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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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Somewhat of an aside, but I have found Taleb supremely frustrating - he sounded like a typical "empirics bro" making wild in-principle-statements as if hes disproven mathematics, which I rounded down to "dont be too confident in your models". It took a completely different branch of thought for me to learn about the problems of infinite variance for decision theory.

Taleb is the most overrated intellectual alive. Tried one of his book, it was literally non stop half-coherent self-aggrandizing rambling. I guess this is a good strategy to sound intelligent to mid-wits: if you don’t fully understand what’s being said, and you’re not smart enough to see that there is nothing there, it might indeed sound like something above your head, rather than drivel.