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The Intellectual yet Idiot

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3 pointstriplesec6 comments

Taleb is insufferably arrogant (and the worse for it), but he brings up interesting thoughts and critiques hidden among the gross generalisations and broad-brush assumptions. I wish his rhetoric were more precise. Still, I'm very interested to hear what HN people make of dissecting his arguments.

I'd say that, while needlessly abrasive and inflammatory in style, this article does a fair job of describing a real set of people.

At least Taleb's arrogance is blatantly exposed. The people he's describing are arrogant, too, but it's more hidden.

except... it's not a real set of people. It's a broad and imaginary set of 'all those that haven't read Taleb's favourite books and know as much maths as him'. Come on, that's not actually a set of real people, but some ridiculous straw men. He lampoons perfectly ordinary behaviour of a certain type, where there are people who just as uncritically hold other contingent social beliefs. And note that his opponents are all 'he'. These people are not the same as those whom he lambasts in all the other ways in the rest of the piece.

He never defines what not being an idiot is. Basically it's anyone that King Taleb doesn't like and looks down upon as intellectually inferior. Probably because some like that snub him for his general asinine rhetoric and arrogance in other areas he doesn't actually understand, highly smart though he is. Loose and lazy this is.

The piece really is rather a rant. I am now looking for what I found useful in it... Ah, ok, sothe problems of statistical and methodological illiteracy in policymaking and politics, and sometimes in academia. Definitely worth it. But he really isn't helping his case with such irrelevant and obviously subjective ad-homines! 'Skin in the game'? What game? And does Taleb have such skin?

Scientism v Science. OK, interesting. But he doesn't define his terms at all. I wish he did, because I'm sure he's spotted interesting things. But now, he doesn't condescend to make a full argument.

A really fast and observant mind, wasted in ego, I fear.

OK, the part that resonated with me was the ivory-tower intellectual who makes decisions for people he/she doesn't know or understand, and then calls the people stupid when they disagree with the intellectual's ideas. See the resentment in Europe toward Brussels for a real-life example, though there are plenty of others.

Yes, that's a fair point: that does resonate in many ways when mahy people are annoyed with the privileged classes for their economic and social ills. Yet then he doesn't seem to make an arguent any more in depth about such bureaucrats than the false equivalentist Trumpists or British Fascist Right (UKIP) does about such elites, nor does he bring any examples or justifications to bear as to how he and his ilk are better and would improve the world. Yes, governments are almost always crap, and inevitably there are incompetent people in them. And some are worse than others, and it's really not clear what he's achieving here.

I think he's criticizing a problem rather than proposing a solution. That's fair, as far as it goes. If you want a concrete proposal for making things better, well, you're going to have to look somewhere else, because it isn't here.

I don't think he and his ilk are better and would improve the world. They'd just be intelligent people who are idiots on different subjects.

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