Yeah, the problem is if you’ve read all the same books as Naval, then you know where much of his tweets and ‘wisdom’ are coming from, but he never credits the source, instead implicitly passing it off as his own.
By way of comparison, one of his idols, Nassim Taleb, enthusiastically credits the sources of any thought or idea that is not his own, but which has informed and enriched his own original ideas. He makes that distinction clear in his tweets, papers, and books, the latter two extensively throughout the text, footnotes, and appendices.
It would be cool and admirable if Naval were using his platform to similarly boost his sources by crediting them more, and showing how their ideas have informed his own. Rather than commingling their and his ideas and implicitly taking credit for all of it.
That his ‘cult’ or followers don’t seem to see this suggests they either haven’t read extensively enough to recognize the sources, or they have and simply gravitate to someone like Naval confirming things they already believe.
This is really valid criticism which not only Naval is guilty, but most of the other intellectual personas on Twitter too.
I've always been interested not just in the ideas per se (which are often useful, no doubt) but also how they came to be, and I've had more than one instance where I wanted to trace back where they adapted the idea and I can't find it that easily.
That said, it may be the medium's fault, as the inherent character limit only allows for so much information that references and relevant information are considered way lesser in terms of priority... which in turn I think says something about the nature of ideas themselves.
No, Taleb has extensively credited Mandelbrot in his books and papers, and in public appearances with Mandelbrot, and has even called Mandelbrot his mentor. There’s not much more he could do to credit Mandlebrot.
By way of comparison, one of his idols, Nassim Taleb, enthusiastically credits the sources of any thought or idea that is not his own, but which has informed and enriched his own original ideas. He makes that distinction clear in his tweets, papers, and books, the latter two extensively throughout the text, footnotes, and appendices.
It would be cool and admirable if Naval were using his platform to similarly boost his sources by crediting them more, and showing how their ideas have informed his own. Rather than commingling their and his ideas and implicitly taking credit for all of it.
That his ‘cult’ or followers don’t seem to see this suggests they either haven’t read extensively enough to recognize the sources, or they have and simply gravitate to someone like Naval confirming things they already believe.