I have been moving this week and did not have much time for thinking and reading. Nevertheless, I have mostly read about Cornel West and Nassim Taleb this week. Both of them are from minority communities in the States and Taleb is not even born in the States; however, they have both become very influencial public intellectual and have impacts on American culture and society. Our readers can surely learn things from them.

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Cornel West — The Historical Philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois — Class A lecture given by Cornel West, one of the most influential black public intellectuals in the States. Most Chinese and most Chinese-Americans are unfamiliar and even apathetic toward black culture and the black community. This is surely a mistake, not only because the experience of being a minority of the black community is very valuable for other minorities in any country, but also because there are universal experiences shared by all of us and manifested so well in the narratives of black culture. His observations of humanities are very insightful. One good distinction he made between joy and pleasure captures our time articulately. From this video, you can also learn a lot about rhetoric and public speaking, for West has the peculiarities that make the audiences to listen to him.

It is also interesting to read about West’s biography and political positions.

Why you should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war An old article about the bitter Twitter exchanges in 2018 between Silver and Nassim, two well-known data scientists. It is still relevant today as the next election is coming. What Silver and Taleb disagree is not so much the technical detail as to how to properly interpret the election forecasting. Interpreting probability is hard and I will try to write about it in the near future. For technical details of Silver’s Monte Carlo method used in the forecasting, see this.

Many readers in China may have not heard of Taleb, but likely have heard of his book Black Swan. While I do find Taleb over-marketing his idea of “black swan”, “skin in the game” and etc., Taleb’s is a good contemporary thinker and has interesting insights to share. I definitely recommend this portrait of Taleb by Malcolm Gladwell in 2002. It would be preposterous to say that Taleb is ascetic, but he practices with great psychological pain in acting against the primary instincts of humans of gaining small now instead of waiting for big in the future, at least in the business of investing. He does this not only because it works, but also because it is according to his conceptual framework and his understanding of the world — something a true intellectual would bravely do.