
GMO Alarmist Nassim Taleb Backs Out of Debate. I Refute Him Anyway - bko
http://reason.com/archives/2016/02/19/gmo-alarmist-nassim-taleb-backs-out-of-d
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kafkaesq
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).

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

