Christmas with Taleb!

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Over the weekend Barry Ritholtz linked to this profile of Nassim Taleb at The Chronicle of Higher Education. I have mentioned Taleb many times over the years and he has contributed to how I think about certain things both related to the task of portfolio construction and more broadly to life in general.

As the linked profile above alludes, Taleb has become in some ways a caricature of himself. We all have our quirks and these quirks often become more pronounced as we get older and that is what I think is going on with Taleb. His latest book is called Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder but the writer for the profile said the book "feels like a compendium of people and things that Taleb doesn't like." I got a good laugh from that one.

The profile goes on to say he doesn't like academics, sociologists, doctors, Harvard B-school, bankers and economists among many others. He also has specific ideas for what fruit he will and won't eat and footwear. Assuming the article is correct about these things, it paints an eccentric picture.

The earlier posts on this blog about his ideas targeted things that I felt added value and I still think those ideas add value but as a function of his fame we are learning more about him and the value of his contribution might be diluting. As an example, most of what he said in the above article offered no critical value (just entertainment value) but there was something. He said "You cannot rely on external confirmation and have a happy life, I don't rely on external confirmation, and I have a happy life."

There was a comment or two questioning whether he really is happy. While that is a good question, I have no basis to doubt him but the idea is interesting from a self awareness point of view. Increased self awareness can help with portfolio management. Too many people are not self aware enough to know what is really important to them and they waste time on things that turn out to be unimportant.

There was also a funny bit in the article pointing out that Taleb might be a lot of the things he doesn't like; he's a part time professor who publishes articles in journals but he says he does not publish for advancement (personal gain) they are only "technical addenda" for his books. The funny part was that the article identified as the flipside to what Taleb does; blogging in cabin somewhere which is a remark that I resemble.

Here are a couple of other links (here and here) that really hit on how eccentric he either was all along or has become. There is still value in some of his commentary but it appears as though it will be more difficult to find.

Totally unrelated, I've tried a few times to find a list of Mr. Burns' (as in the Simpsons) stock portfolio. This was in one episode many years ago but I have never been able to find the list. I remember it was very funny but didn't remember the names. At some point along the way someone put up the site Simpsons Wikia which includes a page devoted to Mr. Burns and it mentions his portfolio which consists of Confederated Slaveholdings, Transatlantic Zeppelin, Amalgamated Spats, Congreve's Inflammable Powder, U.S. Hay and Baltimore Opera Hat Company. Hysterical.

Merry Christmas.