Taleb the Predictor

In his popular but overrated book The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb argued that people are very bad at predicting the future in large part because they are by nature prone to forecasting errors. Apparently, Taleb believes that he is exempt from the errors that afflict the rest of us. In The Economist (here), he makes a variety of outrageous claims about what the world will look like later in this century. Among other things, he predicts the collapse of nation-states as significant political entities (though they may survive "cosmetically"), the disappearance of large-scale, publicly-traded corporations, the demise of currencies, and a return of the gold standard.

It's unclear to me why a staid publication like The Economist would publish such tripe, except that Taleb's name could sell copies. He is, after all, a genius. If you don't believe me, just ask him.