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Nicholas Taleb's Amazon Reviews
- awb 5y agoA polarizing figure with polarized reviews. Nearly everything I scrolled by was either 5 stars or 1 star.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoWhy leave feedback if the book was unexceptional?
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoTo persuade others not to read it?
- graedus 5y agoThat's what the one star reviews are for. (I read "unexceptional" to mean "neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally bad").
- BitwiseFool 5y agoYes, that was my reasoning. If the book was adequate but neither good nor bad I wouldn't bother writing a review about it. Much in the same way I wouldn't review an uneventful fast food dining experience.
- hangonhn 5y agoBut isn't that true of most reviewers? I don't feel compelled to act unless I have strong feelings in either direction.
- reader_mode 5y agoFor big investment (time or money) I'd likely review even with a "meh" feedback or mixed feelings
- ghaff 5y agoI don't leave a lot of reviews but I'm guessing most of the books I review are more likely to be in the 3 or 4 star range. I find relatively few books (or films) are necessarily so awesome I'll give them 5 stars. And anything in the 1 or 2 star range I probably won't finish and figure there're just not for me even if others seemed to have liked.
- itsarnavb 5y agowow, Taleb's Barbell strategy at play
- halikular 5y agoYou have to understand that he probably mostly reads books he enjoy and is statistically and factually correct. The 1 star reviews is when finds lots of statistical fallacies and misuse or they're factually incorrect. He doesn't take lightly on these kinds of things. Personally I think it's great when people finds mistakes in book and publish them for others.
- for_i_in_range 5y ago> A polarizing figure with polarized reviews. I came here to say the same! I’ve been thinking about this recently. It began after hearing the Weinstein brothers talk about Taleb[1]. My hunch is that a significant part of Taleb’s popularity stems from how dogmatically polarizing his views are. I’m not sure if he’s doing so authentically (I think he is), or: if he’s dogmatic in his opinions primarily because he knows doing so will result in wider distribution of his views. I struggle with this dilemma. On one hand, there’s a case for being strong-willed, dogmatic and polarizing. It takes courage. On the other hand, there’s a case for being open-minded, flexible in your thinking, and uncertain. Yet, this is generally perceived as weak-willed and doesn’t attract nearly the same attention as the polarizing stance. [1]: https://youtu.be/XxlVAbc1Vjo https://youtu.be/XxlVAbc1Vjo
- OminousWeapons 5y agoTaleb's insights are wonderful and I've learned a lot from his writing, but his writing style is so obnoxious that I always have trouble finishing his books. It is very clear that he thinks he is one of the smartest people on the planet and he wants everyone to know it.
- agumonkey 5y agoI heard the man like fat tails
- queuebert 5y agoTaleb is a legend in his own mind.
- bsedlm 5y agohe will live on through the notion of "black swan event"
- ben_w 5y agoHe’s far from the only person to spot that idea, though. My favourite take is from a different author: """An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.""" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Prob...
- unixhero 5y agoPolarized thinking aka Black or White thinking is a tell tale sign of clinical depression.
- dhbanes 5y agoBe careful. He might write a biting, 20-bullet-point-long review of your comment.
- solidasparagus 5y ago19 bullets of which will be about himself. But that one other bullet will be quite insightful.
- zpeti 5y agoAre you calling Nassim depressed or his reviewers?
- unixhero 5y agoNassim, potentially. These were all his reviews. Of course it might as well be that Nassim is only compelled to write a review when something is really good, or really bad.
- unixhero 5y agoSource: https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/black-and-white-thinking https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/black-and-wh...
- jaywalk 5y agoShould I know and/or care who this (seemingly) random person is?
- _Microft 5y agoYou might know one of his books: "The Black Swan", "Antifragile" and "Skin in the Game". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sz4kerto 5y agoDon't be fooled by this randomness.
- giarc 5y agoIt's funny as I didn't know who he was either. I went to the link expecting someone with thousand upon thousand of Amazon reviews or something else that stood out about the profile/reviews. I had to Google him to find out who he was. I have heard of his books, but didn't recall his name I guess.
- MagnumOpus 5y agoHe‘s a washed up former Wall Streeter who failed at getting rich through smart trading, and realised it‘s far easier to get rich by cosplaying a smart trader/philosopher on the Ted Talk circuit and to sell pop-Finance books to gullible laymen instead.
- borepop 5y agoSounds about right to me. I can't stand this guy.
- edmundsauto 5y agoAn alternative interpretation is that he made a lot of money betting against Wall Street in the 2008 Financial Crisis. Once he got eff-you money, he went into pompous teacher mode. His theories, while a bit unsubstantiated, are a different way of looking at the world that most people would do well to understand - even if they aren't correct in most circumstances. Basically he talks (from an inflated ego) about tail risk, randomness, and some types of system reliability He is definitely someone whose ideas are worth making up your own mind on, rather than listening to an internet critic (or fanboi's) opinion on.
- blocked_again 5y agoFooled by Randomness by Nicholas Taleb is probably the most influential book I have read so far. It completely changed my world view. But at the same time it made life less meaningful. Are there any books to minimize the damage made by the book? Books that give propose and meaning back to life?
- sz4kerto 5y agoNot really. It might sound esoteric (I'd like to avoid that ...) but not many people find meaning in life through rationality. So I'd look elsewhere.
