{"id":251,"date":"2010-01-21T11:28:42","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T19:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"tag:google.com,2005:reader\/item\/9ddcea897350a5e2"},"modified":"2010-01-21T11:28:42","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T19:28:42","slug":"opacity-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/opacity-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Opacity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shared by JohnH
\n
\nRecent additions to NNT’s Notes page. HatTip to Dave Lull.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\n <\/font>120-
\n <\/b><\/font><\/font><\/font>Climate
\nChange and “Too Big” Polluters<\/b><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/h2>\n

I\u00a0 have been asked frequently on how to deal with climate
\nchange in connection with the Black Swan idea and my work on
\ndecision-making under opacity. The position I suggest should be based
\non both ignorance and the delegation to the wisdom of Mother Nature
\nsince it is older than us, hence wiser than us, and proven much
\nsmarter than scientists. We do not understand enough about Mother
\nNature to mess with her\u00a0 –and I do not trust the models used to
\nforecast climate change. Simply, we are facing nonlinearities and
\nmagnifications of errors coming from the so-called "butterfly
\neffects" we saw in Chapter 11, actually discovered by Lorenz
\nusing weather forecasting models. Small changes in input, coming from
\nmeasurement error, can lead to massively divergent projections –and
\nthat, very generously, assumes that we have the right equations.\n<\/p>\n

We have polluted for years, causing much damage to the
\nenvironment, while the scientists currently making these complicated
\nforecasting models were not sticking their necks out and trying to
\nstop us from building these risks (they resemble those “risk
\nexperts” in the economic domain who fight the previous war)
\n–these are the ones now trying to impose the solutions on us. But
\nthe skepticism about models that I propose does not lead to the same
\nconclusions as the ones endorsed by anti-environmentalists,
\npro-market fundamentalists, quite the contrary: we need to be
\nhyper-conservationists ecologically, super-Green, since we do not
\nknow what we are harming with now. That’s the sound policy under
\nignorance and epistemic opacity. To those who say “we have no
\nproof that we are harming nature”, a sound response is “we
\nhave no proof that we are not harming nature either” –the
\nburden of the proof is not on the ecological conservationist, but on
\nsomeone disrupting an old system. Furthermore we should not “try
\nto correct” the harm done as we may be creating another problem
\nwe do not know much about currently.<\/p>\n

One practical solution I came up with, based on the
\nnonlinearitities in the damage (under the assumption that harm
\nincreases disproportionally with the quantities released), and using
\nthe same mathematical reasoning as the one that led to my opposing
\nthe “too big” concept, is to spread the damage across
\npollutants –should we need to pollute, of course. Let us carry a
\nthought experiment.<\/p>\n

Case 1<\/i>: you give the patient a dose of cyanide, hemlock, or
\nsome poisonous substance, assuming they are equally harmful.<\/p>\n

Case 2<\/i>: you give the patient a tenth of a dose of ten such
\nsubstances, for the same total amount of poison.<\/p>\n

Clearly we can see that Case 2, by spreading the poison ingested
\nacross substances, is at the worst equally harmful (if all the
\npoisonous substances act in the same way), and at the best close to
\nharmless to the patient.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\n<\/font>119-
\nHuet & the Separation from the Vulgar, the Transactional, &
\nthe Common<\/b><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/h2>\n

Quiconque,
\ndit Horace, sera regard\u00e9 en naissant par les muses d\u2019un oeil
\nfavorable, il m\u00e9prisera les Couronnes des Jeux Olympiques des Grecs,
\n& des triomphes des Romains,\u00a0 & leur pr\u00e9f\u00e9rera les
\nd\u00e9lices d\u2019une retraite studieuse, & d\u2019une savante solitude.
\nIl faut de plus un grand courage pour r\u00e9sister aux accidents de la
\nvie, capable d\u2019interrompre les douceurs de son \u00e9tude, aux
\nn\u00e9cessitez publiques, aux guerres (…), aux pers\u00e9cutions des
\nenvieux, (..) et leur vie retirez les expose plus que les autres.
\nQuant un homme de cette terre sera consacrez aux Lettres, qu\u2019il ne
\ncherche la r\u00e9compense que dans les Lettres m\u00eames, & (…) du
\nhaut de cette sainte montagne, o\u00fa la vraie \u00e9rudition a plac\u00e9 sa
\ndemeure, il regarde le reste du monde avec compassion, & avec un
\ngrand m\u00e9pris des erreurs et des vaines occupations du vulgaire.<\/i><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

[I translate liberally:<\/u><\/i> Horace saw that he who is
\nwell treated by the muses (…) will despise the honors, the Olympic
\nMedals, the rewards of a common life. He will have to resist the
\npersecutions of the envious (…) to which his retirement &
\nsolitude will expose him more than others. From this Holy Mountain
\nwhere true erudition placed his residence, he observes the rest of
\nthe world with compassion and with a profound disdain of the
\ntransactions & activities of the vulgar.]\n<\/p>\n

Huet despised Montaigne –whom he called Montagne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shared by JohnH <\/p>\n

Recent additions to NNT’s Notes page. HatTip to Dave Lull.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n 120-
\n Climate
\nChange and “Too Big” Polluters
\nI\u00a0 have been asked frequently on how to deal with climate
\nchange in connection with the Black Swan idea …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}