{"id":6580,"date":"2014-02-09T21:19:37","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T05:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=6580"},"modified":"2014-02-09T21:19:37","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T05:19:37","slug":"n-n-talebs-review-of-the-rational-animal-how-evolution-made-us-smarter-than-we-think-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/n-n-talebs-review-of-the-rational-animal-how-evolution-made-us-smarter-than-we-think-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"N N Taleb&#8217;s review of &#8216;The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think&#8217; | Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>1.0 out of 5 stars <br \/>Nonsensical definition of rationality, February 7, 2014<br \/>By N N Taleb &#8220;Nassim N Taleb&#8221;<br \/>This review is from: The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think Hardcover<br \/>I am not used to give 1 start reviews but I truly feel compelled to do so here, not just because this is a very bad book, but also because the authors are clueless about risk and are dangerously so, promoting silly risk bearing. The authors pathologize people for not accepting GMOs although &#8220;the World Health Organization has never found evidence of ill effects&#8221; a standard confusion of evidence of absence and absence of evidence. This pathologizing is similar to behavioral researchers labeling hyperbolic discounting as &#8220;irrational&#8221; when in fact it is the researcher who has a very narrow model and richer models make the &#8220;irrationality&#8221; go away. They fail to understand that humans may have precautionary principles against systemic risks, and can be skeptical of the unnatural for rational reasons.The book is a rehashing of the general ideas about evolution, except falling for a certain brand of &#8220;naive rationalism&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/review\/R3PV8EN44Z23B2\/ref=cm_cr_old_cmt_rd\">Amazon.com: N N Taleb &#8220;Nassim N Taleb&#8221;&#8216;s review of The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us&#8230;<\/a>.<br \/>HatTip to Dave Lull<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1.0 out of 5 stars Nonsensical definition of rationality, February 7, 2014By N N Taleb &#8220;Nassim N Taleb&#8221;This review is from: The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think HardcoverI am not used to give 1 start reviews but I truly feel compelled to do so here, not just because this is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[288],"tags":[562],"class_list":["post-6580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-nassim-taleb-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6580","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6580"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6582,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6580\/revisions\/6582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}