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Preparedness Paradox

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Re: Preparedness Paradox

#91

Post by asdff »

photochemsyn wrote: post #74

In the modern world, a good fraction of potential problems can be estimated using good computer models. Examples include building design parameters for withstanding earthquakes and hurricanes, river flow models for projecting potential flooding, aircraft design models that discover problems before planes start crashing, climate models that show the results of burning fossil fuels for decades, etc. Yes, many people do…

The problem is that lawmakers are rarely statisticians and are sometimes even the people not trusting the models because they don't understand them. Someone needs to write up a bayesian form of government and then take over a country.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#92

Post by dinosaurdynasty »

asdff wrote: post #91
photochemsyn wrote: post #74

In the modern world, a good fraction of potential problems can be estimated using good computer models. Examples include building design parameters for withstanding earthquakes and hurricanes, river flow models for projecting potential flooding, aircraft design models that discover problems before planes start crashing, climate models that show the results of burning fossil fuels for decades, etc. Yes, many people do…

The problem is that lawmakers are rarely statisticians and are sometimes even the people not trusting the models because they don't understand them. Someone needs to write up a bayesian form of government and then take over a country.

Or they are incentivized to not trust the models...

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#93

Post by izabera »

asdff wrote: post #89
huetius wrote: post #8

Not doubting this, but it seems to cut both ways. I can just as easily justify an overreaction by claiming to have averted some worse outcome. It seems to be a general problem of counterfactuals.

I think it would depend on the context which often depends on what the real risk is. Building 5000 nuclear missiles? Overreaction. Overbuilding flood control systems such that the region has not experienced major flooding in 100 years? Justified preparation. The tell for what is justified and what isn't is through what you can remove from the system and not see any ill effect, like a jenga tower. We've already decomm…

>The tell for what is justified and what isn't is through what you can remove from the system and not see any ill effect, like a jenga tower. We've already decommissioned thousands of nukes and the sky didn't fall, so that goes to show all that preparation was useless.

Bad example. It absolutely wasn't useless at the time to build those thousands of nukes. The whole concept of mutual assured destruction breaks down if the other side has 20x more nukes.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#96

Post by lazyasciiart »

photochemsyn wrote: post #74

In the modern world, a good fraction of potential problems can be estimated using good computer models. Examples include building design parameters for withstanding earthquakes and hurricanes, river flow models for projecting potential flooding, aircraft design models that discover problems before planes start crashing, climate models that show the results of burning fossil fuels for decades, etc. Yes, many people do…

On the other hand, models said that Japan could never experience an earthquake as bad as the 2011 earthquake right up until 2011 proved them wrong (https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.1361)

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#97

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

amin wrote: post #43

This makes me wonder; how different would the COVID pandemic death toll have been if governments didn’t change anything? No travel bans, no lockdowns, etc. I suspect many people would still voluntarily use masks, self-isolate, protect their eldery and take other precautions.

Looks like we'll get a chance to find out with Monkeypox!

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#98

Post by XorNot »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #96
photochemsyn wrote: post #74

In the modern world, a good fraction of potential problems can be estimated using good computer models. Examples include building design parameters for withstanding earthquakes and hurricanes, river flow models for projecting potential flooding, aircraft design models that discover problems before planes start crashing, climate models that show the results of burning fossil fuels for decades, etc. Yes, many people do…

On the other hand, models said that Japan could never experience an earthquake as bad as the 2011 earthquake right up until 2011 proved them wrong ( https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.1361 )

The other side of this is "whats the alternative?"

You can't prepare for an arbitrarily strong Earthquake, so the only lesson we take is that our models needed correcting and we'll work to that next time.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#99

Post by rablackburn »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #69
anonporridge wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it's often good resource management to wait until something breaks before committing resources to fix it. Especially true in software systems. One might think that constant firefighting is a waste of resources, and we'd be better off solving problems before they happen. That's true if and only if you know for sure that the problem and eventual breakage is really going to happen AND that it's worth fixing.…

This is why I think most of the 'absolutes' that programmers, software architects, managers etc. talk about are not so. For example you must never declare 'magic numbers' in code. Or you must always obey S.O.L.I.D. or get 100% TDD. There will be be people who believe in these dogmatically to the point they won't employ anyone who says different (it becomes an interview question). I am not arguing that these are wrong…

> There will be be people who believe in these dogmatically to the point they won't employ anyone who says different (it becomes an interview question).

Though when you’re lucky enough to be in a tight labor market it sure is a convenient filter for companies you don’t want to join!

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