NNT stupid funny

[jslade]

"The funny thing about Taleb is not that he is popular because his people are discussing the merits of his ideas, but rather people are discussing the merits of his ideas because he is popular. "



I think this fame = fame phenomenon is near universal with "popular science" writers. People who don't know any better think a best selling book is equivalent to a Nobel Prize.



Most popular science books don't actually explicate any known science: that would be too boring. Instead, they use their pop science book to sell something which is a sort of weird airy fairy tale which impresses the rubes. Frank Tipler's insane books about how immortality works are a great example. Same with Penrose's books; interesting, and Sir Roger is arguably a very clever theorist, but his pop sci books have less actual science in them than a Jules Verne novel. I don't know much about evolutionary biology or histiography, but I do know that Richard Dawkins is not an evolutionary biologist, and Jared Diamond is more of a bird watcher than a serious historian. These guys succeed by giving people gee whiz fantasist ideas, not by talking about stuff that scientists actually know. Taleb's no different. If he wrote a pop sci book on CAPM; a really deep financial idea which could help regular people think about life in a more useful way, nobody would have read it.

[Nonius]

I think Taleb is different, in the fact that Diamond, Penrose, and Dawkins are scientists and Taleb isn't.  Penrose's popular books have a lot of science in them, but I doubt if anyone who hasn't studied graduate physics would fully understand them.  Try understanding Quantum Mechanics by reading a popular science book from Penrose and not having already a firm (or recently acquired) knowledge of it.  Dawkins may not currently be a Evolutionary Biologist, but he certainly was 30 years ago and his books are written in a straightforward, honest, and easy to understand manner.  Diamond isn't a historian but, as I understand, a fairly general "scientist"....his ideas are probably the most speculative  (although Penrose's idea that gravity waves are needed to understand the function of the brain is fairly wacky).  All these guys studied science, wrote tons of science papers, and have professorships in Science.  All of these guys write in a clear fashion and are intellectually honest.



On the last point, after re-reading Popper, I'm not sure the same can be said for Taleb.