Taleb habitually oversimplifies things, creating strawmen to score easy points. He does generate discussion but probably not in the quarters he is targeting. T

Taleb habitually oversimplifies things, creating strawmen to score easy points. He does generate discussion but probably not in the quarters he is targeting. The deeper philosophical argumemts about the nature of knowledge have been debated endlessly [1]. The naive empiricism he criticises is never too far as a stance (see e.g the discussion about how much an LLM understands the knowledge embedded in the language corpus). There are pragmatic reasons people use historical data in a direct rather than indirect "internalized" way to assess range of outcomes of a system. One reason is the lack of understanding of such complex systems. I.e., the absence of usable and validated mathematical / logical constructs that would allow accurate answers to what-if type questions. Another reason of sticking to historical data is simply the fact they are harder to game. Ofcourse a practice might get established for more or less valid reasons but degenerate over time into a stylized bureaucratic convention. The pathologies associated with incomplete understanding (in particular( of the human condition are many and they are quite dangerous if not existential. "Angry men" railing at the "system" to sell books might not be the optimal path to get on top of them. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism