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I always feel bad when I read some of Taleb's work and come away empty. The guy is clearly smart, but I feel like he skips too many steps in his mental algebra

by ABCLAW 9y ago

I always feel bad when I read some of Taleb's work and come away empty. The guy is clearly smart, but I feel like he skips too many steps in his mental algebra and then misses his own mistakes altogether too often. >This gives us, the crowd, an insurance policy against an Orwellian future. Here's a great example. Does it really, Nassim?

coffeeacc 9y ago
Is the preceding sentence not useful? > But its mere existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that the last object establishment could control, namely, the currency, is no longer their monopoly.
- tantalor 9y ago
  Bitcoin is no more a currency than gold.
  - splouk 9y ago
    But he talked about that too...
- at-fates-hands 9y ago
  The only problem is what we're currently seeing. That yes, the government will do everything within its power to insert itself into the crypto currency market in order to control it. Look at how the SEC is not only keeping tabs on crypto currencies, but are monitoring ICO's and bringing charges against people they feel are committing fraud. It's been pointed out before that although the SEC can't stop CC's, then can effectively sideline them as a niche offering to investors. I guess this is the beauty and beast of CC's right now. Yeah, it's totally unregulated, but it's also rife with fraud. It's like people want it both to be safe and regulated while still outside the control of any government.
- ABCLAW 9y ago
  No? In that statement, Taleb uses his conclusion as a premise. That doesn't make his reasoning stronger.
dxbydt 9y ago
>I always feel bad when I read some of Taleb's work and come away empty Took the words right out of my mouth. His recent thoughts/tweets on Deep Learning were even more confusing.
- ABCLAW 9y ago
  Taleb is a deeply intuitive, sharp individual - this is his weakness. Like all the smart kids in school who rushed through math problems and wrote out the final answer rather than all the work to get there, he often skips key steps in his chain of reasoning. Since he skips them, he doesn't notice when those key steps are demonstrably wrong. I feel he's gotten worse in this respect over time.
  - _e 9y ago
    ...or maybe he is just tired of trying to get people to understand.
ballenarosada 9y ago
Totally agree. He seems to think highly enough of his own intelligence that he's excused from being precise or even intelligible
bbctol 9y ago
You should read Taleb until you understand the important part of his message is not to listen too much to people like Taleb.
- gburt 9y ago
  This is what I get out of his writing. He is a great pop-culture writer, expresses some important (and mostly, relatively old, repackaged) ideas about convexity and natural mathematical implications thereof. He is one of my favorite authors, but I am unconvinced by nearly everything he has to say. He has this cult-leader style of "everyone else is wrong, but here, you can be part of the enlightened group" that I find somewhat grating, but more importantly, he simply does not provide "extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims." Almost nothing he asserts is empirically testable due to his reliance on fat tails and Knightian uncertainty, and when it is, it either has not been empirically tested or the entire "traditional" industry is built around the empirical results. His response to this is generally of the form "systemic failures can dominate normal effects." [1] In the cases where he leans on statistical modelling, especially modelling with fat tails, his writing breaks down. I find his approach at that point to feel sort of "baffle them with bullshit" in the sense that he is indifferent to whether it is even possible for the reader to understand what he is saying, once he has convinced himself. [1] e.g., https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10155509264828375 https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10155509264828375
soneca 9y ago
I think he just isn't a very good communicator (nor cares to be one). He was recently a guest at the excellent podcast Econtalk and you really needed to know his ideas from other sources to properly understand what he was talking about. I don't think is arrogance or anything, it is just a skill that he doesn't have naturally and also doesn't care enough to practice and improve. I think his ideas are strong enough to find an audience even without this skill. Contrasting him with a Malcolm Gladwell who, imo, reaches a large audience much more from his communication skills than from the power of this ideas, I think I prefer Taleb's style.
- _e 9y ago
  Nassim Taleb wrote in one of his books that he intentionally articulates his beliefs in a somewhat difficult to understand fashion otherwise people wouldn't take him seriously. Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Kahneman (author of Thinking, Fast and Slow) both credit Nassim Taleb for a lot of inspiration in their books. Someone mentioned to me that Benoit Mandelbrot (author of (Mis)behavior of Markets) inspired Nassim Taleb for a lot of his thoughts. So there... read Mandelbrot, Gladwell and Kahneman to understand Nassim Taleb.
  - qwz4233 9y ago
    Another option for understanding Taleb is to take a rigorous course on stochastic processes. Afterwards, everything he says will make perfect sense.

