Well, it surely looks like it seeing level of argument he presents and lack of logical consistency in his writing. Even in this article he claims SD doesn't model real world as well as MAD and then as arguments ask you what would you do if you were asked to calculate... MAD, you would clearly see it's not SD :-)
His latest book is worse than the article and my conclusion about him being and idiot is based mainly on it.
Here is one gem from his book:
>>True, while humans self-repair, they eventually wear out (hopefully leaving their
genes, books, or some other information behind—another discussion). But the
phenomenon of aging is misunderstood, largely fraught with mental biases and logical
flaws. We observe old people and see them age, so we associate aging with their loss
of muscle mass, bone weakness, loss of mental function, taste for Frank Sinatra music,
and similar degenerative effects. But these failures to self-repair come largely from
maladjustment—either too few stressors or too little time for recovery between them—
and maladjustment for this author is the mismatch between one’s design and the
structure of the randomness of the environment (what I call more technically its
“distributional or statistical properties”). What we observe in “aging” is a combination
of maladjustment and senescence, and it appears that the two are separable—
senescence might not be avoidable, and should not be avoided (it would contradict the
logic of life, as we will see in the next chapter); maladjustment is avoidable. Much of
aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort—a disease of
civilization: make life longer and longer, while people are more and more sick. In a
natural environment, people die without aging—or after a very short period of aging.
For instance, some markers, such as blood pressure, that tend to worsen over time for
moderns do not change over the life of hunter-gatherers until the very end.
And this artificial aging comes from stifling internal antifragility.
In which he claims aging is misunderstood and proposes his new theory that it comes from too few stressors or too little recovery. Then he says that "Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort - a disease of civilization".
Really ? Aging comes from misunderstanding ?
This is just random babbling, there is no sense in it. Reasonable people don't write or talk like this and those who do with such conviction as him are called... well, idiots.
>polyglot who writes classical Greek, Arabic, French, English and can do advanced statistical modeling is clearly an idiot right?
If he is in fact a polyglot and in fact can do advanced statistical modelling (the latter I very much doubt, the former I have no idea about) maybe he is not an idiot but some mental illness is taking a toll on him which makes him write and talk like one.
The thing is there is no continuity, what he sees as arguments don't even address the point. It's just stream of words without any essence or meaning. I mean again, read the paragraph I quoted.. it's not even cherry picked. There are worse (like the one about depression or academia). The whole book is like that and article from OP just continues the trend.
He does not say aging comes from too few stressors. He says maladjustment (which is just one component of aging) is.
>>> Aging comes from misunderstanding ? This is just random babbling,
You are trying very hard to not understand. The thought is simple - comfort has side effects (think obesity, bad nutrition, lack of movement, overuse of pharmaceuticals like antibiotics or mood adjusters, etc.) which are not properly appreciated (they are starting to be, but we are still far from proper realization (understanding) of what and how much we pay for it and doing something about it). Not understanding those effects influences behaviors in such ways that people harm themselves. These effects accumulate and contribute to what is called "aging" - you can eat random junk when you are 20 and be fine, but keep doing it till you're 50 and you'll be the best client of your local healthcare facilities for the rest of your life. And so on and so forth. I won't say it is the deepest of observations - actually, it's pretty rapidly becoming a commonplace and sometimes even a fashion - but it definitely not a "random babbling".
I get an impression that you just came to a hard conclusion that Taleb literally writes nonsense and you are hard set on not allowing any sense that is contained in his writing - and can be easily seen - to get to you. Your right of course, but I personally fail to find any utility in such a behavior.
This is what I get too. I've read all his books except the technical one (Dynamic Hedging) and this conclusion of 'nonsense' about a pretty clearly written paragraph is baffling. I too read the paragraph and came to the conclusion you did.
Maybe the above commenter has a hard-on for bullet points and power point presentations but Taleb has repeatedly said that he writes essays for pleasurable consumption and not business books (regardless of how the publisher markets them).
I don't see a problem with the sentence "Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort - a disease of civilization". I read it like this: people think comfort is good and healthy and prolongs life, so they seek comfort and get fragile/sick - they misunderstand the effect of comfort.
Although its unfair to nitpick one paragraph since its out of context from the rest of the chapter/book, reading the aging paragraph makes me see where you are coming from with all this.
The guy can't help himself. It's like reading a stock ticker (except its Taleb's stream of thought), flashing across with all the different thoughts that don't necessarily correlate with each other. You think there's some relevancy there but its hard to pick it out in the moment.
I will say though, Taleb reader's are surely great Words with Friends or Scrabble players. You just can't help picking up a few new words.
I don't agree with your 'vile idiot' statement but I mostly concur with your thoughts. I hope that you don't let Taleb affect your senescence.
Infact his goal is to alienate readers like the commenter above by writing in the old literary style. We are so accustomed to modern non-fiction following Malcolm Gladwell like structure for 10 year olds that we've lost the art of appreciating the meandering, scattershot expression of ideas in a literary style. In short, his filtering works.
no, it's just bad writing. meandering nonsense is never good writing, though perhaps it boosts your ego to feel like you are part of a special club (of millions) that understands his ramblings.
>>True, while humans self-repair, they eventually wear out (hopefully leaving their genes, books, or some other information behind—another discussion). But the phenomenon of aging is misunderstood, largely fraught with mental biases and logical flaws. We observe old people and see them age, so we associate aging with their loss of muscle mass, bone weakness, loss of mental function, taste for Frank Sinatra music, and similar degenerative effects. But these failures to self-repair come largely from maladjustment—either too few stressors or too little time for recovery between them— and maladjustment for this author is the mismatch between one’s design and the structure of the randomness of the environment (what I call more technically its “distributional or statistical properties”). What we observe in “aging” is a combination of maladjustment and senescence, and it appears that the two are separable— senescence might not be avoidable, and should not be avoided (it would contradict the logic of life, as we will see in the next chapter); maladjustment is avoidable. Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort—a disease of civilization: make life longer and longer, while people are more and more sick. In a natural environment, people die without aging—or after a very short period of aging. For instance, some markers, such as blood pressure, that tend to worsen over time for moderns do not change over the life of hunter-gatherers until the very end. And this artificial aging comes from stifling internal antifragility.
In which he claims aging is misunderstood and proposes his new theory that it comes from too few stressors or too little recovery. Then he says that "Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort - a disease of civilization". Really ? Aging comes from misunderstanding ? This is just random babbling, there is no sense in it. Reasonable people don't write or talk like this and those who do with such conviction as him are called... well, idiots.
>polyglot who writes classical Greek, Arabic, French, English and can do advanced statistical modeling is clearly an idiot right?
If he is in fact a polyglot and in fact can do advanced statistical modelling (the latter I very much doubt, the former I have no idea about) maybe he is not an idiot but some mental illness is taking a toll on him which makes him write and talk like one. The thing is there is no continuity, what he sees as arguments don't even address the point. It's just stream of words without any essence or meaning. I mean again, read the paragraph I quoted.. it's not even cherry picked. There are worse (like the one about depression or academia). The whole book is like that and article from OP just continues the trend.