My Letter Addressing the Guardian's Distortions

I used to think that the US press was guilty of distortions. Recent events changed my mind, as UK anti-Cameron papers tried to cut and paste from my talk to weaken him by trying to demonize me. The problem is that they got my ideas backwards on every single point. Such lack of ethics, I am certain, would have never happened in the US. Here is my letter to the Guardian:

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Dear sirs,

I am extremely honored to see my conversation with MP David Cameron at the RSA so repeatedly covered in your paper. However I was astonished by the representations that you made as they were in complete reverse to my positions on three subjects: the environment, market crashes, and taxation of the rich.

1) Climate Change. I am hyper-conservative ecologically (meaning super-Green). My position on the climate is to avoid releasing pollutants in the atmosphere, on the basis of ignorance, regardless of current expert opinion (climate experts, like banking risk managers, have failed us in the past in foreseeing long term damages and I cannot accept certainty in a certain class of nonlinear models). This is an extension of my general idea that one does not need rationalization with the use of complicated models (by fallible experts) to the edict: "do not disturb a complex system" since we do not know the consequences of our actions owing to complicated causal webs. (Incidentally, this ideas also makes me anti-war). I explicitly explained the need to "leave the planet the way we got it" .

Instead, I was presented as a "climate-change denier" (Lucy Mangan), and my environmental views summarized by "Climate change is not man-made" (Nicholas Watts).

A minimum of homework on the part of your staff would have revealed that I am one of the authors of the recent King of Sweden's Bonham declaration on attitude to climate change.

2) Crashes. By some coincidence I spoke at the same venue, the RSA, some 30 months earlier, way before the current crash, as part of my crusade against the risk of financial collapse and the need to robustify society. I find it depressing that the British public could have saved several trillion pounds and hundreds of thousands of jobs had they minded these hidden risks in the system. My position is that a robust system needs to produce frequent crashes, with citizens immune to them, rather than infrequent total collapse, for which we have no robustness. By constraining cycles and assuming "no more boom and bust" (as your current government did) you end up with a very large bust -and I am sure that I do not need more events like the most recent crisis to prove the point.

Instead, the anti-Black Swan crusader was portrayed as someone who "loves crashes" (Nicholas Watts and Lucy Mangan). Go figure.

3) Social Fairness. I spent 13 years fighting bankers bonuses (when nobody else did) and am currently crusading for clawbacks of past compensation as I have shown how regular taxpayers have been financing bonuses of millionaire bankers ("socialism for the losses, capitalism for the profits"). We are financing today those who got us here, with tax hikes on those who do the right thing, and larger tax break for those who blew us up. Companies who made mistakes and fragilized the system are being subsidized by the countercyclical ones who make it more robust.

Instead, I was quite shocked to see the headline "David Cameron's guru Nassim Nicholas Taleb says rich should not pay more tax to help the poor". This transformation of my ideas by Nicholas Watts is extremely wicked.

The depressing part is that nowhere does your paper discuss my central idea, that the risks that were in the system 30 months ago are still with us now, and that unless we lower debt to "definancialize" the economy (instead of increasing deficits through stimulus) we face more risks of blowups.

As a systematic thinker with a body of scholarly work around these risk management ideas --not a politician with ad hoc opinions -- the game of selective (and aggressively biased) quoting does not work very well. With the same game one could easily make Karl Marx an apologist of capitalism and Adam Smith a promoter of communism.

Sincerely,

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, PhD.
Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering
New York University, principal, Universa LP, and author, The Black Swan

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Comments

[ReedYoung]

Will you sue for defamation, or whatever British courts call it? That paper obviously does not care about its own good name among informed readers. So while your public correction will help your own good name, only imposing legal consequences on the offenders will do the public the service of deterring more such abuses in the future.

[flossophy]

Hear Hear!

[Old Grandad]

The Guardian is only fit to be used in the smallest room in the house.

[FarOutFish]

"All the News that fits, we print."

"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

[lbcyclist]

Ah, the Guardian, together with the BBC they are home to aging leftists from the 70's who have not learned a thing and never forgotten the old truths. The only British paper worth reading is the FT.

[1088]

People need to stand up and get in front of their news establishment and demonstrate against false and propaganda news. We have the power to change things, but we are too lazy until it's too late.

[flamflurm]

Two days and 28 posts on a site that agrees with you. Talk about risk management! You're very safe from the perils of interesting anyone.

