Posted on 03/21/2018 6:51:49 AM PDT by Voption
Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Taleb for a wide-ranging discussion about why debt leads to fragility (5:16); the importance of "skin in the game" to a properly functioning financial system (10:45); why large banks should be nationalized (21:47); why technology won't rule the future (24:20); the value of studying the classics (26:09); his intellectual adversaries (33:30); why removing things is often the best way to solve problems (36:50); his intellectual influences (39:10); why capitalism is more about disincentives than incentives (43:10); why large, centralized states are prone to fail (44:50); his libertarianism (47:30); and why he'll never take writing advice from "some academic at Cambridge who sold 2,200 copies" (51:49).
(Excerpt) Read more at youtu.be ...
I have heard good things about “The Black Swan” and “Skin in the Game” but in the summary at the top of the thread, I see some disturbing things.
Nationalizing nearly anything but the military is a recipe for destroying it.
And Capitalism having a “genius for failure”...despite having been the engine that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty...well, I will wait until I have a chance to watch to see what the context of that comment is.
Don’t let the Summary confuse you.
Highly recommend:
EconTalk with Russ Roberts
“Taleb on the Financial Crisis”
March 2009
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/03/taleb_on_the_fi.html
Taleb is difficult to pigeon-hole. He was a financier and made a lot of money. His books are strong on math/statistics and deeply philosophical. He doesn’t have much patience for economists and considers them largely phoney. He is about practical, real world implementation of ideas to see if they work.
He likes feedback loops which lead to good risk management and resilience. That’s “skin in the game”. Capitalism is very good at making sure bad ideas fail. Capitalism has a genius for that kind of failure. Which is why Capitalism leads to resilient systems that lift millions of people out of poverty — because bad ideas don’t stick around, but good ideas do.
One of Taleb’s pet peeves is the Power Elite who profit when they get things right, and make YOU pay for everything they get wrong. That is the opposite of “skin in the game” and he would argue that this is largely what is wrong with the world today.
Have a deeper listen to Taleb’s reasoning and thanks for the link. Bookmarked.
Taleb uses “nationalizing” banks as a threat against banks who expect to be bailed out by the taxpayer.
His position is: if you, as a banker, don’t have skin in the game and are not willing to lose your fortune by betting on the wrong thing, then expect the government to come in and control your profits, operations etc. on behalf of the public’s right.
In other words, either break up your bank into smaller banks, or we will sell off your bank to other banks or pout in some government administrators. Your choice.
The whole point of his theory is no business should be “too big to fail”.
So Taleb is all about true capitalism where all investments are truly at risk.
Most new restaurants fail, but the survivors of that industry do so because they have made so many small mistakes they’ve become anti-fragile.
Forgive me, but I have studied this Taleb guy and believe he’s terrific. And I just love his irreverent taunting of academics and Alan Greenspans.
Talab is a philosopher whos ideas are starting to take hold. Perhaps the only other American philosopher who ideas are as important sense WWII is Carl Popper.
Thanks...I just had time to skim it. I will dig deeper. I am going to pick up the Black Swan...
Ah! NOW I see what he means...failures are necessary for a healthy system, a way of culling the sick from the herd. I have long believed that. I misunderstood the heart of that statement “genius for failure”...:)
Good! Not that I am looking for validation of what I think, but I am beyond listening to people who say Capitalism doesn’t work (It ain’t perfect, but is better than everything else out there!)
LOL, no ‘forgiveness’ needed. As predicted, I misunderstood ‘genius for failure” and am on board for not having things bailed out by the government! (A pet peeve, to say the least!)
I am going to purchase “The Black Swan” tonight, and keep “Antifragile” in mind...thank you.
My favorite invention of his is the term IYI - Intellectual Yet Idiot, which applies to well over 90% of insufferable, pedantic, elitist “intellectuals”.
I’m a fan. I’ve read three of his books...
The only thing most of them are gifted at is writing nonsensical word salads.
Nassim Taleb started becoming a favorite writer of mine, in the last year + from the 2016 election.
He shreds the bs artists of the Ivy League and other bs producers. Looking back at my limited background, I have seen how these elite BSers have destroyed companies and organizations when they got control of them.
They and their elite cousins from England and Europe have founded the Deep State thugs. They are in a full effort to destroy any patriotism to the country you are born in and live in.
They see a world without borders, patriotism, religion and basic honesty. They hate the educated middle class and are destroy public schools at all levels or making them worthless.
Thanks for posting this.
I became a fan of his during the 2016 election. I had a Kindle of his Black Swan, and his writings during the election helped me to understand what was happening below the surface of a Black Swan event.
Our last election was a Black Swan Event for many of us. Many have no concept of what was happening and still don’t.
Does anyone have a transcript of this video?
This is the article that got me to read and look for his writings! Enjoy!
Colleges are controlled and operated by the Intellectual Yet Idiots who have been controlling our lives for decades.
Nassim Taleb Exposes: The World’s “Intellectual-Yet-Idiot” Class aka IYI!
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 policy making “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 and fall into circularities?—?, but their main skills is ability to pass exams written by people like them.
With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fat phobia, 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 1/3th 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 policy making goons.
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 policy making “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 and fall into circularities?—?but their main skills is capacity to pass exams written by people like them.
With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fat phobia, 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 1/3th 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 policy making goons.
Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats wanting to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They can’t 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?—?much of what they call “rational” or “irrational” comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models.) They are prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule.
The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in many countries, the government’s role is ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP).
The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and rarely seen outside specialized outlets, social media, and or the IYI.
Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite.
The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When Plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”.
What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences. While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools, and PhDs as these are needed in the club.
More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver. Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair. The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube. Not only will he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some other such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesn’t do so is mentally ill.
The IYI has a copy of the first hardback edition of The Black Swan on his shelves, but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence. He believes that GMOs are “science”, that the “technology” is not different from conventional breeding as a result of his readiness to confuse science with scientism.
Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains. In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).
The IYI is member of a club to get traveling privileges; if social scientist he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the UK, he goes to literary festivals; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed; he takes statins because his doctor told him so; he fails to understand ergodicity and when explained to him, he forgets about it soon later; he doesn’t use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen; he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drank to the point when one starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesn’t know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba; he doesn’t know that there is no difference between “pseudo intellectual” and “intellectual” in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past 5 years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics; he knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-16/nassim-taleb-exposes-worlds-intellectual-yet-idiot-class
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