- hangonhn 5y agoYes! "Against the Gods": https://www.amazon.com/Against-Gods-Remarkable-Story-Risk-ebook/dp/B00BV6RTUG/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=against+the+gods&qid=1621450996&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Against-Gods-Remarkable-Story-Risk-eb... It's the opposite of Taleb. Basically, if people were rational and used financial instruments properly, a lot of the risks of our lives can be mitigated. The trick isn't so much to control everything but to trade the less desirable forms of risk for the ones you can handle.
- ProjectArcturis 5y agoIt's definitely a pre-2008 book. There are several sections extolling the slicing and dicing of risk a la colleralized mortgage bonds.
- ironmagma 5y agoJordan Peterson is obsessed with meaning so his books are filled with discussions on it. Edit: love how I’m getting downvotes for a factual statement
- shannifin 5y agoYes; certainly a politically controversial figure, but "Maps of Meaning" is, obviously, about meaning. Could also try an influence of his, Jung, but he can be a challenge to understand. I'm a bit disappointed that Taleb seems to be unwilling to even talk with figures such as Peterson or Pinker so I could better understand all of their positions, but oh well.
- shannifin 5y agoI wish I better understood his critiques of other authors' statistical / data analysis errors, they're unfortunately mostly over my head.
- gnarbarian 5y agoI love Taleb. he's full of piss and vinegar. His books are pretty interesting but really most of them could be one sentence long. Two examples: Antifragile: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Black Swan: Forecasting is really hard, perfect forecasting is impossible.
- virgilp 5y agoI don't think this is a good characterization. Black Swan is more about "Looking just at probability is misleading and dangerous, you need to look at severity too". I haven't read antifragile, but I don't think that statement summarizes it (also it's a completely false statement). My understanding was that it's message is <<resilient systems are those that have "fragile" components but can adapt to/ learn from failure; not those that are designed to be "very strong">>.
- anthony_r 5y ago> Antifragile: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger No, you've missed the point of the book (or haven't read it). It's about that some things become better in the presence of error/noise/damage/volatility. But not all things, some other, fragile things, become worse and worse as damage accumulates. And that there's no word for such a property, so he calls it "Antifragile". And then the book goes in great detail about lots and lots of examples (with the usual rambling).
- hogFeast 5y agoThe word is the Lindy effect.
- anthony_r 5y agoNo, that's only one example. Or rather a simple pattern for how to spot some antifragility in the wild (has it been around for a long time? well then it's likely antifragile). Consider a portfolio of out of the money options, with some short closer to the money options to "collect premium". This is how Taleb made good amount of his money while trading options back in the day (I personally call such setups "a Taleb trade"). He himself describes it as "trades that make little money on small moves, lose medium amounts on medium moves, win a lot on big moves". But this has absolutely nothing to do with Lindy. A Lindy "trade" would be something like hoarding gold. It's been around for sooooooo long.
- narush 5y agoIf it's your thing, I highly recommend NNT's YouTube channel [1]. He uploads short videos (that he apparently films with a potato), where he explains stat concepts "for beginners." Of course, he also spends lots of time _roasting_ random researchers/statistics users/noobz. Actually though, I've actually a bunch of his videos super educational and well made - if you can get past the terrible camera / sound quality. I watched his explanation of the central limit theorem [2] the other day and found it super helpful. I'm not great at math, but I took multiple stat classes at uni (including two where we went through proofs for the CLT at some level). But this single 10 minute video helped me "get it" more than any class. The big observation that I was missing is that the sample mean is pretty much the same as the sample sum, and the sample sum can sum to "things in the middle" in more ways that things not in the middle (e.g. if you have two dice, rolling a 7 is more likely than rolling a 12). I'm sure I'm butchering it mostly, but that little bit of intuition was just *nice* - especially after 2 stat classes of rote proof following w/ little to no intuition building. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uY6yLP9BS4BUc9BSc0Jww https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uY6yLP9BS4BUc9BSc0Jww [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfM9efdStN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfM9efdStN8
- jdmoreira 5y agoWow! I didn’t know about this, thanks for the recommendation. I love this guy, it’s a guilty pleasure for sure because of his personality but I find it somehow refreshing.
- shannifin 5y agoThanks for the links! Wish he would write a full-length book of "stats for beginners" so I could better understand his critiques of its misuse, but this looks like a good place to start anyway.
- hogFeast 5y agoIf you know a programming language, stuff like Wolfram (or doing it in Python/R) can really help. Stats suffers quite heavily from having to introduce some ideas, most importantly distributions, which can be tricky to intuit at first. Running through some examples with Wolfram (there is a free version which you can in Jupyter) or using the stats package from scipy in Python was very helpful to me personally.
- adrianscott 5y agoMost of us call him Nassim, cheers. It is interesting data to see him called Nicholas here.
- mhb 5y agoYes. Why is that?
- mips_avatar 5y agoI guess I kind of wanted to hear his opinion on random stuff like travel mugs. But I guess it's more useful to hear his opinion on books.
- rossdavidh 5y agoNassim Taleb and Stephen Pinker are two very interesting, intelligent, and utterly arrogant thinkers who completely deserve each other.
- feral 5y agoHis reviews all seem either 5-star or 1-star - fitting for someone who makes his career railing against overuse of normal distributions!
- dalmo3 5y agoBarbell reviewing!
- bernardv 5y agoTaleb could be so much more effective if he dialed down his ego by a notch or two. He is lecturing to an audience that lives in his imagination.
- ciguy 5y agoI found his review of The Count of Monte Cristo hilarious. I read it as a teen and it is in my opinion one of the greatest novels ever written. Apparently he only read it for idle distraction during the pandemic and was surprised by how good it was.
- julienreszka 5y agoWhat a hater