by ABCLAW 9y ago

coffeeacc 9y ago

Is the preceding sentence not useful? > But its mere existence is an insurance policy that will remind governments that the last object establishment could control, namely, the currency, is no longer their monopoly.

tantalor 9y ago
Bitcoin is no more a currency than gold.
- splouk 9y ago
  But he talked about that too...
at-fates-hands 9y ago
The only problem is what we're currently seeing. That yes, the government will do everything within its power to insert itself into the crypto currency market in order to control it. Look at how the SEC is not only keeping tabs on crypto currencies, but are monitoring ICO's and bringing charges against people they feel are committing fraud. It's been pointed out before that although the SEC can't stop CC's, then can effectively sideline them as a niche offering to investors. I guess this is the beauty and beast of CC's right now. Yeah, it's totally unregulated, but it's also rife with fraud. It's like people want it both to be safe and regulated while still outside the control of any government.
ABCLAW 9y ago
No? In that statement, Taleb uses his conclusion as a premise. That doesn't make his reasoning stronger.

dxbydt 9y ago

>I always feel bad when I read some of Taleb's work and come away empty Took the words right out of my mouth. His recent thoughts/tweets on Deep Learning were even more confusing.

ABCLAW 9y ago
Taleb is a deeply intuitive, sharp individual - this is his weakness. Like all the smart kids in school who rushed through math problems and wrote out the final answer rather than all the work to get there, he often skips key steps in his chain of reasoning. Since he skips them, he doesn't notice when those key steps are demonstrably wrong. I feel he's gotten worse in this respect over time.
- _e 9y ago
  ...or maybe he is just tired of trying to get people to understand.

ballenarosada 9y ago

Totally agree. He seems to think highly enough of his own intelligence that he's excused from being precise or even intelligible

bbctol 9y ago

You should read Taleb until you understand the important part of his message is not to listen too much to people like Taleb.

gburt 9y ago
This is what I get out of his writing. He is a great pop-culture writer, expresses some important (and mostly, relatively old, repackaged) ideas about convexity and natural mathematical implications thereof. He is one of my favorite authors, but I am unconvinced by nearly everything he has to say. He has this cult-leader style of "everyone else is wrong, but here, you can be part of the enlightened group" that I find somewhat grating, but more importantly, he simply does not provide "extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims." Almost nothing he asserts is empirically testable due to his reliance on fat tails and Knightian uncertainty, and when it is, it either has not been empirically tested or the entire "traditional" industry is built around the empirical results. His response to this is generally of the form "systemic failures can dominate normal effects." [1] In the cases where he leans on statistical modelling, especially modelling with fat tails, his writing breaks down. I find his approach at that point to feel sort of "baffle them with bullshit" in the sense that he is indifferent to whether it is even possible for the reader to understand what he is saying, once he has convinced himself. [1] e.g., https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10155509264828375 https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10155509264828375

soneca 9y ago

I think he just isn't a very good communicator (nor cares to be one). He was recently a guest at the excellent podcast Econtalk and you really needed to know his ideas from other sources to properly understand what he was talking about. I don't think is arrogance or anything, it is just a skill that he doesn't have naturally and also doesn't care enough to practice and improve. I think his ideas are strong enough to find an audience even without this skill. Contrasting him with a Malcolm Gladwell who, imo, reaches a large audience much more from his communication skills than from the power of this ideas, I think I prefer Taleb's style.

_e 9y ago
Nassim Taleb wrote in one of his books that he intentionally articulates his beliefs in a somewhat difficult to understand fashion otherwise people wouldn't take him seriously. Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Kahneman (author of Thinking, Fast and Slow) both credit Nassim Taleb for a lot of inspiration in their books. Someone mentioned to me that Benoit Mandelbrot (author of (Mis)behavior of Markets) inspired Nassim Taleb for a lot of his thoughts. So there... read Mandelbrot, Gladwell and Kahneman to understand Nassim Taleb.
- qwz4233 9y ago
  Another option for understanding Taleb is to take a rigorous course on stochastic processes. Afterwards, everything he says will make perfect sense.