Post: #101

Maciano good points but just to add, high IQ alone won’t do it, quintus is right when he says that other characteristics comes into play (hard work, persistence, never giving up, self discipline, ability to network, etc) however, those extra characteristics high IQ people on average tend to have better than the average joe.

Denying IQ is denying life reality. Worldwide, poverty doesn’t reduce intelligence, low intelligence leads to poverty.

Post: #102

(01-07-2019 01:42 AM)Maciano Wrote:  Look, I don't feel like educating people on a redpill forum on things which are easily reasearchable with google, and, by experiencing daily life. There's nothing to win for me by spending time on people who haven't read one book about a subject.

All you have to do is skip the posts you don't want to answer. It really is that easy, man. I just redpilled you.

Post: #103

Taleb still coming with strong troll game when it comes to the Twitter IQ debate

Post: #104

IQ cuts right at the heart of Taleb's deepest held belief which holds him to be the smartest man in the world. Since he did not score better than every other person on Earth, he takes pot shots at its significance. He's like the hipster of intelligence. He knew everything before you did. Blowhard who calls out other blowhards. Any curious/normal person should be tired of his act by now.

Post: #105

(01-07-2019 06:22 PM)Shinebox Wrote:  IQ cuts right at the heart of Taleb's deepest held belief which holds him to be the smartest man in the world. Since he did not score better than every other person on Earth, he takes pot shots at its significance. He's like the hipster of intelligence. He knew everything before you did. Blowhard who calls out other blowhards. Any curious/normal person should be tired of his act by now.

Don't really think that's why.

Post: #106

(01-07-2019 06:23 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  Don't really think that's why.

It was meant as a dig, not an honest criticism. His persona is actively detracting from his work and message as a public intellectual. He's not a likable a-hole like Trump. Just an a-hole. I really enjoy his down to Earth mentality intellectually, but I can just read the classics.

He could just go on Molyneux's show and try to make a solid case against IQ and have a lively chat, but it seems he lacks the social skills for that. Fu money doesn't actually mean saying Fu to everyone.

Post: #107

(01-07-2019 07:06 PM)Shinebox Wrote:  

(01-07-2019 06:23 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  Don't really think that's why.

It was meant as a dig, not an honest criticism. His persona is actively detracting from his work and message as a public intellectual. He's not a likable a-hole like Trump. Just an a-hole. I really enjoy his down to Earth mentality intellectually, but I can just read the classics.

He could just go on Molyneux's show and try to make a solid case against IQ and have a lively chat, but it seems he lacks the social skills for that. Fu money doesn't actually mean saying Fu to everyone.

You've got Molyneux and Taleb mixed up.

Molyneux is an entertainer. Demonstrably he does not have FU Money because he keeps on doing the radio show week in week out. Molyneux unfortunately has the same problem as all the liberal journalists he reckons he's against - he has an agency problem, he has to say the things he knows his audience likes or else they stop listening to him, which results in him basically doing stuff that impresses other journalist entertainers on his side of the political spectrum.

Taleb is not an entertainer. This is demonstrably so because he has the mentioned FU Money and therefore doesn't need to play to an audience. For the most part he outright avoids interviews because of the dickheadery practiced without exception by the entertainers who conduct those interviews, be it on the left or on the right. If he has views, he expresses them. He doesn't have particular work or a particular message as a Public Intellectual; that is you buying into how the media wants to package Taleb, since they can't contend with him on even terms, he doesn't need to descend to their levels to keep an audience, and he doesn't need their money.

Taleb's primary focus to me has always come down to the difference between Aristotle and Thales of Miletus.

Aristotle was consumed with being right. When you get down to it, that was his obsession, which is also why Aristotle misinterpreted Thales' demonstration of his wisdom entirely. Aristotle's Golden Mean is constantly to hold the middle course: never too much virtue or too much excess. Aristotle thought Thales made a motza on olive oil crops because Seneca understood the mean perfectly, objectively judged the weather and climate such as to make his investment.

Thales was consumed only with being right when it mattered and content to be wrong when it didn't matter. He was prepared to absorb small, rational losses on the knowledge that when the disaster or happy circumstance hit, he'd make all of his losses back and much, much more. Thus why Thales took options out on all the olive oil presses in an area. He didn't know it would be a fantastic year for olives, he knew the price of his options were absorbable such that if it did happen to be a fantastic year, he'd make a literal fortune.

