You're absolutely right, but there's certainly both: expertise, pseudoexpertise, confusion as to which is which, and revolt against either. The thing that's striking about Taleb's rants in the last few years is that he comes across as believing nobody involved in anything truly complex knows what they're doing, and so he needs to defend his all examples with shopkeepers and electricians.
It's instructive when he's presenting alongside an honest-to-god expert that he agrees with, like Robert Shiller, and they make the same case. Not only is Shiller a lot more persuasive because he's not bogged down in the BS, but Taleb's anti-expertise rant looks pretty petty alongside a Nobel Prize winner who is getting it right and defending the bureaucrats.
You're absolutely right, but there's certainly both: expertise, pseudoexpertise, confusion as to which is which, and revolt against either. The thing that's striking about Taleb's rants in the last few years is that he comes across as believing nobody involved in anything truly complex knows what they're doing, and so he needs to defend his all examples with shopkeepers and electricians.
It's instructive when he's presenting alongside an honest-to-god expert that he agrees with, like Robert Shiller, and they make the same case. Not only is Shiller a lot more persuasive because he's not bogged down in the BS, but Taleb's anti-expertise rant looks pretty petty alongside a Nobel Prize winner who is getting it right and defending the bureaucrats.
I don't remember him always being like this.