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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

#201

Post by renewiltord »

It's just a distributed market problem, right?

As an agent in the market, if you correctly model tail risk you will still be out-competed by someone who does not model tail risk, since they can allocate resources somewhere other than tail risk mitigation. Given non-catastrophic events, this ends up being okay for the market system. After all, society doesn't care if Google is the search engine or Bing so long as they provide similar functionality.

For catastrophic events, though, we'd like to keep things operational rather than have someone else pop in. But that's okay. I think the right model is that the state steps in for true catastrophes and mitigates the effects (like we did in the pandemic).

And, to be honest, I don't see climate change as an extinction level risk. A few hundred million will die in the top end of what we expect, but that's acceptable. And this is clearly the position of most people, so I'm comfortably in the majority here.

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

#202

Post by Darrengineer »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #195
galangalalgol wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this getting downvotes because it doesn't speak to or support the question of the level of trust in the US government? Or is it getting downvotes because the politics of the poster are evident, and people are disagreeing with those politics? I am pretty sure the poster and I would disagree very strongly and on many things, but this post would seem to relate directly on the matter discussed. We do have a decreasing…

I can't actually tell what the parent's politics are. "40% of Americans don't believe Biden won the election" seems like a left-leaning talking point while "protests at Kavenaugh's house" seems like a right-leaning talking point. I think it's a good thing that he wasn't transparently political. I downvoted because the apparent argument ("the US has these imperfections, thus it follows that it ranks low among countrie…

I think the parent was abundantly clear here: > I am not sure if the US could already be classified as a low-trust society (probably not yet), but a strong negative trend is definitely present. I'm not sure where your interpretation is coming from, but if it was a misreading of parent's comment then I think your downvote could be happily reversed.

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

#203

Post by hnbad »

verisimi wrote: post #149
hnbad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government bad! Here's an example of businesses using their power over the government to do bad things. Let's deregulate businesses further so they don't need to use the government to do bad things because they can do them themselves. Did I miss anything?

Not really - but I think its a message that bears repeating. Most people have been through the governmental education process and have been taught that the government is the only fair/legal/possible answer to all our ills. That 10+ formative years of propaganda to counter. Even more if you go to university and licensed to do your job - you are now vested in an exploitative system, that initiates harm against others.…

You're making an excellent argument why centralised power is bad. You're not addressing how those same power dynamics won't be recreated with "smaller government" if large businesses are already so powerful they can influence governments. It sounds like you're arguing the problem isn't the amount of power being centralised but who gets to control it and your solution is to replace any semblance of equal democratic control with unevenly distributed capital. So in other words, feudalism with extra steps, but instead of the divine right of kings we have a supposed meritocracy built on generational wealth.

Now, I'm with you that representative systems are undemocratic and centralised power leads to corruption and is a bad idea. Where we apparently differ is that my answer would also dissolve corporations by eliminating the concept of private property and use the minimalist government structures to provide social services and infrastructure rather than to protect private property.

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

#204

Post by carapace »

aeturnum wrote: post #190

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 know…

The metaphor that comes to mind is "Pacific Rim": we're being attacked by invisible kaiju but we're not building giant robots to fight them because they're invisible. They're saying "let's use radar to locate the monsters and build robots to be ready to fight them".

But the "monsters" are things like floods, wildfires, tsunamis, etc.

> the Hazard Definition and Classification Review, ... outlined over 300 hazard types that can contribute to disasters (UNDRR, 2020a). They include common events such as storms and floods and also less-frequent events such as pandemics and chemical accidents.

https://www.undrr.org/publication/global-assessment-report-d...

And the giant robots are things like better communication, insurance, and paying a little attention.

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

#205

Post by AftHurrahWinch »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #120
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because many hundreds of millions in research money went into doing so. Because that's where the progress was. They simply couldn't make progress on batteries at the time. Making better engines is a question of manufacturing and metallurgy, stuff that is well within scope for the world as it existed 100yr ago. Making better batteries requires a much higher state of technological progress because you first need to un…

> Because that's where the progress was. They simply couldn't make progress on batteries at the time. That's a descent into circular arguments and post-facto analysis. The early twentieth century was a golden age of chemistry. We had the technology to do fractional distillation of petrochemicals and synthesise complex organics. To suppose that we could not have punched gigantic breakthroughs in ionic electro-chemistr…

Gasoline has an energy density of about 34.6 MJ/liter... the lithium-ion battery pack in a Chevy Volt has an energy density of about 0.4 MJ/liter.

