He’s throwing a party for his students the next night “to get them drunk”. With what aim? “No aim. They’re just so uptight.” He loves parties “but with close people. Not with hotshots. Not some black-tie dinner where you’re sitting next to some schmuck who’s going to tell you what he paid for his swimming pool. And not artsy fartsy. I can’t stand artsy fartsy.”

But isn’t it hypocritical to be so anti-artsy fartsy when you are artsy fartsy?

“I’m not. I’m mathematical not artsy.”

“But you go on about your private library. You say you spend at least 30 hours a week reading. You love the classics.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t mean I’m artsy. I don’t hang around with artsy people. I have zero literary friends.”

I wouldn’t want to get into a Twitter catfight with Nassim Taleb. Or be a banker in the audience when he gives one of his talks. “They pay me tens of thousands of dollars to come and rip them apart.”

But he gives good lunch. And he does something which no interviewee in the history of interviews has ever done – he pays. Whatever else he does or doesn’t do, Nassim Taleb puts his money where his mouth is. He has skin in the game.

That, or it’s another example of “fuck-you money”. Possibly both.

via Nassim Taleb: my rules for life | Books | The Observer.