Taleb talks a lot like this certain stereotype of alt-right asshole (Maybe Mike Cernovich, but not totally brain dead) and has pointless fights I associate with alt-right assholery, but I don’t think he actually is
alt-right and I’m not quite sure what to think of him.
stumpyjoepete: I think the word is just “asshole”, or, to be more charitable, “smug, combative contrarian”.
He seems like that in a specifically right-wing way though. There are leftist asshole contrarians and centrist assholes, he has this type of assholery that I associate with alt-righter and the alt-right adjacent in particular.
It might be an artifact of a greater political realignment.
For instance, going from:
0 - Polygamy is bad because it’s socially disapproved / “gross” / foreign.
1 - Polygamy is good because of human freedom.
2 - Polygamy is bad because of its secondary effects which damage the culture we all have to live in and the people that live there, it only isn’t a problem among nerds (or otherwise significantly limited), when there is a massive gender imbalance, and under Transhumanism.
How many people out there are switching from the position “Social Libertarianism is good because gays are actually fine” to “actually, LGBT are fine but pure Social Libertarianism is not,” now? What does their behavior look like? What is their category and what should people think of them?