[scottlocklin]

My blog making fun of Taleb used to have higher page rank than his personal website. However, Taleb is totally correct about this, and his Antifragile book is very good (though he still needs an editor).

Most of modern medical science is quackery and pharma companies trying to milk the populace for profit. Trauma surgery is quite good, and antibiotics and vaccines are important. Other than that, I'm pretty sure going to the gym and the salad section of the grocery is much more important than going to the doctor.

[hidenotslide]

He may be right in this case, I am not a doctor and don't know the details of his anecdote. My point is that if I'm looking for medical advice from a pop science author I'd much prefer Dr. Gawande's evidence and experience based account to some half baked story about convexity.

I'm not even sure whether Taleb's style of writing is meant to communicate much at all, what's the point of all this phony formalism? http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/medconvex

I'd like to see Taleb acknowledge at least that medical and financial estimation risks have a different character. Financial mispricing is adversarial, whereas you'd have to be more cynical than me to think doctors are always trying to get you to take the maximum care they can sell you.