That's why IQ and all similar pseudointellectual puffery pisses Taleb off: because it's indulging the Aristotlean obsession with being right all the time, which simply can't happen in the real world. IQ does not significantly predict financial, relationship, or military success. As Taleb rightly points out, it's only good for identifying those who fall grossly below or above an arbitrarily-chosen norm. It's only good for telling you when the person has fallen afoul of Procrustes. Within the Procrustean bed, it's otherwise pretty much useless.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #108

A parable.

There are two candidates for mayor of a US City. One is a mathematics professor, the other is a Mafia boss. They are asked the following question.

"If a coin has been flipped a thousand times and each time it has landed 'heads', then how will it land if it is flipped one more time?"

The mathematics professor says: "That's obvious, it doesn't matter how many times the coin has been flipped or what the results have been, it is still 50-50 for the next time. It is a case of elementary probability"

The Mafia boss says: "If that coin has been flipped a thousand times and each time it's landed 'heads', then there's something wrong with it. It's gonna land 'heads' again for sure."

Which of these two attitudes belongs to the man who is wealthier, has more game, gets more girls and is more in tune with life?

High IQ is great - but like age it's just a number. Success in life cannot be reduced to one number.

Post: #109

(01-09-2019 11:34 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  It's only good for telling you when the person has fallen afoul of Procrustes. Within the Procrustean bed, it's otherwise pretty much useless.

Is the Procrustean Bed any different for a garbage collector as opposed to an astrophysicist? So as long as the garbage collector and astrophysicist are above 95...it's all good, right?

In the general context of success (typically $), there are countless ways to make $ that don't involve being incredibly smart, just hustle. Hell, you could be born with a number of physical attributes that make you successful. Of course that dilutes the importance of intelligence, but there are so many more avenues of success opened up by having a high IQ in the first place. No one is claiming it to be predictive in that definitive way. It's just the best metric we have that can show potential for success.

And how does being right about IQ matter to Taleb? What skin has he got in the game? Oh, other than Lebanon being barely above room temperature. Being involved in petty flame wars on Twitter is hardly the mark of a refined and reserved intellect. It would seem the first thing one would do with FU money is desert Twitter altogether.

Post: #110

The impression I get is that he likes to take the IQ discussion down a notch into the mud because you find these conversations online (especially on forums like this one) where guys go into a massive IQ circlejerk and just stop making sense. It really is just as simple as "IQ can suggest who might be the smartest guy in the room or who might have the highest potential."

There are plenty of people who would fail an IQ test but still have a lot to show for it. I imagine this would describe most successful athletes and even a number of successful medium-sized business owners.

I mean, at the end of the day we all know who the smart people in the room are. It does not take a test to tell you who knows what the fuck is up and who doesn't.

However, this does not mean that IQ isn't important. It simply means that there are so many avenues by which a person might arrive at success.

I really wish most people would stop being so afraid of IQ and IQ tests. I think the only harm that comes from IQ tests stem from people who are so damn afraid of coming in average that they create silly self-fulfilling prophecies for themselves since they don't understand that it isn't predictive.

I hate how the air gets sucked out of the room if you mention IQ. People get so indignant and butthurt about it all. Not that I talk about IQ with strangers, but it's just so irrational.

If you're able to sit down and discuss IQ without chimping out, then you're probably at an OK spot on the scale.

This doesn't mean that you have to accept every conclusion, but whatever happened to people just being able to look at something impartially without project the results onto themselves?

Post: #111

(01-10-2019 08:25 AM)Fortis Wrote:  If you're able to sit down and discuss IQ without chimping out, then you're probably at an OK spot on the scale.

If you are able to sit down and discuss IQ without chimping out, then your IQ test most likely came out > 100.

THERE, fixed it for you ;-)

Now in all seriousness, think about this for a second. By definition, if the median IQ is 100 then half of the population has scored below that. That is a HUGE demographic to be able to cater to and politicians in Western nations are fully aware of that.

Which is exactly the reason why IQ tests are not a big deal or controversy in places like Russia, China, Japan, etc.

Post: #112

Bro, do not reveal my fucking IQ to the normies.

