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Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

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

#181

Post by BurningFrog »

mypastself wrote: post #162
BurningFrog wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 737 Max tragedy wss mainly caused by regulatory constrains on design.

I’m interested in a source for this. Based on online news reports and a couple of documentaries on the topic I’ve watched (Frontline, Netflix), the regulatory constraints mainly entailed having new airplane designs go through more extensive scrutiny, which would mean greater expenditures for the company. In order to avoid this (and therefore stay competitive with Airbus), Boeing reported the MCAS program as merely a…

I agree with your facts. We differ on judgement and/or labelling.

Regulations made the sounds engineering solution very costly, in both time and money, so Boeing was forced to do a complex error prone hacky solution to stay within the regulatory constraints.

Don't really know what "reductive" means here, but it's probably not good :)

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

#182

Post by jcadam »

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.

If you could replace income tax with a national sales tax, I'd be all for it. The problem is, everyone knows any consumption based taxes will be in addition to the current taxes on productivity (e.g., income tax).

In any case, what the govt doesn't take in taxes, it can just take via inflation.

Wealth confiscation via inflation is great! it doesn't require politicians to justify higher taxes to their constituents (and thus face the wrath of their voters), and it can be implemented by unaccountable and unelected officials at the Fed.

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

#183

Post by ivan_gammel »

blfr wrote: post #94
ivan_gammel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just about informing people, but also automation of many things. It is certainly more powerful transformation than invention of steam engine. It has transformed industry and agriculture on a similar scale, enabling many things that were not possible before, but it also transformed our society, changing the ways we communicate, learn, entertain and find partners.

The difference between having a tractor and not having a tractor is much larger than between having a computer/gps-guided tractor and having an old school tractor. While it's certainly an improvement, it's a smaller improvement. The difference between hailing a taxi via app and hailing a taxi by waving at it is much smaller than the difference between automobiles being available and not being available. Again, it's a…

It depends on where to look for examples.

E.g. in agriculture there's a huge difference between a water pump (or a water wheel, both - incremental updates from a bucket with water) and computer-controlled watering system, which can deliver significant increase in yield or even save your crop during drought.

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

#186

Post by jcadam »

danaris wrote: post #131
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.

Taxing consumption is inherently regressive. By its nature, it places a disproportionate amount of the burden on those least able to pay for it.

There are ways to address that. For example - exempting certain things like staple food items.

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

#187

Post by golemotron »

> World could undo social and economic advances and face 1.5 disasters a day by 2030, according to UN’s flagship Global Assessment Report.

Now is a good time to talk about incentives. If you are the 'UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction' you have to find disasters or disband.

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

#188

Post by throwaway894345 »

mort96 wrote: post #66
throwawaymaths wrote: post #22

> broken perception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility" How about artificially low interest rates? An interest rate is exactly the coordination between risk and time, with a low interest rate you're subsidizing stupidity and wastefulness, and with its concommittant inflation you're forcing people into making those investments to stay afloat. Maybe if we weren't goosing the interest rate low…

Your last sentence seems to suggest that if we just let the free market do what it does, everything would be fixed and we wouldn't have any environmental problems. Are you not aware of the concept of externalities? How do you, for example, explain the fact that leaded gasoline was only replaced with non-leaded gasoline when "meddling" made it illegal?

I don't know that I agree with the idea that the government should take no direct role in managing the economy, but that's a different argument than "the government shouldn't regulate externalities". I think there's a reasonable distinction between "protecting public health" and "manipulating the economy". Certainly regulating public health will have downstream economic impacts, but those impacts aren't the purpose.

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

#189

Post by mypastself »

BurningFrog wrote: post #181
mypastself wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m interested in a source for this. Based on online news reports and a couple of documentaries on the topic I’ve watched (Frontline, Netflix), the regulatory constraints mainly entailed having new airplane designs go through more extensive scrutiny, which would mean greater expenditures for the company. In order to avoid this (and therefore stay competitive with Airbus), Boeing reported the MCAS program as merely a…

I agree with your facts. We differ on judgement and/or labelling. Regulations made the sounds engineering solution very costly, in both time and money, so Boeing was forced to do a complex error prone hacky solution to stay within the regulatory constraints. Don't really know what "reductive" means here, but it's probably not good :)

What I meant by reductive is, I feel like laying the blame solely at the feet of regulators oversimplifies the issue. Someone might argue that better enforcement or additional regulation (one that would prevent Boeing from circumventing the law) could have prevented the disaster.

If I recall correctly, the Netflix documentary tends to blame capitalism, the free market, and other assorted boogeymen for creating the perverse incentives the company was forced to respond to.

I suspect that neither of the two views at the opposite side of the spectrum captures the full picture.

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

#190

Post by aeturnum »

I think a lot of folks here are missing the forest for the trees about this report. This is urging people to take a disaster studies inspired approach[1]. We need are in danger of over-optimizing; of accepting too many disruptions from foreseeable problems. There is nothing here about how many risks we should take - it's talking about the fact that we can model expected disruptions and that we are not using that knowledge to prepare for those disruptions which will, of course, make them worse.

Nearly all disasters are foreseeable and mitigable. We will do better if we prepare ahead of time. Investing a comparatively small amount of resources will have returns down the line - but you have to do the investment and plan accordingly. A laser focus on investing all resources in "progress" will end up forseeably disrupted.

[1] The work of Scott Gabriel Knowles is probably a good intro if people are not familiar.

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