[cortesi]

Taleb's prominence is baffling to me. I've read all his books, and tried hard to figure out why people I respect believe he's an important thinker. I just can't see it. Almost everything he says sets off my bullshit alarm.

Here we have him in typical form. The point of the paper seems to be to argue that we can reduce transmission by reducing contact (obvious), and concludes that we should do this pre-emptively at large scale worldwide (never going to happen, only good for alarmist headlines). This is exactly his formula when treating risk: start with a total platitude (rare events happen), and spin it out through huge over-reach into a headline-grabbing book (black swan! boo!).

The other thing about Taleb is that he's frequently way out over his skis on on the facts. Here, he states that the "selective dominance of increasingly worse pathogens" makes "extinction certain" as if he's stating an undisputed fact. But instead of citing a virology paper, he cites an interesting but not very relevant evolutionary dynamics paper that draws on a particular mathematical model. In fact, the real world is complicated, and if anything virology tells us the opposite: zoonotic viruses tend to become less virulent over time, as the tradeoff between transmission and lethality is optimised. Almost nobody working in the area of virology would agree with the alarmist nonsense that this paper takes as axiomatic.

If anyone is interested in hearing how actual virologists talk about this outbreak, the superb This Week In Virology podcast has just released an episode that dives into this in depth:

http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

[buzzkillington]

He is wrong in just about every case, yet he is right in the aggregate. We are terrible at predicting high impact low probability events and waste our time worrying about low impact high probability events.

Put another way, if we were Turkeys our risk analysis would be modelling how much food the farmer is bringing us every day. And we don't know about Thanks Giving.

[pillefitz]

With a basic world model + scenario analysis they should have become aware of the possibility of a Thanksgiving Event

[buzzkillington]

I am very interested in seeing the research about teaching Turkeys English, time keeping and American colonial history.

[SkyMarshal]

>start with a total platitude (rare events happen),

That's not exactly what he says. He doesn't care about whether an event is rare or frequent, but only in combination with its consequences/impact. His main point is that we're not good at assessing the risk/costs of rare but high-impact events, that our statistical and modelling tools are insufficient for that domain too, and thus we tend to be complacent in our decision making about them. He implicitly argues it's not a platitude because we keep getting it wrong on large scales.

Fwiw his best short problem statement may be this essay in Edge.org from ~10yrs ago: https://www.edge.org/conversation/nassim_nicholas_taleb-the-...

[pillefitz]

So basically value at risk? I don't quite see how our current tools are insufficient

[SkyMarshal]

He's covered both those points extensively since the GFC, not worth rehashing. If you care to, you can find it all in the technical section of his site at https://fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html.

Taleb is publicly, deliberately abrasive and annoying. When evaluating his work you have to conscientiously get yourself into a mindset of ignoring the messenger and focusing on the message. Don't let his personality induce bias into your analysis of his work. But at least he's made that easier by providing extensive technical documentation, "The Technical Incerto Vol I & II", in the sidebar of his site linked above.

[pillefitz]

Thanks a lot! Indeed, I couldn't get around reading the first few chapters of one of his books because of his tone. I might reconsider

[SkyMarshal]

Yeah, just skip his popular lay books if they annoy you and focus on the technical works underpinning his philosophies. They still have a few injections of his personality here and there, but it’s mostly drowned out by technical exposition.

[nootropicat]

I think what he's mostly selling is a feeling of superiority. "I'm so much smarter than those sheep. Muh black swans and fat tailed distributions". A person susceptible to this is definitely going to buy more books to find new ways to feel superior to the "masses".

To be fair, I agree with his view on the need to have skin in the game and occasionally he has interesting insights like the decisive stubborn minority.