>“Some can be more intelligent than others in a structured environment—in fact school has a selection bias as it favors those quicker in such an environment, and like anything competitive, at the expense of performance outside it. Although I was not yet familiar with gyms, my idea of knowledge was as follows. People who build their strength using these modern expensive gym machines can lift extremely large weights, show great numbers and develop impressive-looking muscles, but fail to lift a stone; they get completely hammered in a street fight by someone trained in more disorderly settings. Their strength is extremely domain-specific and their domain doesn't exist outside of ludic—extremely organized—constructs. In fact their strength, as with over-specialized athletes, is the result of a deformity. I thought it was the same with people who were selected for trying to get high grades in a small number of subjects rather than follow their curiosity: try taking them slightly away from what they studied and watch their decomposition, loss of confidence, and denial. (Just like corporate executives are selected for their ability to put up with the boredom of meetings, many of these people were selected for their ability to concentrate on boring material.) I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.”
Is he right?
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I can relate so much.
Insufferable loser who is right about some things. He'll fit in fine here.
>people who work out in gyms can't lift a stone
Where do you see this? This is not true
>people who work out a lot would get beat up in a fight
They're not training in fighting they're training in picking things up with certain muscles. A better example would be martial arts training versus street fighting but that's not true for martial arts that do actual sparring.
>try taking people away from what they study and they aren't as good
Wow, someone isn't good at someone they don't practice, so profound
>when I debate an expert on a certain topic and then talk about so,thing he isn't an expert in it's just like when someone whose an expert in something meets someone who is an experts im a different thing
Wow you're so smart omg here's $100k write a book
>Wow, someone isn't good at something they don't practice, so profound
Pretty much.
He already made his point with the school bit, I think the rest was just passive-agressive digs at buff dudes.
Literally me he's describing
>missing the point this hard
pseuds btfo by themselves
Samefag get out.
>tfw to inteligent
Taleb is a midcultish retard's fantasy of an intellectual came alive.
Being muscular has little relevance to fighting. A certain degree of muscle is a natural consequence of fighting ability and training but technique is of utmost import, even in the face of weight, height and muscle. In such an instance, a properly thrown punch that you are able to quickly recover from is more important than literally everything. You can knock anyone out with it, regardless of their ability, with a bit of luck. It's the bridge between trained and untrained.
I don't like the bodybuilder types either, it seems so aimless and wasteful, as someone who practices multiple martial arts and doesn't use any equipment to build muscle. But beyond the first point, this man is just attacking something he probably has an unsavoury history with. Maybe a Veeky Forumscunt fucked his gf, in his youth.
>I think the rest was just passive-agressive digs at buff dudes.
>Maybe a Veeky Forumscunt fucked his gf, in his youth.
Are Veeky Forumsizens always this insecure about their hobby?
Why the hell does everybody think that Taleb is bashing bodybuilders? It's barely half of the text, and it's extremely relevant in the sense that, yes, bodybuilders aren't as intimidating as their muscles might make you think because they're not trained fighters. This is just another point developing Taleb's ideas on antifragility and how structured environments can't train adaptable people.
Does everybody have absolutely shit-tier reading comprehension or something? Or is the anti-Taleb patrol out in full force today? Sounds like Taleb fucked every faggot's boyfriend in this thread.
Who's that? The villian from iron man?
I'm not even Veeky Forums lmao
And if you read my post (390) you'll see that I acknowledged his main point, which is incredibly valid, but he could've easily just made that same point in 2 sentences while cutting all th bloat.
Taleb is retarded. Bodybuilders aren't training to become fighters so comparing both on combat performance is silly. As for the generalist vs specialist dichotomy he states nothing new. Both have their merits depending on what is needed to solve a given problem.
Taleb is the final boss of political economy.
>Where do you see this? This is not true
I OHP 1pl8. That totals to 135lbs. Over the summer I decided to start doing one handed dumbbell overhead presses for fun. It's a completely different movement and I could barely do 40lbs.
For example, look at lifting Atlas Stones.
But he's not talking about Bodybuilders who know fully well that their strength isn't the determining factor in a fight. He's talking about the bodybuilders who DO think that their strength is the determining factor, as emphasized by the last sentence (notice it's not about body builders).
>I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.”
>taking a metaphor literal and using that as an argument while ignoring the point
brainlet tier, I epect nothing else from Veeky Forums
>I don't like the bodybuilder types either, it seems so aimless and wasteful, as someone who practices multiple martial arts and doesn't use any equipment to build muscle.
I suppose I shouldn't make long posts on Veeky Forums.
>muh squid ink pasta
Also, does Veeky Forums know any 'intellectual yet idiot's in real life?
>gym rat
We're posting about it because it's definitely not just a metaphor and almost the entire text is devoted to it. He obviously has some issues with them of some kind, you don't make an elaborate metaphor orientated away from application and towards pure insults, when making a general point.
