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I used to like Taleb, but his cult is getting out of hand. Really? You needed Taleb to explain why the classics are good reading? Why literature that has been t

by dvt 4y ago

I used to like Taleb, but his cult is getting out of hand. Really? You needed Taleb to explain why the classics are good reading? Why literature that has been treasured for the entirety of human history is valuable? Get a grip. Mix that faux-intellectualism--slash--nouveau-englightenment with gross oversimplifications and you have a Taleb cultist. > From Communist Russia's collapse due to Marxism... I'm no Russian sympathizer, but this is such an oversimplification it borders on parody. The irony being that this follows a spiel about the world being complex. Maybe this is parody and I'm just too dense.

ordu 4y ago
> You needed Taleb to explain why the classics are good reading? Why literature that has been treasured for the entirety of human history is valuable? Classics are good reading because every new generation of readers can find there something valuable. Every new generation of readers can find something new, or at least rediscover something old. Everyone find in classics their own things. If the author sees Dostoevsky through the lens of a modern author (Taleb), the better for Dostoevsky. It means he is still relevant.
- libertine 4y ago
  I see it the other way around: classics boil things down close to what makes us human, and that has no time boundary. It will always be relevant and insightful, no matter the state of some human constructs, or new society standards - in the end human condition will always be with us.
- dvt 4y ago
  > It means he is still relevant. Yeah, that's kind of my point. Of course he's still relevant, he's Dostoevsky. I'm in the middle of Moby Dick. Not because Taleb (or Jordan Peterson, or any other twitter "intellectual") told me about this cool 19th century author named Herman Melville, but because, you know, it's Moby freakin' Dick.
  - ordu 4y ago
    > Of course he's still relevant, he's Dostoevsky. It is a theoretical prediction: Dostoevsky will be relevant forever. When someone reads Dostoevsky and sees Taleb's ideas there, it is not an insult to Dostoevsky, it is an evidence supporting the theory.
- Bakary 4y ago
  You should be more worried about Taleb being remembered in 50 years than Dostoevsky
  - ordu 4y ago
    Why should I be worried about that? Taleb is remembered now, it is relevant now, and it makes people think about Taleb now. So why not to try to understand Taleb deeper by reading Dostoevsky? If Taleb will fail to be relevant in 50 years, then no one would try to do it then. And what? Why should it worry me?
    - Bakary 4y ago
      What I meant is that whether Taleb is a conduit to Dostoevsky or not has no bearing on the latter's continued relevance. Dostoevsky's relevance is not in any doubt but Taleb's is (or any other similar author). The GP was a bit hyperbolic but I am inclined to agree with their viewpoint. The intellectual trend they are highlighting (which goes way beyond Taleb) has real consequences because it is so prevalent among tech workers and capital owners who have enormous influence on modern life.
      - ordu 4y ago
        > What I meant is that whether Taleb is a conduit to Dostoevsky or not has no bearing on the latter's continued relevance. Yeah. And then others will come to have no bearing on Dostoevsky's continued relevance. Dostoevsky relevant while there are people to read him. If people didn't read him, then Dostoevsky would be irrelevant, wouldn't he? If all the people die for example, Dostoevsky would be irrelevant then. Isn't it a causal link? Modern people and their beliefs are a necessary cause of relevance of Dostoevsky. > The intellectual trend they are highlighting (which goes way beyond Taleb) has real consequences because it is so prevalent among tech workers and capital owners who have enormous influence on modern life. Didn't you considered a question: why techies and economists are so excited about Taleb? Why them? Why not plumbers for example? I can propose an answer. Techies and economists are two groups who rely on models the most. It is impossible to use math to solve a problem without conducting a math model of that problem first. So when Taleb had shown them that their models are not good enough, how did they feel? Their art failed them. Their methods can commit not just random blunders, they are guaranteed to blunder in unpredictable ways. Of course they are obsessed with Taleb. And it is a good thing, exactly because "tech workers and capital owners [...] have enormous influence on modern life". Their blunders can hurt a lot. I see as nonconstructive the attitude of scowling at techies discovering Dostoevsky and seeking there ways to refine their art of modelling. If you know better how to deal with a failure of a model, then help them kindly. Suggest them Shakespeare, or Plato, or something else to read that can help them to learn to walk