Post: #113

Here we go...

Post: #114

Thought experiment if we took Bezos, Buffet, and Gates what would there average IQ be? I guessing about 150. Sure it doesnt correlate perfectly with income, but there damn sure are not self made billionaires with an IQ less than 100,

Post: #115

(01-10-2019 07:58 AM)Shinebox Wrote:  

(01-09-2019 11:34 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  It's only good for telling you when the person has fallen afoul of Procrustes. Within the Procrustean bed, it's otherwise pretty much useless.

Is the Procrustean Bed any different for a garbage collector as opposed to an astrophysicist? So as long as the garbage collector and astrophysicist are above 95...it's all good, right?

In the general context of success (typically $), there are countless ways to make $ that don't involve being incredibly smart, just hustle.

Couple of notes:

The vast majority of astrophysicists as a group make about $82,000 per year.

Garbage collectors as a group make about $40,000 per year.

Half the pay, sure. But the garbage collector also doesn't have the a long unpaid university degree to go through before he can start getting paid, and he doesn't have the stinking albatross of a US college degree's debts to pay off while he's scrambling for pissant graduate student jobs or licking professors' arses in order to get paid what amounts to a decidedly subpar wage when you look at the opportunity cost and the actual costs. If he gets tenure it gets better, sure ... but astrophysicists produce new gossip, not products. That's why the engineers get paid a lot more. If the astrophysicists of the world stopped working tomorrow, they wouldn't get paid any additional money to come back and keep working. Can't necessarily say the same of the garbage collectors.

So, at least for these two groups, as demonstrated in the $ terms you mentioned, their IQ makes little to no real difference. With incomes less than $100K in the inflation-racked West, they're both going to struggle to make ends meet ... though odds are on the garbage collector will know how to cope better since he's used to playing life on hard mode, and the astrophysicist has to disabuse himself of the idea that people value him in the slightest for his IQ (which is why he became an astrophysicist to start with.)

(01-10-2019 07:58 AM)Shinebox Wrote:  And how does being right about IQ matter to Taleb? What skin has he got in the game? Oh, other than Lebanon being barely above room temperature. Being involved in petty flame wars on Twitter is hardly the mark of a refined and reserved intellect. It would seem the first thing one would do with FU money is desert Twitter altogether.

If you think academia or academics in general at all represent either refined, reserved, or useful intellects, I have a bridge to sell you. Taleb doesn't have to sell to an audience and there's nothing wrong with a private citizen having a bee in his bonnet about certain issues.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #116

IQ is a meaningless metric on the individual level.

Success is more correlated to hard work, ambition, and mastering a skill. Things that are impossible to measure.

However, IQ is a very useful metric on the societal level.

IQ measures of populations of people can accurately predict how successful they will be in life.

For example, you take 100 Somalians with an average IQ of 70 and compare them to a German group of 100 with an IQ of 100 and drop off in a colony with no resources. I bet in 20 years the group would be much more successful.

Post: #117

Para,

Is this your argument?

Astrophysicists make twice garbage collectors, but since it's under 100,000 it doesn't really matter. Therefore, IQ is useless?

Garbage collectors could be replaced with robots... Next week. Double salary is double. Cut your salary in half tomorrow. No big difference in the inflation wracked west?

The person with the higher IQ could be an Astrophysicist an engineer or a garbage collector. They just usually don't since they don't have to.

IQ will only become more and more important as robots and automation progresses. Taleb's argument held water when everyone was a farmer and even then a little smarts probably did not hurt.

And who said anything about academics? My point was about Taleb. Look at him trying to brag about Mesopotamia. The first civilization on earth actually discovered and invented some things. That's his argument against IQ. It's like saying your older brother who is ten years older than you must be smarter because he learned addition before you were born. And he wants to be taken so seriously? What a childish argument. Even if they were smart, a millenia of the Koran and inbreeding took care of that.

He obviously has a lot of ethnic pride and is butthurt about IQ. To put this guy on any kind of plane or pedestal above anyone else is inane. Hey Taleb, we're all charlatans. You just haven't figured it out about yourself yet.

Post: #118

(01-10-2019 08:49 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  If the astrophysicists of the world stopped working tomorrow, they wouldn't get paid any additional money to come back and keep working. Can't necessarily say the same of the garbage collectors.

