But the fact that the financial sector was in a state of financial fragility was straightforward, from historical comparison with the states of previous financial systems prior to serious financial collapses, and the fact that sooner or later a financial system in that state is going to have a breathtaking collapse that threatens to seriously damage the productive sector of the economy is straightforward from a cause and effect explanation of how a financial system is exposed to collapse when it is in a financially fragile state.

Of course, as a mathematical trader, it wasn't Taleb's job to look at the state of the financial system as a whole, but rather to develop quantitative models which allow instantaneous hedging etc of the portfolios he was actually responsible for. That means riding the wave, or more precisely being able to predict parameters over the short term, since (in principle) he could always adapt his algorithms to the reality as it progresses.

The turkey graph is a nice soundbyte example though, easy for people to quote in their blogs and propagate without much context.

--
$E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$