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

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

#211

Post by mardifoufs » Mon, May 09, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #129

Ambolia wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah wow, I always cringe whenever I hear people unashamedly talking about "degrowth" in poor countries because hey they like it anyways! I mean they are alive so it can't be too bad? As if there's no reason why those subsistence farmers do everything they can to either get themselves out of that situation if they get the chance or at least sacrifice everything to make sure their kids don't have to live the same life. They should've just read about the virtues of minimalist living online and like, reconnect with nature bro.

This is one of the reason why i just can't get into most modern western environmentalist movements , it actually gets uncomfortable how they fetishise misery and stagnation knowing damn well that they themselves won't ever have to experience any major deprivation. Because let's be honest, even if western countries make concessions of course they will never sacrifice more than comforts/superfluous things. abject poverty farming for thee, and at the very very worse "degrowing" a few percentage of GDP for me.

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

#212

Post by White_Wolf » Mon, May 09, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #172

White_Wolf wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The value of an hour of labor isn’t based on the time it took to acquire the skill, it’s based on the value of the good or service produced to society I'd think, the reason that a surgeon is paid more than a garbage disposal person is the ammount of time, brain power and skill it takes to learn/master. In the grand scheme of things, number wise, if the garbage disposal guys are gone (or just refuse to work for 1 yea…

Things like this have been tried throughout history and constantly failed. It was pretty much the running theme of 1800s and 1900s. As the other poster said, the only objective measure of value is what people will pay for it. Nothing centrally planned can handle the variance and fluctuations in the value of things. There are some supply and demand dynamics to it, for example surgeons are less replaceable than garbage…

Central management/centralized control at that level is not something I'm really confortable with seeing. I can see the results of EU and how it shut down a huge chunk of small producers from the coutry side in Romania(my home country).

>"the only objective measure of value is what people will pay for it" - I think the ratio between demand/supply would be a more accurate one. I really don't know what systems have been proposed like this but "what people will pay for it" wouldn't be an option.

The whole chain - raw product to shelf would be (?mostly) quantified and you'll pay what is is out of your "produced/contributed hours".

In that regarding not much would change compared to today. Just the currency and formula used.

Production can be ramped up or down just like today, manufacturing lines closed, etc. Nothing special there.

The main difference is the currency used would be the same all over the place and that (ideally) labour h value for a particular skill would be rated the same everywhere in the world. A laboured in UK would have the same h coef. as one in China. This could also contribute to distribution of production centres more evenly around the world (ideally).

Don't get me wrong. It's just a discussion of sorts and no system is perfect. I just think something like this would help equalize things in some way and still motivate those that want to do more to do so. At the moment, all 'isms have their issues and I'm "hoping" a hybrid of sorts would be worth trying at this stage. I'm not pro any of them and agaist all of them... sort of.

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

#213

Post by luciusdomitius » Mon, May 09, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

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…

Let's play my politics !!! I don't believe that anyone should be coerced into not having an abortion, but I don't believe anyone should be coerced into paying in someone else's abortion. Thus I agree with... wait for it... neither side in the current debate. Congratulations to the winners!!

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

#214

Post by luciusdomitius » Mon, May 09, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #207

Darrengineer wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quo…

Well. In all honesty, I should have written "definetly not yet" instead of "probably not yet". But I see it from my own perspective as someone who grew up in Bulgaria and spent his adult life in the Czech Republic. Neither country is considered an example for the world (understandably lol), but in both, current US state of affairs would be considered extremely worrying. For example in both countries we have a multi-party system, so the average Bulgarian/Czech doesn't hate half the supreme court justices as it is in the US, but 8/9. Yet I don't think that harrassing them at their homes would be an acceptable behavior no matter the case.

So, I made this statement based on low national self-esteem. Later on I compared in my head current US with places such as Lebanon and Venezuela and realised that it is still doing pretty well, even though the strong downwards trend simply cannot be denied. So yeah.

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

#215

Post by luciusdomitius » Mon, May 09, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #182

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.

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 (an…

Yes, but it is as socially unfair as government services being charged on for-profit basis. Or even a bit more.

I am the most anti-socialist person I know and even to me, inflation is too cruel of a tax.

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

#216

Post by fzeroracer » Mon, May 09, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

verisimi wrote: post #12

blueflow wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let local people decide for themselves what they want to do - use leaded petrol - build fridges using HCFCs - burn trash This stuff had to be forbidden by the government to make it stop. The UN might be some corrupt stuff, but the point of reducing government at all is nonsense. People on their own won't stop doing harmful things if they dont suffer the consequences themself.

You're right - but also wrong. Governments built the roads - other solutions are conceivable. Tax payers paid once for the roads to be built, and are now paying for roads to made unusable for cars (lane restrictions, pedestrianisation, etc). That's a waste. Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed? Government waves through unacce…

Are you going to actually answer the question of how corporations would've phased out leaded gas versus the government declaring it illegal due to the harms it posed?

You can't address the rollback of government without addressing the corresponding power increase in corporations.

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

#217

Post by lapcat » Mon, May 09, 2022, 6:35 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #201

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…

> 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.

Citation, please? I'd love to see the polls saying that several hundred million deaths are ok with most people.

From what I've seen, increased government action on climate change polls very well among the public, e.g., https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of...

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

#218

Post by koshergweilo » Mon, May 09, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

Gravityloss wrote: post #122

blfr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 witho…

> 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.

Counterpoint but I think one of the reasons for this is that wind and solar are lower-capital alternatives to building nuclear powerplants. Not spending the capital to maintain existing powerplants does seem like a regression to me though, so we're on the same page there.

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

#219

Post by baremetal » Mon, May 09, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

jolux wrote: post #180

baremetal wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils." Said Diogenes, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king." There are tradeoffs for everything.

The thing is it’s not a choice between living on lentils and fancier food, it’s a choice between having a stable food source and having a food source that is dependent on huge amounts of your own manual labor which will still sometimes fail to feed you through no fault of your own, leaving you or your partner or children to go hungry and possibly starve to death. Ergo: nightmare.

there are boom years and bust years like anything else.

you "make hay while the sun shines", and store up for the lean years. and you form bonds with your neighbors.

but there isnt a public safety net, other than the one you create for yourself. its most certainly riskier, but it is also a freer way to live. it is very empowering to be self-sufficient.

everything has its costs and benefits.

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

#220

Post by dang » Mon, May 09, 2022, 6:57 PM UTC

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]

You crossed repeatedly into personal attack and name-calling in this thread. That's not allowed, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of how wrong or annoying another commenter is or you feel they are.

Would you please review the site guidelines and use HN as intended? We'd appreciate it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Note also the one about not using HN for political or ideological battle. That's also not what this site is for—regardless of what you're battling for or against.

Edit: we've already had to warn you about this quite a few times. Please fix this so we don't have to ban you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24895885 (Oct 2020)

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19335784 (March 2019)

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