Schneier: We Need To Relearn How To Accept Risk 478
An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier has written an article about how our society is becoming increasingly averse to risk as we invent ways to reduce it. 'Risk tolerance is both cultural and dependent on the environment around us. As we have advanced technologically as a society, we have reduced many of the risks that have been with us for millennia. Fatal childhood diseases are things of the past, many adult diseases are curable, accidents are rarer and more survivable, buildings collapse less often, death by violence has declined considerably, and so on. All over the world — among the wealthier of us who live in peaceful Western countries — our lives have become safer.' This has led us to overestimate both the level of risk from unlikely events and also our ability to curtail it. Thus, trillions of dollars are spent and vital liberties are lost in misguided efforts to make us safer. 'We need to relearn how to recognize the trade-offs that come from risk management, especially risk from our fellow human beings. We need to relearn how to accept risk, and even embrace it, as essential to human progress and our free society. The more we expect technology to protect us from people in the same way it protects us from nature, the more we will sacrifice the very values of our society in futile attempts to achieve this security.'"
Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it's worse than that. In order to eliminate certain risks only really drastic solutions are effective.
I don't think certain risk elimination costs will become so high we're unwilling to pay. I believe the costs will go higher and we'll keep paying.
Eventually, people will understand that to avoid risks originating from the poorest countries, the final solution is to just eradicate those countries. After all, we don't want them for their population but for their resources. Instead of killing a few and putting a government that follows our orders, eventually we'll be capable (both technologically and socially) to just exterminate everyone in a country and replace them with resource extraction machines.
And once that problem is finally over, instead of the richest country vs the poorer one it will be between cities, and then neighborhoods.
The only thing stopping the richest from protecting themselves by exterminating everyone else is the shitty quality of the robots.
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Eventually, people will understand that to avoid risks originating from the poorest countries, the final solution is to just eradicate those countries.
While it may be possible to nuke a country so thoroughly into a lunar landscape analogue that not even cockroaches will remain there will inevitably be domestic terrorists/extremists and they cannot start nuking their own cities. So there really is no end to their justification for an increasingly strict police state where everthing is sacrificed on the grand altar of the God of Safety.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually technology will allow a single human being to not need anyone else. Whenever those event coincide, it will be the end of humanity.
Everybody needs friends of some sort. Unless you're suggesting that robots will be good enough friends by then. But if they're autonomous and free-thinking enough to make good friends, they're going to be just as much of a problem as real humans. They're also going to be harder to destroy.
Need for company (Score:4, Insightful)
No. You're projecting your own ideas onto others in order to come up with an answer you like. The history of humanity is filled with those who went away from others on purpose, with motivations all over the cognitive map.
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Everybody needs friends of some sort. Unless you're suggesting that robots will be good enough friends by then. But if they're autonomous and free-thinking enough to make good friends, they're going to be just as much of a problem as real humans. They're also going to be harder to destroy.
Ted Kaczynski
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Having googled the guy, it sounds like he at least had notions of making life better for other people. He didn't hate the whole of humanity, he hated industrialisation.
I maybe shouldn't have used the word "friends" before, and I guess it may only take one sociopath/psychopath or otherwise mentally disturbed person to end the world.. but even sociopaths crave attention and acceptance from others.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
> Having googled the guy, it sounds like he at least had notions of making life better for other people.
> He didn't hate the whole of humanity, he hated industrialisation.
Well you could say the same about Bin Laden, couldn't you? All you really need to do is warp around your idea of "a better life" a little bit. Afterall, "better" is itself a value judgement. Ted said "life is better without technology because it means more jobs" (or something to that effect, and probably more nuanced).
Bin Laden's "better life" was.... "Living the life God intended for us". If you believe in his God and that his God wants a world run the way he espoused, then it makes sense too.
Similarly men like Nelson Rockafeller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Drug_Laws [wikipedia.org] thought that the "better life" was one where nobody was addicted to drugs.
Personally, I tend to think its the desire to judge other people's life and make it better for them, with their cooperation or without that is the problem. The old adage "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" rings pretty true. Good intentions of one sort or another have justified more atrocities than I have time to mention.
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I'm not American no. I've heard of the Unabomber, but if you'd asked me his name I'd probably have guessed Timothy McVeigh [wikipedia.org] for some reason.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe you misspelled "religion" there.
No need to thank me.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you used the wrong word for "Any strong belief"
Stalin Russia was quite violent and evil by today's terms. He wasn't touting Religion but Communism.
Religion tends to make an easy excuse, because most religions are based on old texts that have been translated a few times over, written in people from different cultures and different views of the world, it makes it easy to justify nearly anything with these texts by saying this is fact, this is metaphor, Lets focus on these words and not from those.
When Jesus ask what was the most important commandment, he gave two.
Love God, and Love your Neighbor. I choose to take that as the important parts, but others don't because they dislike their neighbor, and will focus on other parts where it was OK to strike people down.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just any strong belief, after all, I don't think there are too many people who are extremely violent because really orchids are the best kind of flower. I think the proper word is ideology. The kind of violence you are referring to requires a strong set of beliefs that reinforce each other and it requires an enemy ideology (or ideologies). The violence is justified by fear and/or hatred of the enemy.
