Bringing up the Dutch dykes is exactly the kind of things that Taleb warns about - a thinking that distributions of events caused by physical factors can give us lessons on distribution of events in the financial markets, caused by crowd psychology and movements.

And the Turkey example is just about one thing: if you look at things too narrowly (a single turkey's survival at any date, rather than the survival of previous generations of turkey) it's easy to reach absurd conclusions.

His comments are not about statistics - it's about how some all too easily abuse them - or over-interpet them. His quadrant is just a simple way to identify fields of activity where statistical analysis can provide information which is actually usable with enough confidence and, to me, it made sense (if you think about it, it's little different from Rumsfeld's "known knowns, unknown knowns, etc... " quip).

His basic point is only that humans in general, and financial market players in particular, tend to underestimate the probability of rare (and momentous) events.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes