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Let’s answer this man with his own damn quote: > History is useful for the thrill of knowing the past, and for the narrative (indeed), provided it remains a ha

Let’s answer this man with his own damn quote: > History is useful for the thrill of knowing the past, and for the narrative (indeed), provided it remains a harmless narrative. One should learn under severe caution. History is certainly not a place to theorize or derive general knowledge, nor is it meant to help in the future, without some caution. We can get negative confirmation from history, which is invaluable, but we get plenty of illusions of knowledge along with it. Lets also then consider that this gentleman has made a career from a book about the unpredictability of events, and should no more be venerated for his prediction capabilities than someone working under the neon lights of a flickering roadside Psychic sign. Looking at the highest US national debt levels in history while declaring that we are in for a debt crisis is on the same level of prediction. Of course the most likely scenario is debt spiral. That is the lesson of history, and the pattern of civilization, as leaders aren’t wise and austerity isn’t popular.

astrodust 3y ago
The real black swan event was him coming up with the concept of black swan events. Everything else he's done has been increasingly ridiculous.
- happytiger 3y ago
  “My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously.” “But it remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right.” “Unlike a well-defined, precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality.” — three quotes by Nassim Taleb
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    I suppose you think the ridiculousness of those is self-evident. Sorry, no, you need to explain.
    - happytiger 3y ago
      Ok. 1) The author is taking his own knowledge too seriously. 2) He is also boldly speaking about a subject not in his wheelhouse but with firm confidence (against his own advice). 3) He is also speaking about a reality in which everything is (ironically) obvious and well discussed as if it were novel. There is a vast ocean of difference between critique of an intellectual and actual criticism I fear may be lost on this forum. We are allowed (encouraged?) by Western intellectual tradition to point out when leading intellectuals gaffaw, and it was considered in most of history not only noble but necessary to do so; a way to keep public discourse honest and prevent banal hypocracy from rising to popularity. I am discouraged by the number of people demanding explanation or making accusations of personal attack (!). Come on now. Lets not be so naive that we cannot criticise stupid statements from public figures. I In the face of the information control systems that permiate the modern landscapes, each of us should probably be going out of our way to support thinking different from our own rather than the opposite: 1984 beckons.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        > The author is taking his own knowledge too seriously. I don't think this even makes any sense. If it's your own knowledge, of course you take it seriously. > a subject not in his wheelhouse but with firm confidence (against his own advice) Not in his wheelhouse? He became probably 100x as wealthy as you are (guessing) by having insights about risk that most people don't have. This gave him time to read virtually everything relevant on the subject. Granted, he doesn't have a piece of paper from a university placing it "in his wheelhouse." If that's important to you, you have my sympathy. > to point out when leading intellectuals gaffaw, "gaffaw" is not even a word. If you meant "guffaw" that doesn't make sense. Maybe English isn't your primary language, in which case this forum probably is over your head.
        happytiger 3y ago
        Albert, you continue to engage in unnecessary personal attacks and straw man arguments. Why make a conversation a personal attack? Please stop. You have no place acting like this on Hacker News. Read the rules. Critique of the arguments vs criticism of the person, please. Also, if you want to have a constructive conversation with someone, insulting them as a lead isn’t… great. I’m sorry for the typo. It happens. Doesn’t make me an idiot. When I find people making typos, I don’t feel a need to demonstrate my questionable bias towards non-native speakers with a superior complex either: how do you think that would genuinely make a non-native speaker feel? Not great. People make typos in casual communication (have you typed on a phone recently, it