The saying goes that economists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions.
In that passage, Taleb correctly identifies some systemic problems that led to the 2008 crash. That’s not quite the same thing as predicting the crash. (If I say “San Francisco is built on a big fault, and it hasn’t had a really big earthquake for some time.” do I get to claim I predicted the Next Big One, if and when it happens?)
So (1) the impressiveness of that passage depends on how unusual it was to recognize those problems. I don’t know the answer to that; perhaps scarcely anyone else did, or perhaps most of the people with any information did but most of them found it expedient not to say so, or perhaps actually lots of people said so and we didn’t listen.
And (2) whether or not we take this as a prediction, and taking him at his word that he predicted Brexit and Trump and whatever else he said he predicted: what else has he predicted, and how did the other predictions turn out?
For instance: perhaps all his recent predictions have been of the form “populism is in the ascendant”. If so, then that would lead to correct Brexit and Trump predictions, and maybe some others, since populism is indeed doing well. If he noticed that before everyone else, that’s impressive. But it doesn’t necessarily indicate that he’ll predict well outside that domain.
Or perhaps he’s predicted hundreds of things and most of them were wrong—but he doesn’t mention those. If so, saying “I predicted Brexit and Trump” would be entirely misleading and he deserves no credit for anything.
Or perhaps he’s predicted hundreds of surprising things and got lots of them right, in which case we should indeed take seriously the idea that there’s some fundamental thing he’s doing right and others are doing wrong.
Anyone got more information about his actual predictions and how they’ve turned out?
And (2) whether or not we take this as a prediction, and taking him at his word that he predicted Brexit and Trump and whatever else he said he predicted: what else has he predicted, and how did the other predictions turn out?
In the linked interview, it’s not Taleb that says he predicted those things but the journalist.
(Though … is it possible that the journalist wrote that because Taleb said “Make sure you mention that I predicted these things”?)
It’s possible but I don’t think it’s likely as it would be a low status move in the interaction. You don’t tell a journalist what he’s supposed to write. You rather provide him with the material he needs to write a story.
It’s in the journalist’s interest to present Taleb as a genius because that makes the interview more important. It makes it more likely that the article get’s shared and get’s pageviews. The fact that he secured an interview with a genius who often rejects interview requests from the media is also important for the relationship the journalist has with his editor.
Yeah, he probably wouldn’t actually have said “Make sure you mention …”. But he might well have taken care to ensure that the journalist knows that he predicted those things.
(Where “knows” might be the wrong word, to whatever extent he didn’t actually predict them.)
Let’s imagine the journalist asked him: “Is it true that you predict the financial crash of 2008?”
Taleb might have answered: “In my book, I wrote that the financial system is likely to blow up. Various journalists described this as me predicting the financial system. I don’t think that it’s possible to predict the exact year when a system crashes.”
Journalists are in the business of simplifying reality for their readers. It’s quite likely that what Taleb told the journalist, in this case, is completely true but the journalist then simplified the complexity of the statement in something that’s optimized to get the highest number of page views.
Oh, I agree. He himself claims that many analysts were saying the same things, and that you would need to be an imbecile to not notice what was going on at the time.
My feeling is that he himself does not feel that he made an impressive prediction, and was actually just pointing out that it would inevitably go wrong at some point. in fact he has been talking about the issue for long before 2008, it just happens that the publication of his book came at just the right time to make it look like he predicted it just before it happened. (I may be wrong, and am not very familiar with his recent predictions around Trump and the arguments with Nate Silver on that )
Mainstream media does not wish to explain concepts like calibration, and instead runs with articles along tine lines of “Taleb predicts crash! Is God/Superintelligence!” despite his books repeatedly hammering home the point that he aims to make bets with tiny chance of success and low downside, but huge upside.
He aims to bet £1 on horses the bookies have at 10,000:1 that he thinks actually have 2,000:1 odds.
I do not know if he has previously made predictions with attached probabilities that we could track, he would probably argue that his investments play this role.
I don’t have the impression that Taleb goes to any lengths to discourage people from thinking that he made more impressive predictions than he actually did :-).
The saying goes that economists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions.