without crutches of models. You can really try to see world their way, and you can really help them, if you are so good. But I remember literature lessons from my youth, and history, and I hate them. I hated them then, I hate them now. I'm sure all these humanities' people are unable to understand a techie, and they are unable to explain themselves because of it. It doesn't surprise me that techies have difficulties when trying to understand people, but why humanities' people fail to understand tech people and moreover how they can be proud of it I cannot grasp. It is their specialty to understand others isn't it? Shouldn't they be obsessed with Taleb because they cannot understand why techies obsessed with him? Why they obsessed with Taleb more than with Judea Pearl? It is just because Pearl solves problems he stated, while Taleb does not propose a satisfying solution? Or maybe because Taleb's stated problem is more thrilling for them? Why all these arts people think more about the relevance of long dead Dostoevsky than of people who live now? Dostoevsky was concerned of living people and of problems that were relevant at his time. Crime and Punishment is about a young man who had read too much of Nietzsche. More then it was good for him. Nietzsche was a thinker like Taleb. So now we have a lot of people who read too much of Taleb. More than it is good for them. Isn't it exciting? Isn't the best path is to help them and to write a novel predicting their punishment, than to scowl at them?
c0mptonFP 4y ago
> > From Communist Russia's collapse due to Marxism... The delivery of this nonchalant line in particular made me cringe hard.
- devonallie 4y ago
  I think it reveals a deep naïveté about the author that they can simply boil things down to “Marxism bad”. However, they do seem to be learning that there is value in not being a STEMLord.
  - pas 4y ago
    Proper STEMlord doctrine holds that Marxism is not even wrong. Also, obviously, the views/ideas of Marx turned out to be correct (well supported by empiricism) are just part of economics and sociology.
kcatskcolbdi 4y ago
Taleb is another in a long line of people who have accomplished very little outside of selling themselves as a person who Really Understands The WorldTM. His central thesis that models can't account for everything is............................painfully obvious. He's Malcolm Gladwell if Malcom Gladwell's selling point was that he predicted that, during obvious market bubbles, those bubbles would pop.
- brnaftr361 4y ago
  To me this is non-sequitur. If it was so obvious, no institution would rely on the model, nor would people rely on institutions that use the models. Objectively there would be a perpetual hedge - and that is how it is from the perspective of a scientist - but from the perspective of practitioners of theory, the model presents an accurate enough picture that it possesses a degree of truth which is illusory. But even with some arbitrarily defined 99% success, you can never predict when the 1% failure will occur, and if we allow Mandelbrot's postulate Now in things like celestial bodies and their trajectories - it's relegated to some distant inanity that extraordinarily curious people have derived, getting it wrong doesn't change the way the planets revolve around the sun. In the facets of civilization which they can affect, such as economics, they become a serious hazard, because they can and do affect the way the planet moves. It's a pernicious effect, that were it so known and obvious, would be forcibly relegated to oblivion. When probability is measured in infinitesimal fractions of continuous time a 1% fail rate becomes very substantial, and especially when it isn't accounted for in every dimension, to give an example: "The “spreads” between brokers’ bid and ask prices widened sharply—as much as 19 percent above the industry’s norms (that translates into an instantaneous windfall to any broker who called it right, and near-ruin to those who got it wrong). The turmoil spread around the globe: The Hong Kong index fell 14 percent, London 9 percent. In the final twenty-four minutes before the New York market closed at 3:30, prices plummeted at an average rate of 0.10 percent a minute, or 6 percent an hour, the SEC calculated. Put that into perspective: The value of American business was falling $100 million a second. The next morning, prices roared in the opposite direction even faster. But the fastest action of all concentrated into three isolated minutes in the whole twenty-four hours: between 3:12 and 3:14 p.m. New York time, and between 3:24 and 3:25 p.m. This was no mere financial storm. It was a hurricane." -Mandelbrot, The (mis)Behavior of Markets Your position is also highly reductionist, Taleb covers a lot of broad ground, including his own models, which are duly hedged from his perspective as a staunch empiricist.
jmartrican 4y ago
I agree. Taleb's book have really opened up my eyes. But that's just one of lives many lessons. Take the lesson and move on. No need to make a cult of it.

