Nosim, You're Just a Flanner

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i defined myself principally as some one who deals with less tail risk. When you don't have any pressure to do anything, that's when you do the work that there is in you that wants to come out. So so my resolutions are not ar going egeno, in the opposite direction. Thees very straited. And ive done so much t you see, every hear i toght a year with what i want to do this year. And the more i tell myself, i want to take it easy, unerring, the more iam not doing mathematics and no flanner.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Antifragile, Black Swan, and Fooled by Randomness, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about a recent co-authored paper on the risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the use of the Precautionary Principle. Taleb contrasts harm with ruin and explains how the differences imply different rules of behavior when dealing with the risk of each. Taleb argues that when considering the riskiness of GMOs, the right understanding of statistics is more valuable than expertise in biology or genetics. The central issue that pervades the conversation is how to cope with a small non-negligible risk of catastrophe.