> On Sep 18, 2016, at 5:29 AM, Anish Mohammed <anish.moham...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On 18 Sep 2016, at 07:42, Sriram Karra <karra....@gmail.com >> <mailto:karra....@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577 >> <https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577> >> >> Found this funny. But just to question the opening statement (for the rest >> are mostly his delightful opinions)... are we seeing the 'rebellion" >> anywhere? In particular in India? >> >> === >> The Intellectual Yet Idiot >> >> 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 policymaking >> “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. > > Hi Sriram, > Have to admit, the pattern described by Taleb is quite easily recognised in > UK.
I thought Taleb’s essay was a boring destruction of the flimsiest of straw men. In fact, it was worse than that; it was an apologia for anti-intellectualism and anti-science. He cites a few failures of science & policy (for example, nutritional advice to avoid fat), which he asserts (without proof) came out of “elite” institutions, without citing any of the near-miraculous successes that have come out of these same institutions. Reasoning like Taleb’s is exactly why we have an anti-vaccination movement, which exposes hundreds of thousands of children to needless suffering, permanent impairment, even death. After all, if all those Harvard egg-heads can be wrong about fat, why should we believe they’re right about vaccination? Or Climate Change? I know plenty of people who attended Ivy League schools, and, while some of them may be shallow or aloof (i.e. human), none of them conform to Taleb's obnoxious stereotype. I also know lots of people from the “heartland” states, and people with no formal post-secondary education, people who earn their living (as I do) with their hands and backs, not their intellects, and in my experience they conform more closely to the “bigoted redneck” stereotype than Ivy Leaguers conform to theirs. Which is not, I would like to make clear, an endorsement of the redneck stereotype. We don’t need either of them. And furthermore, Taleb is hypocritical. I mean, what is Taleb if not a “public intellectual”? What kind of “skin” does he have in the “game”. I think it’s stuff and nonsense. Here endeth my anti-rant rant. jrs
