11 ms·

The Global Rebellion Against “No-Skin-In-the-Game” Insiders

113 points by MollyR 11y ago

civilian 11y ago
Taleb is an idiot: https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/682361866321002496 https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/682361866321002496
- nicky0 11y ago
  I love how Taleb makes people so angry that they rush to denigrate him. This in itself illustrates many of his points. Most of the links posted here are people with a personal axe to grind or a vested interest in silencing him.
- Plough_Jogger 11y ago
  Agreed.
- skolos 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure that you comment is down-voted due to choice of words. Taleb is a snake oil salesman and other than catchy term "black swan" his words should be ignored as much as possible. There are many blog posts on web that go into details to prove this. In addition to the above link, here is another set of links: http://theweek.com/articles/453558/nassim-taleb-used-hero-but-today-hes-just-plain-wrong http://theweek.com/articles/453558/nassim-taleb-used-hero-bu... http://www.cnbc.com/id/31386309 http://www.cnbc.com/id/31386309 https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/nassim-taleb-clown-of-quantitative-finance/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/nassim-taleb-c... https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/03/is-nassim-taleb-a-dangerous-imbecile-or-just-on-the-pay-of-the-anti-gmo-mafia/ https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/03/is-nassim-...
  - eruditely 11y ago
    Taleb is not at all a "snake oil" salesman, he is very great. ) very much cited https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en ) http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html <-- Silent Risk https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIR1o1dnk5ZmRaaGs/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIR1o1dnk5ZmRaaGs... ) http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf probability theory is the theory for dealing with what we do not know, and that's what his criticism of GMO's and such are based off, it's a rigorous field. His paper on Pinker's work was accepted into a peer reviewed journal. So it's not by any means "outlandish". Cirillo P., Taleb N.N., 2015. On the statistical properties and tail risk of violent conflicts. ) Daniel Kahneman probably the most celebrated intellectual/scientist of this specific modern era calls for his inclusion among the world's top 100 intellectuals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMBclvY_EMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMBclvY_EMA Not to mention, you know, actually predicting the financial crisis of 08 in print? Those were just articles that people get when they're in the limelight and have positions that are hard to follow. It's just dishonest to criticize him like that.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    The "Precautionary Principle" nonsense has always been my least favorite aspect of Taleb's shtick. You're asking too much of Taleb, however. It is not his place to be right all the time. Rather, he must always point out how often those in charge are wrong. That is how he can contribute to the progress of humanity.
- Eifoov7h 11y ago
  Oh please. There are much better links for showing that. https://archive.is/7Bjqc https://archive.is/7Bjqc
  - eruditely 11y ago
    This comment does not pass the principle of charity. You can't just take one isolated comment from twitter and use it as evidence against him. Twitter is supposed to be a place where you're able to share anything quickly. Here's a good aggregate measure of his influence. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en Below is a linked technical book vol1 of Silent Risk. Which definitely demonstrates his abilities. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIR1o1dnk5ZmRaaGs/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIR1o1dnk5ZmRaaGs...
    - Eifoov7h 11y ago
      That's a classic motte-and-bailey doctrine right there. It shows Taleb commenting on a topic he clearly knows nothing about while presenting himself as an expert. Something, if I recall correctly, he often criticises in other people. And it's not merely being imprecise, it's at least halfway between being wrong and not even wrong. If someone's that sloppy on Twitter, why would their research be any better? It probably isn't. In a series of tweets posted around the same time, Taleb also pointed to a "technical" paper claiming a connection between P versus NP and the effects of GMOs [1]. It's drivel. A series of non-sequiturs. No connection is actually established, only claimed. I credit that paper only with relieving me of the dilemma of whether Taleb is an interesting thinker or just another crackpot. (And I'm not even a GMO enthusiast.) The tweets are now gone; I only found this archive.is link because it was posted