>as someone who practices multiple martial arts and doesn't use any equipment to build muscle.
Wrestling with your penis and attempting to t-punch your own fart box aren't martial arts you five hundred pound pig
The whole book is filled with derogatory remarks towards many kinds of different people, I believe it's a part of why it sells, allowing readers to feel superior for once.
Yes. I love seeing his increasing influence around here and in general.
>Being muscular has little relevance to fighting.
He actually believes this
Where are the insults? And since when is ~40% of the text "nearly the entire thing"? I guess you gymaholics are really sensitive lol. Wouldn't have guessed from that tough persona but hey it's life's ironies.
probably the massively negative results of modernism surrounding us helps
It's pretty smart of him to be so insufferable, thus bringing to himself all the credibility of academia without ever being associated with it himself.
His point with antifragility is good, but as has pointed out, it's barely a non-trivial observation. We have been getting more and more overspecialized for decades now, and while it's good that he among others is pointing it out to the masses, he's not really reaching out to many masses with his attitude. But it does get him money for these slick suits.
Furthermore, the real problem of the use of statistics in academia lies in our tendency to employ "Empirical Positivism" in STEM, acting as if our data is the WHY of things as long as there are some barely correlated variables in our analysis (and taking causation relations completely out of our asses). His criticism is needed but neither academics nor others seem to care about his antics because he makes it all edgy with the "lol let us dwell into the cha0s!!1!!!" discourse. But again, the style does sell more books. Which I guess makes his bank account antifragile after all.
Judging from the goatee, black t-shirt blazer combo, and having a dig at people more successful intellectually and physically, I'd say this guy is a bitter loser.
>he is insightful but everybody else doesn't want to listen to him, ergo he is dumb
Wow that really got my gears turning, user. You should write a blog or something.
>But beyond the first point, this man is just attacking something he probably has an unsavoury history with. Maybe a Veeky Forumscunt fucked his gf, in his youth.
Uhhh...
>Taleb doesn't comment from the position of insecurity, jealousy, resentment, or envy
Hmm, you don't say.
Everyone in this thread was trying to paint him as some nerd buttmad at meatheads when he's an enthusiastic power lifter and writes about it pretty often.
>he makes it all edgy with the "lol let us dwell into the cha0s!!1!!!" discourse
he doesn't at all
like, at all
the fact that you say this, like, literally making it up, shows us all plainly how retarded you are
Yes
>babby weights
Okay
He is not that edgy, except if you single out the street fighting stuff and the examples of past skin in the game. But they are not deliberately edgy but work to support his thesis.
I can't find a good word for it but the first word that come to mind is that he writes bombastic (which, again, isn't really the accurate word). What he absolutely does is throw insults around.
And he doesn't advocate for chaos at all, that is a huge misunderstanding. Especially if you know a bit basic 101 complex systems thing, which - at least in antifragile - is Taleb's main backing.
>Furthermore, the real problem of the use of statistics in academia lies in our tendency to employ "Empirical Positivism" in STEM
He talks about this in Antifragile. You come off like a twat when you don't read/comprehend what you're criticizing. However, you are proof that being insufferable gets attention.
Can someone explain this "antifragile" meme to me?
Is it just not being too specialized and inflexible?
>Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.
Babies first musings. Give him a few months to how retarded he was being.
>it seems so aimless and wasteful
So you don't get why someone would strive to look better?
Mkay, smart.
Basically, something is fragile if it's not resistant to change at all, and "breaks off" from having a very specific or many very specific weak point. Big government, big institutions, mythological heroes like Siegfried and Achilles all fit the fragile scheme. It can also be interpreted in terms of something that, when it fails, fails big and fails irredeemably.
The opposite of this would supposedly be resilience, but resilience is not properly the answer here, because resilience just means being unchanged by volatility and uncertainty. The mythological phoenix is an example of resilient being because it is always the same. Resilient systems do not falter upon errors but are largely ideal entities and, more or less, can't even change for the better in principle.
So Taleb came up with another word, antifragile, to describe systems, people, etc. that are not resilient neither fragile upon volatile changes, but rather become "better", or "improve" in some sense under disorder. When you cut the head of a Hydra, two more heads come along and the Hydra is more powerful.
P.S driving away from the mythological analyses, an actual and very math-friendly antifragile system would be the fire ants which colonies are heavily adaptable and actually improved by abrupt changes in environment. Their structures are built to distribute weight and pressure in a remarkably smooth way, actually taking advantage of the pressure itself being exerted.
Related gif
There are a lot of other species which benefit from disturbance
In Australia they don't try to eradicate all non-native willows, because too intense control makes it harder - guess what - to control them, so they leave a few that aren't causing trouble alone