5 ms·

I was going to say something to the effect of "Who is this guy and why do we care what he thinks? He seems like an idiot." But it turns out that he's actually a

by astine 14y ago

I was going to say something to the effect of "Who is this guy and why do we care what he thinks? He seems like an idiot." But it turns out that he's actually a respected thinker and has published some respected books so maybe I'm not allowed to say that. However, I still think this particular essay is insulting drivel. Taleb uses a lot of 10 dollar words to mast his 10 cent thoughts. He wears his vocabulary and enculturation on his sleeve like a badge so that he can pour scorn on neophiles and other people he doesn't like. Now, this may merely be the predjudice of an "autistic" technophile, but I prefer reasoned arguments to intellectual muscle flexing. He makes a few good points. As the old saying goes: "The more things change the more they stay the same." Some things about society will possibly never change. But his actual argument is so vapid: We still use glasses to hold liquids that we intend to drink? Just like the Mesopotamians? No kidding. But chances are that glass he was drinking out of was manufactured in China hundreds of miles away with techniques wholly unavailable to Mesopotamia and shipped across a distance, inconcievable to a Mesopotamian, and at a price, proportionally less that the price of the rudimentary earthenware mug that a Mesopotamian would use. Taleb accuses technophiles of not studying history, but I have studied history, and the world has changed, quite a bit.

JackFr 14y ago
Your first instinct was right.
notJim 14y ago
You spend a lot of time insulting Taleb, and relatively little time actually addressing the problems with his arguments.
- akaru 14y ago
  It's a 50/50 split. In an article, 5/95 would suffice? Must a retort require so much more?
michaelochurch 14y ago
If there's an irony here, it's that Taleb's most famous book is entitled Black Swan, hence the phrase for an out-of-context, low-probability event. Yet here he is downplaying the possibility of future black swans.
- arthurrr 14y ago
  Actually he's saying the opposite. A black swan event is something that is unpredictable. He's saying that all of the futurists' predictions about the future have been wrong, therefore all of the innovations of the future will be black swans, because will have all been unpredicted. If the futurists were correct in their predictions, the future wouldn't have any black swans. A black swan event isn't necessarily a low-probability event. It is dependent on the person who experiences the event, if that person does not take into account the possibility for that event to occur, it is a black swan event for that person. For the vast majority of the people, the most recent economic crash was a black swan event, but for a small number of people, it happened like it was clockwork.
  - venus 14y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding what a "black swan" event is supposed to be. It's not just something that is unpredictable; that is normal. It's something that is so outside the whole frame of reference that it wasn't even not predicted; its very existence destroys the entire framework used to make the predictions. In that sense, although your definition was wrong, you're actually kind of right - the reason predictions so often fail is that they do not take into account the unknown, which is basically a tautology, though one probably worth repeating since it's so hard for our brains to actually accept.
    - 001sky 14y ago
      No, he's right both historically and logically. History: a black swan was rare to a european. but it was native to australia. the idea labeleing events 'black swans' only makes sense in the context of the story being told from the european perspective, not the anitpodean. Logically: A black swan is an ebodiment of non-stochastic process or the intrusion of factors outside the stochastic process under consideration. ie, its about uncertainty not risk/probability. the parametrics of risk/probability are therefore irrelevant, in the normal sense (ie, as priors or ex-ante odds, etc). It is equally as non-sensical to call a black swan x or y probability. TLDR - A black swan is more akin to something from outside the known-state-space. [1] [1] see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightian_uncertainty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightian_uncertainty
minopret 14y ago
On the subject of a piece of chalk, although both are fine, I enjoy T. H. Huxley more than G. K. Chesterton. If Mr. Taleb disdains me, he need not seek my company.

by astine 14y ago

JackFr 14y ago

Your first instinct was right.

notJim 14y ago

You spend a lot of time insulting Taleb, and relatively little time actually addressing the problems with his arguments.

akaru 14y ago
It's a 50/50 split. In an article, 5/95 would suffice? Must a retort require so much more?

michaelochurch 14y ago

If there's an irony here, it's that Taleb's most famous book is entitled Black Swan, hence the phrase for an out-of-context, low-probability event. Yet here he is downplaying the possibility of future black swans.

arthurrr 14y ago
Actually he's saying the opposite. A black swan event is something that is unpredictable. He's saying that all of the futurists' predictions about the future have been wrong, therefore all of the innovations of the future will be black swans, because will have all been unpredicted. If the futurists were correct in their predictions, the future wouldn't have any black swans. A black swan event isn't necessarily a low-probability event. It is dependent on the person who experiences the event, if that person does not take into account the possibility for that event to occur, it is a black swan event for that person. For the vast majority of the people, the most recent economic crash was a black swan event, but for a small number of people, it happened like it was clockwork.
- venus 14y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding what a "black swan" event is supposed to be. It's not just something that is unpredictable; that is normal. It's something that is so outside the whole frame of reference that it wasn't even not predicted; its very existence destroys the entire framework used to make the predictions. In that sense, although your definition was wrong, you're actually kind of right - the reason predictions so often fail is that they do not take into account the unknown, which is basically a tautology, though one probably worth repeating since it's so hard for our brains to actually accept.
  - 001sky 14y ago
    No, he's right both historically and logically. History: a black swan was rare to a european. but it was native to australia. the idea labeleing events 'black swans' only makes sense in the context of the story being told from the european perspective, not the anitpodean. Logically: A black swan is an ebodiment of non-stochastic process or the intrusion of factors outside the stochastic process under consideration. ie, its about uncertainty not risk/probability. the parametrics of risk/probability are therefore irrelevant, in the normal sense (ie, as priors or ex-ante odds, etc). It is equally as non-sensical to call a black swan x or y probability. TLDR - A black swan is more akin to something from outside the known-state-space. [1] [1] see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightian_uncertainty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightian_uncertainty

minopret 14y ago

On the subject of a piece of chalk, although both are fine, I enjoy T. H. Huxley more than G. K. Chesterton. If Mr. Taleb disdains me, he need not seek my company.