RE: Changing the narrative – how to talk about climate change
I don't necessarily agree with Taleb's rejection of statistics. Yes, black swan events are occurring from time to time, but that does not mean that calculating the most probable development (and this is what statistical forecast is) is useless or worthless. If the most probable development is catastrophic enough, why argue with a black swan?
In his books his main argument against forecasts in complex systems is against positive predictions, since a negative black swan can have huge and possibly catastrophic impacts. Climate change is different in that regard, since even the forecasts predict a catastrophic negative outcome. But this is exactly why I really like his argument regarding that - the models simply don't matter, because we should protect the environment regardless. It takes away one of the main counter-arguments made by climate sceptics: "The models are not correct/cannot predict the future" - well, they don't even matter.
Personally, I think some in-between persepective can be really helpful. Keep on using statistics, know their limits, design your social, economical, ecological environment in a way which makes them able to withstand and even benefit from negative black swans (Taleb would call that antifragile).
When I published the German version of this article at another blog with way more readers I received an email by a "climate sceptic" who thanked me for this nuanced take on the whole debate. And although I don't agree with most of the things he wrote, he gave me the impression that he was at least willing to think about the arguments I presented. I don't know whether he will change his behavior, but this experience taught me a valuable lesson: take the sceptics seriously. I know it can be frustrating but people don't like to be devaluated and if we manage to find a way of talking about important issues without pointing fingers and condemning each other, we might actually stand a chance against conspiracy theorists and alternative facts apologists. As I said earlier: we desperately need the better stories.
The problem I see with arguing solely "black swan" based is that it allow people to say that such an event can't be 100% prevented anyway. Imagine the supervolcano below the phlegrean fields erupting or the likes.
I would rather use it as an additional argument, to say "even if the statistic chance of 0.1% that the models are wrong comes true, there is still the chance of a provoked black swan event"). That doesn't devaluate evidence-based predictions.
One thing else: "take the sceptics seriously"
If "taking serious" means staying polite and not to argue ad hominem, I am with you - even though climate sceptics use those tactics a lot. But in a discussion, I still have to tell them that they are wrong. Anything else would be an appeasement tactics that would be a breach of my oath as a PhD.
That's exactly the point I was trying to make, it seems I have failed^^
Totally agree. I was mainly refering to the tone of the debate, not about the factual arguments.
then we're at the same page ;-)