Hacker News Reader

Comment by sincerely | Hacker News Reader

Man, what happened to Nassim Taleb? I remember Black Swan (to a degree) and Fooled by Randomness being pretty illuminating reads but I couldn't finish Antifragile and his Twitter activity is...kind of unsettling, to say the least.

View on HN

Ironically, he has no real "skin in the game" on almost every topic he talks about, which kind of proves the point of this book.

It's sad really. If he didn't have such a narcissistic personality and possessed more modesty he could have been one of the great thinkers of our day.

His life is a cautionary tale.

It's so remarkable I'd almost think it's some kind of long performance art piece. There's a very surreal moment when you've read a bunch of Taleb's writing on the importance of honor and craft and the problems with detached, thin-skinned pseudo-intellectuals who get involved in fields they don't understand and constantly bullshit to prop up their egos... and then check out his twitter. It's the best lesson of all: no one wants to do the hard part, not even the ones telling you to do the hard part. Even writing a book about how important it is to have skin in the game doesn't cover up not having skin in the game.

I think you're misunderstanding skin in the game. It's about putting one's skin into the game of interventionist decisions which could have a real impact if incorrect. If I say "Pepperoni pizza is the best and everyone should know it," SITG doesn't apply.

(In hindsight) I have had the good fortune of being banned by Taleb in his twitter account. A friend that laid low sometimes forwards me screenshots of his rantings and ravings and... I’m regularly amazed.

I have gotten at least one good thing out of occasionally looking over his twitter and that was his retweets of @cuttheknotmath, who posts fun math questions daily.

Everything else had me scratching my head wondering why he is usually so highly regarded on here. I am enjoying the Black Swan right now, it's the first book I've read of his, but he really goes off the deep end on twitter.

And through his writings (either Fooled by Randomness or The Black Swan) I discovered Paul Wilmott and his very lucid writings on quantitative finance.

It's the Kanye West Syndrome

Whenever Kanye puts out an album it's one of the best rap albums of the year...he may be arrogant but he backs it up with genuine talent and arguably musical genius.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com