[Emphere]

Can't help but feel that people here are missing the point and perhaps too hung up on the specific example in the wikipedia article. The broader point is about the misuse and misapplication of technical/"rational" methods in real life i.e. not thinking about whether the model can actually be usefully applied in a certain real world situation. For example, blindly following rote statistical methods/not understanding their assumptions is what got us into the whole psychology replication crisis mess.

[bezmenov]

Yes, it’s just a variation of don’t confuse the map for the territory, or the more general, don’t confuse the model for reality.

[Reimersholme]

Yes. One of the key points Taleb likes to make is that many real life situations are fat tailed, i.e. extreme events are much more likely than what someone assuming a normal distribution would account for, which might help explain why the financial system turns out to be so extremely fragile over and over again every time a major event/crisis occurs.