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The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness co

The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities. What he writes, is truly striking. The article in the link, however, make no reference to such real-world starting points. It fails to emerge from the very practical. It does not gradually abstract away details in order to arrive at surprising insights at the meta-level. The verifiable path is simply gone. It is much more an example in the art of mediocre teaching. I personally think that it is a useless read.

GuiA 9y ago
I am completely unfamiliar with Taleb, this is a genuine question - does he have any work that is accepted as academic philosophy? Just hearing coworkers/friends/etc talk about him, I thought he just wrote books for a general audience.
- sjg007 9y ago
  Yes. I mean wikipedia answers it for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
  - GuiA 9y ago
    That article provides little to no insight as to how his work has been incorporated within academic philosophy. It does provide a brief "Selection of papers" section, all of them in finance and statistical mechanics, so my original question remains. The answer might be “his work hasn’t really intersected with academic philosophy”, that’s fine, I’m just curious to hear about it from people who have done more than read a Wikipedia page about him.
- ssivark 9y ago
  I don't think Taleb has engaged with academic philosophers. He prefers to portray himself as someone grounded in empiricism, and talks down "intellectual-yet-idiot" academics who lose the forest for the trees, in loving their flawed simplifications/abstractions more than the reality they are trying to model [1]. A lot of his ire is directed at economists' over-reliance on flawed mathematical assumptions (particularly relating to modeling randomness), and more broadly, academics in the less empirically grounded fields. I take his principal point to be that the modern approach to decision making under uncertainty (due to being neither theoretically nor empirically rigorous) is just a bunch of fashionable nonsense that has displaced several useful traditional/folk thumb rules which might superficially appear to conflict with the modern scientific models, but represent valuable insights won through hard experience. Most of his writing/speaking directed at a general audience is polemical, and often feels like he is ranting, so YMMV. If you're interested in getting a quick flavor of his work, try his talk at the National Science Foundation [2]. FWIW, several of Taleb's key points expound on some statements by Hume [3] and Seneca [4], so he does value certain works/ideas nominally considered philosophy. [1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577 https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e... (Taleb shares several of his articles/book-excerpts on Medium) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omsYJBMoIJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omsYJBMoIJU [3] https://philosophynow.org/issues/69/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb https://philosophynow.org/issues/69/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4MhC5tcEv0&feature=youtu.be&t=150 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4MhC5tcEv0&feature=youtu.be... PS: Having written this comment on HN makes me feel very weird, stating (my understanding of) the opinions of some particular person, but I just felt like responding to a sincere question.
deleted 9y ago
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justin66 9y ago
> The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities. I don't think Taleb would say his work was more important or "surprising" than the work of Mandelbrot, an academic.

GuiA 9y ago

I am completely unfamiliar with Taleb, this is a genuine question - does he have any work that is accepted as academic philosophy? Just hearing coworkers/friends/etc talk about him, I thought he just wrote books for a general audience.

sjg007 9y ago
Yes. I mean wikipedia answers it for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
- GuiA 9y ago
  That article provides little to no insight as to how his work has been incorporated within academic philosophy. It does provide a brief "Selection of papers" section, all of them in finance and statistical mechanics, so my original question remains. The answer might be “his work hasn’t really intersected with academic philosophy”, that’s fine, I’m just curious to hear about it from people who have done more than read a Wikipedia page about him.
ssivark 9y ago
I don't think Taleb has engaged with academic philosophers. He prefers to portray himself as someone grounded in empiricism, and talks down "intellectual-yet-idiot" academics who lose the forest for the trees, in loving their flawed simplifications/abstractions more than the reality they are trying to model [1]. A lot of his ire is directed at economists' over-reliance on flawed mathematical assumptions (particularly relating to modeling randomness), and more broadly, academics in the less empirically grounded fields. I take his principal point to be that the modern approach to decision making under uncertainty (due to being neither theoretically nor empirically rigorous) is just a bunch of fashionable nonsense that has displaced several useful traditional/folk thumb rules which might superficially appear to conflict with the modern scientific models, but represent valuable insights won through hard experience. Most of his writing/speaking directed at a general audience is polemical, and often feels like he is ranting, so YMMV. If you're interested in getting a quick flavor of his work, try his talk at the National Science Foundation [2]. FWIW, several of Taleb's key points expound on some statements by Hume [3] and Seneca [4], so he does value certain works/ideas nominally considered philosophy. [1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577 https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e... (Taleb shares several of his articles/book-excerpts on Medium) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omsYJBMoIJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omsYJBMoIJU [3] https://philosophynow.org/issues/69/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb https://philosophynow.org/issues/69/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4MhC5tcEv0&feature=youtu.be&t=150 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4MhC5tcEv0&feature=youtu.be... PS: Having written this comment on HN makes me feel very weird, stating (my understanding of) the opinions of some particular person, but I just felt like responding to a sincere question.

deleted 9y ago

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justin66 9y ago

> The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities. I don't think Taleb would say his work was more important or "surprising" than the work of Mandelbrot, an academic.