to a mathematics cranks subreddit. Probably because these were too obvious of an embarrassment to him. Fine. Though I think Taleb also likes to talk about "courage" a lot... Taleb's other "technical" papers are not particularly impressive either. I find them completely inscrutable; Taleb never explains his notation or terminology, and I often have a hard time deciphering equations he writes. While this may be because of my rather modest background in statistics, I'm sure it could be possible to make them more accessible. Take Laszlo Babai's paper on graph isomorphism in quasipolynomial time [2]: all you have to know in advance to understand it is some basic vocabulary of graph theory and algebra, and you can readily find them even on Wikipedia. He lays out definitions clearly and even goes as far as as presenting Latin equivalents of Fraktur letters (I wouldn't bother). Taleb seems more interested in establishing profundity by obscurity (what Charles Seife calls "proofiness"), like some kind of post-modernist philosopher. Come to think of it, Taleb seems very much like one. (I know I'm being trolled, but...) [1] http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/PPAlgo2.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/PPAlgo2.pdf [2] http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03547v1 http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03547v1
- murbard2 11y ago
  As much as Taleb's attitude and lack of manners are annoying, he does have a point and the article quoted by Pinker fails to get it. For instance: "To a normal person, the statement ‘terrorism kills far fewer people than falls from ladders’ means a purely factual statement about the number of casualties over a specified period in the past. " No, it really doesn't. The whole point of these statements is to hint at latent properties, not merely to report historical records.
fiatmoney 11y ago
It's not only "no skin in the game", it's also "in the game to lose". For instance, Democratic victories in the US are really great for GOP fundraising. Given the choice between no job in a Trump administration, and a sinecure complaining about the policies a President Clinton enacts, many of the GOP establishment prefer the latter. This tends to engender some frustration. A lot of government policy around things like welfare enrollment, security theater, or certain categories of crime follows similar incentives. "Solve the problem", especially in a cost effective way, and you're out of a job.
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  "Solve the problem", especially in a cost effective way, and you're out of a job. Or redefine your mission. Which is what happened when there was a vaccine invented for Infantile Paralysis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_of_Dimes#Change_of_mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_of_Dimes#Change_of_m...
  - fiatmoney 11y ago
    March of Dimes was a almost pure fundraising / fund distribution organization - it's very easy for such organizations to change direction when their putative target changes.
shas3 11y ago
One can come up with a completely alternative explanation for what's happening with Trump/Sanders, Farage/Corbyn, Modi, etc. based on constructs like 'end of average' and income inequality. These are social consequences of the growing gap between highly skilled and low-skilled workers. The former are more and more important to the economy even as the latter become less so with technological progress and globalization. The tectonic shifts in jobs, wealth, etc. are causing a realignment of electoral coalitions. Low skilled jobs are automated or shifted offshore at an increasingly faster pace. The status quo of the last 40 years is being challenged: in the US with the reshaping of the economic and social landscape of the country, and elsewhere in the world with the emergence of new uncertainly-oriented behemoths in China and India. A libertarian magazine like Reason would be more than happy to seek and celebrate a libertarian revolution, whether one really exists or not.
- mtgx 11y ago
  It doesn't help that not only does the US not adopt free college and other educational programs to ensure its workforce is prepared for the 21st century going forward (as an investment into the country's future, not a "freebie" - just like infrastructure spending), but it actually gives everyone large amounts of life-long debt through the broken tuition loan system it has put in place. Then, they export all low-skill (or even higher skill) jobs abroad. So the low-skilled masses are getting screwed from all sides.
  - scottlocklin 11y ago
    What do you do with the people who are too dumb to go to college? Serious question; one that seems to get left out among the college educated who are running the place. It's like basketball players assuming everyone is over 6 feet tall and athletic.
    - unchocked 11y ago
