles to refereed journals, considers most people who are indifferent to him as fools, and disdains editors, even spellcheckers.
>They believe there is a campaign against their ideas, a campaign compared with the persecution of Galileo or Pasteur.
his colleague Paul Wilmott, wrote a fawning article about him in which they noted that he is “Wall Street’s principal dissident. Heretic! Calvin to finance’s Catholic Church”
>They attack only the biggest theories and scientific figures.
His website states his modest desire to understand chance from the viewpoint of “philosophy/epistemology, philosophy/ethics, mathematics, social science/finance, and cognitive science”.
>They coin neologisms.
he has gone so far as to print a glossary for his neologisms (eg, “epistemic arrogance” for “overconfidence”).
>In Martin Gardner’s taxonomy, Taleb is a classic crank.
>The Black Swan may popularize the concept of low probability events, what were called 'peso problems' (see Rietz 1988), and that would be a good thing. But ultimately, the bumper sticker "shit happens" is kind of funny, kind of true, but hardly profound.
Also read Herbert Gintis' review of Black Swan on Amazon (spoiler: Taleb replies).
TLDR: Taleb has some nice thing to say, but he's not original or profound.
Taleb is a hit and miss, but come on this:
>In Martin Gardner’s taxonomy, Taleb is a classic crank.
Kill yourself
>mfw
>fat
you probably don't even deadlift
Is that lmao2.5pl8?
>Get in faggot we're getting antifragile
Taleb is definitely worthwhile just the notion "just because something has always been doesn't mean it always will be" is good to live by. He's really all about truisms but I guess nothing is self evident anymore. Antifragile and Black Swan are really all you need and even then you can just skim it. I think the biggest take away is to learn that method of dealing with risk and uncertainty, which again is rooted in stuff that *used* to be self evident
>I think mixing statistics and society is bound to be a shitty endeavour.
That's like his whole thesis. I don't know what book you read.
you're probably right desu, there's a certain amount of "self-editing" that smart people do that translates into easily hateable charactersitics in people that aren't you
thank you for putting effort
>mixed grip
Is there a version of his thesis that is just the bullet points of his argument plus the citations and links to academic papers to back it up?
rare events are hard to predict because we have little data on them, so be careful out there (original idea donut steel)
Do you think Gardner does deadlifts?
>IYI
>doing deadlifts
A Mini is the least antifragile car ever
What the fuck are you trying to do faggot?
Nothing here disproves the arguments Taleb makes.
>but he's not original or profound.
Assuming this is true, distributors of ideas are important, and he does a fantastic job distributing good ideas.
Consider killing yourself.
Anyone Scientific American calls a pain in the ass can't be all bad.
I think John Horgan's blog is one of the worst on Scientific American. Prefer Scott Barry Kaufman and Darren Nash.
...
i am waiting eagerly for the day when Taleb soyposts