Nassim Nicholas Taleb is one of the most provocative thinkers of our time. Since he first burst into popular consciousness in 2001 with his bestselling book ‘Fooled by Randomness’, Taleb has been a bane of conventional thinking in any field where decisions are necessarily clouded in uncertainty. Drawing his inspiration from the classical scholars of antiquity and with a special affinity for our enlightenment giant Edmund Burke, the thinking of Taleb has arguably been shaped more by his childhood in Beirut than his intense scholarship since. Crucially, the experience of living through the unexpected collapse of a civilised order has…