      Simple: you dumb college down. If college is the new high school, then college becomes a default path that is more valued for its socialization experience than for academic knowledge imparted. And like AP classes in high school, you have hard majors where the "life of mind" is taught, and push the smart kids to go into those.
KingMob 11y ago
Ehh. Another "libertarian" discussion without any reference to the fact that prior to the mid-late 20th c. in America, and in most of the world even today, "libertarian" is a synonym for "anarchist". Unfortunately, it got mangled along the way. As always on political terminology, Orwell was most astute: "Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different." "It would seem that, as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, youth hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I don't know what else."
Animats 11y ago
"What we are seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking "clerks" and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think...and 5) who to vote for." That's Taleb describing himself.
- terravion 11y ago
  Especially since he's not going to starve for evidence-less anti-GMO policies. I'd like to see him name who should starve for the precautionary principle--would he?
  - choicewords 11y ago
    So why is there such a strong lobby against GMO labeling laws?
    - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
      That's a really good question. Surprisingly, I don't think there's just the one simple explanation - that it's regulatory capture based in the activities of lobbyists. I think it's also a reaction to the fairly draconian anti-tobacco lobby from say, 1980 until the United States v. Phillip Morris decision. This is part of the Prohibtionist American anti-pattern.
    - mikeyouse 11y ago
      I've seen a few reasons that make sense; 1. GMO is really really hard to define. Figuring out what would need to be labeled would be ripe for manipulation. (i.e. is material genetically inserted from the same species, like doubling up a promoter region, GMO? Or if you discover something through a GM but recreate it 'naturally', is that still considered GM?) 2. The average consumer knows very little science, they'll likely avoid products that are labeled GM, whether or not it makes any sense to do so. Handicapping a potentially important technology to appease the scientifically ignorant seems like pretty bad policy. From my perspective, opt-in initiatives like the non-GMO project are a better way to handle the labeling requirements.
andrewclunn 11y ago
One of the reasons I refuse to self identify as a 'skeptic' is because the supposed reverence for science and empiricism is largely just deference to academia. There's also a feigned distaste for personal experience (and really who can or should dismiss their own life experience). Ultimately this isn't about libertarianism, it's about allowing individuals to choose their own standards for evidence, trusted authorities, and process for making their own decisions. The "educated elite" really truly believe that their standards are superior and that it's their duty to help others by making the decisions for them. This is ultimately a religion attempting to impose itself on others, but because it doesn't call itself one people don't recognize it as doing such.
- choicewords 11y ago
  The 'higher standards' are often influenced by large amounts of money coming from corporations. I would not so much think of it as a religion, then, as another means of propaganda from the overall system.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Most of the money in academic research comes from the government.
CM30 11y ago
I think the best part of the article, and perhaps the best summary why this is happening is this single line: "who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think...and 5) who to vote for." People are seeing right through the political class and media, and it's making them extremely worried. They see an elite that seems to utterly hate them, ignore things they consider issues (while attacking anyone who disagrees as 'bigots') and who who seem more interested in lining their own pockets than actually helping society.
- x5n1 11y ago
  It has always been this way for humans for the past 10,000 years since we invented society. In small groups you can actually care about people, in large hierarchical groups you can't possibly care about anyone other than your small tribe. The solution to this is to break countries into much smaller units of representation while at the same time reducing the population significantly, we don't need more than a few hundred million people on this planet, ever. Essentially making a war on hierarchy and massive conglomeration of people. Without these two moves, things will continue to get worse or perhaps better depending on perspective. It's evident to anyone with a mind that civilization as it exists now is completely and utterly a mad experiment which has at least as much chance in total failure as it does in success... and success might not be something which is positive, i.e. everyone hooked into the Matrix or something akin to that. Robots doing everything and reducing people to something akin to wild animals with no economic purpose.
