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recent bookmarks from jmBeard vs Taleb: Scientism and the Nature of Historical Inquiry2017-08-08T08:30:28+00:00
https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/beard-nassem-taleb-twitter-feud-and-dangers-of-scientism-auid-868?access=ALL
jmThe most interesting aspect of this Twitter war is that it is representative of a malaise that has stricken a good chunk of academics (mostly scientists, with a peppering of philosophers) and an increasing portion of the general public: scientism.
I have co-edited an entire book, due out soon, on the topic, which features authors who are pro, con, and somewhere in the middle. Scientism is defined as the belief that the assumptions, methods of research, etc., of the natural sciences are the only ways to gather valuable knowledge or to answer meaningful questions. Everything else, to paraphrase Taleb, is bullshit.
Does Taleb engage in scientism? Indubitably. I have already mentioned above his generalization from what one particular historian (Beard) said to “historians” tout court. But there is more, from his Twitter feed: “there is this absence of intellectual rigor in humanities.” “Are historians idiots? Let’s be polite and say that they are in the majority no rocket scientists and operate under a structural bias. It looks like an empirically rigorous view of historiography is missing.”
]]>history science scientism nassim-taleb argument debate proof romans britain mary-beardhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0d86528d3920/Nassim Taleb: retire Standard Deviation2014-01-15T21:32:15+00:00
http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25401
jmstatistics standard-deviation stddev maths nassim-taleb deviation volatility rmse distributionshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f9906de54f2e/