Talk:Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Glass–Steagall
I just made an account to note that whoever wrote the third paragraph in the section about Black Swans seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the financial system, and especially the Glass-Steagall Act ,which he or she repeatedly misspells as 'Glass-Stiegal'.

The author claims, 'The main difference being that without the Glass-Stiegal Act, the Someone Else was allowed to change from "other, larger banks who might have some vague idea of what they were purchasing" to "hedge fund managers who didn't".' In fact the Glass-Steagall Act separated investment and commercial banking and it's repeal allowed for larger commercial banks to be involved in the creation and trading of mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. I'm agnostic as whether or not the repeal of Glass-Steagall exacerbated the financial crisis, but an actual answer would require an actual understanding of what the act did.

I'm not sure how to fix that paragraph (other than fixing the misspellings) while retaining the original intent. I think it's probably best for it to be deleted, but I don't want to tread on any toes since I've never edited anything on this wiki before. Yeangst (talk) 16:03, 31 August 2015 (UTC)Yeangst

Assertions, few arguments
A lot of this article consists of saying Taleb is wrong about something, without actually saying why. This needs to be fixed.--Кřěĵ (ṫåɬк) 00:09, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Issues with this article
This whole article kinda reads like a sort of ranting essay. The history shows it as mostly being written by one person.

I do not see the point of the "Religion" section. Fully quoting a Facebook user who makes several allegations that might be true, but does not explain them, and an excerpt from his book that is seemingly unrelated? The section about Pinker makes the claim that Taleb bullies Pinker, without really explaining that either, and concluding that "Pinker is actually a down to earth, rational person who does not make wild speculations". Falkenstein is cited multiple times, reverently as some kind of authorative source, without any reasoning why we should care so much about this person's opinion.

And is "attacking New Atheism" sufficiently questionable to be listed in the first three bullet points? Seriously? Balaer (talk) 22:25, 13 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Most articles on RW are substantially the work of one person, in fact. I see nothing deeply wrong with this one. Taleb is that dense - David Gerard (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

non-pure water homeopathic "remedies"
If homeopathic "remedies" were always just stirred expensive water, one could kind of sort of somewhat agree with the placebo use, with caveats. But in some countries (like the US, I think) homeopathic "remedies" can contain active substances that can be harmful if ingested in excess. There were people who have lost their sense of smell due to overuse of homeopathic "medicines". http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/06/17/2225246/fda-says-homeopathic-cure-can-cause-loss-of-smell


 * Yep - non-water homeopathic remedies where the "inactive" ingredient turns out to be harmful - David Gerard (talk) 15:12, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

In favor of article overall, might need to be fleshed out more though
I've gradually evolved from following NNT to seeing him as somewhat of a stopped clock, and I've now come to view it as peculiar how much he is venerated in rationalist circles. He's right on some things (i.e., the inadequacy of statistics to fully and faithfully model complex phenomena, cognitive biases in the face of randomness / illusory chains of causality) and for this he might merit respect (this is how he first gained mine). On other matters, however, he's a bit bizarre (his support of religion- although this does seem to be more for cultural reasons, dieting, exercise, and for some reason he acts like philosophy of science ended with Karl Popper and refuses to acknowledge later contributions from Kuhn, etc). I also feel a bit uneasy with him embracing the whole "maverick" schtick- it smacks a bit too much of the prototypical hermit scientist for comfort. He's right that credentialism is not always right, and that individuals without PhDs can sometimes be on par or smarter than academics in their fields. The issue with this point is that individuals with such expertise outside of academia are rare, not because of the credential, but because the time and effort it takes to develop such expertise can usually only be allocated if you are in a role where your sole purpose is to develop this expertise (i.e., grad student). While NNT is clearly a talented mathematician, and I don't doubt that his work will contribute to the established body of knowledge out there in some way, I find it unlikely that statisticans/economists who have spent most of their adult lives checking and re-checking model assumptions are fully unaware of the problems he delineates. More likely they communicate about it using different terminology, and there's some sort of jargon barrier between established researchers and NNT.&mdash; Unsigned, by: Jaipel / talk / contribs 16:48, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Antifragile
The criticism in this page seems to be very weak. Robust is something that "can take the knocks", in Taleb's words, whereas antifragile is something that actually "benefits from the knocks." So they are not the same thing. Secondly, Eric decides to formulate Taleb's concept of antifragile using the term 'mishandle' and then criticized it heavily because of what 'mishandling' should mean. Well, just formulate Taleb's own idea with other words, like Taleb himself has done! 187.64.234.98 (talk) 22:34, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Adding a few new Categories
I was curious about adding a few new categories to this page. I suggest adding him to "Batshit Crazy","Insufferable Assholes", and "Smooth Talking Bastards". Name any other categories that may be fitting for this individual as their true self needs to be exposed. I&#39;m a biologist... and a madman. (talk) 06:34, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Regarding changing position on bitcoin
I don't really follow the whole thing, but to me it seems based in first assuming it could have the necessary qualities for a currency (low volatility being key), and, as it shows no sign of eventually becoming the case, abandoning the view. And perhaps doing some other kind of modeling/thinking, somewhat recently I think he had a paper or blog post that added something arguing for an inherent long-term worthlessness. Changing one's mind according to evidence/failed predictions seem to me more a pro than a con, or questionable at all. Unfortunately he's not more consistent, eventually giving up the anti-GMO and pro-alternative-med-quack position. Hopefully he's apparently a vocal critic of anti-mask libertarians in the whole covid crisis and so forth, which kind almost gives hope, since he's not defending to use the failed improvised medications or shaken water.

He plans a new book. Title: "Fallacies"
Source here. This is gonna be good.--Max Sinister (talk) 09:58, 8 December 2022 (UTC)