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Nassim Taleb Tore Into the Left Hemisphere’s Pretensions Before Iain McGilchrist Explained Them
“I gotta get these two guys together.”
I think most of us have had that thought. We have two friends, from different segments of our lives, and we know they’d hit it off.
I think we gotta get Nassim Taleb together with Iain McGilchrist.
If you’re reading OtML, you know McGilchrist and his popular 2009 book, The Master and His Emissary, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
But if you read at all, you know Taleb and his popular 2007 book, The Black Swan, which sold millions of copies.
McGilchrist has become a minor intellectual celebrity. Taleb, a major one.
McGilchrist is a psychiatric professor with expertise in literature, who wrote three books about applying neurological studies to our existence in general. Taleb is a stock trader with expertise in statistics, who wrote five books about applying financial lessons to daily life.
They have different areas of expertise. They cover different topics. They even have different approaches and different tones in their writing.
But they reach parallel conclusions.
McGilchrist explains the left hemisphere. Taleb mocks it. McGilchrist calls the left hemisphere by name. Taleb refers to “imbeciles.” McGilchrist shows how the left hemisphere has created cultural problems. Taleb shows how it has created economic ones.
The Hemisphere Hypothesis is ingrained in the mere titles of what Taleb calls his Incerto (a Latin term meaning “uncertain”):
Fooled by Randomness (“How reality consistently tricks the left hemisphere”)
The Black Swan (“Why the left hemisphere’s cherished forecasts and models crash”)
Antifragility (“Why modernity is prone to shattering”)
Skin in the Game (“Don’t trust intellectuals and their cocky ideas”)
We are creatures meant for uncertainty. It’s ingrained in our primordial truth as creatures of the indefinable and unpredictable Tao.
