Denialism

It's plausible, although many autistic people are overly emotional.
Teach him how to articulate his thoughts through writting. Teach him about his capability of being evil. Teach him what it means to be a human being, and that he is just like all the other humans.

Why does Nassim Taleb deny the safety of GMOs?

>Teach him about his capability of being evil.

This seems like good advice, you don't want to raise a lamb, you want to raise an elephant.

How would you do this? Any literature you recommend?

Teach him to not make a scapegoat for all the evils in the world and to be skeptical about his true motives.
Any unbiased books about evil things that happened in the past while imagining himself in the same position as the ''bad guy'' would do the work.

Precautionary principle - better to be cautious of things which we don't completely understand than to accept them. These things must also have the ability to have long term consequences which are unknowable. To him, GMOs fit this description

>Precautionary principle - better to be cautious of things which we don't completely understand than to accept them.
This could be applied to anything, why GMOs?

Because for the longest time information was passed on from generation to generation and this allowed us to survive

Because they don't have a fetishism for the pursuit of truth that scientists tend to have.

who is that sandnigger and what were they arguing about?

Science fields struggle with this too. 80% of biologists reject race realism due to political prejudice.

...

Have them read the enchiridion and other greek philosophy, and then have them read a diverse selection of other works (lit, phil, science, etc).

Only after a long intellectual climb will they see that long ago the sophists won and their greatest member (plato via socrates) was so good he convinced everyone else he wasn't a sophist.

Forgot to clarify - GMOs could carry long term and systemic consequences (through genetic mechanisms, difficult to undo). e.g. it's one thing to CRISPR someone but another thing entirely to CRISPR an entire population (obviously CRISPR != GMO, but you get the idea)

fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2

like what? they do research on these things, it's not just willy nilly
there's all sorts of standards they have to conform to before GMOs are allowed to be used

What prompted that exchange?

I guess he's talking about the boogieman of cross-breeding with indigenous populations of plants and spreading the direct modifications to natural ecosystems.

Because the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

The fact that studies dont show any problem with GMO means nothing, we dont know about long term consequences, it can happen the same as cigarettes but now much worse because its food.

This is just fearmongering. They have tested the proteins that were modified extensively. Please give evidence that they can possibly be hazardous.

Data can be misinterpreted also...

>20 years later: Oops we found that GMOs actually could harm us

Im hedging for a risk in the unknowable, you know that experiments are incomplete, biological systems are complex and emergent and you simply cant know what could happen unless you test real humans (not mice) and in real enviroment

Because the absence of evidence IS evidence of absence, if evidence is possible which it clearly is.

>The fact that studies dont show any problem with GMO means nothing
That's because you don't understand how science works.

>we dont know about long term consequences, it can happen the same as cigarettes but now much worse because its food.
Long term consequences of what?

What was their argument about?

The same could be said for every new cultivar, yet I don't see anyone claiming non-GMOs should be safety tested for 13 years like GMOs.

Anti-GMO people are simply afraid of what they don't understand. Taleb constantly lashes out at anyone who defends GMOs as a "Monsanto shill" and he cites long debunked pseudoscience like the Seralini mouse study. There is no rational justification for this fear of GMOs.

bigthink.com/risk-reason-and-reality/taleb-on-gmos-advocacy-masquerading-poorly-as-honest-intellectual-argument.amp

>20 years later
oops looks like electricity causes dementia, I guess we'll have to scrap all of modern technology
fuck outta here with that bullshit

hmm I think it was GMO plants aren't as fit as wild plants so they would be out competed anyway

Yes, until you cite an article with well executed experiment showing that the proteins are hazardous, GMO remains.

Non-GMO has worked for a long time, the GMO are new, theres no point in comparison

You dont have absolute knowledge, there was a time were medical studies recommended not giving breast milk to children. There was a time were there was "no rational justification" to say cigarette were bad. You take pride of the minuscule knowledge we have and arrogantly pretend we can know the macro effects of something complex like GMO. If theres something worse than ignorance is a Dunning-Kruger syndrome.