  - _yosefk 11y ago
    When you say that "we" (you?) don't need most of the people living today, or their offspring, ever, isn't it the perfect example of inability to care about people?
    - x5n1 11y ago
      That does not necessarily mean that no one should have any kids. It means that people should be forced to have at most one child, by probably compulsory sterilization after the first child's birth. Puerto Rico is an example of a place where this policy worked just fine. And it should apply to everyone, not certain groups and classes of people which is where such a policy errors. So no it has nothing to do with caring for people. In fact the geometric population reduction would have the exact impact of reducing the population and therefore creating more appreciation for people.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
This is very very true. While I don't share his sentiments about GMO, the principle applies to immigration and asylum seekers - where politicans living in their own walled world tell us mere mortals how letting random people into the country is the right thing to do and also beneficial to the economy.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I feel that this global rebellion against authority will seriously damage us as a civilization. This is mass insanity caused by somewhat justifiable lack of trust, amplified millionfold by the media. It's psychological reactance happening at scale, and we're doing it to one another. What I mean is - even though probably half of psychology (and definitely more than half of dietetics) is wrong, it gets made wronger 10 times more by journalists. If you, dear "rebel against 'no-skin-in-the-game' insiders" are reading popular media crap and believing it, instead of standing in front of their offices with pichforks, you're responsible for this. If you repeat that bullshit further, you're responsible more, and God forbid you actually make a business from propagating it to people. And either way, you're still much better off listening to half-wrong field of psychology than to your grandmother. They at least have some context and try to get it not terribly wrong. Also the funny thing: the very ethics of capitalism was always "if I mind my own business and/or maybe even benefit for myself at others' expense, things will turn out Good for everyone". Greedy optimization ("greedy" in the CS sense of the word). Now that it turned the world into such a mess, what's the answer? More individualism, more minding your own business, more greedy optimizing? Seriously, how do people arrive at this conclusion? The idea that local optimization is better than global baffles me completely. Where do people get it from?
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  We no longer have any authority. We no longer have anyone to trust. No politicians, no thinkers, no idealists. This is a very serious crisis of trust and you can't make it go away by shouting at people; much less by shouting at the wrong people.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    True. I didn't mean to come off as shouting. I guess that only reflects how powerless I feel in the face of this crisis.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Honestly this is why so many people like a person like Donald Trump. They crave an alpha leader: strong, unafraid, confident. Which he definitely is. He's 180 degrees from the thoughtful, intellectual, politically correct yet fundamentally dishonest and self-serving leaders we've had for the past 30 years. It's in our primal pack psychology from when we all lived in tribes.
dforrestwilson1 11y ago
I don't know whether to applaud or cry. Worrisome trends: Globally 1. Massive population explosion 2. Declining cross-border trade 3. Declining Pax-Americana Domestically 1. Declining educational standards leading to a less-skilled middle class 2. Corruption (government) * Greed (corporate) 3. Justifiable distrust of media and political class 4. Revolt against free-trade due to #1 5. Separation between the ultra rich and the rest 6. Political upheaval due to #1-5 It's been almost a decade since the world experienced a major war or epidemic. Means tend to revert, and socio-economic upheaval tends to lead to one or both. People who feel desperate take desperate measures. It's my belief that people who haven't been in a war are more likely to start them, especially when they can self-reinforce their own bellicosity through like-minded media groups. I don't know how to solve for all the variables, and I'm not sure we will.

