Nassim Nicholas Taleb has identified a well-known class of person, who my dad would have called an educated idiot. The only folks who can’t actually see the Intellectual Yet Idiot would be the IYI. (h/t Instapundit)
The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, election forecasting models, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.
I dunno what some of those things on the list really are, but can we add Global Climate Change, the Population Bomb and the Welfare State to the mix. Oh, and Trump’s chances of being elected.
The list is we extensive and multidisciplinary enough I don’t know which way they were wrong on some of those things.
LikeLike