I had issue with Taleb from the very first time I read his books, some 13 years ago or more, as can be seen here.
See that italised caption? That’s a clue as to what I think is wrong with Nicky Nassim there. And it more directly identifies the issue I discussed at the post from 13 years ago.
But let us first count the ways in which he is wrong.
Then we will look at why he makes these mistakes.
And finally we will take a bird’s eye view of his errors and what the real, and much broader, issue is.
Fair enough it is twitter, so I won’t take him to task concerning his initial statement that things perfect by nature over millions of years are “safer”. I mean, it all depends what the organism is. Go bleeding into the right South American river and the Piranhas that have evolved there for a long time, will be anything but safe to you. But I get what he’s trying to say while limited to 140 characters. And insofar as he means it, he is correct.
Now we move to his later text, where he is wearing a black background. Perhaps to represent grieving over his now defunct reputation as a brilliant statistician and very cultured person.
Error n. 1
Viruses have multiplicative risks.
Is it even true? Mostly no. It is not. In fact, you could argue that over the long haul, the risks of viruses not only become nil or close to nil, but enhance and strengthen the entire human race. The Red Indians used to die of what Europeans called the common cold, and they did so for a while, but today, they get ill and recover from it just like the rest of us.
Furthermore, a virus that really will wipe out all humanity is, in my considered —and statistically aware— opinion, impossible to come about through any natural processes. Nature has a way of ensuring life forms survive even massively bad events, and that includes asteroids (yes, yes, I know, the dinosaurs, but I have a theory on that which we will explore another time). Viruses, at least natural ones, arise from the same environment in which we live, so it does not make any sense that they would be so lethal as to wipe out ALL hosts. A percentage of the hosts will always be immune or develop immunity, or somehow survive. So, while if you take a short-time preference view of things Taleb’s point looks “smart”. If you take the long view, which he references in his first tweet, then he is simply flat out wrong and you could even argue that viruses are a good thing as they cull the weak and least “fit” from the herd. Which has always been what nature does to retain a natural balance.
Error n. 2
Vaccines don’t.
Again, wrong. Of course, we now know with absolute certainty that the genetic serum clott shots —intentional mislabelled as “vaccines” when they are really a depopulationist’s wet dream as well as possibly the nasty wedge of transhumanism— are really bad news, for each individual that took them, but that’s not the immediate point. The point is that if the serums are bad news (which they are and which anyone who spent five minutes researching mRNA technology online at the time would have known) the image is not limited to the individual that croacks, but it extends to his whole family, his work and the general infrastructure of society. Furthermore, we know (and have known for some 20 years) that mRNA “vaccines” don’t work for their intended purpose, are very unstable, and in fact are very likely to cause Antibody Dependent Enhancement, which ultimately kills you when you get re-infected by “wild” versions of the virus (i.e. that have naturally mutated), See here, for the full explanation couched in “but maybe…” wishful thinking; from way back in 2005. And keep in mind they have been trying to get this stuff to work since the 1990s.
Here is the key extract in case you don’t want to bother with the whole thing:
Synthetic peptides corresponding to IDS could induce high titers of S protein–specific antibodies, but none of these antibodies possesses neutralizing activity. These findings suggest that the IDS in S protein may not induce neutralizing antibodies. Whether these antibodies enhance infection by heterologous SARS-CoV strains or mediate harmful immune responses is unclear. The S protein of FIPV expressed by recombinant vaccinia can cause antibody-dependent enhancement of disease if vaccinated animals are subsequently infected with wild-type virus (32). Our previous studies on HIV-1 showed that antibodies against some immunodominant epitopes in the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein could enhance infection by heterologous HIV-1 strains (33). Most recently, Yang et al. (6) demonstrated that the polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies against S protein of the late SARS-CoV (Urbani strain) could neutralize infection by the relevant late SARS-CoV strains. However, these antibodies enhanced infection by an early human SARS-CoV isolate (GD03T0013) and the civet SARS-CoV–like viruses. These investigators have shown that the ACE2-binding domain mediates the antibody-dependent enhancement of civet SARS-CoV–like virus entry (6). Theoretically, some antibodies to the ACE2-binding domain may enhance infection if these antibodies closely mimic the receptor ACE2 and induce similar conformational changes, as the receptor likely does.