by dvt 4y ago

ordu 4y ago

> You needed Taleb to explain why the classics are good reading? Why literature that has been treasured for the entirety of human history is valuable? Classics are good reading because every new generation of readers can find there something valuable. Every new generation of readers can find something new, or at least rediscover something old. Everyone find in classics their own things. If the author sees Dostoevsky through the lens of a modern author (Taleb), the better for Dostoevsky. It means he is still relevant.

libertine 4y ago
I see it the other way around: classics boil things down close to what makes us human, and that has no time boundary. It will always be relevant and insightful, no matter the state of some human constructs, or new society standards - in the end human condition will always be with us.
dvt 4y ago
> It means he is still relevant. Yeah, that's kind of my point. Of course he's still relevant, he's Dostoevsky. I'm in the middle of Moby Dick. Not because Taleb (or Jordan Peterson, or any other twitter "intellectual") told me about this cool 19th century author named Herman Melville, but because, you know, it's Moby freakin' Dick.
- ordu 4y ago
  > Of course he's still relevant, he's Dostoevsky. It is a theoretical prediction: Dostoevsky will be relevant forever. When someone reads Dostoevsky and sees Taleb's ideas there, it is not an insult to Dostoevsky, it is an evidence supporting the theory.
Bakary 4y ago
You should be more worried about Taleb being remembered in 50 years than Dostoevsky
- ordu 4y ago
  Why should I be worried about that? Taleb is remembered now, it is relevant now, and it makes people think about Taleb now. So why not to try to understand Taleb deeper by reading Dostoevsky? If Taleb will fail to be relevant in 50 years, then no one would try to do it then. And what? Why should it worry me?
  - Bakary 4y ago
    What I meant is that whether Taleb is a conduit to Dostoevsky or not has no bearing on the latter's continued relevance. Dostoevsky's relevance is not in any doubt but Taleb's is (or any other similar author). The GP was a bit hyperbolic but I am inclined to agree with their viewpoint. The intellectual trend they are highlighting (which goes way beyond Taleb) has real consequences because it is so prevalent among tech workers and capital owners who have enormous influence on modern life.
    - ordu 4y ago
      > What I meant is that whether Taleb is a conduit to Dostoevsky or not has no bearing on the latter's continued relevance. Yeah. And then others will come to have no bearing on Dostoevsky's continued relevance. Dostoevsky relevant while there are people to read him. If people didn't read him, then Dostoevsky would be irrelevant, wouldn't he? If all the people die for example, Dostoevsky would be irrelevant then. Isn't it a causal link? Modern people and their beliefs are a necessary cause of relevance of Dostoevsky. > The intellectual trend they are highlighting (which goes way beyond Taleb) has real consequences because it is so prevalent among tech workers and capital owners who have enormous influence on modern life. Didn't you considered a question: why techies and economists are so excited about Taleb? Why them? Why not plumbers for example? I can propose an answer. Techies and economists are two groups who rely on models the most. It is impossible to use math to solve a problem without conducting a math model of that problem first. So when Taleb had shown them that their models are not good enough, how did they feel? Their art failed them. Their methods can commit not just random blunders, they are guaranteed to blunder in unpredictable ways. Of course they are obsessed with Taleb. And it is a good thing, exactly because "tech workers and capital owners [...] have enormous influence on modern life". Their blunders can hurt a lot. I see as nonconstructive the attitude of scowling at techies discovering Dostoevsky and seeking there ways to refine their art of modelling. If you know better how to deal with a failure of a model, then help them kindly. Suggest them Shakespeare, or Plato, or something else to read that can help them to learn to walk without crutches of models. You can really try to see world their way, and you can really help them, if you are so good. But I remember literature lessons from my youth, and history, and I hate them. I hated them then, I hate them now. I'm sure all these humanities' people are unable to understand a techie, and they are unable to explain themselves because of it. It doesn't surprise me that techies have difficulties when trying to understand people, but why humanities' people fail to understand tech people and moreover how they can be proud of it I cannot grasp. It is their specialty to understand others isn't it? Shouldn't they be obsessed with Taleb because they cannot understand why techies obsessed with him? Why they obsessed with Taleb more than with Judea Pearl? It is just because Pearl solves problems he stated, while Taleb does not propose a satisfying solution? Or maybe because Taleb's stated problem is more thrilling for them? Why all these arts people think more about the relevance of long dead Dostoevsky than of people who live now? Dostoevsky was concerned of living people and of problems that were relevant at his time. Crime and Punishment is about a young man who had read too much of Nietzsche. More then it was good for him. Nietzsche was a thinker like Taleb. So now we have a lot of people who read too much of Taleb. More than it is good for them. Isn't it exciting? Isn't the best path is to help them and to write a novel predicting their punishment, than to scowl at them?

