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GMO Alarmist Nassim Taleb Backs Out of Debate. I Refute Him Anyway

8 points by bko 11y ago

metaphorm 11y ago
the author of this article argues in favor of GMO on the basis of certain short term material benefits provided by them. he does not refute anything that I imagine Taleb might have conceivably presented as an argument in favor of his version of an anti-GMO stance based on the precautionary principle. this gives me the impression the author of this piece has not read or has not understood Taleb's style of argumentation and general philosophy with respect to black swan events, risk evaluation, and fragility/anti-fragility. if I might be permitted, briefly, to act as a surrogate for Taleb in this case I will try to present my interpretation of a Talebian argument against GMOs. this is not necessarily my position but I believe it is the argument the original author _should_ have addressed. Taleb would note that unintended consequences can have outsize impact on the world in ways that are not easy to anticipate and that our statistical and inferential models generally fail to account for due to the limitations of the underlying mathematics and the philosophy by which those models are interpreted. In his working paper Taleb refers to several possible "black swan" risks that could have catastrophic consequences if they do occur, and under Taleb's method of evaluating risk we must account for the fact that anything that is possible will eventually occur, so even low probability events must be accounted for if they have enormous impact when they do occur. It only needs to occur once, after all. The outsize risks Taleb discusses in his paper are the following: catastrophic ecological damage due to GMO vulnerability to specific pathogens, catastrophic ecological damage due to transgenic transfer of accidentally deleterious sequences to other species in the environment, catastrophic ecological damage due to unforeseen consequences that simply cannot be anticipated through rational, inferential models. Note that his primary concern is that GMO crops present a potential risk of catastrophic ecological damage. That is the agricultural equivalent of global nuclear war. It is an unacceptable outcome under any circumstances and it cannot be recovered from if it does occur. This is the basis of Taleb's criticism. He seems to be willing to forego the short term economic upside of using GMO crops as a price of avoiding the catastrophe scenario. The author of the reason.com piece slurs Taleb and calls him an "alarmist" but I don't think that is a fair or accurate characterization. Taleb is simply doing risk assessment in the way he knows how. Perhaps the rest of us should be alarmed that we remain naive and ignorant about how to perform risk assessment around events with potentially catastrophic outcomes. We seem to be especially prone to avoiding this type of risk assessment when it concludes that we SHOULD NOT seek short term material gain. And yet, that is what Taleb's method advises in this case and he is once again receiving a lot of pushback because of it.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  Exactly. Not only does Bailey not address Taleb's systemic arguments; I'm not sure he understand them, really.
kafkaesq 11y ago
Taleb probably looked into Bailey's earlier background, in particular his books Ecoscam and "The True State of the Planet, and his CEI connections came to the conclusion that at the time he was clearly ideology-driven, if not perhaps a bit of kook (I'm not saying that's what he is -- but his language at the time was quite strident, and one can't be blamed for coming away from this impression). He definitely seems to have sobered up a bit over the years (he's taken up a much more reasonable stance on global warming, for example), but I don't blame Taleb for applying the "cautionary principle" and walking a way from a situation that he suspected might have been something of a theatrical ambush (by being asked to debate someone who was perhaps rhetorically very well skilled, but somehow also caught up in a web of ideological, pseudo-rational thinking).

8 points by bko 11y ago

the author of this article argues in favor of GMO on the basis of certain short term material benefits provided by them. he does not refute anything that I imagine Taleb might have conceivably presented as an argument in favor of his version of an anti-GMO stance based on the precautionary principle. this gives me the impression the author of this piece has not read or has not understood Taleb's style of argumentation and general philosophy with respect to black swan events, risk evaluation, and fragility/anti-fragility. if I might be permitted, briefly, to act as a surrogate for Taleb in this case I will try to present my interpretation of a Talebian argument against GMOs. this is not necessarily my position but I believe it is the argument the original author _should_ have addressed. Taleb would note that unintended consequences can have outsize impact on the world in ways that are not easy to anticipate and that our statistical and inferential models generally fail to account for due to the limitations of the underlying mathematics and the philosophy by which those models are interpreted. In his working paper Taleb refers to several possible "black swan" risks that could have catastrophic consequences if they do occur, and under Taleb's method of evaluating risk we must account for the fact that anything that is possible will eventually occur, so even low probability events must be accounted for if they have enormous impact when they do occur. It only needs to occur once, after all. The outsize risks Taleb discusses in his paper are the following: catastrophic ecological damage due to GMO vulnerability to specific pathogens, catastrophic ecological damage due to transgenic transfer of accidentally deleterious sequences to other species in the environment, catastrophic ecological damage due to unforeseen consequences that simply cannot be anticipated through rational, inferential models. Note that his primary concern is that GMO crops present a potential risk of catastrophic ecological damage. That is the agricultural equivalent of global nuclear war. It is an unacceptable outcome under any circumstances and it cannot be recovered from if it does occur. This is the basis of Taleb's criticism. He seems to be willing to forego the short term economic upside of using GMO crops as a price of avoiding the catastrophe scenario. The author of the reason.com piece slurs Taleb and calls him an "alarmist" but I don't think that is a fair or accurate characterization. Taleb is simply doing risk assessment in the way he knows how. Perhaps the rest of us should be alarmed that we remain naive and ignorant about how to perform risk assessment around events with potentially catastrophic outcomes. We seem to be especially prone to avoiding this type of risk assessment when it concludes that we SHOULD NOT seek short term material gain. And yet, that is what Taleb's method advises in this case and he is once again receiving a lot of pushback because of it.

kafkaesq 11y ago
Exactly. Not only does Bailey not address Taleb's systemic arguments; I'm not sure he understand them, really.

kafkaesq 11y ago

Taleb probably looked into Bailey's earlier background, in particular his books Ecoscam and "The True State of the Planet, and his CEI connections came to the conclusion that at the time he was clearly ideology-driven, if not perhaps a bit of kook (I'm not saying that's what he is -- but his language at the time was quite strident, and one can't be blamed for coming away from this impression). He definitely seems to have sobered up a bit over the years (he's taken up a much more reasonable stance on global warming, for example), but I don't blame Taleb for applying the "cautionary principle" and walking a way from a situation that he suspected might have been something of a theatrical ambush (by being asked to debate someone who was perhaps rhetorically very well skilled, but somehow also caught up in a web of ideological, pseudo-rational thinking).