Plus, we have also known for ages, and confirmed it again with the covid genetic serums, that mRNA “vaccines” in fact fuck up your DNA permanently, so they absolutely are something that cannot be undone.
Knowing all this (which again, could be found with a minimal of research online) it becomes pretty clear that the genetic serums were extremely risky at best, and given that the depopulationist scum pushing them, were totally immune from penalties if they happened to be murderous experiments, would have anyone who can actually DO risk analysis, not take them. At all. Because, again, the cascading effect of mass die-offs absolutely have multiplicative risks. Potentially civilisation-ending levels of multiplicative risk in fact.
As it turns out, there is now also at least some evidence that the genetic serum shots cause a shedding that can also affect underused healthy purebloods, so in fact, the things seem to have multiplicative risk both along a vector that Taleb completely missed, though it was absolutely predictable, and the very same vector he is “considering”; though to be fair this one was only theoretically predictable.
Error n. 3
Evaluate the risks of the vaccine *to you* against the risk of covid *to others* the 2-5 people you might infect and the 2-5 people they might may each infect…
This is really the worst and most unforgivable error, because it’s just bad elementary level math.
We knew from very early on that Covid had a chance of killing you that was less than 1%. And then basically pretty much only if you had serious comorbidities. We also knew the information already laid out above that for at least 30 years, mRNA “vaccines” were thought of as too dangerous, unstable and controversial for use in humans. So you have a maximum of 1% chance of death against something that they couldn’t;t get to work for 3 decades that was being pushed by globalist depopulationists like Billy the Goat Gates, who funded the research into the bioweapon of covid 19 via the Pirbright institute and did event 201, which was a gaming out of the whole pandemic before covid 19 hit the scene. And all this was known too, as you can see from my post here, on the 29th February 2020.
So which kind of risk analyst would vote on the side of the genetic serums?
A really, really bad one, that’s what kind.
Conclusions
Remember how I said at the start we would look at why he makes these errors? Well, here it is. Taleb has presented himself, and been vastly accepted as being this incisive intellectual who uses his laser like objectivity to make a lot of money in trading some positions that are considered “bad” for most days but that have a likelihood of eventually coming true. A more complex version of betting on say red at roulette and doubling your bet if you lose and continually doubling your bet until black comes out. Except that, as with roulette, the game is fixed and the croupier can make black come out 15 times in a row if he wants. So his supposedly Olympian level of detachment is really only just a lucky guess or three that got him enough money to make his name. What really drives Taleb, which comes across if you look at his demeanour, his writing style, his twitter, is that, he has some kind of chip on his shoulder. He simply protesteth too much about being from the Levant. And that drives him to be seen as excelling the brash Americans that surround him, or the less than refined Europeans that don’t come from the Levant. That chip on his shoulder, ultimately means he acts based on his emotive impulses, not rational computer-like math. That’s my assessment and you’re free to disagree, of course, but I called it more than 13 years ago, and that’s not a coincidence.
Now as to the much broader issue that causes him to make such errors. I gave a hint of it in the caption below his tweets. If you are actually really good at math, fear is not really a big factor in your life. For many, many, many reasons. All of them related to probability, which I am actually really quite good at doing on the fly, and —far more importantly— in the real world context, not the theoretical world “context”. It’s why I have made life decisions (repeatedly) that seem absurdly risky and came out the other side with a “lucky” result. Do I always get it right? No. Of course not. But most times I do. I’d say my success rate is about a 7 out of ten in a bad streak , dropping to 6.5 or so in my younger days, and probably more like an 8 out of ten on average, with some streaks of 9.5 out of ten at times.
It is also why I could repeatedly make profit margins for my employers that they could never understand. I literally would get double the expected and maximum margin than any other contracts manager in the firm, and some of these were multi-billion dollar a year firms, and the directors above me simply couldn’t follow my reasoning. Even when I explained it to them in as simple a way as I could make it. Colour-coded charts and all. And as a result, believe it or not, they often fired me, because since they could not follow my process, and they also assumed they were smarter than me (all but one, and he was told to fire me too anyway because I had embarrassed the group director for not being able to do percentages) they went on to assume I must have done something illegal, or not kosher in some way, or maybe I was lying and hiding problems. None of these things were true, as the collected profits would always demonstrate, but they simply could not reason as I do.
