Comments on: EMPTY STATISTICS

By: We Hardly Understand the Dynamics of Progress - Maarten van Doorn

We Hardly Understand the Dynamics of Progress - Maarten van Doorn — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 17:39:58 +0000

[…] local rebuttals to some optimists’ examples. For instance, Nassim Nicholas Taleb has (poorly) pressed the following valid point. Even if the overall numbers of bloodshed are down, […]

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sat, 24 Dec 2016 00:22:35 +0000

I happen to agree with your critique of Taleb. I am amazed at the following he gets. This ideas he spouts are not original, but he has a knack for naming things and making a lot of noise and hurling insults.

Taleb did not invent fat tails; they have been known about and agonized over in finance for the full 20 years I have been in the field. All Taleb did is label it with “black swan” and popularize it, and claim his is smarter than his peers.

His attacks on Pinker follows this same pattern–attack a fellow scholar over a strawman that Taleb himself invents.

By: John Vos

John Vos — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 20:44:55 +0000

Vince, it would be interesting to hear directly from the 20 scholars what they think of all this. Any links to that you can share with us? Being familiar with Taleb’s inclination to misrepresent, I wouldn’t be surprised if “the agreement was to not talk about [Pinker’s] thesis any further” actually means: “the audience wasn’t very much interested in my [Taleb’s] feud with Pinker”.
And then this: “the organizer was told by Pinker that he did not wish to rebut our papers”. Hmm… is there anything new in the papers that Pinker didn’t already rebut? Can you blame him for refusing to become a slave to Taleb’s obsessions? Given Taleb’s breath-taking output of noise and distortion, rebutting each of his (often repetitive) papers would be a full-time job for any single individual.

By: Vince

Vince — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 16:31:36 +0000

So now we can see who are the Frauds. Just like 20 scholars at the Nobels. Please carry on with your blog, oh please do. Ah bless, no response. You-ve been caught, how embarrassing. Please read on everybody. GAME OVER. https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10153924661333375

By: Vince

Vince — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 16:28:37 +0000

LMAO so David, you are as bad at stats as this guy & pinker? Would you like to start on Pvalues now or later? And caught red handed on the Tim Hunt affair, my oh my you are making a reputation for yourself, maybe the nobel’s look at this too! Big Smile, big huge smile, you old fart. https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/posts/10153924661333375

By: Steve Bull

Steve Bull — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 13:11:46 +0000

Not having read through all the commentary and so not sure if this has been raised, I have a simple proposition: the trends cited as the underlying impetus for decreasing violence are founded upon relatively cheap and easy-to-extract energy sources (fossil fuels) that have allowed increasing economic expansion and associated benefits for a larger swath of people, decreasing the violence required to expand (something most societies do); however, as the source of this energy is finite (and very likely has peaked), we are bound to see a return to more violent ways as societies begin fighting over the remaining resources. In other words, the trend is about to reverse…

By: John Vos

John Vos — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 20:12:18 +0000

How do you know it was peer-reviewed? It’s not even published…

By: ზვიად

ზვიად — Sat, 16 Jan 2016 13:13:09 +0000

This paper has gone though peer-review process. Are you trolling?

By: Yann

Yann — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 12:22:09 +0000

I would like to back this comment, I also love the content but loathe the format.

By: danyzn

danyzn — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 13:42:04 +0000

Pinker is correct about the historical decline in violence, certainly of the everyday nonmass type. Taleb has a point (really the only point he ever has) about power laws with fat tails: basically, that only the tail really matters, because it swamps everything else when it happens, even if it is very unlikely and you haven’t seen it yet. And it is true that, in a sense, an event that wipes out half of humanity makes everyday concerns trivial. But in another, more accurate sense, it doesn’t. Even if I knew that the world would eventually end in a nuclear holocaust, I would still greatly prefer not to see human sacrifice and chattel slavery reinstated in the meantime.