Nassim Taleb on Charlie Rose

Anyone read The Black Swan yet? I liked his earlier book Fooled By Randomness. I skimmed the Black Swan at the bookstore and liked it as well but was too cheap to part with the $20 :-) Here is an earlier post, linking to a nice podcast interview in which he discusses prediction and the dismal track record of certain prognosticators.

Taleb: "There are a lot of disciplines -- economics, political science -- where the expert is no expert. ... They don't have more predictive power than cab drivers ... do not take the experts seriously in these areas..." (He says this both on the podcast and on Charlie, but I quote from the latter. He's exaggerating -- remember his market perspective -- but not entirely wrong :-)

By the way, the current seizing up of the credit markets is not a black swan event -- a lot of people predicted it a long time ago!