If we were in the 98' you would probably be a retard telling me how theres no rational justification for fearing about planes crashing the WTC

I recommend you The Black Swan is a great Taleb book about these unknowable risks.

>We actually found GMO causes cancer
>Millons of people dies
>Not my problem :^)

Idiot, if we get to find negative effects, the consequences would be devastating. If we dont, nothing happens. Its a better bet to assume GMOs are dangerous

>And skeptics... don't be so sure

samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion

>Non-GMO has worked for a long time, the GMO are new, theres no point in comparison
New cultivars have not worked for a long time, that's why they're new. The method of creating a novel genotype is irrelevant, since he's claiming the new genotype is the source of potential danger.

>You dont have absolute knowledge, there was a time were medical studies recommended not giving breast milk to children.
And now they do? According to the precautionary principle I guess we should not give children breast milk since this could be giving them autism.

>There was a time were there was "no rational justification" to say cigarette were bad.
Exactly, so don't do anything, since it might be bad for you. Or you could just listen when scientists are reasonably certain that something is safe. I'll go with the latter.

>You take pride of the minuscule knowledge we have and arrogantly pretend we can know the macro effects of something complex like GMO.
GMOs are much less complex and more understood than other things which we have a very good understanding of. You sound like someone denying climate change because the climate is complex and we don't understand it.

>If theres something worse than ignorance is a Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
Thinking that you know the risks of GMOs better than the scientists who study them is indeed Dunning-Kruger.

>If we were in the 98' you would probably be a retard telling me how theres no rational justification for fearing about planes crashing the WTC
There was no rational reason to! If we took the time to care about any unlikely eventuality we would be worse off, since the cost of worrying about all the things that didn't happen would dwarf the cost of the one thing that did. Arguing with examples of unlikely events in the past with your 20/20 hindsight vision is retarded a hell. We can only act based on the knowledge we have.

You're not considering the massive benefits of GMOs and the undefined probability of GMOs devastating us (becsuse no one can even come up with a possible way GMOs could kill us all). You're arguing from ignorance.

Sounds more like a masochistic scenario given that you would be executed and humiliated for everyone to see.

That's a false equivalency and you know it. If you don't want to eat GMO food, you can pay premium to use an alternative.
If you don't want to generate electricity by burning coal, you can pay premium to use solar or water.

Anyway the REAL problem with GMOs is that the crops are largely sterile by design, and designed to be used in combination with pesticides / herbicides. I'm not making an argument for "natural" vs "unnatural" or something judgement-based like that, just pointing out that this system is vulnerable to significant flaws.

>And now they do? According to the precautionary principle I guess we should not give children breast milk since this could be giving them autism.

Breast milk has worked for millons of years

>Exactly, so don't do anything, since it might be bad for you. Or you could just listen when scientists are reasonably certain that something is safe. I'll go with the latter.

Im taking the risk not scientists, its easy to recommend stuff we you dont have skin in the game

>Thinking that you know the risks of GMOs better than the scientists who study them is indeed Dunning-Kruger.

Unless you are arguing that biology haves the absloute truth, you have to admit theres a possibility of them being wrong (like they were many times in the past)

>There was no rational reason to! If we took the time to care about any unlikely eventuality we would be worse off, since the cost of worrying about all the things that didn't happen would dwarf the cost of the one thing that did. Arguing with examples of unlikely events in the past with your 20/20 hindsight vision is retarded a hell. We can only act based on the knowledge we have.

Im proving to you that there exists a set of events that cannot be predicted or even think about, the black swans. Rationality haves limits and using it for every decision will bite your ass sometimes and could do it in this case.

Name their benefits, Monsanto earnings are not a benefit to me.

Fields are bullshit.

Non-physical objects don't influence physical objects physically.

peelified.com/index.php?topic=23582.msg1469911#msg1469911

Nobody wants to admit it though. Want to make calls to authority to professors nobody ever heard of.

Exactly this. How is it that even after all the years humanity has suffered at the hands of presuming certainty for uncertain hypotheses people still continue to think all potential harms have been completely explored

Google "cognitive dissonance."

