Taleb doesn’t identify as a libertarian, but he often sounds like one. He has argued that we need to build a society where major actors have “skin in the game” and our public intellectuals can bloviate without subjecting the rest of us to the consequences of their bad ideas. He supported Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential election and has cited the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek as an influence.
Taleb has called New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman “vile and harmful” and coined the phrase the “Stiglitz Syndrome” after Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, which refers to the phenomenon of public intellectuals being held utterly unaccountable for their bad predictions. Paul Krugman and Paul Samuelson are among Taleb’s other Nobel laureate bête noires.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from DisorderTaleb’s new book is Antifragile: Things that Gain with Disorder, which argues that in order to create robust institutions we must allow them to build resilience through adversity. The essence of capitalism, he argues, is encouraging failure, not rewarding success.
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).
Produced by Jim Epstein; camera by Epstein and Anthony L. Fisher.
Approximately 56 minutes.
Go to http:// reason. com/ reasontv/ 2013/ 01/ 20/ interview- with- nassim- nicholas- taleb for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV’s YouTube Channel to receive automatic updated when new material goes live.
Category: General
RSA: Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Antifragile
RSA Keynote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of ‘The Black Swan’ and one of the most radical and iconoclastic thinkers of our times, visits the RSA to reveal how to thrive in an uncertain world.
In ‘The Black Swan’, Taleb showed that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In his new book Antifragile, he provides a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Standing uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, Taleb proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine, in Taleb’s uniquely interdisciplinary and erudite style.
At the RSA, Nassim Taleb will show how the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events, and will consider a number of critical questions, such as: why is the city-state better than the nation-state; why is debt bad for you; why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all; and why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak?
Speaker: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and author of ‘Antifragile: how to live in a world we don’t understand’ (Allen Lane, 2012).
Discussant: Rohan Silva, senior policy adviser to the Prime Minister at No 10 Downing Street.
Chair: Fraser Nelson, editor, The Spectator
Link: http:// www. thersa. org/ events/ audio- and- past- events/ 2012/ antifragile
Full podcast including audience Q&A:
http:// www. thersa. org/__data/ assets/ file/ 0006/ 999816/ 20121206 NassimNicholasTaleb. mp3
www. thersa. org/ events/ audio- and- past- events/ 2012/ antifragile
Nassim Taleb: More Skin in the Game in 2013
“Those who have the upside are not necessarily those who incur the downside. For example, bankers and corporate managers get bonuses for “performance,” but not reverse bonuses for negative performance, and they have an incentive to bury risks in the tails of the distribution –& in other words, to delay blowups.
The ancients were fully aware of this incentive to hide risks,& and implemented very simple but potent heuristics. About 3,800 years ago, the Code of Hammurabi specified that if a house collapses and causes the death of its owner, the house’s builder shall be put to death.”
Link: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/improving-managers–incentives-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb
Nassim Taleb talks with The Motley Fool on the Benefits of Uncertainty
Motley Fool Money Radio Show chats with Nassim Taleb (full length audio) link: http:// feed proxy. google. com/ ~r/ Motley Fool Money/~5/ l8vbg4tKAsk/ 12_07_2012_ Motley_Fool_Money.mp3
Rana Mitter talks to Nassim Taleb to test the robustness of his ideas, on Night Waves (BBC)
Nassim Taleb, the banker-turned-philosopher who predicted the financial collapse of 2008, has been called ‘the hottest thinker in the world’. His internationally bestselling book, The Black Swan, was about the impact of rare, unpredictable events. In his latest book he expands on this theory and comes up with the concept of ‘antifragile’ – the idea that through small shocks and surprises humans (and financial systems) can become more than robust – they can thrive and become antifragile. But critics have labelled this theory ‘antisocial’. Rana Mitter meets Nassim Taleb to test the robustness of his ideas, on Night Waves, at 10pm.
Audio Link: http:// www. bbc. co. uk/ programmes/ b01nzq6p
Nassim Taleb discusses Antifragile on Kojo Nnamdi Show
From the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to the 2008 financial collapse, many of the most consequential events in recent history caught government and investors off guard. In 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb provided a highly influential framework for explaining, and adapting to, these unpredictable shocks to political and financial systems, with his book “The Black Swan.” His latest work, “Antifragile,” expands on his theory of the unknown to explain how we can succeed and thrive in a world ruled by disorder.
Link: http:// the kojonnamdi show. org/ shows/ 2012-12-03/ antifragile- things- gain- disorder
Direct Audio Link: http:// the kojonnamdi show. org/ audio-player?nid= 22510
Nassim Taleb on Chanel 4 News (UK)
Author Nassim Taleb calls for symbolic action against bankers.
Matt Ridley reviews Antifragile in The Wall Street Journal
You don’t need a physics degree to ride a bicycle. Nor, Nassim Nicholas Taleb realized one day, do traders need to understand the mathematical theorems of options trading to trade options. Instead traders discover “heuristics,” or rules of thumb, by trial and error. These are then formalized by academics into theorems and taught to new generations of traders, who become slaves to theory, ignore their own common sense and end by blowing up the system. In a neat echo of its own thesis, Mr. Taleb’s paper making this point sat unpublished for seven years while academic reviewers tried to alter it to fit their prejudices.
Economic Bricolage: We should treat failed entrepreneurs with the reverence that we reserve for fallen soldiers.
http:// online. wsj. com/ article/ … 51100906 . html
Antifragile is out!
Antifragile is finally out, check it out on Amazon.
Nassim is currently on the book tour circuit until early December, checkout his schedule and list of appearances over at his website here: http:// www. fooled by randomness. com/ scheduled seminars. htm
Antifragile Book Review
Click for full resolution version.
Original link provided by Taleb: http://www. fooled by randomness. com/ EdSmith. pdf