My Dog Ate the Black Swan

Terry Naylor
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

I saw a post on Twitter yesterday telling me that now would be a good time to read SPQR and wondered why (it’s a book I’ve been meaning to get around to). Further interrogation of the twittersphere turned up the reason: Nassim Nicholas Taleb (risk managing economist author of The Black Swan) has been highly critical of Mary Beard (historian author of the aforementioned SPQR) in her endorsement of the accuracy of a BBC cartoon depicting the Romans as a multi-ethnic society.

I should declare at this point that when my dog ate The Black Swan (a random, unforeseeable event that I should have seen coming) I didn’t replace it, even though I hadn’t yet completed it. Its status as a bestseller is long established and there could well be something in the claim that it foreshadowed the 2008 financial crisis, so its author has every right to be as pleased with himself as he so clearly is.

Much of the recent timeline of @nntaleb’s Twitter feed is devoted to what can justifiably be called a ‘spat’ because that’s how it seems he projects his words. Although the stereotype of the loud, conceited American expert is about as realistic as that of the insecure, money-hating, British academic that he alludes to, Taleb has a good go at breathing life into it. It’s easy to imagine his tweets voiced by Bulldog from Frasier.

It’s when he crosses the line from decrying his detractors as ‘assholes’ and their claims as BS, to generalising, from one contentionable point about the racial make-up of Roman society, that scholarship in the UK is dead, that Taleb lays himself open to the accusation that he is taking at best, a bit of a leap and at worst, a leaf from the book of history’s twisted propagandists.

Taleb alleges that a feminist vs mysoginist defence is deployed in support of Beard. You can check the timelines of both to see how true this is and make your mind up for yourself. But then he goes on to smear his critics as members of the politically correct brigade, without seeing any apparent irony in this.

Now I might not have any skin in this particular game, but I know bullying when I see it and it needs to be called out for what it is. No-one is looking for a post-truth approach to academic research, but it does seem to me that the same whoever shouts loudest and harshest wins approach, that is predominant in politics, is being deliberately deployed in this debate at the expense of clarity, truth and good grace.

Taleb reports that his books are still selling well and this particularly teacup storm gained him twitter followers, despite being blocked by over a thousand of the PC mob. Well let me make that 1001. When I’m next in a bookshop, I’ll be seeking out SPQR and I’ll try to make sure that book doesn’t become dogfood for thought.

Terry Naylor

Written by

Not been there, not done that