Another Piece on Taleb

Yves Smith summarizes the piece at Automatic Earth, before republishing it.

HITS THE SPOT:

"What is happening right now is not because all the epidemiologists & virologists around the world are wrong, but because they’re asked to make decisons and construct models about something they don’t know nearly enough about."https://t.co/3ZYBlKefbe

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 17, 2020

The Only Man Who Has a Clue?

The Only Man Who Has a Clue by Raul Ilargi Meijer (ZeroHedge)

What the government controls best is border control/filtering incoming passengers & yet-uncancelled superspreader events (games). They messed that up.
The rest is largely ex post response lagging individual behavior.https://t.co/wl65RHvy0t

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 16, 2020

Peer review is often necessary but v. highly insufficient; gives cover to unrigorous crap. There are citation rings. Imagine passing a review on risk by an ignorant psych like @PTetlock who still doesn't know the difference betw probability & expectation or point estimate & EVT. https://t.co/PCF7t4qJYm

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 16, 2020

No masks, no testing. But lockdown.
This is what happens when you panic too late. https://t.co/P2aGktcv0R

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 16, 2020

Why you cannot use epidemiological models with point estimates when variables are stochastic. An illustration.

You end up with a crazy distribution of outcomes, get fooled. This is our problem with the UK "model". pic.twitter.com/yBk1AygMwN

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 16, 2020

Taleb at Work

"Evidence based" means that she recommended in her Forbes column in late February that people wear no masks. Yes, NO masks. Because absence of evidence is not evidence based.
It is hard to share the planet with such dangerous people. https://t.co/iKVU52M7Cd

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 5, 2020

I am amazed that an error that eludes "evidence based" "scientists", nonprobabilist statisticians, Pinker-style naive empiricists... is explained very simply by Mike to his kids. https://t.co/lXsStELc6Y

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 5, 2020

Department of hindsight: the NYT is now blaming mobility. Yet they were publishing crap saying it was not rational to panic when Yaneer, Joe, and I were advocating what looked like an "overreaction".https://t.co/5MOhTJeeyA

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) April 5, 2020