[Wazzat]

Climate change models are the best the scientists can come up with at the moment,
but there is inherent unpredictability in such an enormously complex system. This unpredictability will remain even when computers are a thousand times faster, and models and measurements a hundred times
better. Nevertheless the predictions of the models do some good if they serve to warn us of the possible consequences of the way we are living.
But Taleb's point seems to be that even without complicated models, we have to know that things are going in the wrong direction. Burning nearly all the solar energy trapped over millions of years in the form of coal and oil, within the short span of a couple of hundred years of human existence, cannot not have dire consequences. Yet we choose to ignore this obvious fact, and to ignore the all-too obvious evidence of climate change all around us.

By the way: anybody ever figure out the total extra energy expenditure as a result of Bush's wars? And what the net energy benefit would have been if all those trillions had instead been invested in green energy? My guess is that GWB's contribution to the overall problem
was a very large drop in the bucket.

[maxwells]

Taleb's being skeptical of climate models was justified, BUT in a way entirely contrary to the denialists. The weight of data over the past decade suggests that global climate disruption is occurring much faster than the models were predicting, due partly to incomplete assessments of the physical mechanisms and synergies.

But I also think the models were too conservative due to innate risk avoidance. Until a consensus gathered, few scientists would willingly risk careers to publicly shout, not just of seeing, but of forecasting the equivalent of "fire in a crowded theater". I'm suggesting they were trying to play the prediction game as safely as possible - to our detriment, to be quite frank. It now appears that we've already passed the first tipping points, such as 350ppm of CO2. So, within this century we will likely see some significant degree of climate disruption, even if we stopped emitting man-made CO2 and other greenhouse gases today.

Don't you Armageddonites try to take any comfort from this. The Earth isn't going away. A few of your great-grandchildren will survive the worst of what you've wrought with your profligate monster trucks, Hummers and SUVs. And they'll hate you for it.

[raydot]

Keep stickin' 'em NNT. We need more thinkers like you. Any of you that have not read his books are wasting your time on this earth.

[MTGradwell]

P.S.

"I used to think that the US press was guilty of distortions. Recent events changed my mind, as UK anti-Cameron papers tried to cut and paste from my talk to weaken him by trying to demonize me. "

Perceived mistreatment by a *British* paper causes you to revise your opinion of the *US* press? Does that make any sense?

[auntiegrav]

I think the missing word was "most" guilty of distortions.
Then it makes sense.

Thank you Mr. Taleb. Again you demonstrate an understanding.
Isn't the rest of humanity quaint in its confusion? It's like the rats built their own maze and then had their brains removed.

Maybe it's the food......

[changeself]

nope.

i don't waste my time on this sort of personal whining.

[brendanm]

You do know that Rupert Murdoch owns newspapers and television stations in the United States, Mr. Taleb? I'm not saying our newspapers are no better than those in Britain, but it isn't hard to find many journalistic abortions in the US media.

[MTGradwell]

Climate: You say your views were summarized by "Climate change is not man-made". The Guardian website currently has "Climate change may not be man-made". Maybe they've edited, but then they should say so. "Climate change may not be man-made" seems a fair summary of "even I don't believe that carbon thing is necessarily anthropogenic [man made]", which you are quoted as saying.

Mangan doesn't say you're a "climate change denier" (unless it's somewhere I haven't found). She said you were "the author of a book that could easily cause [you] to be summed up as a recession-loving, tax-hating, climate-change denier". As a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering you should understand that someone who says what you said risks being summed up as a climate-change denier.

Crashes: You weren't just *portrayed* as someone who "loves crashes". You're *quoted* as saying ""I like crashes". If you didn't say that then you may have a basis for a lawsuit. (However, I'm not a lawyer).

Tax: Watts claimed you say it's wrong for the rich to pay higher taxes to help the less well-off. You're quoted as saying "If you are losing money in 2009 you get a bigger tax break. It is the opposite of everything I believe in". Since those who are losing money generally get multi-million-dollar bonuses, they can hardly be described as "less-well off". On this you *definitely* have a basis for a lawsuit. Go for it! (Again, IANAL).

[flossophy]

Lemme guess: lifelong Guardian reader?

[OlHippie]

"Socialism for the losses, capitalism for the profits."

I love that phrase; succinct and complete. Says it all.

Thanks Dr. Taleb; I'll be using it.....a lot.

[DD2005]

I can't start this comment without first congratulating Mr. Taleb on his fantastic book (The Black Swan). It has truly inspired me and helped me change the way I view things in business and in life. I thank you for giving me a different perspective and the ability to interpret data differently.

As for your letter to the Guardian, it was very well written and we should see more individuals speak up when they feel they have been taken out of context or misquoted.

I see it every day in the media where a reporter will take one or two quotes that might present and support"their" view, the one they want to present but completely igonore the rest of the interview because it weakens the impact of the quotes they selectively chose to make their argument, whatever that argument might be. However, "reversing" the arguments is a whole new level of lowball reporting. Good on Mr. Taleb for speaking up.