One of those technologies is easier to develop than the other. Science doesn't need to be deterministic for some fruit to hang lower than others.

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

#206

Post by danaris »

jcadam wrote: post #186
danaris wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, there really aren't. You can mitigate the regressive nature of consumption taxes, but you can't eliminate them.

Fundamentally, poor and middle-class people spend a higher percentage of their annual income on goods and services than rich people do. There just isn't enough stuff that one could ever want to buy (or services to partake in) for rich people to spend the same proportion annually.

The best you'd be able to manage is limiting your consumption taxes to things that only very wealthy people can afford in the first place, like superyachts. But at that point, a) you're not managing to bring in a huge amount of revenue with it, and b) you might as well just raise the higher income tax brackets, or add taxes on wealth over $X amount.

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

#207

Post by throwaway894345 »

Darrengineer wrote: post #202
throwaway894345 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't actually tell what the parent's politics are. "40% of Americans don't believe Biden won the election" seems like a left-leaning talking point while "protests at Kavenaugh's house" seems like a right-leaning talking point. I think it's a good thing that he wasn't transparently political. I downvoted because the apparent argument ("the US has these imperfections, thus it follows that it ranks low among countrie…

I think the parent was abundantly clear here: > I am not sure if the US could already be classified as a low-trust society (probably not yet), but a strong negative trend is definitely present. I'm not sure where your interpretation is coming from, but if it was a misreading of parent's comment then I think your downvote could be happily reversed.

That quote demonstrates enumeration fallacy (using examples to argue that the US ranks lower without any context about the countries against which the US is ranked).

Moreover:

> [The US's classification as a high-trust society] might have been true 10 years ago, but now (just from the wiki examples): ...

This seems to unambiguously argue that the US is not a high-trust society. With the additional context of your quote "not sure if the US could be classified as a low trust society...", it's possible that the parent is contradicting himself or that he's arguing that the US is certainly not high-trust, but middling or lower. Thus the parent is either unclear (contradiction) or he's arguing by enumeration. Even if there is some alternative interpretation, this very debate suffices to prove unclarity.

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

#208

Post by aeturnum »

carapace wrote: post #204
aeturnum wrote: post #190

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 know…

The metaphor that comes to mind is "Pacific Rim": we're being attacked by invisible kaiju but we're not building giant robots to fight them because they're invisible. They're saying "let's use radar to locate the monsters and build robots to be ready to fight them". But the "monsters" are things like floods, wildfires, tsunamis, etc. > the Hazard Definition and Classification Review, ... outlined over 300 hazard type…

Exactly - though I think I would go even further with the metaphor and say this report is pointing out that we can see the Kaiju on the radar right now but we are choosing not to build the robots! So it is warning that, given the Kaiju we can foresee, the projected output of our industry is going to dip into the negative.

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

#209

Post by I_DRINK_KOOLAID »

fallingfrog wrote: post #199
I_DRINK_KOOLAID wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Countries like Ethiopia are catching up from being way behind using imported technology And who do you think is doing all the importing? A young guy in his 20s , who is working 14 hours per day for his family import-export company and helping his dad cooking the books to convince the bank to loan them money to get access to such foreign technology. That is to me both a survivor and a risk taker, not an American kid…

[flagged]

Just by the tone of this response I can infer that you did not

People with healthy levels of arrogance and self-confidence don't talk in such a poised manner pivoting against other demographics when questioned about how they fare at the micro level.

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

#210

Post by luciusdomitius »

dpark wrote: post #177
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.

> leaded petrol cannot really be handled by a market as it is in its nature a bodily harm and there is the criminal code for that. This is the same fallacious thinking “libertarians” fall into when they think civil court will solve for most regulations/codes. The burden of proving harm is too high. Probably hundreds of millions were spent proving that leaded gasoline was unsafe. No criminal prosecution could have acc…

In case you are actually asking a question - most environmental guidelines in today's EU cities are the result of court cases. Both my hometown and the city I currently live in have been found guilty of neglecting air quality multiple times and ordered to take action. And yeah - in a libertarian (actually an-cap) world it wouldn't be a city, but a municipal services corporation with participatory ownership (a la UK Premier League).

But then again I am not really an anarcho-capitalist, but an extremely mild minarchist (imagine Raegan without his naiveness or Thatcher without her inferiority complex). So even this doesn't represent my opinion.

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