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Our Newfound Fear of Risk

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Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#151

Post by lectrick »

acabal wrote: post #80

I think it's become a cultural thing, unfortunately. I've spent the last few years seeing the world, and the difference in attitudes between the people of many other countries and Americans at home is striking. We've become a fear-based culture. I have an anecdote from a month or two ago. My girlfriend--she's German--and I were in Boston's central park, where there's a wading pool for children. The place was extremel…

Boston's a poor example. It's possibly the most socially-conservative place on earth I've ever lived in other than a Muslim country.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#152

Post by spin »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #19
_mvuc wrote: post #9

When you treat adults like children, and children like babies, you get exactly that. And that's why a hundred years ago 14-year olds were captaining their own ships, and today you have 40-year olds who can't do their own laundry or balance a checkbook.

I also wonder if it's related to decreased birth rates in modern times - parents have fewer children than a century or two ago, so losing a single child to an accident of some sort is much more costly to the family, hence the increased risk aversion.

I have another explanation: If you have more kids, you don't have time to watch after them all as much.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#153

Post by sliverstorm »

dredmorbius wrote: post #146
sliverstorm wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that providing energy needs under a renewables basis is going to be really hard doesn't make nonrenewables any better -- they're only going to work until they don't and we fall off a cliff. What's your suggestion. My suggestion is to pick our energy sources carefully. Solar panels mean a dependence on China, which is hardly a departure from our current foreign dependence. Maybe there is no energy source that…

Solar panels mean a dependence on China If you're referring to rare-earth production, my understanding is that this is more a matter of where mining operations are considered viable and acceptable (largely on a basis of environmental impacts). The elements themselves are relatively abundant in the Earth's crust, they're simply not concentrated as other minerals have traditionally been (though we've done a rather good…

My point is that whatever challenges renewables offer, they're out only hope

Ok, we're on different pages then. I don't dislike renewables. I think at least one of them is probably the way of the future. I just dislike the black-and-white way renewables vs. nonrenewables are addressed.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#154

Post by NoPiece »

tedks wrote: post #142
NoPiece wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are numerous laws that enforce the no risk world on parents. These are things I did as a kid that are now illegal: Rode in the back of a pick up truck Rode a bike without a helmet Sat in the front seat of a car before I was 8 years old. Swam in a pool that didn't have a fence around it Set off fireworks in the street in front of our house on July 4th Walked to and home from school alone (not illegal, but agains…

Almost none of those are good ideas. Walking alone is an exception; it's very easy for one momentary lapse to cause death or permanent damage in any of the others. One of mother's best friends died riding in the back of a pickup truck; car accidents are common, but all that happened in her case was that the road had a pothole, she fell, and happened to hit her head too hard and in the wrong spot. My girlfriend in col…

The point isn't whether they are good ideas, but to illustrate that perception of risk really has changed. So much so that the anti-risk mentality has been codified. No kids wore helmets 30 years, now they have to by law. I'm just surprised that people would argue with the premise that people are more risk averse now.

With that said, while almost always ride with a bike helmet, when I was in NYC this summer, I joyously rode the Citibikes around without a helmet. I would have been a less happy, less human person if I took your advice and didn't ride around NYC just because I didn't have a helmet.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#155

Post by venomsnake »

rayiner wrote: post #32
newobj wrote: post #11

Related: at the PARK this weekend, and heard all the following utterances in the span of ten minutes from some parents: "NO RUNNING!" "IT'S DANGEROUS HERE" "YOU'RE GONNA GET HURT" "NO RUNNING!" Talk about instilling fear and creating risk aversion. Sometimes you just have to let a child find out for themselves what's safe and what isn't. What you can get up and dust yourself off from and what you can't. It's hard to…

I'd bet that much of the issue stems from the decline in birth rates among middle/upper middle class parents relative to the days of yore. When you only manage to pop out one or two kids, at great career sacrifice and monetary expense, each one seems to matter more than they did back in the day. Also, paradoxically, the safer things get the more people worry about the dangers that remain. This is rational. Say doing…

Direct quote from a friend:

"First kid - food drops on the clean floor - burn the food sterilize the place. Second kid - food drops on the clean floor - wash it and give it back to him. Third kid - she ate the cat's dinner? It's the cat's problem, not mine."

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#156

Post by vacri »

tedks wrote: post #140
enraged_camel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>If your child crashes his bike and gets a bloody knee on the playground, your relaxing afternoon at the park is most likely over and now you have a crying child, bloody clothes, a damaged bike wheel, and potentially another child who is now screaming because you have to leave the park to go find bandages. Well, yes. This is called parenting: it is expected that, as a parent, you will have to endure a certain amount…

If the only way humans could learn was through directly physical stimuli, we'd be scratching dirt and running down antelope still.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practise.

