
Nassim Taleb suggests Musk doesn’t understand risk in complex systems - SQL2219
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/taleb-says-musks-comment-on-coronavirus-panic-being-dumb-is-whats-dumb-2020-03-07?mod=home-page
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curiousgal
Nassim Taleb got lucky trading during the 80s and he would not let us hear the
end of it. He is smart and all but his language and writing style spike my BS
meter.

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aguyfromnb
I'm not a huge fan of NNT. He's a jerk on Twitter (so is Musk), but he's not
the first expert-in-his-field to call Musk out for not knowing what he's
talking about. The latest incident being Musk's irresponsible comments on
Covid-19.

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justanotherhn
How are his comments irresponsible? All he said is that the panic is dumb.
That's it. Are you are suggesting that people should be panicking? Which
includes stockpiling, paranoia and racism disguised as fear of the virus.

Definition: A sudden, overpowering feeling of fear, often affecting many
people at once

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aguyfromnb
> _How are his comments irresponsible? All he said is that the panic is dumb.
> That 's it._

That isn't "all he said"; you could try reading his Tweets on the matter:

"Virality of C19 is overstated due to conflating diagnosis date with
contraction date & over-extrapolating exponential growth, which is never what
happens in reality. Keep extrapolating & virus will exceed mass of known
universe!"

This is just utter nonsense. It's gibberish, coming from a guy who uses the
term "exponential growth" all the time when it comes to his factory
production. _Virality_ is a social media term for crying out loud.

> _Definition: A sudden, overpowering feeling of fear, often affecting many
> people at once_

It's your and Elon's _opinion_ that people are panicking.

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justanotherhn
Twitter is a place where people will take the contrarian point to the most
obvious of statements to "dunk" on people who they perceive as the goliath in
their warped view of reality. Nassim knew damn well what Elon meant with his
tweet and chose to misinterpret it. [0]

[0] “If the word ‘panic’ means ‘exaggerated’ reaction, could be so at the
individual level but NOT at the collective one"

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AzzieElbab
Best case scenario - Musk is being dishonest

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Bombthecat
Meh, i think that this is part of beeing an entrepreneur. You don't consider
the risks as high as others.

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vanniv
Permabear/crisis geek complains that people not panicking just don't
understand that we are all gonna die again. News at 11.

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smallcharleston
Nassim Taleb suggests everybody but Nassim Taleb doesn’t understand risk in
complex systems.

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appleshore
I generally like the Drudge Report, but his headlines do seem like he’s been
effected by the same temptations of cable and online news. It creates this
effect where you visit more / watch more news. It makes it very difficult to
understand reality.

I wish all this energy and attention could somehow be harnessed into testing
100x more people and making a vaccine. And for us regular people, just do what
we can to be safe and go on with our lives.

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QUFB
Derek Lowe, as always, has some great insight into possible treatments and
vaccine development (and drug discovery in general):

[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/06/co...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/06/covid-19-small-
molecule-therapies-reviewed)

