What sounds like a rather bizarre public discussion took place today between David Cameron and the American-Lebanese economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swan (for a summary of Nicholas Taleb's ideas see his letter to the Tory leader in the Guardian). What was team Cameron's intention behind this "intellectual debate", as he called it, and what ideas came out of it? Jim Pickard has a great write up in the FT:
It was an unlikely event that was bound to happen eventually: a public meeting between David Cameron and Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
No one was quite sure why the Conservative leader had arranged the debate with Mr Taleb, author of The Black Swan - a book about the inevitability of the low-probability event.
One theory was that it was a public-relations exercise to rebrand Mr Cameron as an intellectual, rather than a man of the people: or maybe an intellectual people's person.
Either way, Tuesday's head-to-head seemed so improbable that it attracted a full room of policy wonks and political journalists.
Mr Taleb spoke in sweeping sentences, embracing a multitude of thoughts and metaphors on the US economy and Mother Nature.
Why did herds of elephants in Africa allow elderly matriarchs to survive, he pondered, his mind racing from subject to subject. Because they had long memories, he explained
If Mr Cameron had any idea what his guest was talking about it was not entirely clear. Already sporting a suntan - even though he doesn't go to Greece until next week - he seemed sunk in puzzled thought.