c0mptonFP 4y ago

> > From Communist Russia's collapse due to Marxism... The delivery of this nonchalant line in particular made me cringe hard.

devonallie 4y ago
I think it reveals a deep naïveté about the author that they can simply boil things down to “Marxism bad”. However, they do seem to be learning that there is value in not being a STEMLord.
- pas 4y ago
  Proper STEMlord doctrine holds that Marxism is not even wrong. Also, obviously, the views/ideas of Marx turned out to be correct (well supported by empiricism) are just part of economics and sociology.

kcatskcolbdi 4y ago

Taleb is another in a long line of people who have accomplished very little outside of selling themselves as a person who Really Understands The WorldTM. His central thesis that models can't account for everything is............................painfully obvious. He's Malcolm Gladwell if Malcom Gladwell's selling point was that he predicted that, during obvious market bubbles, those bubbles would pop.

brnaftr361 4y ago
To me this is non-sequitur. If it was so obvious, no institution would rely on the model, nor would people rely on institutions that use the models. Objectively there would be a perpetual hedge - and that is how it is from the perspective of a scientist - but from the perspective of practitioners of theory, the model presents an accurate enough picture that it possesses a degree of truth which is illusory. But even with some arbitrarily defined 99% success, you can never predict when the 1% failure will occur, and if we allow Mandelbrot's postulate Now in things like celestial bodies and their trajectories - it's relegated to some distant inanity that extraordinarily curious people have derived, getting it wrong doesn't change the way the planets revolve around the sun. In the facets of civilization which they can affect, such as economics, they become a serious hazard, because they can and do affect the way the planet moves. It's a pernicious effect, that were it so known and obvious, would be forcibly relegated to oblivion. When probability is measured in infinitesimal fractions of continuous time a 1% fail rate becomes very substantial, and especially when it isn't accounted for in every dimension, to give an example: "The “spreads” between brokers’ bid and ask prices widened sharply—as much as 19 percent above the industry’s norms (that translates into an instantaneous windfall to any broker who called it right, and near-ruin to those who got it wrong). The turmoil spread around the globe: The Hong Kong index fell 14 percent, London 9 percent. In the final twenty-four minutes before the New York market closed at 3:30, prices plummeted at an average rate of 0.10 percent a minute, or 6 percent an hour, the SEC calculated. Put that into perspective: The value of American business was falling $100 million a second. The next morning, prices roared in the opposite direction even faster. But the fastest action of all concentrated into three isolated minutes in the whole twenty-four hours: between 3:12 and 3:14 p.m. New York time, and between 3:24 and 3:25 p.m. This was no mere financial storm. It was a hurricane." -Mandelbrot, The (mis)Behavior of Markets Your position is also highly reductionist, Taleb covers a lot of broad ground, including his own models, which are duly hedged from his perspective as a staunch empiricist.

jmartrican 4y ago

I agree. Taleb's book have really opened up my eyes. But that's just one of lives many lessons. Take the lesson and move on. No need to make a cult of it.