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I think I’m one of very few people who isn’t impressed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I have the suspicion that The Black Swan is one of the great unread books of modern times. I can’t prove this, but I’ve read the book and it’s one of the most arrogant and incoherent books I’ve ever read. The Black Swan is so bad that it’s nearly unreadable.

Taleb really has one idea—that financial market returns don’t follow a normal distribution. OK, I got it. That’s all that he’s complaining about in this clip. For the record, this isn’t Taleb’s idea. A much better book is Benoit Mandelbrot’s, The Misbehavior of Markets.

At around five minutes into the clip, the interviewer asks, “Climate change, civil liberties, do these now go out the window in the face people losing their jobs and homes?” Yes deary, that’s exactly what it means.

Here’s a short review I did of The Black Swan.

Posted by edelfenbein at October 14, 2008 11:03 AM