- Was trying to explain the GMO problem to a Hayekian-libertarian: “GMOs are a Soviet-style top-down solution to a bottom-up process”. He got it.
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Thanks for attending the lecture I apologize I wasn’t talkative I was distracted/had to make it to the airport through the NY rush hour.
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via Was trying to explain the GMO problem to a… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
@nntaleb Friends, if someone finds a mistake in this paper. Thanks. I am not supposed to show it
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIUWpCaHkxbVBodk0/view?pli=1
Arguing with biologists about risk is exactly like arguing with George W. Bush about algebraic geometry.
This is by Mark Buchanan, a physicist.
The Trouble With the Genetically Modified Future
With GMOs, there’s no way of knowing how bad the worst-case scenario could be.
via Arguing with biologists about risk is exactly… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Allometry: How things scale and should scale.
A child has much larger head relative to his body than an adult (this even applies to GMO biologists). I am adding this slide to Tuesday’s lecture on scaling and cities. It shows how the relative size of parts scales differently as the unit grows. There is abundant work on this by physicists (G. West of Santa Fe), but what I am adding to the picture (and the research) is the link to fragility, how fragility is necessarily tied to scale, which comes out of the notion that fragile=nonlinearity (concavity).
A restaurant has a scale beyond which it transits into something horrifying, fast food. Same with wineries, etc. This applies to all corporations (there is a sweet spot of fragility) but academics haven’t noticed yet. And of course the same to political units, etc.
More generally, our society under commoditization and pseudointellectualization lost control of our natural intuitions on how things should grow (especially economists who see GDP growth as a mission). But somehow the Ancients did, with this obsessive “metrion”, the balance: a man should not be too strong (leave it to an ox), too fast (leave to a horse), too tall, etc.
Some excellent news on GMOs. There is evidence that the GMO “shills” (paid propagandists and lobbyists masquerading as promoters of “scientific awareness”) do not have many hits on their sites. They are truly unpopular. These small gangs can attack GMO opponents, & terrorize and bully some lone scientist all they want. I can see that the strategy of GMO companies is to lobby governments and newspapers, which is much easier.
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People make the mistake of engaging a paid shill. All one should do is *expose* them.
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Finance people were risk-blind, but were a 1000 times more sophisticated than GMO-biologists (at least finance people can understand an insult). I noticed that the GMO promoters make elementary risk mistakes of showing the “benefits” of GMO (which I don’t contest) as if it meant anything about the “risk” of GMOs. This is the standard Russian Roulette fallacy by which someone tells you the probability of getting the bullet is lower *because* the money you win is now larger.
So far all arguments are fraught with these fallacies: 1) The “evidentiary fallacy” (or Turkey problem, mistaking evidence of absence for absence of evidence), 2) The potato fallacy, 3) The technological salvation fallacy (risk-blind), aside from other similar elementary mistakes.(paid propagandists and lobbyists masquerading as promoters of “scientific awareness”) do not have many hits on their sites. They are truly unpopular. These small gangs can attack GMO opponents, & terrorize and bully some lone scientist all they want. I can see that the strategy of GMO companies is to lobby governments and newspapers, which is much easier.—-
People make the mistake of engaging a paid shill. All one should do is *expose* them.
—
Finance people were risk-blind, but were a 1000 times more sophisticated than GMO-biologists (at least finance people can understand an insult). I noticed that the GMO promoters make elementary risk mistakes of showing the “benefits” of GMO (which I don’t contest) as if it meant anything about the “risk” of GMOs. This is the standard Russian Roulette fallacy by which someone tells you the probability of getting the bullet is lower *because* the money you win is now larger.
So far all arguments are fraught with these fallacies: 1) The “evidentiary fallacy” (or Turkey problem, mistaking evidence of absence for absence of evidence), 2) The potato fallacy, 3) The technological salvation fallacy (risk-blind), aside from other similar elementary mistakes.
via Some excellent news on GMOs. There is evidence… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.