In practise, there is.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#157

Post by dredmorbius »

nitrogen wrote: post #145
dredmorbius wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels do have some low-reserve raw-materials requirements. CSP (concentrated solar thermal power) rather less so, though it has higher costs and isn't as easily deployed widely (PV can be installed pretty much on any existing structure, CSP generally requires its own dedication installations). Though really, all this says is that even under a renewables scheme, we're not going to be able to provide power at th…

Though really, all this says is that even under a renewables scheme, we're not going to be able to provide power at the level some have come to expect for the population we've now got (7 billion) or are projected to have (10 billion). This is best viewed as an engineering problem; those are much easier to solve than social problems.

It's not an engineering problem to the extent that you've got populations whose very existence depends on these energy streams.

At that point, it becomes a rather pressing existential problem.

You cannot simply "engineer" more energy into existence.

Yes, there's quite a bit more energy striking Earth every day from the sun than humans use today. However it's not in forms we can utilize directly, other than simply basking in it. The most widespread process for converting sunlight into useful energy is about 1% efficient, we're already using 14% of all its productivity on the planet, and using it to replace existing fossil fuel uses would require another 21%. That's plants, and for humans to directly utilize 35% of all net primary productivity strikes me as manifestly infeasible.

Source: Jeffrey Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine"

http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange...

And the lack of an engineering solution means that this is a social problem -- that's the fundamental conflict here: deciding how to allocate scarce resources.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#158

Post by dredmorbius »

sliverstorm wrote: post #153
dredmorbius wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels mean a dependence on China If you're referring to rare-earth production, my understanding is that this is more a matter of where mining operations are considered viable and acceptable (largely on a basis of environmental impacts). The elements themselves are relatively abundant in the Earth's crust, they're simply not concentrated as other minerals have traditionally been (though we've done a rather good…

My point is that whatever challenges renewables offer, they're out only hope Ok, we're on different pages then. I don't dislike renewables. I think at least one of them is probably the way of the future. I just dislike the black-and-white way renewables vs. nonrenewables are addressed.

I just dislike the black-and-white way renewables vs. nonrenewables are addressed.

Then do some research.

I've, literally, dedicated the past 9 months to figuring out what the hell is going on. And one way or the other, we're going to run out of fossil fuels in any practical economic sense (there will always be some coal, oil, and natural gas underground, but the ability to extract it and gain useful economic productivity from it will eventually expire).

You can quibble over whether we've got enough to last for 5 years, 50, 500, or 5000, but they will run out. Almost certainly at some point in the timespan I've just given. Very likely sooner rather than later for oil (on which we're tremendously dependent for anything involving transportation), and likely not much longer for gas and coal. And those timespans are well within the span of existing human history. Which is to say: we're facing the very probable end of industrial civilization of humans on Earth.

It's also hardly a "green" or "liberal" viewpoint: the finite nature of fossil fuels was realized quite early in the Industrial Revolution. William Stanley Jevons is often mentioned ("The Coal Question", 1865), but he was beat by 76 years by John Williams, "The Limited Quantity of Coal in Britain", 1789. More recently, M. King Hubbert (petroleum engineer), Hyman Rickover (US Navy admiral), and Colin Campbell (petroleum engineer).

It's geology, physics, and math. Not ideology.

And even if we've got reserves to last a million years, the environment can't take it. CO2, mercury, sulfur dioxide, particulates, and other pollutants from coal, oil, and gas will kill us.

We're stuck between those two prongs.

And beyond energy, there's a host of other resources which humans have done an exceptionally good job of drawing down. As if it's our job (and I could make a fair case that it has been).

And, as with any coldly rational bottom-line focused employer, once an employee has provided all the useful work they can provide you, you let them go.

That's us: humanity is very close to having worked its way out of a job. And no, the Universe doesn't offer unemployment insurance, welfare, or a pension.

Think it over. Do some research. See what conclusions you come to.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#159

Post by mtdewcmu »

acabal wrote: post #80

I think it's become a cultural thing, unfortunately. I've spent the last few years seeing the world, and the difference in attitudes between the people of many other countries and Americans at home is striking. We've become a fear-based culture. I have an anecdote from a month or two ago. My girlfriend--she's German--and I were in Boston's central park, where there's a wading pool for children. The place was extremel…

The most unfortunate part isn't that we worry too much -- it's that we worry about the wrong things. Not enough people seem to be concerned about the unaffordability of health insurance, or the fact that 401k plans are unlikely to cover retirement.

Re: Our Newfound Fear of Risk

#160

Post by mtdewcmu »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #72
zeteo wrote: post #49

It was a lot easier to tolerate risk when people had a common Big Picture. This could be provided by religion, ideology etc. Such attitudes still hold in some places, e.g. Amish communities seem more resilient after school shootings [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_school_shooting#Amish_com...

And when the Big Picture is fractured, trust disappears. I see the anti-vax craze as primarily an issue of trust and control. "I don't trust Those People (the doctors)" or along the lines of "I need to control everything, including my vaccine schedule".

I think it's motivated a lot by fear of autism, which contributes the vindictiveness. It also seems to be an offshoot of the anti-science left, which embraces natural food, loathes agribusiness, and prefers alternative medicine to the hated big pharma. I think it's grounded in Romanticism [1]. There's definitely a mistrust of doctors, but I don't see it as being generically about control.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism

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