Not everything Nassim N. Taleb says is rubbish. For someone writing about so many different things (people call him ‘eclectic’, although he prefers to be called a thinker), it would be quite a feat never to say anything interesting. His criticism of financial forecasters is undoubtedly warranted – for the most part. He’s also right [...]
From 2009, revisited in context of recent Guardian reviews. I used to think that the US press was guilty of distortions. Recent events changed my mind, as UK anti-Cameron papers tried to cut and paste from my talk to weaken him by trying to demonize me. The problem is that they got my ideas backwards [...]
Forget everything you ever learned from Harvard drones and Nobel laureates, for in them lies no salvation. They think only in the sort of teleological heuristic iatrogenics that would appeal to a Seneca or a Nero. The world is really composed of Triads: the Fragile, the Robust and the Antifragile. Now abideth these three. And [...]
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Christmas traditions have gone from stockings and exchanging gifts, to fruitcakes, bad sweaters, NBA games, and now Taleb books, a sign that perhaps the Mayan return isn’t so much an apocalypse but rather a mercy killing. Taleb is one of many best-selling authors I don’t enjoy (Tom Friedman, Robert Kiyosaki, Snooki), but as he is [...]
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
There’s more to this, much of which may have been deleted, but a little shyte storm broke out this morning on Twitter around some ”favorite passages”, ostensibly from NNT’s new book, Antifragile (that was the context of the blog post) published by Joshua Brown at ‘the Reformed Broker’. The post has since been removed, probably [...]
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
The author of The Black Swan has now written a baggy, dispiriting, antisocial mess of a book. By David Runciman If the idea is nice and neat, however, the book that houses it is just the opposite. It is a big, baggy, sprawling mess. Taleb seems to have decided not just to explain his idea [...]
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Certainly NNT has set the stage for these sorts of reactions. Hopefully they won’t get in the way of his message. Have you ever gazed upon classical Greek philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb and thought to yourself, “That man has a body from the gods. I could never hope to match him in brains, but what [...]
(REVISED) What do you do to a “prominent” social scientist who is talking about my book while visibly not read it (or did not read it attentively to realize that his points are not what I am saying)? The best strategy is to… promote his review. http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WEIPZNPXM3U1/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm via (REVISED) What do….
1.0 out of 5 stars Might be a nice twenty page essay, but a bomb of a book, April 10, 2012 By Herbert Gintis This review is from: The Black Swan (Hardcover) Science does not generally predict, but when it is good science, it does explain. You cannot, even in principle, predict the decay of [...]
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
In the end I added this to the ‘haters’ category. Especially after I read this post. He seems to be writing anonymously. Anyone know who it is? According to philosopher Taleb we can have heuristics, but not optimization. Optimization leads to airport delays. It also leads to cheaper tickets and in this exciting two part [...]
I’m in receipt today of a collection of emails from Janet Tavakoli. You may recall some controversy around figures NNT was quoted to have said in a GQ article. I believe I’ve posted about this elsewhere on the blog. It’s from 2009. As you know, I have no relationship with Nassim Taleb, I’m simply collecting, [...]
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Shared by JohnH
This fellow apparently doesn’t think much of The Bed of Procrustes, or NNT for that matter, but in the interest of balance, and because the graphic is hilarious, I’m passing it along. HatTip to Dave Lull.
Illustration for …
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Now you all know I’m a Taleb super-fan, but this video is excellent and hilarious. It’s not going to mean much to the general public, but to those of us following the argument it’s genius. Would love to watch NNT’s face as he saw it for the first time. I like to think that he’d get a few laughs out of it as well, but who knows?
Also filed in John, Video
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Tagged autism, bell curve, Benoit Mandelbrot, code farm, credit derivatives, extreme value theory, Frank Night, Nobel Prize, normal distribution, Peter Cotton, quant, regression, standard deviation, statistics, value at risk, xtranormal
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