Hacker News Reader

Comment by msandford | Hacker News Reader

> If all he has is a mathematical critique that was roundly rejected by 100 experts in the field

So, Taleb has looked at the math and says it's good. They haven't looked at the math at all, or if they have, they've made no effort to refute it. If the conclusions are supported by the math (presumably they are, otherwise what's the point of writing the paper?) then to say "no we don't agree with the conclusion" without making any attempt to understand the way that the authors got to the conclusion is pretty freakin' suspect to use a colloquialism.

View on HN

Looking into it more, Taleb's only clear connection to the paper or biology in general is an old grudge against Dawkins. He's a fascinating economist but it looks like he's out of his element here.

It looks like a complete non-story scientifically. However, Taleb's now wandered into a new neighborhood, he's insulted people, he's bragged about his math skills, and he's borderline demanded a paradigm shift in a field he has no background in. This might still get interesting considering A) Dawkins' response might be classic and B) some mathematical physicist might wander by and take issue with a group of scientists being disrespected by an economist who thinks he's good at math.

> and he's borderline demanded a paradigm shift in a field he has no background in.

I don't think that's true at all, and it makes the rest of your argument a lot weaker.

What he has said is "if someone goes to the trouble of doing the math, at least take a look at it!" because there are a bunch of people who haven't bothered to refute the math in the slightest, but who are demanding retraction nonetheless. I don't think that position is entirely unreasonable, either.

I assure you if my arguments look strong it's an illusion! Biologists know their field and they either dismiss things that anger people or they go on a million wild-goose chases. It's no-win. They know this area far better than Taleb and I have to defer to their expertise while accepting that in very rare occasions they'll be wrong.

Looking around the rebuttals[0][1][2] seem pretty non-exceptional. From the looks of it nobody's claiming Wilson's math is incorrect on a technical level, but that it's wrong on a conceptual level. Taleb's mathematical audit may have preemptively refuted a claim nobody was even making.

If Wilson et al. have a better tool it's on them to demonstrate it. Nobody needs to check the math, they just state their better predictions and the community examines them. Sometimes the claimed mathematical tools aren't even as good as the current ones, and then the correctness of the math is moot. FWICT, the biologists are saying they already have better tools and they're declining the offer to downgrade.

[0] - http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/03/researchers-challenge-e.-... [1] - https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/a-misgui... [2] - http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/eo_wilson_disavows_his_... [mathy rebuttal] - http://kinselections.blogspot.com/2013/12/nowak-and-wilson-a...

I've read them, and I've yet to see anything other than a bunch of people saying "nuh uh! you're wrong!" to paraphrase. They might be smart folks, but the fact that people can't point out obvious mistakes and must simply say "it's not right" is really unfortunate.

In a lot of science there are right and wrong answers and the math (and experiments) make it obvious which is which. Here it seems to be a lot more opinions rather than facts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com