No readers of The Black Swan, Fooled By Randomness or any of Taleb’s academic writings about economics, probability, risk, fragility, philosophy of statistics, applied epistemology, etc, will question whether he is qualified to dish out wisdom. And none will be surprised that Taleb, unlike the inspirational writer he calls “my compatriot from a neighbouring (and warring) village in northern Lebanon, Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet,” can be blistering. His observations concern superiority, wealth, suckerdom, academia, modernity, technology and the all-purpose, ignorant “they” who dare to doubt him.