The Intellectual Yet Idiot

Medium Corp ^ | 16 Sep, 2016 | Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[MtnClimber]

What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They cant tell science from scientism — in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types — those who want to “nudge” us into some behavior

[MtnClimber]

I would like to “nudge” politicians to leave me alone.

[fireman15]

Fairly long, but a good rant all the same.

[GunsareOK]

...... he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre.....

Hell, I’ve never even heard of these people!

[vooch]

Taleeb knocks it Out of the park with this. Our intellectuals yet idiots are no different than Soviet era Nomenklatura

[JGT]

Intellectual idiot = Noam Chomsky

[GunsareOK]

He’s one of many.

[justa-hairyape]

Very true. Was arguing with a Nasa engineer about the ozone hole and got him to admit, he did not know if they were correct in determining what caused the ozone hole, but he felt good doing something about it. Feel good scientism rules right now. And watch the ozone hole open up bigger than ever in recorded history 5 to 10 years down the road. The hole has not closed, but the Progresso’s feel good about trying to close it. Idiots.

[Arm_Bears]

The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited.

Money quote.

[17th Miss Regt]

There are a few intellectuals and politicians who should be “nudged” off a platform with a rope around their neck.

[upsdriver]

The IYI are the same “political establishment” from both parties and the mainstream media who vehemently oppose Trump and the rest of us “deplorables”. We beat Hillary Clinton, we beat them.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Taleb knocks it Out of the park with this. Our intellectuals yet idiots are no different than Soviet era Nomenklatura

Thanks for mentioning the name of the author . . . I noticed

macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology

which relates to two things I was previously aware of:

1. There are two kinds of economics:
   1. Classical economics, now called “microeconomics,” and

   2. Democrat wish-fallfilment “economics,” called “macroeconomics”

2. Nasim Nicholas Taleb has written several books, and I’ve read three of them. One of them - not The Black Swan - asserted that economists commit a math error by writing an equation with an integral - then taking one of the variables out of the integral by assuming, incorrectly, that it is a constant.

   Clearly, he must have been referring to macroeconomic theory at the time.

[mrsmith]

Exceptionally good rant.

Still, misses the effect of the political donors and the media advertisers being the same people. Which effect is that both say the same thing- what the man paying the fiddlers wants.