In fact, most of Taleb's ideas are about how to not rely on predictions of events that are unpredictable - so faulting him for predicting or not predicting this and that means one does not really understands what Taleb is talking about.

Yes, his Black Swan stuff is a completely separate issue from whether he has or hasn't predicted anything.

Fascinating, but how is that at all relevant? I didn't call 2008 a black swan, I called Black Monday in 1987 a "Black Swan", using Taleb's own descriptor for it. So what is the issue?

A different discussion concerns the fact that Taleb's possible luck in 1987 makes him a prescient seer for things like the financial crisis. But he isn't, and a tremendous number of things he has said have simply been wrong (most notably, and importantly, everything he said about government intervention. He was 100% wrong in every way).

People ask why people get the heckles up about Taleb, and it isn't actually about Taleb at all. It's about the, for lack of a better phrase, Taleb "fan boys". Bizarre that such a thing exists, but people like having their prophet.

Your post was in reply to someone asking about Taleb's Black Swans so I assumed you were talking about 2008 in reference to that.