Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

undrr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 255 posts

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

#61

Post by jolux »

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.

Subsistence farming is a nightmare, I can all but guarantee that no living subsistence farmer would choose that life over renting an apartment and having disposable income.

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

#62

Post by blfr »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #60
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 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 spread around the world).

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

#63

Post by rob_c »

This is a plote headline for addressing the fact we don't have 2million dead bodies in britain. Stats for the whole and stats for the individual are dangerous things to mix up. i.e. There is a non-zero chance a plane will land on you during your commute (there are even videos on-line around the world showing this happening now, god-bless the wide adoption of tech) but this does _not_ mean that you should never leave your house.

Also, people need to understand the nature of the risk. Most risk profiles drawn up my mathematicians/statisticians are delibarately very boolean in their outcome. This is to remove potential biases and in order to understand if something will happen you need the following: A(chance something will happen) x B(chance that is bad) = P(death)

This in almost all situations means that P(A) is not the same as P(death) because P(A) will include everything from a stubbed toe or sneeze to death. Conversely P(B) is also no P(death) as it's derrived from the subset of people who pass the condition of P(A) happening which is by definition And now that I've introduced something involving stats on the internet the trogledites will chery pick and straw man this into oblivion, but please, pick up a text book once in a while and stop clicking on the dailymail...

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

#64

Post by ivan_gammel »

I_DRINK_KOOLAID wrote: post #59
ivan_gammel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you have two possible projects: X is investment in growth, which will result in increase of your revenue in the short term, and Y is investment in reduction of risks which will increase the value of your assets in the long term. If interest rates are low, borrowing money for Y or for both projects becomes more tangible option. If interest rates are high and you are an optimist, you will choose to borrow mon…

Quoted post unavailable.

In Europe we do not have "safe places in colleges". It is an US phenomenon, that has nothing to do with risk aversion - on the contrary, it is based on the optimistic assumption that society is generally mature enough to own firearms and you only need to mitigate some "edge cases". True risk aversion would be to regulate the gun ownership, education and welfare the same way as it is done in Europe, where mass shootings are much less common.

As for the interest rates, I don't really get how do you connect wealth and loss aversion here. Interest rates are not taxing wealth, in fact lower interest rates are resulting in lower yields and even in the reduction of the capital (e.g. Germans keep a lot of savings on their bank accounts, yet they have to pay for this service now thanks to negative interest rates).

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

#65

Post by Ambolia »

jolux wrote: post #61
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.

Subsistence farming is a nightmare, I can all but guarantee that no living subsistence farmer would choose that life over renting an apartment and having disposable income.

It's not that bad, and a lot of people like to own their own land rather than never get to own anything.

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

#66

Post by mort96 »

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?

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

#67

Post by Chris2048 »

refurb wrote: post #55
Chris2048 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds familiar Yeah, it sounds like the faulty science & religious justifications of Colonialism - but only matters if the current science is also faulty. Is modern climate the same as Colonial race science? Or do we only act on what things superficially appear to be / sound like?

Residential schools in Canada were an effort to make sure the youth were formally educated as per Western standards (versus not even knowing how to read or write). That's not a faulty assumption, but it was terrible to use violence to force it on people using who never asked for it. But it is pretty amazing how easily we can convince ourselves the oppression of others is for their own good, huh?

ok, premise: youth should be educated per Western standards

let's say that's a good premise.

Does that mean all implementations, whatever their details, are also good?

I don't think so. I don't think the logic follows.

> convince ourselves the oppression of others is for their own good, huh?

I' not sure I just did. You seem to have equated education to oppression by ignoring that not all education requires oppression. In fact, I think it's pretty telling that the crux of these matters (the oppression) is often a secret.

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

#68

Post by andyjohnson0 »

verisimi wrote: post #3

Coming from the UN, we already know what the answer will be. More governance, more/better management of risk by the UN that is then delegated to its administrative regions (the US, EU, etc). This is because as long as we are talking about risk, this plays into the hands of a global governance structure. All risks should be planned for and managed - I mean the covid response was fantastic, right? What was wrong was no…

> let local people decide for themselves what they want to do.

How do we solve big, global problems like climate change, pollution, ecosystem collapse, pandemic prevention, food/water precarity, etc if everywhere is just local people deciding for themselves?

Have you heard of the Collective Action Problem [1]? Its basically why we have governments. Now think about about the scale of the problems we face right now: what systems do we need to address them?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

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

#70

Post by I_DRINK_KOOLAID »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #64
I_DRINK_KOOLAID wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

In Europe we do not have "safe places in colleges". It is an US phenomenon, that has nothing to do with risk aversion - on the contrary, it is based on the optimistic assumption that society is generally mature enough to own firearms and you only need to mitigate some "edge cases". True risk aversion would be to regulate the gun ownership, education and welfare the same way as it is done in Europe, where mass shootin…

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN