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Comment by juskrey | Hacker News Reader

"Selfish gene" notion was debunked by Novak et al. Also Taleb extensively writes in his books about how this contradicts evolution.

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The Novak et al. paper was heavily rebutted.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/03/researchers-challeng...

http://ped.fas.harvard.edu/files/ped/files/nature09836.pdf

The nature paper is not a rebuttal, it just says "hey look we did some studies, didn't they read those studies? We studied lots of things and came to conclusions."

There's no modeling of the Wilson argument that is then proven to be wrong.

I wouldn't give much stock in what Taleb writes about anything except options trading.

Can you give a more specific reference to Novak et al.? I don't think the "Selfish Gene" has been "debunked", and find no reference to Novak eg at Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene-centered_view_of_evolutio...

I think this refers to Nowak et al and I assume refers to the discussion mentioned in the Wikipedia article of the book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene#Units_of_sele...).

> I wouldn't give much stock in what Taleb writes about anything except options trading.

Why do you say that? I’m broadly familiar with Taleb’s writing, but have yet to fully read any of his books. So I’m curious of your perspective here and what is informing that sentiment.

He's a gadfly, not a scientist writing to popularize a field he actually does work in. (With the plausible exception of options trading).

Do you think his central thesises around Black Swan events, tail risks, hedging, and skin-in-the-game principle for evaluating advice/statements, are not relevant to scopes beyond options trading?

Note, I am not stating he is not a gadfly. He is, absolutely. But is he wrong?

I'd take him about as seriously as I take Wikipedia. Sometimes useful. Follow links to sources, evaluate those.

Whether he's truly a gladly or not, you have to appreciate a guy who's self-aware enough about such opinions that he listed this quip first on the back cover of his latest book (from memory, mind you) —

>The trouble with Taleb isn't that he's an asshole—he is an asshole. The trouble with Taleb is that he is right.

Love that!

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