Addendum posted 30 August 2015.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has posted a response to my blog post on “The Precautionary Principle” from last week, arguing that I made “severe errors.” In response to an earlier version of the criticism posted on Twitter, I commented that I had misunderstood something that wasn’t expressed precisely. Taleb responded by accusing me of violating a “Principle of scientific integrity.” After a more careful reading, I decided that my reading of Taleb’s work was fine. However, I do think think there were a few things that I could have expressed more clearly. I’ll try to clarify a couple of points that could have been expressed better, as well as respond to Taleb’s criticisms of the piece.