Considering basically nothing he talks about is a thought original to him, I can't say I agree. He's good at popularizing things with the general public that were already well known within specialist circles, though.
He's also quite spotty on a bunch of science related subjects, including GMOs
We have always been over our head. And you don't have to be a "Monsanto shill" to realize that.
He's very trigger happy with the block button, which ironically limits his exposure to contrarian views and likely makes his ideas less anti-fragile in the long run.
From everything I have read about Monsanto (none of it from Taleb), they are a pretty shitty, unethical company. They have ruined the lives of farmer in many places inside and out outside the US. I mean, round up is illegal in the EU.
His issue with GMOs, as I understand it, is mother nature "developed" and evolved these crops over a long period of time, and we should not trust a few IYI scientists at Monsanto, etc to play with that evolution via genetic manipulation.
There are many many examples of GMO foods that we all eat every day that are not related to the genetic modification done to make plants able to handle having roundup sprayed on them. I had some papayas over the weekend - something like 4/5ths of all papayas in the US are GMO because the ringspot virus nearly wiped them out prior to scientists genetically modifying them.
Taleb basically sticks his head in the sand and acts like Monsanto is the only game in town when it comes to GMOs and thinks that it is too dangerous for us to do at all.
> mother nature "developed" and evolved these crops over a long period of time, and we should not trust a few IYI scientists at Monsanto, etc to play with that evolution via genetic manipulation
We evolved sleeping on the earth, but very few treat that as an argument against beds.
That is a flagrant abuse of the phrase "by definition"! Who is Vallianatos and on what basis does he make these claims? I looked him up and found that he has a BA in zoology and a doctorate in history, so I'd be keen to look at original sources rather than treat him as an expert.
He's obviously important in general - I just think there's probably a better label thank thinker. Evangelist, maybe?