Meetings with unremarkable men

Or, don’t talk to strangers on Facebook(by Igor Rivin)

In the beginning• Many years ago, a friend I respected (call him

James) recommended to me a book called “Fooled by Randomness”, by N. N. Taleb, referring to the author as “one of those Arabic cafe guys”.

• Since I had (and still have) a lot of respect of James, I picked up the book, read about ten pages, and then, much to my surprise, channeled Dorothy Parker, who might or might not have said:

–Dorothy Parker (possibly apocryphal, but she SHOULD have said it)

“This is not a book to be tossed lightly, but one to be hurled with great force”

Why so harsh?• Basically, the thesis of the book is that there is

a tendency to use strategies that have high probability of short term success, while having a negative expectation in the long run.

• There, I have just saved you $20, and interminable self-absorbed babble.

• It turns out that James was exactly correct (I speak from experience of having spent more time in cafes trying to avoid people like Taleb than I care to admit.

What next?

• Still, I remembered his name, and since Robert J. Frey (a Facebook acquaintance and a respected quant finance person) followed Taleb, and commented on one of his posts, I saw the following:

Puzzling.Since every mathematician knows that writing a

book is the path to fame (people are lazy and don’t read papers).

So, I made two mistakes

• The first was to point out to Taleb that he was wrong, by showing him the following page:

Books do count!

Books do count!• The astute reader will see that “The fractal

geometry of nature”, despite not really being a mathematics book, has garnered 299 citations.

• Which is a lot, since the book has no theory, no theorem, and is basically a coffee-table book, and, granted, had a considerable influence on popular thought because of the author’s gift for self promotion and appropriating the work of others.

And now we get to my second mistake

• I mentioned (as evidence that writing books is actually in one’s self-interest) that if not for Mandelbrot’s book, the Mandelbrot set would be known as the Brooks-Matelski set, after its actual discoverers.

• Since the genesis of the (so-called) Mandelbrot set is well-known to many people of my acquaintance, I was quite unprepared for the response.

Briefly back to Facebook

• You will notice that the clips I am giving from the comment thread do not include any of my comments. That’s because Taleb, due, I guess to cowardice, blocked all of my comments, so all the viewer can see is sewage coming out of his mouth in the direction of one Igor Rivin, but one cannot see what objectionable commentary provoked it.

And in particular

• One does not see that the last circled packet of drivel was refuted by this link:

• http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mandelbrot-set-1990-horgan/

• Which is publicly available for all to read….

And in particular…

• and quotes Mandelbrot himself as feebly claiming the discovery of the Mandelbrot set only slightly after Brooks-Matelski, and a lot after John Hubbard (whose role in this I was not aware of, I admit).

Notice further• That instead of admitting his obvious

inaccuracy, Taleb then proceeds to berate your humble correspondent (bad enough), but also THE WHOLE MATHEMATICAL PROFESSION.

• In particular, he quite clearly states that mathematics is just book-keeping, of no interest. And only charlatans (umm, I mean, geniuses) like Mandelbrot make the world go round.

And underlines the point:

• Now, I have pretty wide interests, and some modest accomplishments, but all of them are due to thinking like a mathematician: which means, to me:

• Precision and economy of expression

• The search for the truth (most mathematicians do not claim to invent things, but to discover them).

• The feeling that I have not really understood things, unless I have understood why things are simple.

• So, the people I respect most are (not surprisingly) mathematicians, which is why I cannot really sit still when overhyped jerks like Taleb spit at them (and, in this case, almost literally at me).

• As for Mandelbrot, I have read some of his books, and he simply is not a mathematician, though I certainly would not deny that he was an interesting thinker (and really more of a physicist in the way he thought). While he was a notoriously unpleasant person in his own time, it seems that Taleb succeeds in soiling his memory as well.

In conclusion?• Has New York University now become an accredited

hammam, so that it employs anti-intellectual frauds like Taleb?

• Is the hatred of mathematics so prevalent in our culture that NO ONE objected to Taleb’s invective other than yours truly?

• Can one really fool most of the people most of the time?

• And finally, the reader can see the entire Facebook discussion (or what I could salvage of it) here: https://www.evernote.com/pub/igorrivin/mandelcrap