I had the exact same reaction to his Antifragile!! Then I found his Twitter account and immediately wished I hadn’t... People who knew him in person say he isn’t like that IRL, or that something changed. Online the pattern is consistent, especially with actual mathematicians: he often begins with respect or even collaboration, then flips to "idiot", "charlatan", "disconnected from reality", or "fraud" and blocks them the moment they publish a critique or simply disagree. The gap between his books' quality and that online persona is so big that it even made me wonder whether the books were written by ghostwriter(s) (Michael Malice has hinted more than once that if we only knew who he ghostwrote for, and the language does feel somewhat similar in places imo). The books are still really good! *The online personality is a separate (and pretty ugly) thing.
Sorry for the random vent and gossip. Please read that ^^ comment as high praise for the book itself: it’s so good it almost feels like Taleb doesn’t deserve it, lol :))
I had the exact same reaction to his Antifragile!!
Then I found his Twitter account and immediately wished I hadn’t... People who knew him in person say he isn’t like that IRL, or that something changed. Online the pattern is consistent, especially with actual mathematicians: he often begins with respect or even collaboration, then flips to "idiot", "charlatan", "disconnected from reality", or "fraud" and blocks them the moment they publish a critique or simply disagree.
The gap between his books' quality and that online persona is so big that it even made me wonder whether the books were written by ghostwriter(s) (Michael Malice has hinted more than once that if we only knew who he ghostwrote for, and the language does feel somewhat similar in places imo).
The books are still really good!
*The online personality is a separate (and pretty ugly) thing.