Reddit mentions of Understanding Philosophy of Science

> What is 'scientific anti-realism?'

This is from "Understanding Philosophy of Science" by James Ladyman. Hopefully it will give you the flavour of what it means. Thomas (admittedly, a bit of a patronising git) is explaining the anti-realist position.

Alice: So now you’re saying that science might give us knowledge up to a point but it only tells us about what we can
observe?

Thomas: Maybe so. It seems possible.

Alice: Yes, well, it’s possible that the table we are sitting at is a
figment of our imaginations or that it disappears when
nobody is looking at it but so what? You can’t prove anything beyond doubt but that doesn’t mean we don’t know
anything. If all you are saying is that I have as much right
to believe atoms are real as I do to believe the table is real
then I agree with you.

Thomas: Slow down. When you claim to
know there’s a table there, you aren’t claiming to know
about ultimate reality or the hidden nature of things, just
about how things seem.

Alice: Well, I am claiming that the table exists even when I am
not looking at it and that it is the same table you see, and
that it will still be here if we go away for a minute and
then come back and . . .

Thomas: Yes, but at least sometimes we can observe the table. The
point about atoms and the like is that they are purely
theoretical. For all we know there could be quite different
things causing what we see.

Alice: You might as well say that it just looks as if I am sitting
here but I’m not really.

Thomas: I don’t think it’s the same thing, and anyway, as far as
science is concerned, all that matters when it comes down
to it is getting the predictions right for what we observe.
Lots of different theories that disagree about what the
unobservable world is like could still agree in what they
predict about the results of experiments.

Note: I don't think Taleb is the kind of anti-realist who would question the existence of the table but he probably questions the existence of quarks and any properties physicists infer from their existence which go beyond what has been observed and measured.