IYI

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, wrote this semi-literal, semi-satirical piece titled “The Intellectual Yet Idiot”, IYI for short in the rest of his article (and this blog).

So who is an IYI?

“(The) class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.”

Sound familiar?

IYI’s are theoriticians, with no connection in real life to what they like to preach about. Or as Taleb says, they have no skin in the game. The IYI is smug and arrogant:

“The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests.”

And:

“What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences.”

The IYI will know terms like the “butterfly effect” (a minor act in one corner can trigger an avalanche far, far away) but won’t realize that it applies to his predictions as well!

And the IYI believes that he is above reproach:

“Although they treat the rest of humans as inferiors, they don’t like it when the waterhose is turned to the opposite direction.”

No wonder then that the rebellion against the IYI’s has started “from India to the UK to the US”, as Taleb puts it.