113 points by MollyR 11y ago

Taleb is an idiot: https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/682361866321002496 https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/682361866321002496

nicky0 11y ago
I love how Taleb makes people so angry that they rush to denigrate him. This in itself illustrates many of his points. Most of the links posted here are people with a personal axe to grind or a vested interest in silencing him.
Plough_Jogger 11y ago
Agreed.
skolos 11y ago
I'm pretty sure that you comment is down-voted due to choice of words. Taleb is a snake oil salesman and other than catchy term "black swan" his words should be ignored as much as possible. There are many blog posts on web that go into details to prove this. In addition to the above link, here is another set of links: http://theweek.com/articles/453558/nassim-taleb-used-hero-but-today-hes-just-plain-wrong http://theweek.com/articles/453558/nassim-taleb-used-hero-bu... http://www.cnbc.com/id/31386309 http://www.cnbc.com/id/31386309 https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/nassim-taleb-clown-of-quantitative-finance/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/nassim-taleb-c... https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/03/is-nassim-taleb-a-dangerous-imbecile-or-just-on-the-pay-of-the-anti-gmo-mafia/ https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/03/is-nassim-...
- eruditely 11y ago
  Taleb is not at all a "snake oil" salesman, he is very great. ) very much cited https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en ) http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html <-- Silent Risk https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIR1o1dnk5ZmRaaGs/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIR1o1dnk5ZmRaaGs... ) http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf probability theory is the theory for dealing with what we do not know, and that's what his criticism of GMO's and such are based off, it's a rigorous field. His paper on Pinker's work was accepted into a peer reviewed journal. So it's not by any means "outlandish". Cirillo P., Taleb N.N., 2015. On the statistical properties and tail risk of violent conflicts. ) Daniel Kahneman probably the most celebrated intellectual/scientist of this specific modern era calls for his inclusion among the world's top 100 intellectuals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMBclvY_EMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMBclvY_EMA Not to mention, you know, actually predicting the financial crisis of 08 in print? Those were just articles that people get when they're in the limelight and have positions that are hard to follow. It's just dishonest to criticize him like that.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  The "Precautionary Principle" nonsense has always been my least favorite aspect of Taleb's shtick. You're asking too much of Taleb, however. It is not his place to be right all the time. Rather, he must always point out how often those in charge are wrong. That is how he can contribute to the progress of humanity.
Eifoov7h 11y ago
Oh please. There are much better links for showing that. https://archive.is/7Bjqc https://archive.is/7Bjqc
- eruditely 11y ago
  This comment does not pass the principle of charity. You can't just take one isolated comment from twitter and use it as evidence against him. Twitter is supposed to be a place where you're able to share anything quickly. Here's a good aggregate measure of his influence. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en Below is a linked technical book vol1 of Silent Risk. Which definitely demonstrates his abilities. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIR1o1dnk5ZmRaaGs/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nhAlfIk3QIR1o1dnk5ZmRaaGs...
  - Eifoov7h 11y ago
    That's a classic motte-and-bailey doctrine right there. It shows Taleb commenting on a topic he clearly knows nothing about while presenting himself as an expert. Something, if I recall correctly, he often criticises in other people. And it's not merely being imprecise, it's at least halfway between being wrong and not even wrong. If someone's that sloppy on Twitter, why would their research be any better? It probably isn't. In a series of tweets posted around the same time, Taleb also pointed to a "technical" paper claiming a connection between P versus NP and the effects of GMOs [1]. It's drivel. A series of non-sequiturs. No connection is actually established, only claimed. I credit that paper only with relieving me of the dilemma of whether Taleb is an interesting thinker or just another crackpot. (And I'm not even a GMO enthusiast.) The tweets are now gone; I only found this archive.is link because it was posted to a mathematics cranks subreddit. Probably because these were too obvious of an embarrassment to him. Fine. Though I think Taleb also likes to talk about "courage" a lot... Taleb's other "technical" papers are not particularly impressive either. I find them completely inscrutable; Taleb never explains his notation or terminology, and I often have a hard time deciphering equations he writes. While this may be because of my rather modest background in statistics, I'm sure it could be possible to make them more accessible. Take Laszlo Babai's paper on graph isomorphism in quasipolynomial time [2]: all you have to know in advance to understand it is some basic vocabulary of graph theory and algebra, and you can readily find them even on Wikipedia. He lays out definitions clearly and even goes as far as as presenting Latin equivalents of Fraktur letters (I wouldn't bother). Taleb seems more interested in establishing profundity by obscurity (what Charles Seife calls "proofiness"), like some kind of post-modernist philosopher. Come to think of it, Taleb seems very much like one. (I know I'm being trolled, but...) [1] http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/PPAlgo2.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/PPAlgo2.pdf [2] http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03547v1 http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03547v1
murbard2 11y ago
As much as Taleb's attitude and lack of manners are annoying, he does have a point and the article quoted by Pinker fails to get it. For instance: "To a normal person, the statement ‘terrorism kills far fewer people than falls from ladders’ means a purely factual statement about the number of casualties over a specified period in the past. " No, it really doesn't. The whole point of these statements is to hint at latent properties, not merely to report historical records.

fiatmoney 11y ago

It's not only "no skin in the game", it's also "in the game to lose". For instance, Democratic victories in the US are really great for GOP fundraising. Given the choice between no job in a Trump administration, and a sinecure complaining about the policies a President Clinton enacts, many of the GOP establishment prefer the latter. This tends to engender some frustration. A lot of government policy around things like welfare enrollment, security theater, or certain categories of crime follows similar incentives. "Solve the problem", especially in a cost effective way, and you're out of a job.

PhantomGremlin 11y ago
"Solve the problem", especially in a cost effective way, and you're out of a job. Or redefine your mission. Which is what happened when there was a vaccine invented for Infantile Paralysis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_of_Dimes#Change_of_mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_of_Dimes#Change_of_m...
- fiatmoney 11y ago
  March of Dimes was a almost pure fundraising / fund distribution organization - it's very easy for such organizations to change direction when their putative target changes.

