When the press hates you, it doesn’t matter

Monday, April 16th, 2018

It seems to Nassim Nicholas Taleb that the conventional press is dead:

And let me give you the evidence: we did an embargo on the book [Skin in the Game]. We did this for several reasons. The first one is what I call the IYI syndrome. In the past, my targets in The Black Swan were academic/finance people.

In Fooled by Randomness, the targets were rich idiots. Who — anyway — by now are poor. But — a rich idiot at the time. So,  journalists, you see, they loved it: “Someone is going against power, and it’s not us.” So phase one, they loved it. Although I criticized journalism, they said I was criticizing someone else.

In phase 2, I went against economic people who use the bell curve… and statisticians. And again, journalists cheered.

Now phase 3 — phase 4 actually — I went after the classes of people that include some people who review books. Therefore, I did not want to give them the chance to play with the book.

So we did an embargo.

What happened in London is someone managed to get a copy of the book. And sure enough, in succession, on the publication date, you had The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Guardian trying to hammer the book.

In spite of that — or maybe thanks to that — the book was the best seller in London. Now, surprisingly, the book was not reviewed in the United States. Nobody heard of it. And guess what? It was also a big surprise in the United States.

Which tells us something: When the press hates you, it doesn’t matter. It’s a very nice experiment. You can bypass conventional media by staying in the online field.

I still think the cover of the book should have been a beaver, raccoon, mink, and chinchilla all playing cards.

Comments

  1. Gaikokumaniakku says:

    “I still think the cover of the book should have been a beaver, raccoon, mink, and chinchilla all playing cards.”

    Is there any symbolism to those particular animals, or is it just fun to have furry critters playing cards on a book cover?

  2. Isegoria says:

    They’re all fur animals; they’ve got skin in the game.

  3. Gaikokumaniakku says:

    Aha! Thanks for explaining that.

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