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> "our early estimates of Trump’s chances weren’t based on a statistical model." The Polls+Plus model that Taleb criticized wasn't an early estimate and it see

by iaw 9y ago

> "our early estimates of Trump’s chances weren’t based on a statistical model." The Polls+Plus model that Taleb criticized wasn't an early estimate and it seems kind of strange that you'd conflate the two. Trump receiving the nomination can be argued as a 'black swan' event (although whether it was is debatable because it was observed as a possible, if unlikely, outcome before it happened), however Trump winning the election was not. Your original post linked to a straw man attack by Taleb against Nate Silver based on paper Taleb wrote that is explicitly constrained to binary systems. When I pointed out this problem with Taleb's argument you created your own straw man citing Nate's words about a related, but different, statistical problem involving more than two choices. That is not a result that Taleb claimed and seems to be wholly outside of the scope of our original discussion. Ultimately I think this is an ego thing for Taleb, he makes a habit of critically attacking [0] people who have fame in related fields without actually contributing anything to the discussion. Again, it's hard to see this as anything but Taleb's ego at work. By calling out the famous 'smart' people as wrong using arguments that are impregnable to people without highly advanced mathematic training he effectively increases his media clout without actually contributing anything to society. Serous question: Has Nassim Taleb ever admitted he was wrong? Edit: I just read about how poorly Nassim Taleb did with Empirica Capital, [1] it seems very surprising that Nassim Taleb has such confidence undermining the work of others given that, objectively, his work during that period was a failure. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Praise_and_criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Praise_a... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirica_Capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirica_Capital

21 9y ago
As Taleb would say, debate the best possible version of your opponents argument, not the one most convenient to attack: "Take for instance the great Karl Popper: he always started with an unerring representation of the opponents positions, often exhaustive, as if he were marketing them as his own ideas, before proceededing to systematically destroy them" What I was saying was in the spirit of GP, which mentioned that he is sick of hearing people attack "science", and mentioned Nate Silver. I was pointing out that Nate Silver himself admitted of not doing "science" with respect with Trump, at least in part. Sure, Taleb has an ego, just like Wolfram. Taleb can also be a jerk, just like Linus. Everyone knows that. Dismissing him because of that is just an easy way out.

by iaw 9y ago

21 9y ago

As Taleb would say, debate the best possible version of your opponents argument, not the one most convenient to attack: "Take for instance the great Karl Popper: he always started with an unerring representation of the opponents positions, often exhaustive, as if he were marketing them as his own ideas, before proceededing to systematically destroy them" What I was saying was in the spirit of GP, which mentioned that he is sick of hearing people attack "science", and mentioned Nate Silver. I was pointing out that Nate Silver himself admitted of not doing "science" with respect with Trump, at least in part. Sure, Taleb has an ego, just like Wolfram. Taleb can also be a jerk, just like Linus. Everyone knows that. Dismissing him because of that is just an easy way out.