As a research psychologist, I found his rant particularly upsetting because the very thing he's ranting about has been dealt with in the social sciences for yea

As a research psychologist, I found his rant particularly upsetting because the very thing he's ranting about has been dealt with in the social sciences for years and years and years. One of the reasons this issue keeps recurring is because, taken to its logical conclusion, the "time" probability paradigm (to use his term, there are better terms that have been used) as applied to persons' behaviors, only applies to that single individual, which then leads to a sort of paradox. Although we might want to know the probabilities for Theodorus Ibn Warqa, this is in principle unknowable because there is only one Theodorus Ibn Warqa. So when he is ruined, you can in theory say nothing about Maximillian Samuel Warqa. At some point you have to invoke a counterfactual of sorts, and use a different person as a substitute, and this is why the "ensemble" probability model is invoked. Taleb is right that the consequences of a ruin event are different at the individual level, but so what? The cost estimate is different from the probability estimate. It's not like people don't understand this. Maybe in the strawman literature he reads, but not in what anyone else is thinking. What's more typical is a ruin event one way or a ruin event another. This is difficult stuff if you go beyond the toy gambler scenario he's dealing with. Just for one example: https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/11718181 https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/11718181 People wrestle with this not because they're idiots, but because it's more difficult than it seems once you really dive into it.