Originally Posted by
Whoobie77
Contra, ignore Solaris/Rosewood's of typing of Taleb. I don't know where in the hell she got Alpha NT, but I think she just pulled it out of her ass. Taleb is pretty much the most anti-Ti author I've ever read. He derides theory at every chance he gets, and champions empiricism to the point of barely even having connective tissue which make his empiricism sensible.
MensSuperMateriam, I think you got it right. I think Taleb is a Ni-LIE. He wrote a book, Antifragile, which is basically an ode to vortical-synergetic cognition. It's all about scorning theories in favor of experimenting in the free market. Taleb said, "I love to make right mistakes". The vortical synergetic page says, "Synergetics do not confuse temporary setbacks with error; they will undertake attempt after attempt until success ultimately comes to them." When I first read the latter sentence, I thought how well it would fit into Taleb's work.
As for Aristocracy, Taleb proclaims that prostitutes and taxi drivers are some of the most "antifragile" of professions (and therefore, implicitly some of the best) because it allows those who choose them to stochastically tinker with the market, to intermingle with a wide range of clients, and to diversify their income sources. If someone says, "Oh, well, he talking about groups of people, he must be aristocrat!" from this, I might just about scream, because, once again, it's a failure too imaginatively digest the theory. These professions have an almost "antiprestige" in the Ne/Fi/Te/Si sense, if you were to associate yourself with one of these groups at a Delta outing, it would result in you receiving condescending pity and a lowering of status. Taleb scorns the largest Delta Neopuritan aristocracy of today, the middle class. He only appreciates "old money" because it is a way to escape being a wage slave, not because of the status it confers. He turns aristocracy on its head. I think he is a democrat.