Taleb is listed rather prominently on the Universa Website and Spitznagel graciously credits Taleb in the paper, but Taleb and/or Spitznagel have put a fork in the archetypal Black Swan theory (and yet, Taleb has never been really consistent, so one can say he meant this all along at some level). I have no doubt some people can predict infrequent events, and perhaps Spitznagel is one of them. Yet it’s pretty hard to validate objectively, and in my experienced is best done via observing all the little good investments someone has made for 10 years, something that is impossible to do in scale. The idea that if you can predict infrequent events you can do very well for yourself is true enough, but that’s a lot less useful to know than if rare events are unappreciated in general, which turns out not be be true.

via Falkenblog: Is Spitznagel an Apostate?. HatTip to Dave Lull