Monthly Archives: November 2012

Taleb Pegs Greenspan, Stiglitz as ‘Fragilistas’ – Bloomberg

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He names names: Alan Greenspan, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Friedman, Robert Rubin and Alan Blinder, among others, receive very harsh treatment, some for blindness, others for ethical lapses. They all fit his definition of the “fragilista”: “Someone who causes fragility because he thinks he understands what’s going on.”

“I do not have a political affiliation,” Taleb asserts after blasting both parties, complaining that it’s hard to fit his ideas “within the current U.S. political discourse.” He writes as a philosopher and a prophet, though he’s mainly a prophet in the sense that Cassandra was.

via Taleb Pegs Greenspan, Stiglitz as ‘Fragilistas’ – Bloomberg.

Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Guardian

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The author of The Black Swan has now written a baggy, dispiriting, antisocial mess of a book. By David Runciman

If the idea is nice and neat, however, the book that houses it is just the opposite. It is a big, baggy, sprawling mess. Taleb seems to have decided not just to explain his idea but also to try to exemplify it. One of his bugbears is the fragility of most of what passes for “knowledge” – especially the kind produced by academics – which he thinks is so hung up on order and completeness that it falls apart at the first breath of disruption. So he has gone for deliberate disorder: Antifragile jumps around from aphorism to anecdote to technical analysis, interspersed with a certain amount of hectoring encouragement to the reader to keep up. The aim, apparently, is to show how much more interesting an argument can be if it resists being pinned down.

There are two problems with this. First, the book is very hard going. Everything is taken to link to everything else but nothing is ever followed through. Taleb despises mere “theorists” but still aspires to produce a theory of everything. So what we get are lots of personal reminiscences buttressed by the ideas of the few thinkers he respects, almost all of whom happen to be his friends. The result is both solipsistic and ultimately dispiriting. Reading this book is the intellectual equivalent of having to sit patiently while someone shows you their holiday snaps.

via Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – review | Books | The Guardian.

Letter to the Editor of the Guardian Book Review Section

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The Reviewer was not offended enough

Sirs,

I am extremely flattered by Mr Runciman’ s anger and sorry for the pain he got reading my book (as an academic and political scientist). But I am certain that he barely skimmed the book, as evidenced by his comparison of cab drivers with stockbrokers (stockbrokers have volatile careers) and his misdefinition of the proposed heuristics (heuristics need to be convex, so he missed the central idea of the book). Given Mr Runciman’s ideas about the state he should have been considerably more annoyed with Antifragile and much more offended by its contents.

The book deserves an angrier reviewer (and perhaps a more intuitive one). The next time, please pick an academic political scientist who has more time to read.

Best regards,

N. N. Taleb

Updated 11/24/12

PS: There are 607 references to convexity (and related concepts such as optionality and asymmetry) in the book which I said is the central idea.

NOTE (NOT IN LETTER). I’ve had >1000 bad reviews over time. This ranks as the second most stupid reviewer. The most stupid one was an economist.

via Untitled Document.

To counter the drift in meaning…

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To counter the drift in meaning I suffered with The Black Swan reviewers scan the book, then read other reviews and anchor on them, so there is a progressive drift away from the message and the idea; to counter this I wrote my own essay in the wsj last weekend for the the public to have an idea of what ANTIFRAGILE is about. People are no fools, when they can, prefer to skip the middleman and go direct to the source.

via To counter the… | Facebook.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Became The Chiseled Adonis You See Before You Through A Strict Regimen Of Picking Up Rocks And Lying In Bed For Two Years « Dealbreaker: Wall Street Insider – Financial News, Headlines, Commentary and Analysis – Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Banks

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Certainly NNT has set the stage for these sorts of reactions. Hopefully they won’t get in the way of his message.

Have you ever gazed upon classical Greek philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb and thought to yourself, “That man has a body from the gods. I could never hope to match him in brains, but what about brawn? If only I could obtain the details of his diet and fitness regimen”? Well, friends, today is your lucky day. Despite still being on his second tour of self-imposed quiet time, Taleb granted several interviews to publications reviewing his new book, “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder,” and, naturally, the topic of his physique came up, specifically the various ways he keeps it in such enviable shape. (He also touches on the exercises that led to him having a brain three times the size of the typical astrophysicist, though please note that these should be appreciated but not be attempted by average humans, who could hurt themselves quite badly.)

via Nassim Nicholas Taleb Became The Chiseled Adonis You See Before You Through A Strict Regimen Of Picking Up Rocks And Lying In Bed For Two Years « Dealbreaker: Wall Street Insider – Financial News, Headlines, Commentary and Analysis – Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Banks.