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I don't understand calling him a "vile idiot" is so terrible. Vile is a subjective assessment in the eye of the beholder. Bluecalm began with a few paragraphs m
by rz2k 13y ago
I don't understand calling him a "vile idiot" is so terrible. Vile is a subjective assessment in the eye of the beholder. Bluecalm began with a few paragraphs making the case that Taleb has pretensions of being an expert where he doesn't know what he is talking about, and that his statements are unsupported.
Calling him a crank is a more objective statement, and to me seems to impute an unknowable motive to what Taleb is doing in these types of articles. Is it an egotistical attempt to feel important, a strategy to sell books, or does he believe all the stuff he says?
What I personally find so unpleasant and objectionable about Taleb is probably unfair, but he seems to fit the archetype of an entire group of people who make loud statements that are wrong or unsupported, but take a long and nuanced discussion to explain why.
For example he seems to be terrible at economic analysis, but portrays himself as an excellent trader so he asserts that scientific study of the economy is bunk. Let's say that he really is an outlier in finance, operating with localized phenomena is different than having a comprehensive view of the economy and refining models.
I think his idea of Black Swans is incredibly useful, and it is interesting to explore the psychology of underestimating the likelihood of rare events. His contributions are less useful when he sounds like the people who say "economics is not a science", before making a bold assertion about the economy that has no rigorous models to support it. Such situations are analogous to saying meteorology is not a science when it comes to forecasting whether or not it will rain in ten days. "A science" is a field where everything is known? "A science" is not a field where models are refined through research and experimentation? The science part of meteorology is the process of understanding the mechanisms behind how air masses interact and improving models, not predicting weather at a future date when a good deal of what will determine whether or not it rains has not yet occurred.
- coldtea 13y ago>I don't understand calling him a "vile idiot" is so terrible. Then you are a vile idiot.
- tptacek 13y agoSuper helpful comment. Thanks. Definitely, the transition from calling public figures "vile idiots" to calling individual commenters on HN threads "vile idiots" is sure to produce a productive discussion. I started this subthread by pointing out that 'bluecalm had weakened his argument by using the words "vile idiot". But 'bluecalm also made a bunch of testable and non-obvious observations in his comment; his writing had value. Whereas you just jumped in to call someone you disagreed with a name, and nothing else; your writing had no value. Could you stop writing comments like that?
- jessaustin 13y agoDid you really understand that comment to be addressed to the writer rather than what was written? Frankly I found it to be a rather more convincing condemnation of the phrase "vile idiot" than your own. FWIW, I don't think anyone here (nor NNT even) is a vile idiot.
- coldtea 13y ago>Super helpful comment. Thanks. Definitely, the transition from calling public figures "vile idiots" to calling individual commenters on HN threads "vile idiots" is sure to produce a productive discussion. The point I wanted to make was that "vile idiot" is problematic in itself, and by my meta-use of it, I hoped the parent would obviously see why. How calling public figures "vile idiots" is any better than calling individual HN commenters the same? >Whereas you just jumped in to call someone you disagreed with a name, and nothing else; your writing had no value. Did it really seem like a called him a name just for the fun of it? Wasn't the meta-context obvious?
- rz2k 13y agoLet's say it was worded instead: "... these are some reasons that he was wrong, and his style of argumentation leads me to feel actual antipathy toward him." Maybe it is because "vile" doesn't sound like a very extreme word to me—almost like Daffy Duck saying "despicable". I suppose I would have had the same reaction, if instead bluecalm had denigrated him with a word that sounds more serious to me like "worthless".