Tag Archives: Facebook

Nassim Taleb’s Musings On Facebook – Business Insider

Taleb’s Facebook — which boasts 33,000+ followers — is truly a must-like for anyone interested in success, failure, Brooklyn, the modern condition, philosophy, the sordid state of journalism, or all of the above.

Here are Taleb’s 35 most important observations. Each is a quote.

The artificial gives us hangovers, the natural inverse-hangovers.

The only problem with the last laugh is that the winner has to laugh alone.

Intelligence without imagination: a deadly combination.

via Nassim Taleb’s Musings On Facebook – Business Insider.

Sunday Times The Bed of Procrustes Review

The Sunday Time’s Robert Collins wrote a review of The Bed of Procrustes. It’s behind a paywall but NNT was kind enough to make it available from his site. Here’s a direct pdf download link.
And thanks to Dave Lull for letting me know.
Here’s an excerpt:

The likes of Facebook, though, get his epistemological hackles up: “Social networks present information about what people like; more informative if, instead, they described what they don’t like.” And so that’s precisely what Taleb does: gyms, economists, carbohydrates, journalists — he loathes them all. “I take a ritual bath after any contact, or correspondence (even emails), with consultants, economists, Harvard Business School professors, journalists, and those in similarly depraved pursuits.”

Oh, and don’t forget you: “Newspaper readers exposed to real prose are like deaf persons at a Puccini opera.”

But if there’s one thing that truly gets Taleb’s goat in his arch if uneven meditations, it’s jobs: “Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.” Which brilliantly proves how clever the maddeningly wise Taleb is: he’s cured himself of that problem completely.

The Black Swan Report

Update 8/11/10 Turns out one need only be logged in to Twitter to see NNT’s tweets. It does appear the RSS feed is also login protected.

Update 8/8/10 It would appear NNT has “protected” his tweets. Not sure what that means exactly. There is the option to Send Request. Never seen that before. It looks to me like NNT has managed to turn Twitter into an anti-social media!

NNT turned off his tweets.