[dondawest]

I almost spit out my coffee when you mentioned TALEB as a stoic, much less a member of the “big three”

He’s as far from stoic as I can possibly imagine. His hairtrigger easily offended argumentative twitter presence is maybe even more sensitive and reactive and thin skinned than trump.

[yhavr]

Taleb is not a stoic, but his works provide a great framework for dealing with uncertainty: for example, the whole concept of antifragility... benefiting from misfortunes... seems like core stoic concept, isn't it?

Regarding his behavior. I think he just enjoys being human. After all, if he was ruled by emotions he'd not survive the trader job.

[user_agent]

The most basic definition of stoicism is "indifference to fate". In that scope Taleb definitely is a stoic. His approach toward stoicism, though, is less philosophy focused and more (that's kind of unique) targeted toward statistics. Ancient stoics don't write about their philosophy in such a way, but the logic remains similar. The whole concept of antifragility Taleb has promoted is pure "opportunistic" stoicism. Taleb is like a Seneca the Younger, minus some charm ;)

Regarding his online presence, anyone knowing his works also knows that he's using Twitter purely to mess with people. He stated that many times in his Incerto series.

Sometimes it's easy to forget what is the actual core of a given philosophy / enterprise / etc. Hence my whole comment. It's worthwhile to know, I think, that stoicism has a very important component comprised of pure logic, which Taleb seems to be hyped about (not without a reason).

I wouldn't call Taleb a member of the top-3 stoics though. He's balancing on the verge of being an outcast rather than hanging out with mainstream stoic crowds.

[dondawest]

He reminds me of Ayn Rand hating on government handouts while taking them. He promotes stoicism while practicing the opposite.

You can say he’s promoting “logical stoicism” just like Ayn Rand fans can say that “it’s okay to be ideologically against handouts while taking them,” but we both know deep down that these people aren’t practicing what they preach.

I like Taleb a lot but it took me a little while to understand that he was writing an idealized version of himself and his philosophy that is frankly fictional but still has great value.

[yhavr]

He promotes stoic-ish things, not stoicism.

> "but we both know deep down that these people aren’t practicing what they preach"

Actually, it's one of core tenets of his philosophy. "don't tell what to do, show me what you did in the same situation".