Someone needs to tell Taleb there is a field called Social Psychology where everything he is raving about is formally studied under the heading of Conformism or Group Dynamics.

For those actually interested in this stuff, beyond Taleb's stand-up routines, look up the work of Kurt Lewin, Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch, Phil Zambrado or Mel Slater. It's much more thought provoking.

These are very interesting times, because we finally have tons of data on how groups form, grow, break, merge etc And the ongoing merger of social psychology, political science, network theory as seen in the emergence of computational social science depts, doesn't just tell us how things work, but how to change and regulate the behavior and actions of groups. Early days but full of promise.