A Covid-19 Risk Conversation with Nassim Taleb and Yaneer Bar-Yam

We discuss 1) the errors in ignoring scaling for pandemics, why a doctor's micro-expertise doesn't transfer to collective risks, 2) how evidence based medicine is closer to anecdote based medicine owing to silent risks, 3) the risks of morbidity must be accounted for 4) how the dangers of vaccines do not scale.

Nassim Taleb spent 20 years as a derivatives trader and, after closing 650,000 option transactions and examining 200,000 risk reports, he changed careers in 2006 to become a scholar and philosophical essayist. Taleb is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's Polytechnic Institute, but he self-funds his research and operates in the manner of independent scholars. He is the author of four novels, most notably The Black Swan and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Taleb's works focuses on decision making under opacity, as well as mathematical and philosophical problems with probability, in other words on "what to do in a world we don't understand" as well as on the properties of systems that can handle disorder. His latest book is titled Skin in the Game.