Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress • Hacker News Board

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#121

Post by Layke1123 » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

KptMarchewa wrote: post #105

luciusdomitius wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, externalities must indeed be settled. However, leaded petrol (same chap also invented freon (!) btw - talk about being unlucky :D) cannot really be handled by a market as it is in its nature a bodily harm and there is the criminal code for that. Freon would be a much more interesting example as it hurts societies in the long-term and not individuals in the short.

Unfortunately governments can also fail in settling externalities. For example, making it hard to extract oil domestically only shifts production to other countries, which are often bad authoritarian states. Better way is to tax consumption, but that has never been popular in US.

No post body was provided.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#122

Post by Gravityloss » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #62

ivan_gammel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you missed the moment between 1950-2020s when our civilization transitioned from industrial to information society thanks to massive progress in IT. Super-optimistic approach to software design in that period of time has led us to the destructive mess of the social networks, cyberwarfare and buggy MCAS in Boeing 737 Max. EDIT: I also forgot to mention globalization, where optimism resulted in the supply chain…

I didn't miss the massive progress in IT. I mean, obviously I didn't, we're having this conversation on HN. However, progress in IT, in bits, while fine and useful, is simply not as powerful as progress in more basic industries, in atoms. Having the means to (over)feed seven billion people (1940s tech spread around the world) is more important than having the means to (mis)inform seven billion people (1980s tech spre…

Look at a smart phone. Just the physical parts like the battery, the cpu, display and power electronics are completely different to technology in 1990.

How do you get information or deal with payments? It's the smartphone. Many people in developing countries benefit immensely from this change. Or refugees or travelers. And on software services side, we have similar improvements - the smartphone would be useless without the services it's used with. How many hours of queuing have we eliminated since now you can do those things online? In my country almost nothing requires physical presence anymore. And also, millions of people can spend their time on something more productive than sitting behind a counter, serving customers for trivial things.

Although, ironically, these hacker news discussions could have content wise been had in the usenet already in the eighties. No similar upvoting / downvoting crowd moderation though, which did kill it as a discussion platform once the masses got access.

What other technologies look completely different? People laughed at wind and solar power. They were completely unviable as power sources.

Cars used leaded gasoline. Diesels were rolling smoke stacks. Air quality in cities was terrible. Now we have electric buses.

On the other hand, there have been regressions. Nuclear power was being built at a fast pace in the late seventies and early eighties. It's way slower now.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#123

Post by Zababa » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #57

I think this is completely backwards. We are not risking enough and the progress has stalled as a result. During the 1880-1950 we were causing massive disasters all around, literally nuking cities. But that period is also where we came up with virtually all of technology that makes the modern world: cars, planes, radio, computers, nuclear power, jet propulsion. Since then (also ~70 years) we have maintained a little…

I don't think it's about risk, I think it's about low-hanging fruits. It's also why some people could bring revolution to mathematics, physics, philosophy in just one life before, and these days it's not possible.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#124

Post by galangalalgol » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:19 PM UTC

KptMarchewa wrote: post #105

luciusdomitius wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, externalities must indeed be settled. However, leaded petrol (same chap also invented freon (!) btw - talk about being unlucky :D) cannot really be handled by a market as it is in its nature a bodily harm and there is the criminal code for that. Freon would be a much more interesting example as it hurts societies in the long-term and not individuals in the short.

Unfortunately governments can also fail in settling externalities. For example, making it hard to extract oil domestically only shifts production to other countries, which are often bad authoritarian states. Better way is to tax consumption, but that has never been popular in US.

The US is a "low trust" society. We don't trust our government. Our entire system was in fact designed assuming the axiom that people in power cannot be trusted. People are not confident those tax dollars would be used to offset the externality, as opposed to a pet project. Sadly, our history would seem to make that lack of confidence rational. But, denying our government the power to govern isn't the solution, demanding (and getting) transparency and personal accountability that is meaningfully severe is.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#125

Post by mort96 » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

infogulch wrote: post #118

mort96 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was specifically talking about the last paragraph, that the solution is to not "meddle" in general. It's quite possible that the way interest rates are set is problematic, I'm not qualified to have an opinion on that. But clearly there are problems where meddling is necessary.

Humans have a strong universal bias towards additive solutions, even when subtractive solutions are clearly better. I doubt regulatory policymakers are immune.

