The Wall

[BananaStand]

Can someone explain to me why the comparison between a home's doors and windows are comparable to a nation's immigration policy.

I see no direct comparisons which are simultaneously logical and compelling.

Because doors and countries are both made out of atoms. Satisfied Mr. Physics?

More seriously, it's an analogy. Its' when you take something that's really nuanced and complicated and compare it to something more simple, so that reasonable people who understand the simple thing, can then use that knowledge to understand the more complex problem.

You lock your house to deter entrance by people who want to do you harm. You secure your country's border for the same reason.

You lock your house to deter people from taking your property. You secure your country so non-citizens won't come over and exploit your social programs.

Having a secure home means that you can control what is in it and what is not. Say you decide that you don't want drugs in your house. You should have a right to deny entrance to a meth addict. Similarly, a country should be able to stop illegal substances from crossing over its border.

Locking your house keeps other people's conflicts away from you. Say your neighbor's wife is a relentless harpy. He decides he's had enough of the conflict and wanders over to your place and sits down in your living room. Maybe you learn why his wife hates him so much. To prevent that, you have a door, and you control who comes through it. For countries, open borders means the cost of migrating is lower, meaning refugees are willing to immigrate earlier and further. This will have the most negative impact on the most prosperous countries.

Having a door through which you control the entry and exit to your home allows you to maintain law and order within its wall. If 200 people suddenly showed up, you'd have chaos likely resulting in property damage. Similarly, for countries, an open border policy could cause sudden spikes in population, particularly in areas closest to the border. That puts undue strain on local law enforcement and other public services, the net result of which is usually crime.

But if you want to be a dick about it, you're right. doors and countries are not the same thing. You get an A for vocabulary today. Tomorrow's word, is Analogy. Study hard.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Because doors and countries are both made out of atoms. Satisfied Mr. Physics?

Logical, but not compelling.

[the rest].

Neither logical nor compelling.

Windows are totally easy to break. Cordless power tools exist.

Is your analogy that a nation's immigration policy should be paper thin and easy to circumvent?

But if you want to be a dick about it, you're right. doors and countries are not the same thing. You get an A for vocabulary today. Tomorrow's word, is Analogy. Study hard.

What I want is to understand a nuanced subject in an adult manner which is informed and open-minded to unorthodox ideas, whether or not they pan out to be workable solutions.

There is only one person in this thread who is taking things personally and throwing insults around. The rest of us are struggling to uncover the missing information which clouds us from a full understanding.

[BananaStand]

The rest of us are struggling to uncover the missing information which clouds us from a full understanding.

Watch more Fox News

[Jack Sawyer]

Watch more Fox News

This is both hilarious and sad at the same time

Talk about conflicting emotions

[Poopadoop]

The gist of Taleb's argument against GMO as I understand it is that a small change in a number of small variables (i.e., genes) could have emergent multiplicative risks out of all proportion to their understood individual risks down the line, and that these could end up being catastrophically bad because ecology is all interconnected.

The problems with the argument imho is that a) it isn't at all obvious that these variables will necessarily interact, and b) if they do, it isn't obvious that such an interaction will be any more likely to be catastrophic than would be leaving things as they are. The variables as they exist now could still have a catastrophic effect at some time in the future (we'll never know until it happens because it's impossible to predict all the interactions, which is kind of Taleb's starting point for saying we shouldn't mess with the unknown).

It's like saying you have ten jars full of 100 marbles each, and each jar contains one or more marbles that fit into a piece that if combined becomes the 'giant doomsday marble'. You pull one marble from each jar simultaneously and if you pick 10 doomsday pieces at the same time you create the doomsday marble and the world implodes. His argument is analogous to saying that we COULD be increasing the number of doomsday pieces in each jar by GMO, thus increasing the chance of the world imploding. But with all the maths in the world it can't be measured objectively because it's impossible to identify the doomsday pieces' interactions by definition. Which he then uses as an argument that we basically shouldn't accept any risks with any GMO because it is akin to creating these potential doomsday marbles in different jars (I'm paraphrasing).

tl;dr Taleb seems to be talking out his ass a bit on this one.

[wufwugy]

The gist of Taleb's argument against GMO as I understand it is that a small change in a number of small variables (i.e., genes) could have emergent multiplicative risks out of all proportion to their understood individual risks down the line, and that these could end up being catastrophically bad because ecology is all interconnected.

The problems with the argument imho is that a) it isn't at all obvious that these variables will necessarily interact, and b) if they do, it isn't obvious that such an interaction will be any more likely to be catastrophic than would be leaving things as they are. The variables as they exist now could still have a catastrophic effect at some time in the future (we'll never know until it happens because it's impossible to predict all the interactions, which is kind of Taleb's starting point for saying we shouldn't mess with the unknown).

It's like saying you have ten jars full of 100 marbles each, and each jar contains one or more marbles that fit into a piece that if combined becomes the 'giant doomsday marble'. You pull one marble from each jar simultaneously and if you pick 10 doomsday pieces at the same time you create the doomsday marble and the world implodes. His argument is analogous to saying that we COULD be increasing the number of doomsday pieces in each jar by GMO, thus increasing the chance of the world imploding. But with all the maths in the world it can't be measured objectively because it's impossible to identify the doomsday pieces' interactions by definition. Which he then uses as an argument that we basically shouldn't accept any risks with any GMO because it is akin to creating these potential doomsday marbles in different jars (I'm paraphrasing).

tl;dr Taleb seems to be talking out his ass a bit on this one.

It's funny, I think your explanation is fantastic and I don't think it suggests out-of-ass talking on his part.

Perhaps it's because I view the "we COULD be increasing the number of doomsday pieces..." statement as being more credible than perhaps you do. Lately I've been of the mind that "consensus" gets lots of stuff wrong, even when backed empirically with higher-than-standard rigor.

[Poopadoop]

It's funny, I think your explanation is fantastic and I don't think it suggests out-of-ass talking on his part.

Perhaps it's because I view the "we COULD be increasing the number of doomsday pieces..." statement as being more credible than perhaps you do. Lately I've been of the mind that "consensus" gets lots of stuff wrong, even when backed empirically with higher-than-standard rigor.

I probably shouldn't have said 'talking out of his ass' as if he never thought about it much and just spun out a paper one day cause he was bored. I'm sure he has thought about it and he may be making more sense than I realise.

OTOH, I still stand by my arguments a) and b) above. I think his argument is a bit of the old 'we're creating our own disaster because experts don't understand maths' argument that he used for economics. I think he may have gotten a big head about that and his hubris may have outran his knowledge a bit.

What this kind of reminds me of is about a dozen years ago when Francis Crick (of Watson and Crick, the structure of DNA Nobel prize winners) decided he was going to be a neuroscientist, and not only that but solve pretty much the biggest question in neuroscience which was how the brain creates consciousness. That did not end well for him.