Well, that's odd.
James Allan, the conservative law lecturer at UQ who I have previously pointed out makes statements unsupported by, you know, facts, has a typical Australian right wing conservative blowhard's take on COVID-19: its danger has been vastly overestimated and the lockdown approach has been a terrible error.
But in the Spectator column in which he is opining this, he starts with citing Nassim Taleb's "skin in the game" idea as being crucial to understanding why governments have got it wrong.
Which seems odd for this reason: I think Taleb is far too idiosyncratic to spend much time paying attention to, but as far as I know, from my brief looks at his Twitter account since the pandemic started, he has never been a sceptic of the danger of COVID 19 and lately has spent time arguing that governments requiring face mask wearing would be a good policy they should have been pushing earlier.
In other words, Allan seems to be using one idea of Taleb's to make an argument, but ignoring Taleb's actual opinion on COVID and risk. Which seems a foolish (that is, typical Australian version of a conservative) thing to do.
Perhaps Jason can confirm this is correct, as I assume you still follow Taleb much more closely than I do....
oh yeah definitely https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1285295120380829702
ReplyDeletesteve I've tweeted at Taleb directly with a link to the article in the hope that Taleb might unleash his usual invective at James
ReplyDeleteHeh. That would be amusing to see.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone sensible could sign on to the precise nature that the lockdowns took in practice. But Taleb was probably the earliest and most forceful advocate of strong action way back in the early days. Its wrapped up with his critiques of mainstream statistics. He was arguing that from a heuristics point of view the most important thing was the so-called estimates of R-nought. And that any lurgie with a high enough estimated R-Nought implied international travel bans as the right measure.
ReplyDeleteI pointed this out to Sinclair and he started taking the lurgie seriously after that. I said that "only the doomed argue with Taleb Nassim." Which is true. You want to lose the argument argue with this fellow.
But this advocacy of serious travel bans very early on in the story ought not be an excuse for the left to be putting words in his mouth or assuming he agrees with the lunatic Fauci on other matters or anything of this nature. But he was more forceful earlier than just about anyone else and this was all to do with his take on the estimated R-nought.
Lifting Taleb's skin-in-the-game concept could very much be used to show some places where the government has got it wrong. I'll read the whole article on Saturday. But we don't want to be conflating things here. You had Taleb's take on what the estimated R-nought means for the decision-making rules of thumb. Then you've got Taleb's view of the concept of "skin-in-the-game" which shows how now, so many decision-makers, screw things up. These are not contradictory concepts. The fellow may well be using the one concept competently. That doesn't mean that the heuristic to do with R-nought is wrong. They can both be valid concepts.
ReplyDeleteGuys do try to be serious social scientists here. We don't want to be charging fore and aft in a shallow and simplistic way. I take the disease very seriously because I know that if you are not prepared you can get in a vicious circle that you may never pull out of. I have experience in these matters consulting for someone. Doesn't mean I think the government did things perfectly. Or even very well. They did things in an UNDERSTANDABLE way. I'm not angry with Sco Mo. But to make really good decisions you need sophisticated analysis. Not just saying one crowd is taking it seriously and another bunch of fellows are not.
' I have experience in these matters consulting for someone."
ReplyDeleteGraeme please don't tell me you're practising medicine without a license
Yes of course I am. If I don't the people will die. Not for money of course. This is pro-bono advice. The terrorists are trying to kill as many people as they can. So even saving one or two people is better than nothing.
ReplyDelete