Question
How credible and attention-deserving is Nassim Taleb?
Answer
He's an elitist, snooty rogue, who you are forced to like despite his rather infuriating "cultivated" airs :)
He deserves all the attention he gets simply for making fun of academics who take themselves far too seriously, whatever the merit of his ideas. He takes himself too seriously as well, but that's relatively forgivable, compared to the windbags he takes down.
I enjoy his polemical style despite myself. His ideas, I think, are actually pretty uncontroversial and old. You'll find echoes of it in the earliest stats pioneers works. It's mainly late 20th century scholastic quant academics who are better at the formulas than at the philosophy of statistics, who are offended by him.
I think Pascal, the Bernoullis, Laplace, Gauss etc. would have found his views uncontroversial, since they were all pretty competent philosophers as well. He would have been at home in Abbe Mersenne's living room in the good ol' days.
I think of him as my evil twin.
Byron Gibson in a way, misses the point in trying to bolster Taleb's credibility by citing his published "technical" works. In a way, Taleb is the nemesis of all these "technical" people who can do complicated math like trained monkeys, without thinking about the epistemology or philosophy involved. These so-called "quants" may need their thought-free number-crunching virtuosity to anchor their credibility, but Taleb's is anchored primarily by his non-technical pop-philosophy.
His technical work (and any trading accomplishments) helps prove that he actually understands the people he is criticizing, but that's a much lower bar, and not really a necessary one unless you are the bureaucratic type who demands to see credentials because you cannot judge intellectual merit without supporting paperwork.
There have been great philosophers for instance, who have influenced great physicists, without themselves being technically trained in physics.
A more accurate benchmarking of his truly relevant "technical" skills would be to consider his scholarly philosophical writings if he has any. I don't believe he does. And I am not saying he needs them. I am just saying those would be more relevant if he had them.
In a way the question is hilarious because by building a career on taking down academic puffery, Taleb has helped reconstruct the very notion of "credibility" and has made us question whether the common academic sort is indeed worth as much as it claims. So perhaps the right question is, "is academia less credible/attention-deserving thanks to the work of Taleb?"
I would say, the answer is yes. He has helped highlight flaws in the methods and structures of academe. If Nobel prize winners can embarrass themselves a la Black-Scholes, you have to question why we trust institutional signs of credibility so much. I am not denying the Nobel-worthy contributions of messrs Black-Scholes (their derivative pricing work etc.), just pointing out that Taleb is the person you must turn to, to get a philosophical sense of their failures.
He deserves all the attention he gets simply for making fun of academics who take themselves far too seriously, whatever the merit of his ideas. He takes himself too seriously as well, but that's relatively forgivable, compared to the windbags he takes down.
I enjoy his polemical style despite myself. His ideas, I think, are actually pretty uncontroversial and old. You'll find echoes of it in the earliest stats pioneers works. It's mainly late 20th century scholastic quant academics who are better at the formulas than at the philosophy of statistics, who are offended by him.
I think Pascal, the Bernoullis, Laplace, Gauss etc. would have found his views uncontroversial, since they were all pretty competent philosophers as well. He would have been at home in Abbe Mersenne's living room in the good ol' days.
I think of him as my evil twin.
Byron Gibson in a way, misses the point in trying to bolster Taleb's credibility by citing his published "technical" works. In a way, Taleb is the nemesis of all these "technical" people who can do complicated math like trained monkeys, without thinking about the epistemology or philosophy involved. These so-called "quants" may need their thought-free number-crunching virtuosity to anchor their credibility, but Taleb's is anchored primarily by his non-technical pop-philosophy.
His technical work (and any trading accomplishments) helps prove that he actually understands the people he is criticizing, but that's a much lower bar, and not really a necessary one unless you are the bureaucratic type who demands to see credentials because you cannot judge intellectual merit without supporting paperwork.
There have been great philosophers for instance, who have influenced great physicists, without themselves being technically trained in physics.
A more accurate benchmarking of his truly relevant "technical" skills would be to consider his scholarly philosophical writings if he has any. I don't believe he does. And I am not saying he needs them. I am just saying those would be more relevant if he had them.
In a way the question is hilarious because by building a career on taking down academic puffery, Taleb has helped reconstruct the very notion of "credibility" and has made us question whether the common academic sort is indeed worth as much as it claims. So perhaps the right question is, "is academia less credible/attention-deserving thanks to the work of Taleb?"
I would say, the answer is yes. He has helped highlight flaws in the methods and structures of academe. If Nobel prize winners can embarrass themselves a la Black-Scholes, you have to question why we trust institutional signs of credibility so much. I am not denying the Nobel-worthy contributions of messrs Black-Scholes (their derivative pricing work etc.), just pointing out that Taleb is the person you must turn to, to get a philosophical sense of their failures.