I'm profoundly confused by the deep respect Taleb commands in the eyes of many people here, apparently. The guy has a few good ideas that he repeats ad nauseam,

I'm profoundly confused by the deep respect Taleb commands in the eyes of many people here, apparently. The guy has a few good ideas that he repeats ad nauseam, but he punches way over his own intellectual weight too often. A few especially egregious examples are his deranged GMO hate "paper" which is profoundly ignorant of the involved biology [1], his support of Syrian government's slaughter of civilians [2][3], and his Putinversteher views ([4] reads as a parody for anyone knowing anything about Putin and modern Russia). Combined with his unlimited arrogance, I don't understand how people can respect him intellectually. [1]: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2 http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2 [2]: https://medium.com/opacity/the-syrian-war-condensed-a-more-rigorous-way-to-look-at-the-conflict-f841404c3b1d https://medium.com/opacity/the-syrian-war-condensed-a-more-r... [3]: https://medium.com/@ameraidi/nassim-taleb-is-wrong-on-syria-e1faa523824c https://medium.com/@ameraidi/nassim-taleb-is-wrong-on-syria-... [4]: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/773323163509850112 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/773323163509850112