Comment by MonkeyClub

> just restates obvious things in a more formalized and somewhat pompous way

That's sort of the premise of his Black Swan idea, namely that extraordinary things appear quite obvious in retrospect.

I've read a few of his books, including Antifragile that's referenced in TFA, and he does go beyond merely restating (or formalizing) the obvious.

But then again perhaps such things are not generally obvious and need to be stated explicitly, we just happen to be part of a subset that is more aware of them.