Reviewing the Reviewers

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The problem with book reviews is that you need to have read the book to realize that the book reviewer is full of balloney. So, in the past, reviewers could go on forever without any form of accountability. Even publishers were in on it: the (then) editors at Random House prevented me from being tough with Easterbrook to avoid upsetting the New York Times.

Now, reviewers have skin in the game. Recall l that the idea of SITG is to prevent anyone from having powers over citizens with impunity.

You can actually expose their reading deficiencies, actually forcing the reviewer to read the book.

Deficiencies in reading comprehension, case of John Gapper (FT), Zoe Williams (Guardian), and Phil Coggan (Economist) (Skin in the Game). Posting such comments deterred other reviewers.

Reading comprehension and deficiencies of Gregg Easterbrook in his review of The Black Swan, (yes, it is 11 years later but his review is still up).

Severe problems of reading comprehension& (more generally, in elementary scientific knowledge) nbsp; by David Runciman in his review of Antifragile.

Noah Smith, BS Vendor