So they're dumb?

Economist

They don't Reject it they're just afraid to say it, but that's because they're wimps.

Thanks

I think she said that there were sub saharan africans in high positions in the roman empire, remember that bbc clip? Nassim wrote a medium post about it debunking it with data, she went made, then he tore her up on twitter while deadlifting 225.

Ha

Self-propagating electromagnetic fields can travel in a vacuum.

>Why does Nassim Taleb deny the safety of GMOs?
Why do you deny the safety of radium skin creams, cigarettes and asbestos? Studies have proven that all of these things are completely safe. - You in 1930s

That was a good read.

>Breast milk has worked for millons of years
Are you saying women have had the same diet and exposure to toxins for millions of years?

>Im taking the risk not scientists, its easy to recommend stuff we you dont have skin in the game
How are you taking any more risk than scientists? Scientists live in the real world also.

>Unless you are arguing that biology haves the absloute truth, you have to admit theres a possibility of them being wrong (like they were many times in the past)
Everything we think is true could possibly wrong. What is your point? We can only make decisions based on the information we have.

>Im proving to you that there exists a set of events that cannot be predicted or even think about, the black swans.
Why would you need to prove this when I never contradicted it? Try responding to what you're quoting. Worrying about "black swans" is harmful since the effort spent preventing them would mostly be wasted, due to their inherent unpredictability. There are black swans everywhere, but Taleb conveniently only cares about the ones related to stuff he doesn't like. Stop pretending this is about black swans and admit this is simply a post hoc justification of fear of GMOs.

>Rationality haves limits and using it for every decision will bite your ass sometimes and could do it in this case.
Rationality has worked for millions of years. There is no better alternative.

>Name their benefits, Monsanto earnings are not a benefit to me.
Cheaper food, increased crop yield and resource efficiency, disease resistance, better taste/texture, less food waste...

Are you seriously this retarded?

Rational actions are not taken because of a belief in certainty, this is a non sequitur.

What studies proved these things are safe? In order for the analogy to work, GMOs have to be shown to be harmful like cigarettes were. Otherwise you could just say that anything is unsafe because cigarettes were unsafe.

GMOs can alleviate world hunger and help with climate change
imagine combining the environmental benefits of best practices in organic farming plus the advantages of GMOs, but that won't happen because of naturalist irrationality

>Anyway the REAL problem with GMOs is that the crops are largely sterile by design
False, someone's feeding you misinformation.

enjoy your dog/cat and abortion you cringy white retard

Please don't tell me you unironically think Black Science Man is smarter than even some Christfag politician?

>alleviate world hunger
>help with climate change
Imagine being such a brainlet that you simultaneously believe that flooding the third world with retarded babies will somehow save the planet...

>Breast milk has worked for millons of years
Isn't this exactly what the "black swan theory" argues against? The turkey has had a great day for his entire life being fed all the water and feed he wants, until the day he gets slaughtered.

If anything, the fact that Taleb believes he can predict GMOs will be dangerous means it's not a black swan.

this is why conservatives can't be told that climate change is real

>Too lazy to actually read a book on Roman Britain.
>Look at that faggot asking about my knowledge about the topic!

Taleb is just an intellectually shallow contrarian.

>Implying he's not tryint to take control of a situation he has no control over of because in reality. No woman wants to have a kid with him

>We can only make decisions based on the information we have.

But you have no information at all. You dont know the probability of GMOs being dangerous, its less than a incomplete information problem, its uncertainity and the problem is you could be severely underestimating the risk of GMOs being dangerous.

Rationality works perfectly with perfect information, but could make retarded decisions in any other kind of problem.

In uncertainity problems, as you dont know the probabilities of each event, the only thing you can do is weigh what you lose vs what you win. What do we win if you're right and GMO are safe? Marginal wins, as you mentioned, only more productivity and small benefits. But what if Im right and GMOs are dangerous? The possible losses are infinite (as death, is an infinite loss to anyone, you cant lose more than your life)

The main reason Taleb goes against GMOs is because companies like Monsanto are pushing the "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" meme, which is illogical, so they can sell their shit quickly. Is expected to get mad when you push policies based on logical fallacies

Its true, but dont mention Hume problem to Veeky Forums cucks, the autistic screeching would be too much.

