Taleb is woke

Talab tweeted this:

One of these is distinctly unlike the others. I’m sure you can guess which one. That would be wokeness. Notice how he lumps wokeness with the others, because he is trying to deflect any sort of association with wokeness, which as he correctly perceives, is unpopular. Yet at the same time, by lumping wokeness with a bunch of things that are anti-woke, he does not risk losing too many of his woke followers which he gained during Covid and Ukraine. If he came out and said he is woke, which would at least be honest on his part, he would lose probably most of his non-woke followers (who haven’t yet caught on to the fact that Taleb is obviously woke) and his intellectual credibility would take a hit.

This is probably why he is quiet about the overturing of Roe v. Wade, having not tweeted about it despite it being one of the biggest stories of the year, yet he tweets endlessly about Bitcoin, Ukraine, and inflation. If he came out in support of abortion rights (which is his true belief), that would remove any pretense of being un-woke given his positions on Ukraine, Covid, and everything else. But tweeting in opposition of abortion would also alienate all his new woke followers, so the best choice is to not tweet at all about it.

Here are just a handful of many tweets that confirm Taleb is woke (any one of these alone is not sufficient, but believing all of them indisputably makes him woke):

Masks work, and if you disagree you’re a psychopath. Very convincing argument. Even the left-leaning SF Gate concedes mask mandates don’t work.

This tweet about Ukraine, Putin, Trump, and vaccines…all in one:

Solidarity for multi-millionaire musicians against ‘Covid misinformation’:

Regarding Elon Musk’s plan to buy twitter:

Celebrating the cancellation/de-platforming of Stefan Molyneux:

Taleb’s stance on IQ, overall, is consistent with the left.

And finally defending BLM:

Again, any one of these alone is insufficient. There are plenty of conservatives who support Ukraine or who are skeptical of IQ research/HBD, but combined he checks all the boxes for wokeness.

Before Covid, in 2018-2019, I suspected he was woke when he criticized IQ research, Quillette magazine, and Stefan Molyneux. His attacks on Steven Pinker, and themes of Hume, Rousseau, and Popperian philosophy in his writings are suggestive of a form of liberalism, that is an antecedent of the left today. Anti-rationalism and skepticism stands in contrast to moral and epistemological rationalism. To deny the existence and importance of hierarchies (such as hierarchies arranged by competence, IQ, or other attributes) or to accept the limitations of knowledge or to deny epistemological certainty, is no different when the left insists that characteristics such as race or gender are not absolutes or are social constructs.

If he just came out and admitted to being woke he would lose some followers, but at least he would not have to keep pretending that he’s guided by higher intellectual principles when he’s just a mouthpiece for the left now.