only works because of spell check!). It doesn’t make them lower on the totem pole or worth “going after” personally. What it does is it makes me someone who made a typo (the horror). I wish you the best, but please stop making it unnecessarily personal. This isn’t Usenet in 1993, and I’m allowed to dislike the arguments of public intellectuals as long as my arguments and criticisms are cogent. I’m not making jokes about the man’s mother, sir. I don’t need to be personally bullied or called ‘a poor’ for not being as successful as the person I’m providing a critique about. That’s an overly personal attack that doesn’t have anything to do with the criticisms I’m levying toward him. I would normally ignore such behavior, but this is a small community and you’re a public person, so I feel compelled to say something. Please don’t do this to others. Be well, HN friend. I’m going to try to engage more in this forum, but obit if you think I belong. Maybe I should practice my English a bit moar.
jalapenos 3y ago
Isn't he just saying it's inevitable from what's observable? E.g. approaching the point where servicing the debt itself becomes untenable? There's nothing historical or predictive involved that I can see. If a group of people are telling you again and again, for decades, that "we're just not ever going to even slow down the pace we're wracking up unrepayable debt, no matter what", isn't it just a case of take them at their word, and extrapolate to the obvious? Like, if a car is heading towards a cliff, with the driver loudly yelling out the window "I'm driving off this cliff!", can't we just take him at his word?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- happytiger 3y ago
  The “who correctly called the 2008 financial crisis” in the headline supports nonsensical predictionism, even if the supporting article is entirely different. Also bear in mind there’s a quote from the author for prediction as well though it is more than a tad offensive to modern sensibilities: > “If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.” The idea that somehow we should put more credence on a man speaking on the future of the markets and is calling for a “miracle” who is famous for writing a book about unpredictable events is just hilarious, and my point. Who else should we take our advice from about the most predictable events of history? Steven Hawking from the grave? Perhaps a successful advice columnist? Let us not get lost in the obviousness of the prediction or the durability of the prediction of bears when we can enjoy the stupidity of the media presenting an author of a book about unpredictability as some kind of novel expert in the inevitability of the collapse of the western financial system due to unsustainable debts. It’s rich and delicious irony and, especially combined with all of the famous things this man has said that are the opposite of linear predictability being more common than we realize is, as I said earlier, just utterly hilarious.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    There it is again. You really hate him, don't you? What things that weren't conventional wisdom have you ever done? "predictionism" -- is that a word you just invented? What does it mean?
AlbertCory 3y ago
You seem to have a personal thing about Taleb ("his own damn quote", "this gentleman has made a career from a book about the unpredictability of events"). Taking the 2nd one first: he's written at least five books, and they're about much more than "unpredictability of events." Have you actually read any of them? As for his own damn quote: a debt crisis is a matter of financial arithmetic, not "a flickering roadside Psychic sign." If indeed the US tacitly admitted that it was never going to pay its debts, then the interest rates would rise. You don't have to be psychic to predict that.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Nothing personal. Yes all of them. Disagree. Economics is not pure math it is deeply political. Indeed. The point.
gmuslera 3y ago
We don't know the future. That glass that you have in the border of the table may never fall, may not break if fall, even if a lot of people walk by its side not noticing it. But watching it may be obvious that the entire situation is fragile, odds are high that someone will bump that glass, it will fall, and it will break if everything continue as it is going, and even worse with trends pushing to make the situation even more unstable. Things may change, or that risk somewhat never materializes. But someone that made a career showing up patterns of fragility in several kinds of systems think that the trend points to some kind of crash.