>absence of evidence is evidence for absence
Fallacy

New drugs have to be tested for typically 10-15 years before they get released. Remember, these are purely artificial, man-made substances created to directly influence the human body from the inside.

GMOs have been around for decades, and they get tested for toxicity on animals before release. Also, they are slightly manipulated foodstuffs.

So if we can't know that GMOs are safe even after decades of use, how can we know that drugs are? Why don't you hate new drugs? In what way are they safer?

Satan speaks the truth once more

>But you have no information at all.
Yes we do. GMOs are not complicated.

>You dont know the probability of GMOs being dangerous, its less than a incomplete information problem, its uncertainity and the problem is you could be severely underestimating the risk of GMOs being dangerous.
The reason I don't know the probability of them being dangerous is because no one can come up with a way in which they would be dangerous despite a large regulatory infrastructure and decades of testing. The same way no one can come up with a way breast milk would be dangerous. If we are to assume GMOs are dangerous, why do we not assume everything is dangerous?

>Rationality works perfectly with perfect information, but could make retarded decisions in any other kind of problem.
No, it only makes wrong decisions in hindsight, with additional information. This is the problem with worrying about black swans, you can only see them one they happen. You don't need perfect information to make the right decision now.

>In uncertainity problems, as you dont know the probabilities of each event, the only thing you can do is weigh what you lose vs what you win.
Ha, no. That would imply that both outcomes are equally likely. No one who actually knows anything about GMOs thinks a GMO disaster is likely, including Taleb.

>The possible losses are infinite (as death, is an infinite loss to anyone, you cant lose more than your life)
Using this analysis, no action should ever be taken, since there is some unknown possibility that any action could kill all life. Thus the cost of taking any action is always infinite. So your argument is absurd.

>
The main reason Taleb goes against GMOs is because companies like Monsanto are pushing the "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" meme, which is illogical
It's perfectly logical. If Taleb thinks this is false he has zero understanding of Bayesian probability, and so do you.

True. For example, if some study could have found but fails to find evidence for a hypothesis, then that is evidence against the hypothesis.

> why do we not assume everything is dangerous?
Taleb literally addresses this. It's systemic risk that matters when invoking the precautionary principle, not individual risk.

>absence of evidence is evidence of absence
Looks like you know nothing about the philosophy of science. Read some Popper.

>(((tested)))

Moralfaggotry(liberalism) or egoism.

Truly the savior of the white race.
Reminder to have 5+ kids if you're white and educated.

>It's systemic risk that matters when invoking the precautionary principle, not individual risk.
So why isn't everything systemic dangerous? For example non-GMO cultivars.

>Looks like you know nothing about the philosophy of science. Read some Popper.
Science is dependent on absence of evidence being evidence of absence. Failing to find evidence for a hypothesis weakens the hypothesis. You have failed to respond to my argument.

>Taleb literally addresses this. It's systemic risk that matters when invoking the precautionary principle, not individual risk.
Breast milk feeding is systemic. Answer the question.

Parentheses aren't going to convince anybody worth convincing.

>So why isn't everything systemic dangerous? For example non-GMO cultivars.
The point is that systemic processes have the potential to be dangerous, not that they are necessarily so, obviously.

>Science is dependent on absence of evidence being evidence of absence. Failing to find evidence for a hypothesis weakens the hypothesis. You have failed to respond to my argument.

Sure, but there's an inherent problem with induction which you obviously still don't understand. Failing to find evidence for a hypothesis does not prove or disprove it (but science may, incorrectly, attribute this to some degree of disproof). Finding a counterexample would definitively disprove it. I'm not saying that science in practice does not do these things, I'm saying that philosophically they shouldn't be.

>The point is that systemic processes have the potential to be dangerous, not that they are necessarily so, obviously.
How does this respond to what you're quoting? Why is Taleb focusing on GMOs?