Garbage collectors went on strike many times trying to get raises here.
In the end the elite replaced them with migrants, paid much less of course

This conversation has outlived its usefulness I'm afraid.

Post: #119

(01-11-2019 12:22 AM)Shinebox Wrote:  Para,

Is this your argument?

Astrophysicists make twice garbage collectors, but since it's under 100,000 it doesn't really matter. Therefore, IQ is useless?

Garbage collectors could be replaced with robots... Next week. Double salary is double. Cut your salary in half tomorrow. No big difference in the inflation wracked west?

The person with the higher IQ could be an Astrophysicist an engineer or a garbage collector. They just usually don't since they don't have to.

IQ will only become more and more important as robots and automation progresses. Taleb's argument held water when everyone was a farmer and even then a little smarts probably did not hurt.

And who said anything about academics? My point was about Taleb. Look at him trying to brag about Mesopotamia. The first civilization on earth actually discovered and invented some things. That's his argument against IQ. It's like saying your older brother who is ten years older than you must be smarter because he learned addition before you were born. And he wants to be taken so seriously? What a childish argument. Even if they were smart, a millenia of the Koran and inbreeding took care of that.

He obviously has a lot of ethnic pride and is butthurt about IQ. To put this guy on any kind of plane or pedestal above anyone else is inane. Hey Taleb, we're all charlatans. You just haven't figured it out about yourself yet.

Frankly I can't believe Taleb is jumping the shark with all that shit. And per the above: And in my opinion at least working as an astrophysicist and discovering the universe is probably more fulfilling and comfortable than to empty stinky trashcans in sub zero temperatures.

Taleb is a great example of high IQ individuals who, despite their incredible intellect and extensive education, are unable to see the forest for the trees. It's a bit like discussing beauty, you can talk about it all day long but in the end the average Ukranian woman will trigger more stiffies than the average Chilean/Peruvian. Period.

Same applies to IQ: just go to Sub Saharan Africa and look around. Then go to any Western city and compare the level of accomplishment and organization. You may claim that the Sub Saharans are happier in their 'natural' environment and I won't argue that point with you. BUT what is painfully apparent is that Sub Saharans are and will continue to be incapable of producing a 1st world society. Period.

So all this debate about the significance of IQ scores is outright silly. The measures we employ may be clumsy and require improvements. But in the end it's like comparing a 386 CPU with an i7 - one is simply capable of higher performance, no matter how you define that.

Make no mistake: Taleb is controlled opposition and despite his dead lift bragging deep inside he's a member of the old globalist cabal. What is worse is that he suffers from a chronic bout of cognitive dissonance as he's the one who constantly posts math puzzles in his tweets but then turns around and claims that IQ does not matter.

My question to him would be this: If 99% of your followers are unable to solve your math puzzles, then what does that say about intelligence? And if nothing else, HOW ELSE are you going to quantify mental performance?

Post: #120

The IQ debate is one fraught with so many falsities and misleading definitions that is hard to sift through the noise to get to the meat of the matter.

One of the longest enduring fallacies on this forum is the idea that IQ determines economic prosperity directly. Wrong!

Economic prosperity directly affects average IQ. Comparing the IQ average of Chinese during the communist days as against the current IQ average among Chinese people, you would find a dramatic leap from IQ averages in the vicinity of 70, 80 to averages of 120 and above.

Point? Better economic conditions enable people to get affordable education. intelligence is not a crystallized fixed value that remains unchangeable. It is fluid and changes with respect to economic conditions.

Besides, trying to base a concept as far-reaching and complex as intelligence on a century-old arbitrary metric is nothing shy of silly.

Post: #121

(01-11-2019 12:22 AM)Shinebox Wrote:  Para,

Is this your argument?

Astrophysicists make twice garbage collectors, but since it's under 100,000 it doesn't really matter. Therefore, IQ is useless?

Your metric was to generally equate $ with success. By that measure, then, given neither the garbage collector or the astrophysicist can comfortably crack 100,000 in income per year, IQ meant precisely dick. Or are you saying success is achievable below earning 100,000 in any mainstream Western country?

(01-11-2019 12:22 AM)Shinebox Wrote:  Garbage collectors could be replaced with robots... Next week. Double salary is double. Cut your salary in half tomorrow. No big difference in the inflation wracked west?

