The Secret of Fatima
5.0 out of 5 stars James Bond as a Catholic Priest, April 5, 2016
Review By
N N Taleb
This review is from: The Secret of Fatima (Kindle Edition)
Masterly! This is the page turner par excellence; every new page brings some surprise and it was impossible for me to put the book down. I even read some of it during elevator rides, not being able to resist. And truly sophisticated: Nobody but Peter Tanous would have imagined to cross James Bond with a Catholic priest.”

HatTip to Dave Lull

5.0 out of 5 stars
This is THE reference book, April 15, 2015
By N N Taleb “Nassim Nicholas Taleb”This review is from: 1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover’s Life List (Paperback)
If one is to name the single most knowledgeable person about food on planet Earth, it would be Mimi Sheraton. She is also –by far– the most experienced food critic in an area where experience matters the most, a field in which the expert is the expert. She has an insatiable curiosity, does her homework, visits countries, argues with locals, tries all manner of restaurants, and is never fooled by hot air or pseudosphistication.
I have seen it with my own eyes. Over the past 34 years i watched her in action, particularly when after my graduation, I would go order for her in restaurants so the food would get to the table before the waiters recognized her. She did not use her priviledge as a food critic to get the better quality food and service than the rest of the people –a testament of both ethics and curiosity.
As I said she is the real thing; this book is the real book.

via Amazon.com: N N Taleb “Nassim Nicholas Taleb”‘s review of 1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food ….
HatTip to Dave Lull

5.0 out of 5 stars Nobody asked them if they would rather get respect and no aid rather than aid and no respect., April 3, 2014

By N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”

This review is from: The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (Hardcover)

The point that top-down development methods are great on paper but have not produced benefits (“so far”) is a point Easterly has made before, heavily influencing yours truly in the formation his own argument against naive interventionism and the collection of “humanitarians” fulfilling their personal growth and shielding themselves from their conscience… This is more powerful: the West has been putting development ahead of moral issues, patronizingly setting aside the right of the people to decide their own fate, including whether they want these “improvements”, hence compounding failure and turning much of development into an agenda that benefits the careers (and angst) of “humanitarians”, imperial policies, and, not least, local autocrats *without* any moral contribution. Talking about a sucker problem.

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To put it in an aphorism, they didn’t ask the people if they would rather get respect and no aid rather than aid and no respect.

via Amazon.com: N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”‘s review of The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictat….
HatTip to Dave Lull

1.0 out of 5 stars
Nonsensical definition of rationality, February 7, 2014
By N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”
This review is from: The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think Hardcover
I am not used to give 1 start reviews but I truly feel compelled to do so here, not just because this is a very bad book, but also because the authors are clueless about risk and are dangerously so, promoting silly risk bearing. The authors pathologize people for not accepting GMOs although “the World Health Organization has never found evidence of ill effects” a standard confusion of evidence of absence and absence of evidence. This pathologizing is similar to behavioral researchers labeling hyperbolic discounting as “irrational” when in fact it is the researcher who has a very narrow model and richer models make the “irrationality” go away. They fail to understand that humans may have precautionary principles against systemic risks, and can be skeptical of the unnatural for rational reasons.The book is a rehashing of the general ideas about evolution, except falling for a certain brand of “naive rationalism”.

via Amazon.com: N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”‘s review of The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us….
HatTip to Dave Lull