Taleb and his book Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Taleb as I have mentioned earlier is one of the smartest human beings in the world right now. His book 'Fooled by Randomness' is probably going to be one of the few books which people will read after 200 years, like Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' or Darwins "The Origin of Species". In showing us how we often mistake coincidence for causality, he is not the first-but his main contribution is to use this idea to make our lives better in a real way, with practical uses and examples. When he says casually "There's no such thing as Alternative Medicine" it sounds like a casual offhand remark-but it is so very significant and useful. You can dump all those alternative medicine doctors safely-Modern Medicine is originally derived from Alternative Medicine and you can safely trust the Scientists at Pfizer and Merck and Ranbaxy to bring you the best of the alternative world medicines-these guys are constantly looking for new ideas and chemicals...

I find so many examples where Taleb's central idea-that we keep getting fooled by randomness, thinking that there's some causality, some pattern out there in our experiences with the world, when there isn't any. Check yourself when you think Sunday is a good day for shopping, or you are a lucky guy always in restaurants to find empty tables-reality is far more brutal, and doesn't care that much about you.

Together with Adam Smith and Darwin, I find Taleb one of the most wonderful and intelligent humans to walk this planet. As often is the case with great minds, they get really famous after their death-and I hope that with Taleb, at least some of the credit he deserves for showing us the difference between anti-knowledge and knowledge he will reap the rewards of in this present life...(a Nobel Prize in Economics by the Swedish Bankers...nah!).

Sanjay

Global Warming and Going Green are Religions-not Science!

In the last few years everyone in the world is worried about global warming. Al Gore, a politician, has turned into a scientist in a few years and has won lots of prizes (I will call him Green God Gore from now on). Let's now examine the science behind all this.

Here's my position: That there is global warming, increase in earth's temperature, is true. That this will have disastrous consequences is false. It is alarmist, and there's no substance to these "the world is coming to and end" from the scientific point of view.

The link to NRDC site on Global Warming Basics.

The link to NASA's Global Warming Page.


It is true that we have accelerated melting of polar ice. It is also true that we have a rise in ocean levels. This may lead to a tough life for penguins and sea lions and all other animals which live in the poles and cold areas-but as Darwin explained to us so very well in The Origin, Life loves warm weather. The number of species of both plants and animals goes down as we goes away from the Equator. For every penguin dying in Antartica, there are maybe hundreds of deer and snakes and other tropical creatures who are born, and they will lead to the formation of new Species. For plants it is an absolute party as well-a warmer earth will lead to a REFORESTATION of the Amazon jungle in the long term (unfortunately I don't know what that long term is). But this is directly from Darwin, and some simple observations of life around us on our planet. Living things, both plants and animals, multiply better in warm weather, and a warmer earth is good for Life on earth. And come to think of it-what percentage of humans have actually seen a glacier or hung out with a penguin in Antartica? There are plenty of penguims in zoos nowadays-and we can always raise them well there in case there is a complete melting of ice caps (we did domesticate dogs, cats, and all kinds of other animals, this one will be harder, but we have a long history of domesticating animals!). Warmer earth is also good for population of plants and animals in the sea-e.g. the number density of fish species goes down as you move away from warmer waters to colder waters.

Ocean levels are rising is also true. Low rise Islands are disappearing. They say that with the current rate of rise of ocean levels, assume all goes according to what all these climate scientists think, Maldives might disappear in 2100. This is the biggest direct threat to human life. Maldives has a population of 300,000 today, and even if this happens as these scientists claim-do you think that humans are so brutal that large land mass countries around Maldives like India or Africa or even Europe will let these people just drown??? Of course not. Most countries would be happy to take these immigrants today-it is a very small number of people.
As far as the rise in sea levels on all coasts in major continents-that low lying coastal lands might be gone, that is true also. But people forget that The Netherlands has been below sea level forever, and human industry of the Dutch has kept it one of the finest, richest countries of Europe in the last 400 years at least. As long as there is a big land mass around, like the Dutch have (unlike Islands like Maldives) we can always reclaim land if needed.

There is a theory on faster hurricanes because of warmer weathers (see links above). I don't know much about this, and this may be a valid negative effect of global warming.

What we are doing is restraining economic development by all these carbon caps etc. Energy is becoming expensive to produce-and since cheap energy is the CAUSE of economic development (just like all cheap raw materials) we are increasing the costs to humans because of bad science polluting the world.

Sanjay