As I have stated many many times here, I am not now, and neither have I ever been, a banker. Thus I'd suggest to you that my industry and your industry are, broadly, one and the same. I don't disagree with the various ideas that he has discussed. I fundamentally disagree with the statement that they are "his" ideas. He is loud, he's obnoxious, he's self-contradictory, he's a shameless self-promoter, etc etc. Most importantly, he's not even that original; he just shouts the loudest, which, unfortunately, drowns out a lot of the more interesting and meaningful voices. Other than that, I don't got a problem with him.
This is precisely it. One difference is that, unlike yourself, over the years I have concluded that all his affectations and gimmickry are not harmless.
question for those of you that have his Fooled by Randomness book: on pg 62, he states that the converse should be true. Really? The converse.. or did he mean to say the contrapositive.. then not construct it right?
Actually I reread it and see that I misread. I thought you were doing an awesome job of the backhanded compliment, i.e. my affectations and gimmicks are harmless where as Taleb's aren't. I think you were actually saying that I see them as harmless and you don't, which is a fair enough point, just not the cleaver insult I thought it was!
No insult was intended at all. I was actually quite happy that you summarized a lot of how I feel about NNT quite eloquently.