>Sure, but there's an inherent problem with induction which you obviously still don't understand.
I'm not talking about induction, I'm talking about probability.

>Failing to find evidence for a hypothesis does not prove or disprove it (but science may, incorrectly, attribute this to some degree of disproof)
Evidence is not proof and science doesn't prove anything. This had nothing to do with what we're discussing. No one has claimed GMOs are proven safe.

Again, Taleb is obviously using this argument post hoc to justify his irrational fears of GMOs. If the argument was truly the basis of his fear, then he would fear any potentially systemic action. But I don't see him advocating against global agriculture in general. What works in the real world is, we have an acceptable level of risk, and wet trust the most knowledgeable people to tell us when something is above or below that level of risk. GMOs have clearly passed this hurdle. Taleb is not knowledgeable at all about GMOs, evidenced by his citations of pseudoscientific sources. He is a hypocrite contrarian, plain and simple.

>What works in the real world is, we have an acceptable level of risk, and wet trust the most knowledgeable people to tell us when something is above or below that level of risk.
The essence of Taleb's argument is - that's how the world works, not how it should work. Even experts have poor understanding of risk.

>I'm talking about probability.
Other than "muh Bayes", what do you mean here?

>The essence of Taleb's argument is - that's how the world works, not how it should work. Even experts have poor understanding of risk.
The essence of my argument is - he's wrong. He doesn't understand GMOs and thus doesn't understand their risk.

>Other than "muh Bayes", what do you mean here?
I mean that evidence only increases the probability of something being true, it doesn't prove something is true. If the problem with induction is that it does not lead to truth, this is a non sequitur, as no one claimed it did. How risky GMOs are is a probabilistic question, not a matter of deduction. So far you have not put forth an argument that shows GMOs are too risky to implement while regular agricultural techniques are not. And you won't be able to so long as you ignore the information we currently have about GMOs. That is all that probability is, a way of describing the information we have.

That webm is the comfiest thing I've seen in a long, long time

pretty much this, I don't know why Taleb is like that, even with people that actually agrees with him

meanwhile, many of the modern self-proclaimed "skeptics" might as well be considered 'gullible' by how blindly dogmatic they are.

Being a "skeptic" doesn't automatically mean you're good at rational/critical thought, it just means you have a propensity to call bullshit on things (independent of whether or not you're actually being rational). It's all too easy to call bullshit on things just because they don't fit your world view, and that's precisely what happens a lot of the time.

Are you actually wondering what the answer is? Becuase if you are you are a retard.

>"there's no evidence showing that GMOs are safe!"
>yes there is
>"yeah well those experiments could be wrong! better not trust their conclusions until we've waited decades and decades just in case one of them is overturned!"
is this niBBa serious

>Cheaper food
Since when?

>If we were in the 98' you would probably be a retard telling me how theres no rational justification for fearing about planes crashing the WTC

What is your solution to this problem? Because it seems like you are advocating banning planes or tall buildings because we don't yet know the risks.

Introduce them to the scientific method early. The goal of any endeavor should be to increase knowledge, regardless of how knowledgeable they may be.

The best way to teach this is probably by example. Readily admit when you are wrong, and occasionally verbally address when you learn something new or when you experience something that challenges your world view, especially if it is from them.

Don't let them take words for granted either. Encourage them to research what they learn on a deeper level if they have nothing better to do.

And of course, i'm just talking out my ass here, got no kids of my own, so I'm all ears if anyone has any other suggestions.

teach them how to murk a mf if shit goes south

honestly, teach them philosophy. while science is cool majority of science is "normal science" (using Kuhn's term) which is baked in ideology.

God, where the fuck are people like you normally on Veeky Forums? It's like you even mention the benefits of epistemology, or perhaps looking into the linguistic root of certain words to gleam meaning from their usage, or just talking about philosophy in general and people sperg out saying that philosophy is for brainlets.