shas3 11y ago

One can come up with a completely alternative explanation for what's happening with Trump/Sanders, Farage/Corbyn, Modi, etc. based on constructs like 'end of average' and income inequality. These are social consequences of the growing gap between highly skilled and low-skilled workers. The former are more and more important to the economy even as the latter become less so with technological progress and globalization. The tectonic shifts in jobs, wealth, etc. are causing a realignment of electoral coalitions. Low skilled jobs are automated or shifted offshore at an increasingly faster pace. The status quo of the last 40 years is being challenged: in the US with the reshaping of the economic and social landscape of the country, and elsewhere in the world with the emergence of new uncertainly-oriented behemoths in China and India. A libertarian magazine like Reason would be more than happy to seek and celebrate a libertarian revolution, whether one really exists or not.

mtgx 11y ago
It doesn't help that not only does the US not adopt free college and other educational programs to ensure its workforce is prepared for the 21st century going forward (as an investment into the country's future, not a "freebie" - just like infrastructure spending), but it actually gives everyone large amounts of life-long debt through the broken tuition loan system it has put in place. Then, they export all low-skill (or even higher skill) jobs abroad. So the low-skilled masses are getting screwed from all sides.
- scottlocklin 11y ago
  What do you do with the people who are too dumb to go to college? Serious question; one that seems to get left out among the college educated who are running the place. It's like basketball players assuming everyone is over 6 feet tall and athletic.
  - unchocked 11y ago
    Simple: you dumb college down. If college is the new high school, then college becomes a default path that is more valued for its socialization experience than for academic knowledge imparted. And like AP classes in high school, you have hard majors where the "life of mind" is taught, and push the smart kids to go into those.

KingMob 11y ago

Ehh. Another "libertarian" discussion without any reference to the fact that prior to the mid-late 20th c. in America, and in most of the world even today, "libertarian" is a synonym for "anarchist". Unfortunately, it got mangled along the way. As always on political terminology, Orwell was most astute: "Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different." "It would seem that, as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, youth hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I don't know what else."

Animats 11y ago

"What we are seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking "clerks" and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think...and 5) who to vote for." That's Taleb describing himself.

terravion 11y ago
Especially since he's not going to starve for evidence-less anti-GMO policies. I'd like to see him name who should starve for the precautionary principle--would he?
- choicewords 11y ago
  So why is there such a strong lobby against GMO labeling laws?
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    That's a really good question. Surprisingly, I don't think there's just the one simple explanation - that it's regulatory capture based in the activities of lobbyists. I think it's also a reaction to the fairly draconian anti-tobacco lobby from say, 1980 until the United States v. Phillip Morris decision. This is part of the Prohibtionist American anti-pattern.
  - mikeyouse 11y ago
    I've seen a few reasons that make sense; 1. GMO is really really hard to define. Figuring out what would need to be labeled would be ripe for manipulation. (i.e. is material genetically inserted from the same species, like doubling up a promoter region, GMO? Or if you discover something through a GM but recreate it 'naturally', is that still considered GM?) 2. The average consumer knows very little science, they'll likely avoid products that are labeled GM, whether or not it makes any sense to do so. Handicapping a potentially important technology to appease the scientifically ignorant seems like pretty bad policy. From my perspective, opt-in initiatives like the non-GMO project are a better way to handle the labeling requirements.

andrewclunn 11y ago

One of the reasons I refuse to self identify as a 'skeptic' is because the supposed reverence for science and empiricism is largely just deference to academia. There's also a feigned distaste for personal experience (and really who can or should dismiss their own life experience). Ultimately this isn't about libertarianism, it's about allowing individuals to choose their own standards for evidence, trusted authorities, and process for making their own decisions. The "educated elite" really truly believe that their standards are superior and that it's their duty to help others by making the decisions for them. This is ultimately a religion attempting to impose itself on others, but because it doesn't call itself one people don't recognize it as doing such.

choicewords 11y ago
The 'higher standards' are often influenced by large amounts of money coming from corporations. I would not so much think of it as a religion, then, as another means of propaganda from the overall system.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Most of the money in academic research comes from the government.