That's a non-statement. Nothing about what I have said assumes that policymakers are immune to any form of bias.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#126

Post by verisimi » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

748 wrote: post #27

verisimi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say remove - I say rollback. The sentiment should be that we have less government - we should empower individuals, not monolithic state apparatus. It would ideally be rolled back slowly, keeping a steady focus where governmental power is continuously eroded. However, I also think that things are so wildly out of kilter now, that it is far more likely that things could become even more tumultuous. I even think the…

I understand your distrust towards "Big Corporations" aimed at maximizing profit.. But I wouldn't trust individuals with many things govmnts regulate. We may be talking in different contexts, but as it was mentioned above, almost all aspects need a governing body that has the overview of the general state of things in order to properly "reduce damage". Same thing with speed limits - some people claim there should be…

> And if we have to chose between two evils - the govmnts and "individuals" - it is reasonable to chose the least evil, which is the govmnt.

Although that may appear to be the choice it isn't in reality. If you believe that government is a real thing the answer is always more government. However, the reality is that you are an individual. Government is an idea we can believe, a means whereby the individual can pretend to hand over their personal authority, as a child does with its parents. In fact, as an adult, you are autonomous. You don't have to do what other entities tell you to do, unless you agree. Well, you might have to do it on account of the use of force (actual or implied), but if you think it is wrong it cannot become right. Implied use of force is what government does!

So, if some group writes a bunch or laws, and calls them 'the Law' and says it is 'good', and even appears to be subject themselves to it, if you think the law is wrong you do not have to follow it. You are in fact an individual, and only have to answer to yourself and your conscience.

'Government' has no interest in helping you become a fully fledged individual, hence we are all indoctrinated from day 0. They have us believing that the infrastructure they provide is good, the best we can do, etc - even if they couch it as 'government is a terrible system except for all the others'. Anarchy has such a bad name - why? Because it actively holds 'no leaders' as its central tenet.

Ultimately, we are individuals living in a moral world. We have been miseducated and misled into authorising others to do things on our behalf - this is government acting in a self-serving way, that ensures it gains ever increasing amount of power at individual's expense. And then I say the 'government acting in a self-serving way' I really mean those individuals that manage and benefit from the parasitic governance system.

Morality itself, comes down to the golden rule, which I think is best stated as:

Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated.

This basically says, everything you want to do is fine - as long as you are not harming others. And it is fine to protect others who are being harmed.

For fun, here is a story that attempts to imagine an alternative reality:

https://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/andthentherewerenone.mp3

(Its great if you can get past the wierd narration, which I think works..)

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#127

Post by White_Wolf » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #107

inawarminister wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were proposals for labor-backed currency, where the basic unit is one hourly work of the worker. So B2B transactions will be valued from the man-hours that went to it. Of course this approach breaks when the gigantic corpocracies are able to bloat into larger and larger sizes. But it might be an interesting research topic.

Labor hours fails because some jobs need more incentive to get into. Why would I study in school when I could make just as much doing basic unskilled labor, with careful savings the unskilled laborer can retire earlier since he starts sooner (also likely doesn't have to pay off student debt)

You'd have to implement a coeficient based on the average time needed to aquire said skill for a person with average IQ and EQ, performance, number of base skills required to learn said skill, so on. This formula would be a bit more complex than this but you get the jist of it.

It wouldn't be impossible to quantify it for all but edge cases.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#128

Post by anovikov » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:32 PM UTC

I would say our risk perception is broken in an opposite way: we became too risk-averse thus making simple things insanely more complicated. Think nuclear power.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#129

Post by rayiner » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

Ambolia wrote: post #54

jolux wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that economic growth is extremely important to developing economies as well. It’s one thing to say we should limit growth, or deprioritize it, or whatever, but in practice this means forcing poor countries to accept lower standards of living. That’s the real trade-off here.

Depends what "poverty" means. A lot of poor people were subsistance farmers, able to hold property and carve a space for themselves and their families in the world. That's something that will be out of reach for many "rich" people in the upcoming decades.

Dude. Go move to my dad’s village in Bangladesh for a year, so what they do, then come back and post on HN.

Re: Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

#130

Post by SkyMarshal » Mon, May 09, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #124

KptMarchewa wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately governments can also fail in settling externalities. For example, making it hard to extract oil domestically only shifts production to other countries, which are often bad authoritarian states. Better way is to tax consumption, but that has never been popular in US.

The US is a "low trust" society. We don't trust our government. Our entire system was in fact designed assuming the axiom that people in power cannot be trusted. People are not confident those tax dollars would be used to offset the externality, as opposed to a pet project. Sadly, our history would seem to make that lack of confidence rational. But, denying our government the power to govern isn't the solution, deman…

Technically the US is a “high trust” society. Meaning we have institutions like rule of law, independent courts, and elections that are trusted by society to facilitate commercial and legal relations between people, rather than personal relationships and kinships.

Yes we complain a lot and criticize the government and don’t fully trust our polarized politicians, but a real “low trust” society is a far cry from what we have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_socie...