In that passage, Taleb correctly identifies some systemic problems that led to the 2008 crash. That’s not quite the same thing as predicting the crash. (If I say “San Francisco is built on a big fault, and it hasn’t had a really big earthquake for some time.” do I get to claim I predicted the Next Big One, if and when it happens?)
So (1) the impressiveness of that passage depends on how unusual it was to recognize those problems. I don’t know the answer to that; perhaps scarcely anyone else did, or perhaps most of the people with any information did but most of them found it expedient not to say so, or perhaps actually lots of people said so and we didn’t listen.
And (2) whether or not we take this as a prediction, and taking him at his word that he predicted Brexit and Trump and whatever else he said he predicted: what else has he predicted, and how did the other predictions turn out?
For instance: perhaps all his recent predictions have been of the form “populism is in the ascendant”. If so, then that would lead to correct Brexit and Trump predictions, and maybe some others, since populism is indeed doing well. If he noticed that before everyone else, that’s impressive. But it doesn’t necessarily indicate that he’ll predict well outside that domain.
Or perhaps he’s predicted hundreds of things and most of them were wrong—but he doesn’t mention those. If so, saying “I predicted Brexit and Trump” would be entirely misleading and he deserves no credit for anything.
Or perhaps he’s predicted hundreds of surprising things and got lots of them right, in which case we should indeed take seriously the idea that there’s some fundamental thing he’s doing right and others are doing wrong.
Anyone got more information about his actual predictions and how they’ve turned out?
In the linked interview, it’s not Taleb that says he predicted those things but the journalist.
Oh, you’re right. My mistake; sorry about that.
(Though … is it possible that the journalist wrote that because Taleb said “Make sure you mention that I predicted these things”?)
It’s possible but I don’t think it’s likely as it would be a low status move in the interaction. You don’t tell a journalist what he’s supposed to write. You rather provide him with the material he needs to write a story.
It’s in the journalist’s interest to present Taleb as a genius because that makes the interview more important. It makes it more likely that the article get’s shared and get’s pageviews. The fact that he secured an interview with a genius who often rejects interview requests from the media is also important for the relationship the journalist has with his editor.
Yeah, he probably wouldn’t actually have said “Make sure you mention …”. But he might well have taken care to ensure that the journalist knows that he predicted those things.
(Where “knows” might be the wrong word, to whatever extent he didn’t actually predict them.)
Let’s imagine the journalist asked him: “Is it true that you predict the financial crash of 2008?”
Taleb might have answered: “In my book, I wrote that the financial system is likely to blow up. Various journalists described this as me predicting the financial system. I don’t think that it’s possible to predict the exact year when a system crashes.”
Journalists are in the business of simplifying reality for their readers. It’s quite likely that what Taleb told the journalist, in this case, is completely true but the journalist then simplified the complexity of the statement in something that’s optimized to get the highest number of page views.
Oh, I agree. He himself claims that many analysts were saying the same things, and that you would need to be an imbecile to not notice what was going on at the time. My feeling is that he himself does not feel that he made an impressive prediction, and was actually just pointing out that it would inevitably go wrong at some point. in fact he has been talking about the issue for long before 2008, it just happens that the publication of his book came at just the right time to make it look like he predicted it just before it happened. (I may be wrong, and am not very familiar with his recent predictions around Trump and the arguments with Nate Silver on that )
Mainstream media does not wish to explain concepts like calibration, and instead runs with articles along tine lines of “Taleb predicts crash! Is God/Superintelligence!” despite his books repeatedly hammering home the point that he aims to make bets with tiny chance of success and low downside, but huge upside.
He aims to bet £1 on horses the bookies have at 10,000:1 that he thinks actually have 2,000:1 odds.
I do not know if he has previously made predictions with attached probabilities that we could track, he would probably argue that his investments play this role.
( more details in my other comment http://lesswrong.com/lw/olj/interview_with_nassim_taleb_trump_makes_sense_to/dmr0 )
I don’t have the impression that Taleb goes to any lengths to discourage people from thinking that he made more impressive predictions than he actually did :-).
He doesn’t do so explicitly but he does so implicitly by saying that certain predictions can’t be made reliably.