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Tag Archives: precautionary principle

Taleb’s “The Precautionary Principle (with application to GMOs)”. Advocacy Masquerading as Rational Argument.

The Precautionary Principle (with application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms) suggests that GMOs pose a “ruin” problem, “in which a system is at risk of total failure”. Taleb and colleagues believe that the risks from GMOs, even if small, can mount up and spread because our agricultural and natural systems are globally connected. So […]

Genetically Modified Organisms Risk Global Ruin, Says Black Swan Author — The Physics arXiv Blog

Taleb and co focus on two examples. The first is nuclear energy. They point out that many people are justifiably concerned about the risk associated with nuclear energy. Scientists are well aware of the harm that can be caused by radiation release, core meltdown and the disposal of radioactive waste and these risks have been […]

Finally, soon after the posting of the Precautionary Principle paper on ArXiv…

Finally, soon after the posting of the Precautionary Principle paper on ArXiv, the debate on GMOs is starting — and the (rigorous) physics community is getting the point. This summary is from the ArXiv blog. They overhype my role in the paper and downplay that of others, Rupert Read and Yaneer Bar Yam. https://medium.com/…/genetically-modified-organisms-risk-gl… Genetically […]

Ruin is vastly more affected by noise than by the potential benefits or the signal

This picture show the effects of the information ratio (that is, benefits/uncertainty or signal/noise) on ruin; ruin is vastly more affected by noise than by the potential benefits or the signal. (Continuing the previous post). The Precautionary Principle paper is here https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIbGFzOXF5UUN3N2c/edit?pli=1 The previous post has not been well digested as people still argued in […]

Something people don’t get: more skepticism about climate models should lead to more “green”…

Something people don’t get: more skepticism about climate models should lead to more “green” ecological conservationist policies not more lax pro-pollution ones. Why? Simply, uncertainty about the models increases fragility (and thickens the left tail), no matter what the benefits can be in the right tail. Added the section to the precautionary principle. Please discuss […]