They were, and are, trained to work the minutiae. The standard operating procedure must be followed, and so on. That is not how I looked at any project. My perspective was simply, ok. They are aiming to hit target X. On a project this size, 2X is obviously doable and maybe even 3X.
On one project of little more than a million pounds I made a 34% profit margin. There was absolutely nothing dodgy or illegal or even slightly bent in my work. In fact I gave full break-downs of all the calculations and prices. Literally no one could find any fault with any of my methodologies and in fact the client was ecstatically happy because we finished on time (rare in the construction industry) and they wanted to give us more work as a result.
The financial director of the firm I worked for was far from happy. He too could not follow the process I did and he was extremely worried (according to him) that I would upset the client by “eye-gouging them”. And then he went and made sure they didn’t give us any more work because he had a grudge with my counterpart at the client’s side over a bill of £300 from 5 years earlier, and pretty much called him a cunt over the phone about it. At final settlement. But he was smarter than me, you see. And he was doing this job for 25 years, you see. So I couldn’t possibly have done a better job after 2 years there than he had done in 25 years. No, no. It won’t do.
My grandfather was right, math is not an opinion, but unfortunately every asshole has an opinion and they value it far more than math.
Taleb does not know how to apply the math he knows or learnt in the context of the real world. It is the result of the mechanisation of humanity by Satanic infiltrations over centuries. Most notably the Protestant Rebellion, which has gradually secularised and made worldly Christianity (Catholicism being the only Christianity), and in doing so also reduced the Protestant minute to essentially a Calvinistic process of binary thinking that excludes the humanity, charity and love out of life. They abandon and reject reason in favour of a false sense of certainty that is ultimately pure illusion. I don’t expect you will have read my blog post linked above from 13 years ago, so allow me to quote myself:
The problem I have with these two types of author is that in a subtle but insidious way, their work, which is engaging, mostly correct, based on sound science and entertaining too, implies by a kind of induction that most of life is reducible to a set of formulaic behaviour and that some “control” can be exerted on aspects of life that not only cannot really be controlled, but SHOULD NOT be controlled. I kind of blame the upcoming generation of social robots sort of on them. And Taleb in particular if he’s reading this will probably be tearing out the last few hair he has before possibly hiring hit-men to ruin my life, because his whole message (secretly, because he’s a contrarian remember) seems to me to be that you should enjoy life, read widely, and have the opportunity to do well by exploiting the greed and stupidity of that very hated class of financial animal, the banker/trader. Nevertheless, hit-men and hair notwithstanding, I do think that someone who takes all Taleb has to say at face value and tries to organise his life that way, will miss out on some spectacular, interesting and ultimately GOOD life experiences. If I had to summarise it I would say these people promote an Obsessive Compulsive Culture.
Drool a bit of milkshake on your shirt-front and say how much you enjoy the sunshine because it’s hotter than the moon rays and these people might have a brain aneurysm. But at least I like them (or at least I think I would like them, I’ve not met either of these authors) as people, and I believe they are honest in their endeavours and share their work mostly as a wish also to improve mankind’s lot (I expect Taleb would argue vehemently against this).
And that observation has not improved over time. In fact, my esteem for Nikki Taleb has considerably declined since then.
But hey, he’s a wealthy, swarthy, Levantine, and I am just a poor, Warlord reduced to farmer, olivine skinned Venetian, so you know, I am sure his being able to hum Mozart makes up for it. Or something.
PS: My friend Adam also informs me Taleb bought a Tesla. I chose to not investigate this vicious potential fact any further. One really shouldn’t kick a man when he’s already so down he’s incapable of doing basic math.
White Noise to wipe out the Amish?
Point of note, I have not personally verified the image below, but I believe it to be fairly accurate. If not, let me know.
Either way, the film White Noise is a real thing and people from the town of East Palestine were used as extras in it. The film premiered in Netflix a short time ago and the plot is about a train derailment that causes a toxic air spill.
It’s just a few too many coincidences for my tastes, though Taleb probably thinks this is “just fine.”
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By G | 14 February 2023 | Posted in Social Commentary