CM30 11y ago

I think the best part of the article, and perhaps the best summary why this is happening is this single line: "who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think...and 5) who to vote for." People are seeing right through the political class and media, and it's making them extremely worried. They see an elite that seems to utterly hate them, ignore things they consider issues (while attacking anyone who disagrees as 'bigots') and who who seem more interested in lining their own pockets than actually helping society.

x5n1 11y ago
It has always been this way for humans for the past 10,000 years since we invented society. In small groups you can actually care about people, in large hierarchical groups you can't possibly care about anyone other than your small tribe. The solution to this is to break countries into much smaller units of representation while at the same time reducing the population significantly, we don't need more than a few hundred million people on this planet, ever. Essentially making a war on hierarchy and massive conglomeration of people. Without these two moves, things will continue to get worse or perhaps better depending on perspective. It's evident to anyone with a mind that civilization as it exists now is completely and utterly a mad experiment which has at least as much chance in total failure as it does in success... and success might not be something which is positive, i.e. everyone hooked into the Matrix or something akin to that. Robots doing everything and reducing people to something akin to wild animals with no economic purpose.
- _yosefk 11y ago
  When you say that "we" (you?) don't need most of the people living today, or their offspring, ever, isn't it the perfect example of inability to care about people?
  - x5n1 11y ago
    That does not necessarily mean that no one should have any kids. It means that people should be forced to have at most one child, by probably compulsory sterilization after the first child's birth. Puerto Rico is an example of a place where this policy worked just fine. And it should apply to everyone, not certain groups and classes of people which is where such a policy errors. So no it has nothing to do with caring for people. In fact the geometric population reduction would have the exact impact of reducing the population and therefore creating more appreciation for people.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

This is very very true. While I don't share his sentiments about GMO, the principle applies to immigration and asylum seekers - where politicans living in their own walled world tell us mere mortals how letting random people into the country is the right thing to do and also beneficial to the economy.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I feel that this global rebellion against authority will seriously damage us as a civilization. This is mass insanity caused by somewhat justifiable lack of trust, amplified millionfold by the media. It's psychological reactance happening at scale, and we're doing it to one another. What I mean is - even though probably half of psychology (and definitely more than half of dietetics) is wrong, it gets made wronger 10 times more by journalists. If you, dear "rebel against 'no-skin-in-the-game' insiders" are reading popular media crap and believing it, instead of standing in front of their offices with pichforks, you're responsible for this. If you repeat that bullshit further, you're responsible more, and God forbid you actually make a business from propagating it to people. And either way, you're still much better off listening to half-wrong field of psychology than to your grandmother. They at least have some context and try to get it not terribly wrong. Also the funny thing: the very ethics of capitalism was always "if I mind my own business and/or maybe even benefit for myself at others' expense, things will turn out Good for everyone". Greedy optimization ("greedy" in the CS sense of the word). Now that it turned the world into such a mess, what's the answer? More individualism, more minding your own business, more greedy optimizing? Seriously, how do people arrive at this conclusion? The idea that local optimization is better than global baffles me completely. Where do people get it from?

guard-of-terra 11y ago
We no longer have any authority. We no longer have anyone to trust. No politicians, no thinkers, no idealists. This is a very serious crisis of trust and you can't make it go away by shouting at people; much less by shouting at the wrong people.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  True. I didn't mean to come off as shouting. I guess that only reflects how powerless I feel in the face of this crisis.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Honestly this is why so many people like a person like Donald Trump. They crave an alpha leader: strong, unafraid, confident. Which he definitely is. He's 180 degrees from the thoughtful, intellectual, politically correct yet fundamentally dishonest and self-serving leaders we've had for the past 30 years. It's in our primal pack psychology from when we all lived in tribes.

dforrestwilson1 11y ago

I don't know whether to applaud or cry. Worrisome trends: Globally 1. Massive population explosion 2. Declining cross-border trade 3. Declining Pax-Americana Domestically 1. Declining educational standards leading to a less-skilled middle class 2. Corruption (government) * Greed (corporate) 3. Justifiable distrust of media and political class 4. Revolt against free-trade due to #1 5. Separation between the ultra rich and the rest 6. Political upheaval due to #1-5 It's been almost a decade since the world experienced a major war or epidemic. Means tend to revert, and socio-economic upheaval tends to lead to one or both. People who feel desperate take desperate measures. It's my belief that people who haven't been in a war are more likely to start them, especially when they can self-reinforce their own bellicosity through like-minded media groups. I don't know how to solve for all the variables, and I'm not sure we will.