astrodust 3y ago

The real black swan event was him coming up with the concept of black swan events. Everything else he's done has been increasingly ridiculous.

happytiger 3y ago
“My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously.” “But it remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right.” “Unlike a well-defined, precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality.” — three quotes by Nassim Taleb
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  I suppose you think the ridiculousness of those is self-evident. Sorry, no, you need to explain.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Ok. 1) The author is taking his own knowledge too seriously. 2) He is also boldly speaking about a subject not in his wheelhouse but with firm confidence (against his own advice). 3) He is also speaking about a reality in which everything is (ironically) obvious and well discussed as if it were novel. There is a vast ocean of difference between critique of an intellectual and actual criticism I fear may be lost on this forum. We are allowed (encouraged?) by Western intellectual tradition to point out when leading intellectuals gaffaw, and it was considered in most of history not only noble but necessary to do so; a way to keep public discourse honest and prevent banal hypocracy from rising to popularity. I am discouraged by the number of people demanding explanation or making accusations of personal attack (!). Come on now. Lets not be so naive that we cannot criticise stupid statements from public figures. I In the face of the information control systems that permiate the modern landscapes, each of us should probably be going out of our way to support thinking different from our own rather than the opposite: 1984 beckons.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      > The author is taking his own knowledge too seriously. I don't think this even makes any sense. If it's your own knowledge, of course you take it seriously. > a subject not in his wheelhouse but with firm confidence (against his own advice) Not in his wheelhouse? He became probably 100x as wealthy as you are (guessing) by having insights about risk that most people don't have. This gave him time to read virtually everything relevant on the subject. Granted, he doesn't have a piece of paper from a university placing it "in his wheelhouse." If that's important to you, you have my sympathy. > to point out when leading intellectuals gaffaw, "gaffaw" is not even a word. If you meant "guffaw" that doesn't make sense. Maybe English isn't your primary language, in which case this forum probably is over your head.
      - happytiger 3y ago
        Albert, you continue to engage in unnecessary personal attacks and straw man arguments. Why make a conversation a personal attack? Please stop. You have no place acting like this on Hacker News. Read the rules. Critique of the arguments vs criticism of the person, please. Also, if you want to have a constructive conversation with someone, insulting them as a lead isn’t… great. I’m sorry for the typo. It happens. Doesn’t make me an idiot. When I find people making typos, I don’t feel a need to demonstrate my questionable bias towards non-native speakers with a superior complex either: how do you think that would genuinely make a non-native speaker feel? Not great. People make typos in casual communication (have you typed on a phone recently, it only works because of spell check!). It doesn’t make them lower on the totem pole or worth “going after” personally. What it does is it makes me someone who made a typo (the horror). I wish you the best, but please stop making it unnecessarily personal. This isn’t Usenet in 1993, and I’m allowed to dislike the arguments of public intellectuals as long as my arguments and criticisms are cogent. I’m not making jokes about the man’s mother, sir. I don’t need to be personally bullied or called ‘a poor’ for not being as successful as the person I’m providing a critique about. That’s an overly personal attack that doesn’t have anything to do with the criticisms I’m levying toward him. I would normally ignore such behavior, but this is a small community and you’re a public person, so I feel compelled to say something. Please don’t do this to others. Be well, HN friend. I’m going to try to engage more in this forum, but obit if you think I belong. Maybe I should practice my English a bit moar.

jalapenos 3y ago

Isn't he just saying it's inevitable from what's observable? E.g. approaching the point where servicing the debt itself becomes untenable? There's nothing historical or predictive involved that I can see. If a group of people are telling you again and again, for decades, that "we're just not ever going to even slow down the pace we're wracking up unrepayable debt, no matter what", isn't it just a case of take them at their word, and extrapolate to the obvious? Like, if a car is heading towards a cliff, with the driver loudly yelling out the window "I'm driving off this cliff!", can't we just take him at his word?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
happytiger 3y ago
The “who correctly called the 2008 financial crisis” in the headline supports nonsensical predictionism, even if the supporting article is entirely different. Also bear in mind there’s a quote from the author for prediction as well though it is more than a tad offensive to modern sensibilities: > “If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.” The idea that somehow we should put more credence on a man speaking on the future of the markets and is calling for a “miracle” who is famous for writing a book about unpredictable events is just hilarious, and my point. Who else should we take our advice from about the most predictable events of history? Steven Hawking from the grave? Perhaps a successful advice columnist? Let us not get lost in the obviousness of the prediction or the durability of the prediction of bears when we can enjoy the stupidity of the media presenting an author of a book about unpredictability as some kind of novel expert in the inevitability of the collapse of the western financial system due to unsustainable debts. It’s rich and delicious irony and, especially combined with all of the famous things this man has said that are the opposite of linear predictability being more common than we realize is, as I said earlier, just utterly hilarious.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  There it is again. You really hate him, don't you? What things that weren't conventional wisdom have you ever done? "predictionism" -- is that a word you just invented? What does it mean?

AlbertCory 3y ago

You seem to have a personal thing about Taleb ("his own damn quote", "this gentleman has made a career from a book about the unpredictability of events"). Taking the 2nd one first: he's written at least five books, and they're about much more than "unpredictability of events." Have you actually read any of them? As for his own damn quote: a debt crisis is a matter of financial arithmetic, not "a flickering roadside Psychic sign." If indeed the US tacitly admitted that it was never going to pay its debts, then the interest rates would rise. You don't have to be psychic to predict that.

happytiger 3y ago
Nothing personal. Yes all of them. Disagree. Economics is not pure math it is deeply political. Indeed. The point.

gmuslera 3y ago

We don't know the future. That glass that you have in the border of the table may never fall, may not break if fall, even if a lot of people walk by its side not noticing it. But watching it may be obvious that the entire situation is fragile, odds are high that someone will bump that glass, it will fall, and it will break if everything continue as it is going, and even worse with trends pushing to make the situation even more unstable. Things may change, or that risk somewhat never materializes. But someone that made a career showing up patterns of fragility in several kinds of systems think that the trend points to some kind of crash.