Show me a Western country where they've managed to do so in a major metropolitan area at more than a test scale and you might have an argument. As it is, fully self-driving cars or trucks used en masse in the real world are about as close as fusion reactors and always will be. Too much opacity, I'm afraid.

(01-11-2019 12:22 AM)Shinebox Wrote:  IQ will only become more and more important as robots and automation progresses. Taleb's argument held water when everyone was a farmer and even then a little smarts probably did not hurt.

Quite the contrary: if robots, automation and AI supposedly become more prevalent and progress, IQ will become less relevant as time goes on, because human beings will wind up being locked further and further out of the process; machines will do the thinking for themselves. If AI reaches the levels of intelligence a lot of futurists wank themselves to sleep to, human IQ would be utterly irrelevant in the process, because Skynet would be able to brute-force outcalculate any human, no matter how high his IQ.

You can see a highly stylised version of this in the fact computers can now regularly defeat Grand Masters in chess. If the Grand Master's IQ is irrelevant in whether or not he can beat Deep ThoughtBlueSixFuckStack, then so is the local retard's as well. Whether it's because the computer is basically brute-force cracking the result or apeing some elements of human reasoning, IQ again is shortly going to mean precisely nothing in this context.

Of course, the real IQ is in the creativity necessary to manipulate, use, and harness "educated", "intellectual" men for your own purposes. As men like Henry Ford knew full well.

(01-11-2019 06:05 AM)redpillage Wrote:  My question to him would be this: If 99% of your followers are unable to solve your math puzzles, then what does that say about intelligence? And if nothing else, HOW ELSE are you going to quantify mental performance?

(1) My reply would be that it says pretty much nothing about intelligence, because there isn't a full correlation between being able to do differential calculus and a high IQ. You haven't overcome the opacity problem; the proposition is on par with the average social science paper.

(2) My answer to the second question is: if the best measure you can come up with for the danger an avalanche presents to a nearby town is a result on par with "Rocks are currently moving", then it's time to perhaps rethink why you're even testing at all. Perhaps it's time to think about doing the Thalesian thing and moving the fucking town.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #122

Heh I love this review of Taleb


ANTIFRAGILE: THINGS THAT GAIN FROM DISORDER
BY NASSIM TALEB
antifragile

What It’s About: Before I explain a few of the brilliant ideas in this book, I need to get something off my chest: Taleb sounds like a pompous dick. If he’s trolling the world with his writing style, he’s doing a good job, because some passages are almost impossible to get through without either rolling your eyes at him or shoving the book through a paper shredder. If he really is this arrogant, well, then let’s just say he won’t be invited to any of my playdates anytime soon.

Taleb has a handful of amazing ideas. I’m talking potentially life-changing, world-affecting ideas. These ideas can be explained well in about 50 pages. The other 450 pages are mostly him trying to prove how cool and cultured he is while explaining how much smarter he is than the following groups of people: academics, politicians, Nobel Prize winners, Wall Street analysts, economists, journalists, statisticians, historians, soccer moms, teachers, anybody who uses the bell curve, anybody in the social sciences, and anyone who disagrees with him.

So what are his handful of earth-shattering ideas in Antifragile? Well, here’s the starting point:

Often the most influential events in history are, by definition, the least anticipated. These are called “Black Swan” events.5
As humans, we are inherently biased against noticing both the number of random events in our lives and the impact these random events have on us.
That due to the exponential scaling of technology, Black Swan events are becoming more common and influential than ever before.
Therefore, we should build up systems (and ourselves) to be “antifragile,” that is, to construct our lives and our societies in such a way as to benefit from major unanticipated events.
If that tweaks your nipples and you don’t mind putting up with pages upon pages of pretentious meandering, then go nuts, Taleb is for you.

Notable Quotes:

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

“The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.”

“Difficulty is what wakes up the genius.”

Bonus Points For: Being a totally insufferable asshole. And wrong about tons of his analogies and examples. But still brilliant somehow, despite himself.

If This Book Could Be Summarized in An Image, That Image Would Be: Some fat, rich bald guy boring you to death over cappuccinos with inane stories about living in France and smoking skinny cigarettes with Umberto Eco while you stab yourself in the face with a sugar spoon repeatedly trying to make it all stop.