I'm just going to tag along for this wild comment ride, because I'm not sure exactly who to respond to. As a geneticist, my perspective is fairly simple; for many GMO procedures, there is no reason why it would go wrong, or be at all dangerous, and certainly no way in which it would be more dangerous than common agricultural practice has been for the past couple hundred years.

The notion that skeptics might rightfully take into account as a risk is that we aren't fully sure of all of the incidental interactions that might be had by certain proteins or biomolecules. A really good example of a natural case of loss-of function by a natural stimulant introduced would be caffeine (pic related), which contrary to how we look at it, doesn't give us energy. What it does is fits into the receptors for the signal that makes us tired, but doesn't fire them- essentially just making it harder for the 'tired' signal to reach our brain. The worry with GMOs that aren't tested is that there could be some incidental blocking of certain pathways as a result of interactions between proteins that might create some unexpected shape- proteomics is still relatively small as a field, and while we have genomic data of all genes that we might engineer with, but full comprehensive understanding comes from taking the protein and modeling it with all other proteins in the proteome, assuming any and all kinds of post-translational modifications possible for it.

HOWEVER, as farmers we've been cross-breeding plants, encouraging mutagenesis in plants, and refining our breeding structure to introduce new genes all the time. Been doing it for hundreds of years, and it comes with the EXACT SAME kind of "unknowability" of genetic engineering- moreso, even, since at least with Gene Engineering we have a broad sense of whether the gene will have any transcription-related ramifications (which are some of the only kind that could ever even lead to cancer).

To add on to this, I don't think I need to even mention this, but; the same risks that we're talking about apply to the natural course of mutation by any species. Humans, as migratory creatures, haven't really co-evolved with any particular species that we predate on to the point of metabolic symbiosis, so saying there's unknown risk in gene editing is tantamount to saying that there's an unknown risk to eating any kind of food that we don't know which proteins will influence our body poorly with; which is every single food imaginable, as we don't even know in a 'normal' state how all proteins will interact with each other, only vaguely. (Though, we learn more every single day. Damn proteomics is a busy fucking field, and people say nojobs in biology)

>my kids
Before you can help others, you have to help yourself.

It's actually not usually monsanto which are doing the testing of novel strains. Monsanto is shitty because of their work involving intellectual property and the gene- which is such a clusterfuck it's unimaginable just how bad it really is- but when designing new combinations of genes, a lot of the testing is completely public. There are at least strict regulations on the kinds of research that must be done- what is lacking, as many people see it, is long-term effect testing. This is difficult for many reasons.

1) How long is long-term?
2) What kind of things are we looking for?
3) What could even lead to long-term issues?

Diseases such as cancer are not likely to be caused by any novel edition to a genome- the only way with which this could feasibly occur is if there were an increase in radical-promoting species within the end crop, which is something that can be tested for easily using laboratory condition animal test subjects and chemical/proteomic assays of the product.

Most biologists reject race realism because they subscribe to the current front-runner model for genotypic species classification. This model essentially attempts to classify species not based on arbitrary cherry-picked traits, but rather by total genetic deviation within/between populations- that is to say if two populations have a larger ratio of genetic variation between them than the genetic variation among the individual populations, they can be said to belong to different categories, with the larger the discrepancy leading to further categorization (subspecies vs species, regional classifications, etc.).

When this has been done time and time again by many organizations separately, and the genomes of many populations of humans have been sequenced and compared, it gets tiring to repeat the same results. The genetic variation among populations for humans is statistically no less than between populations, and is actually (but not by a statistically significant margin) greater within the population- meaning on average, the difference (in total base pairs of DNA) between two white people who aren't related will be the same or greater than the difference between a white and black person.

That's not to say there aren't certain genes that are specific to populations of course, just that if you were to say, make a map that represented origin of "races" based on purely % difference in genome, you wouldn't get any coherent groupings that match up with how we classify race. It might be possible to then create a new classification, but it would not at all be based on skin color, and maybe not even have many large phenotypic markers to be able to easily classify, since most of the genes are deeper than skin-deep.

So, the conclusion biologists have come to is race is real, but it's not a biological concept- it's a social one.

it's a meme you dip