After writing this, I scrolled down Ben Casnocha’s blog and read a few more entries and came to this discussion of Nassim Taleb. Casnocha writes:
At the bottom of Taleb’s homepage he posts his email address and invites readers to contact him. With some qualifications:
Concise messages are much preferable (say a maximum < 40 words) as I will not be able to read long letters. Please do not 1) send me your papers or other "interesting material" to read, 2) ask finance questions (not my specialty, 3) make me to rewrite sections of my books (I write books, not emails), 4) ask for a list of "other interesting books to read", 5) ask me to provide career or educational advice, 6) send me passages from Tolstoy or the Ecclesiast on luck and randomness, 7) send me the list of typos in my drafts. Note that I almost always reply (but ONLY to short messages), time permitting (but once) -even to nasty emails. Finally, note that, thanks to my new keyboard, I sometimes reply in Arabic, particularly to academics. [Also please please refrain from offering to "improve" my web site].
He opens his piece on walking by noting that thanks to the “exposure” of his books he came onto theories about fitness by two authors. I imagine this happend by a reader writing in and sharing “interesting material” of the sort he says he does not want. I have never emailed Taleb, but I [Casnocha] don’t take his qualifications seriously. It is, in fact, a very naked way to signal busyness and importance.
I think there’s something important that Casnocha (and his blog commenter) are not understanding here, and that is the interaction between the linear scaling of a person’s time and the exponential scaling of fame.
Here’s the deal. Taleb is one person. I’m sure he can answer emails faster than most of us–and he might even have a secretary to filter out the spam–but, still, he’s responding to these on human scale. Similarly, he writes just like the rest of us (James Patterson and Doris Kearns Goodwin excepted), putting one word after the other. Even if he writes 10 times faster than a less practiced writer, he still has to do the work.
But . . . he’s really famous. OK, not famous like Elvis or even Bob Dylan, but he could very well be receiving a zillion emails per day. Taleb doesn’t need to signal busyness and important. He’s certainly important, and if he tries to answer all his emails, he’s gonna be busy also. Lots of famous people don’t have emails at all
I do, however, think it’s a bit silly for Taleb to ask people not to send him things to read. I like when people send me things to read. I can look at a couple paragraphs and decide if I want to read more. Sometimes people send interesting things. Also, I’d recommend that Taleb get rid of his “almost always reply” rule. I almost always reply to emails, but Taleb must receive many many more than I do.
P.S. Heinlein’s solution.
Along these lines, Donald Knuth quit using email 20 years ago.
Taleb doesn't understand the notion of linear scale versus log scale. That much is evident from his book "Black Swan" and its treatment of "Extremistan" and "Mediocristan".
People like him are a statistician's worst nightmare: spreading half-truths, massaging basic assumptions (IID anyone?) to fit their story, and lobbing sound-bite assertions left and right.
Funny, I actually emailed him once, after Fooled By Randomness was out but before Black Swan. And it was for educational/career advice! At the time I had no idea what I wanted to do; I knew only that I loved his book and I couldn't decide if a math or an economics Ph.D. might be better for doing that sort of stuff for a living. A few weeks later, I got an automated response saying it would take a while to get back to me. I'm still waiting.
The only other author I've ever emailed, Douglas Hofstader, wrote me back a nice response to the question I asked about some of his work. Speaking of Hofstadter, I read your post where you explained that you didn't like one of his lines. But I'm interested to know more about why you think he's overrated.
John: Interesting about Knuth. The no-reading-email-before-4 and deal-with-each-item-right-away strategy works sometimes for me, but sometimes I'm too lazy to follow the second part of that strategy and I get a bit overwhelmed.
Gabe: I enjoyed Taleb's book a lot, not because of his explanations of probability but because it stimulated a lot of thoughts (see my reviews of his books on this blog).
Matt: Yes, I think the log/linear thing explains why Taleb can't go around offering career advice.
When you ask why I think Hofstadter is overrated, do you mean, "What about Hofstadter do I not like?" or "What about Hofstadter do I think made him so popular"?
Regarding the former, I just didn't think he had much to say. He was too busy writing a tour de force to think about what went inside it. A pamphlet would've been better, in my opinion. (I know that people say the same thing about Red State, Blue State, but (a) anybody who says that just didn't read the book, which has lots and lots of stuff that's not in the original article, and (b) RSBS is a lot shorter than GEB.)
Regarding the second question, I think a lot of book reviewers like that whole scientist-who's-a-sensitive-humanist shtick. The book certainly has lots of interesting bits and you can learn a lot from it. It's not a bad book, I just think it's way overrated.
I think I'll write a blog entry sometime on overrated science books. Godel, Escher, Bach will be one of them.
Dr Gelman – I agree the book was entertaining. But, working as a statistician, a co-worker suggested to me that I read it and asked how the notions in his book could be applied to our current projects/situations. I spent weeks having to disspell some of the half-truths and even had a two hour "class" on what it means to be Normally Distributed.
Also, while I don't disagree that GEB is overrated, it is still a great book. You can be overrated but still be very good. If something is "rated" (hypothetically) as a 95 / 100, but in reality is maybe a 80 / 100, it's overrated but still very good.
I had come across Taleb's rules of emailing last year. It seems perfectly consistent with the attitude in his book: he is the most superior of intellects, with no reason to engage us, the teeming, filthy masses.
I thoroughly enjoy his ideas, but wish someone with a little more humility could present them.
Gabe: I grade GEB below 80/100. My problem with it is that it has mistakes (such as the one mentioned in my linked blog entry) that to me reveal either huge conceptual errors on Hofstadter's part or, more likely, an over-eagerness to fit everything into his preconceived categories.
Tgrass: See the third-to-last and second-to-last paragraphs of my blog entry above. Taleb's too famous. He can't answer all his emails any more than Santa Claus can answer all his letters or Tiger Woods can give golf tips to all his fans or Steve Jobs can help people on problems with their Macs. Taleb could be the humblest dude in the world, but if he started answering all his emails, he'd have no time to do anything else.
Dr. Gelman,
I wholeheartedly agree with you that his response policy is reasonable. I am in constant amazement that there are many bloggers out there, you, Scott Sumner, Russ Roberts, who answer emails/comments in a timely and relevant way. My reaction is to his tone, which is the same as in Black Swan: that he is the uber-intellectual who cannot deign to chat with the mortals. It is a tone which more often than not reflects insecurity, which while I was reading Black Swan, made me read his premises even more critically than I normally would have. I don't trust someone who believes they have answers which no one else is even mentally capable of ascertaining.
He could have easily written an email policy in language that was less belligerent. 'Interesting material' in quotes? Though his ideas may be culturally classic, his writing style is not, and consequently his books and fame could easily fade. He's no Veblen. His contempt and pride may undermine the very fame which presently keeps him from answering emails.