Read This Book If…
…you like feeling like you’re smarter than everybody even though you’re not.
…you want to have your conception of “success” and “progress” completely flipped on its head.
…you want to read a book that while consisting of maybe 60% bullshit, will have you still thinking about the ideas years later.

Post: #123

(01-11-2019 06:07 AM)Stonk Wrote:  The IQ debate is one fraught with so many falsities and misleading definitions that is hard to sift through the noise to get to the meat of the matter.

One of the longest enduring fallacies on this forum is the idea that IQ determines economic prosperity directly. Wrong!

Economic prosperity directly affects average IQ. Comparing the IQ average of Chinese during the communist days as against the current IQ average among Chinese people, you would find a dramatic leap from IQ averages in the vicinity of 70, 80 to averages of 120 and above.

Point? Better economic conditions enable people to get affordable education. intelligence is not a crystallized fixed value that remains unchangeable. It is fluid and changes with respect to economic conditions.

Besides, trying to base a concept as far-reaching and complex as intelligence on a century-old arbitrary metric is nothing shy of silly.

This is flat out wrong. Intelligence is stable after adolescence. Education does not change IQ. Famine/starvation of course impact development but that simply keeps a population from reaching it's full potential.

You are repeating blank slatist left wing talking points. IQ is not perfect but it is the best metric we have to measure this.

Post: #124

This is a great review. Amusing and accurate.

The part I didn't like was where the reviewer wrote that Taleb is wrong about tons of his analogies and examples, but didn't elaborate on at least a couple of the major ones.

(01-23-2019 06:01 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  Heh I love this review of Taleb


ANTIFRAGILE: THINGS THAT GAIN FROM DISORDER
BY NASSIM TALEB
antifragile

What It’s About: Before I explain a few of the brilliant ideas in this book, I need to get something off my chest: Taleb sounds like a pompous dick. If he’s trolling the world with his writing style, he’s doing a good job, because some passages are almost impossible to get through without either rolling your eyes at him or shoving the book through a paper shredder. If he really is this arrogant, well, then let’s just say he won’t be invited to any of my playdates anytime soon.

Taleb has a handful of amazing ideas. I’m talking potentially life-changing, world-affecting ideas. These ideas can be explained well in about 50 pages. The other 450 pages are mostly him trying to prove how cool and cultured he is while explaining how much smarter he is than the following groups of people: academics, politicians, Nobel Prize winners, Wall Street analysts, economists, journalists, statisticians, historians, soccer moms, teachers, anybody who uses the bell curve, anybody in the social sciences, and anyone who disagrees with him.

So what are his handful of earth-shattering ideas in Antifragile? Well, here’s the starting point:

Often the most influential events in history are, by definition, the least anticipated. These are called “Black Swan” events.5
As humans, we are inherently biased against noticing both the number of random events in our lives and the impact these random events have on us.
That due to the exponential scaling of technology, Black Swan events are becoming more common and influential than ever before.
Therefore, we should build up systems (and ourselves) to be “antifragile,” that is, to construct our lives and our societies in such a way as to benefit from major unanticipated events.
If that tweaks your nipples and you don’t mind putting up with pages upon pages of pretentious meandering, then go nuts, Taleb is for you.

Notable Quotes:

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

“The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.”

“Difficulty is what wakes up the genius.”

Bonus Points For: Being a totally insufferable asshole. And wrong about tons of his analogies and examples. But still brilliant somehow, despite himself.

If This Book Could Be Summarized in An Image, That Image Would Be: Some fat, rich bald guy boring you to death over cappuccinos with inane stories about living in France and smoking skinny cigarettes with Umberto Eco while you stab yourself in the face with a sugar spoon repeatedly trying to make it all stop.

Read This Book If…
…you like feeling like you’re smarter than everybody even though you’re not.
…you want to have your conception of “success” and “progress” completely flipped on its head.
…you want to read a book that while consisting of maybe 60% bullshit, will have you still thinking about the ideas years later.

Post: #125

Taleb fighting on two fronts - going against the IQ guys like he was doing recently AND socialists. This guy really tries to incorporate anti-fragility in his real life - always seeking conflict and bumps from all comers and powering up from it