It doesn't matter whether the enemy is libertarianism, collectivism, capitalism, Islam, religion, athieism, liberalism, progressives, conservatism, environmentalism, industrialism, or people with different colored skin. Some people will try to marshal fear and hatred to enhance their own power, and intentionally or not, it will spawn violence. These people will routinely used cherry-picked facts or quotes to justify their position, sometimes ignoring the obvious message to focus on minutae that can justify their current activities. They may do it consciously to manipulate others or unconsciously to justify their behaviour, but tiny little facts that match their ideology will be found to be more important than the massive important ones that contradict it.
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Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a step there that you are avoiding. To exterminate everyone in a country you might need a bomb, but you might also use a genetically targeted bio weapon. Or whatever else we invent.
The problem is that the biggest risk factor is not genetic - it is Islam. I suppose in the far future it might be possible to have intelligent swarms of robot "wasps" with poisonous stings, who can look out for indications that someone is a muslim, but the problem will still be with us for many years.
You must be one of the people who pose the biggest risk to society if you actually believe that, you are one of the stupid morons who is unable to critically evaluate anything not fed to you by fox news.
Islam is a religion, nothing more nothing less. Many people go through life being helped by Islam (just like Christianity) to be better people and act in ways less dictated by self interest and more in being nicer to ones fellow man. The problem is that just like Christianity a few years back it is twisted by some very sick individuals to justify their own sick ends.
This is hardly a fault of Islam since the main tenets of that faith were written down thousands of years ago and have been unchanged since (the Koran is actually less flexible in this regard than the Bible, although it worth remembering that Islam still recognises Christ as being a prophet so they don't exactly ignore his teachings). This is the fault of the person doing the twisting and the person who believe the twisted result. Hate preachers want us all to live in an Islamic Caliphate just because that puts them in charge.
We in the west though have similar people who try and twist christianity or democracy or patriotism towards their own ends: We have people who own arms companies who love it when we invade other nations as they sell more guns. We have people who own oil companies who love it when invading a country and installing a friendly government opens up a new market. We have politicians who carp on about something happening overseas and whipping up a furor amongst the public to distract from them humping their PA or giving their chums a tax break (ok, this might be an exaggeration but I certainly do not believe that many of our politicians act in our own best interest, they act in theirs).
The problem is not the idea of patriotism, democracy, christianity or islam. The problem is when we blindly follow interpretations of these ideas spouted by people with a hidden agenda. The only solution to this is that we question more of the information that it is given to us and think more about motives of the people trying to encourage our views in a particular direction.
(Just for the record, I think there is about as much chance of any western country becoming a caliphate as their is of world peace breaking out tomorrow. I am also a thoroughly decided atheist who has read about a few religions but decided that ultimately they are all the creations of man, not god so I would simply refuse to follow any religious laws that were imposed on me that I did not agree with morally anyway.)
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This is hardly a fault of Islam since the main tenets of that faith were written down thousands of years ago and have been unchanged since
That's hilarious since that's one the faults of Islam that is most often criticized.
Hate preachers want us all to live in an Islamic Caliphate just because that puts them in charge.
That's one of those tenets of the faith that you were just praising for being unchanging.
We in the west though have similar people who try and twist christianity or democracy or patriotism towards their own ends: We have people who own arms companies who love it when we invade other nations as they sell more guns.
Ahh, bliss, if that were the problem in Islam, that some guys were greedy and wanted to manipulate others to boost their own personal wealth.
The Taliban isn't motivated by money, they're motivated by their Islamic faith and they need money to accomplish their goals.
It could be that you're projecting a bit too much of yourself onto others
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Another way of looking at it is that religions typically either demand certain behaviors or prohibit certain behaviors. For Jews, the basics are more-or-less the 10 Commandments. For Christians, the basics are laid out in Matthew 22:36-40, to love thy neighbor and love God. For Muslims, the basics are the 5 Pillars, which are:
1. A declaration that Allah is the one true god, and Mohammed is his prophet.
2. Praying 5 times a day.
3. Fasting during Ramadan.
4. Give a percentage of your income to the poor.
5. Try to get to Mecca at least once in your life.
The vast majority of Muslims kinda sorta do that, although many fudge the praying 5 times a day part when it's inconvenient, and many never make it to Mecca. The idea, very popular in some Christian circles, that all Muslims are some sort of barbarian horde that would destroy everything good in the world if given a chance, just doesn't match up with reality.
Likewise, the idea, very popular in some Muslim circles, that all Christians are some sort of decadant horde that would destroy everything good in the world if given a chance, also fails to match up with reality. For some reason, blanket statements about the worldviews of a billion people just doesn't capture the nuances of human thought and behavior.
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Sorry, I'm not gullible enough to fall for that meaningless bullshit. Do you have an actual argument to make?
