Nassim Taleb is a good rock thrower, he will point out flaws in things like no one else. He can pin point why a model/theory will breakdown, and under what conditions it will break down. He is pretty good at being skeptical towards lots of commonly held ideas what about you can and you can't do with mathematics and statistics. What Taleb is bad at is communicating. His first step after he disagrees with someone is to offend that person in the internet. That's just not a productive way to get anything done. He complained that Piketty didnt listen to him when he criticized and found flaws in his math relating to that the income concentration work of the "Capital in the twenty-first century" book. Yet, if you look the way Taleb goes about trying to implement change (first call them idiots, then yell at them, etc), its not a surprise he can't get anything done. Remember when Reinhardt and Rogoff had an excel error in their work? The flaw was pointed out by a student who requested the data directly from them. I doubt that student called them idiots or tried to attack them. He just did good work and as a result R&R published a corrected update. Why does Taleb does this? I think its because he is more of an activist than a theorist. He is more interested in throwing rocks and venting than actually to get anything done. The reasons I dont fully know but the net effect is that one has to be VERY careful when reading his work. If he has something good to say about Harry Markowitz (and I'm sure he has since diversification has been proven deeply) he wont tell you, because he has an 'activist' image to protect. If the use of Standard Deviation is good in certain situations, he also wont tell you, you will only hear the criticism. Furthermore, if you read his work without paying attention to EXACTLY what he is saying (and what he is not) you will get a false impression about what he thinks of things. Markowitz is an example, Taleb has criticisms relating to SPECIFIC applications to Modern Portfolio Theory, not ALL applications of Modern Portfolio Theory. But because you only read criticism, you might end up thinking MPT is terrible. But there are some good things in it, Ray Dalio is an example of someone who used that theory to build investment strategies that actually DECREASE tail risk. As a result of all of this, take what Taleb writes with a grain of salt, he will be an activist more often than a theorist. And when he is being a theorist, you will only hear one side of the story. If you don't pay attention to details deeply, you might end up not exploring topics that are quite important in risk management. All because you thought they were not worth exploring after Taleb went on a rant against it on Twitter
You mean how come you have over 10,000 posts and no idea what you're talking about type of offensive. Poor snowflake, some people don't need an essay to point out Taleb's analysis based on experience and past historic events holds water compared to the majority who write what everyone wants to hear with zero understanding of multi-dimensional economic cycles. But sane analysis doesn't mix with pyramiding so of course you, nor most people, have any clue because they have a memory span of a knat.
Can't argue with that: he certainly has an iconoclastic style, and that's how he sells books (and he really does sell an awful lot of books). I happen to like that, myself. Yes - he certainly is. And he does it very well. I think this is a considerable exaggeration, on two counts: first, I don't think he's "bad" at it - I just think he's perhaps not quite as good at it as you might expect from someone so eloquent, articulate and educated; secondly, I would qualify your word "communicating" by restricting it to "communicating with people who aren't themselves highly educated and very well read". It's quite an achievement to have limited skills at that, and still sell as many books as he has. (Stephen Hawking has achieved it, too - and, like Taleb, has a pretty interesting back-story of his own, which doubtless helped.) Apart from that point, I don't really disagree with you ... and I admit that as one of Taleb's admirers, myself.
You seem to have the "I disagree by insulting you" concept down pretty well, amazingly without adding a single substantive item to the conversation. Takes real skill.
Take it to Taleb. He's on tweeter. If your logic holds water, you need no wolf pack. PS: I followed Taleb more than 20 years since his 1st book so I "think" I know him well. The "language" he uses to speak to certain people is exactly the type of "language" he thinks those people could understand. That's the worst insulting I notice since he knows many different ways to communicate to people depending on their levels.
here is a little known fact about Taleb. he has female groupies college coeds who follow him around. what conclusions can you draw?
That he's relatively goodlooking, wealthy, successful, highly educated, highly intelligent (and probably not gay)?
He is very active on Tweeter. He tweets several time a day and I gotta admit, I agree with most everything he says. He's very insightful. Here is a little known fact about Taleb. he has female groupies college coeds who follow him around. what conclusions can you draw? .....I need to hang around with him.
The guy is bald, fat and old. The only way he is getting chicks is if he graduated from the Bill Cosby School of Dating.
did Taleb suggest anything on how to decrease tail risk? and how is your approach to address portfolio's tail risk? thanks