If you can intentionally or unintentionally anger a friend to the point of making him try to harm you, he was never a friend.
via If you can intentionally or unintentionally… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
A great victory for us on this page. 2-3 years ago we discussed the HIDDEN RISKS of Lipitor from first principles and probabilistic arguments, namely that administering the drug for nonsevere cases would show side effects worse than benefits, simply using the argument that up to 2-3 standard deviations, nature has encountered the problem and has to have a selfcorrecting mechanism. We also said that there are many many more nonseverely affected patients than seriously ill ones (5000 times more) and that pharma would go for these.
The point was NONLINEARITY of Number Needed to Treat to condition and its probabilistic consequences.
Now 3 years later the side effects are starting to show. We can expect similar effects for any drug mass marketed to a wide semi-healthy patient, rather client base. Remarkably pharma understands the local problem (side effects) not the metaproblem (iatrogenics & small deviations). We called this NAIVE INTERVENTIONISM.
http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2014/08/08/pfizer-faces-numerous-lawsuits-over-lipitor-side-effects/
Pfizer Faces Numerous Lawsuits Over Lipitor Side Effects
A fast-growing number of lawsuits have been filed women who allege that the…
blogs.wsj.com|By Ed Silverman
via A great victory for us on this page. 2-3 years… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
So, finally, after our Precautionary paper, a GMO (Monsanto) lobbyist (name: Val Giddings) seems to be after us, with naive demonization techniques, very elementary efforts at delegitimizing me in person. I thought we were doing something wrong before that. But the problem is that the fellow is not very skilled at it and can’t seem to get more than 900 pple on twitter (a net of 300 followers after reciprocation).
I wonder if something has changed in the smear campaign business. Not that it has ever been a great idea. Ralph Nader a lone activist faced a smear campaign by GM (failed). Same with Edmond Safra with American Express paying journalists to smear him (failed too, but he got them to pay big bucks and benefited hugely from the affair).
Anyway, worth inspecting how these things work.
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UPDATE: So far reactions by lobbyists to our paper are not worth answering scientifically so far as they have been ALREADY addressed in text. The lobbyists just perform strawman deformations. Answering these other than telling them they are spinning means entering their game.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=51&page=G
‘The Terminator technology is not unethical. It is unethical to empower farmers with the ability to steal value added by companies.’
via So, finally, after our Precautionary paper, a… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
A formal definition of a charlatan. Is there anything missing? Also a formal definition of citation rings (since charlatans can hide under a collective of back-scratching fellows).
After 20 months, completed the math part of SILENT RISK. Now moving into the verbal part on top of the rigorous math apparatus, a codification of terms, making what needs to be precise as precise as possible so inference can be clean. The superimposed verbal part should make ALL math concepts accessible to the logically aware person; this approach is closer to legal philosophy in style. Reading 13th century legal philosophers like Olivi gave me an epiphany: the most important subject in the history of mankind, RISK Applied Probability doesn’t even have as much as a sketch of definitions.I noticed that many papers, researchers, decision-makers conflate many things, especially academics recall the Pinker Problem, with results patently opposite to what they claim. The GMO debacle and the sloppiness of the discussions on Black Swan risks by “scientists” not only clueless about probability but not aware of their ignorance makes this project essential.
