{"id":7961,"date":"2015-07-28T14:06:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T21:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=7961"},"modified":"2015-07-28T14:12:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T21:12:39","slug":"the-mathiness-of-nassim-nicholas-taleb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/the-mathiness-of-nassim-nicholas-taleb\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mathiness of Nassim Nicholas Taleb"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Certainly, mathematics is a powerful tool for gaining insight into the natural world, but Taleb\u2019s \u201cPrecautionary Principle\u201d is no <em>Principia Mathematica<\/em>. It would be overly generous to call it a mathematical argument; \u201cThe Precautionary Principle\u201d would be more accurately described as <em>mathiness<\/em><sup id=\"fnref:1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.inexactchange.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/24\/the-mathiness-of-nassim-nicholas-taleb\/#fn:1\" rel=\"footnote\">1<\/a><\/sup>. Rather than set out a rigorous argument, it uses things that <em>feel<\/em> like mathematics \u2013 graphs, equations, and technical definitions \u2013 to provide a veneer of rigor to an ideological agenda. Critically, it lacks the precision of language and the careful attention to assumptions that lie at the foundation of mathematical reasoning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.inexactchange.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/24\/the-mathiness-of-nassim-nicholas-taleb\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Mathiness of Nassim Nicholas Taleb<\/a><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/nntaleb\/status\/625403098622730240<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/Can the GMO shills send us another mathematician to &quot;debunk&quot; PP? The only 2 flaws Merberg found were HIS mistakes. https:\/\/dl.dropboxusercontent.com\/u\/50282823\/response.pdf \u2026\" target=\"_blank\">Hacker News discussion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Can the GMO shills send us another mathematician to &#8220;debunk&#8221; PP? The only 2 flaws Merberg found were HIS mistakes. https:\/\/dl.dropboxusercontent.com\/u\/50282823\/response.pdf \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Certainly, mathematics is a powerful tool for gaining insight into the natural world, but Taleb\u2019s \u201cPrecautionary Principle\u201d is no Principia Mathematica. It would be overly generous to call it a mathematical argument; \u201cThe Precautionary Principle\u201d would be more accurately described as mathiness1. Rather than set out a rigorous argument, it uses things that feel like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[791,1038,1037],"class_list":["post-7961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twitter","tag-gmos","tag-mathiness","tag-merberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7961","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=7961"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7964,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7961\/revisions\/7964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}