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some soi-disant Christians are all but claiming that B. Hussein Osama is the Antichrist.
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Christianity teaches that one should respect and obey authority as long as it does not conflict with the commonly agreed upon tenents of the bible.* This is not generally a bad thing. Mostly it involves being peaceful, paying your taxes, not speeding, etc. Pauline Christianity places a large emphasis on obedience to the law. Some Christians miss this, but this is not surprising. In any random group you pick, you will get people who don't pay attention to what they believe and twist it to their own purposes.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:4, Insightful)
*As interpreted by Christianity, not buy you. Your(and other's) interpretation may differ.
Which Christianity? Not all Christianity is even Saulist!
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The best lies contain a seed of truth, and paul did a masterpiece on the church he created. Funny enough, they still kept the part where Jesus said the church would be corrupted. Unfortunately, you're right, these are the majority
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It's not really as in the bible, that is the fundamentally wrong part about what constitutes moral in a religion.
It's the moral tenents of the actual religion which in general are held in esteem.
It's not really about interpretation, Christians do not follow most of the Bible, which is VERY, VERY fortunate.
I'd hate to see raped women being forced to marry their rapists for instance.
Actually, it is about interpretation. Where do you think those "moral tenants" come from? Let me use your example (though this is now off topic). Don't forget Deuteronomy 22:25. I.e. Stone the rapist. Or the way out (Exodus 22:16–17). Does that change the picture? When you start interpretting the bible within it's own context, and within the context of the culture in which it was written, you begin to get a better picture of what is going on. In this case a cultural mechanism to protect the victim and
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This is what I never understand about most people critical of Christianity. The common complaint is that Christians pick and choose the rules they abide by. Nobody ever seems willing to look at the historical or contextual reasons for these choices, instead portraying them as arbitrary. Like it or hate it, Christianity is not that arbitrary, and since most of the source documents are open (here I include historical figures such as Augustine, etc) it is fairly easy to trace where these tenets(brain fart on m
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one am critical of Christianity because your own holy book describes a vile and evil god who inflicts uncountable horrors on mankind, and you dare to bow before his monstrosity and give praise to his sins. Your god is personally responsible for genocide, murder, arguably rape and countless other crimes against humanity. And that is not even counting the crimes committed on his command by his prophets, praised by the leaders of his faith or by his followers in his name.
Of course I am also critical of ALL religion because it is nothing more than a memetic parasite that infests and corrupts the human mind and subverts free will through the use of brain washing and mental degradation. And in some cases, these religions pose an existential threat to the long term survival of humanity.
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Funny)
I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes."
I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian."
I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant."
I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist."
I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist."
I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist."
I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region."
I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912."
I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
- Emo Philips
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What is Christianity in America. You can ask each sect and they will groups X,Y,Z are also Christians but U,V,W are not. But if you ask an other group they will say other groups are and are not. They cover a wide range of values. Some very Progressive other very Conservative, some take a more moderate approach.
This is a common misconception. A person is a "Christian" if they believe the Apostles' Creed. There are minor variations of the creed depending on your Christian denomination, but regardless of
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Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
So far it has worked in Germany, Japan,
Those countries weren't exactly starving in the streets when they tried to take over the world.
Germany, of course, was one of the most powerful countries in the world before WWI and wanted to use the war to consolidate the continent. That's the actions of a superpower, not a desperate street scrapper.
Japan before WWII had been building and modernizing for decades. They were an ally in WWI. They had fought some minor wars in the region earlier, defeating Russia for instance. Again, not a country with some existential threat.
Countries that are powerful can also be dangerous, it's just a matter of attitude. Germany post-WWII has been decidedly anti-war, not due to them having food and energy, but because they were thoroughly humiliated when the world found out about what was going on in concentration camps. I mean really humiliated on every level.
Progress is being made in China, India, and Brazil.
So do you think that China is less aggressive militarily today, with their growing wealth and industrialization and national pride, than 20-30 years ago? I mean there's a lot of tension between China and Japan, and in the seas around China in general. You don't perceive that as a growing trend as they get wealthier and more powerful?
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany was badly bankrupted by the Allies after WW I and experienced hyperinflation that is pretty much the textbook example of what hyperinflation looks like. It's not hard to find images of people buying bread with wheelbarrows full of currency.
And then there's the merry-go-round of governments that took place in the 20s into the 1930s that allowed a failed artist from Austria to seize power.
To describe post-WW I Germany as a "powerful country" is grossly inaccurate.
Germany has largely been anti-war not because of the holocaust but because of the high price paid in Germany over two wars. The US largely imposed a famine on the German population through 1946-1947 through restrictions on food imports and food aid.
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I said "Germany, of course, was one of the most powerful countries in the world before WWI" not post-WW I.
Regardless, between the end of WWI and the start of WWII Germany did a lot of rebuilding. They certainly didn't start their next world war when they were at their most desperate, they built up strength.
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The only thing stopping the richest from protecting themselves by exterminating everyone else is the shitty quality of the robots.
And the fact that the poorer people ultimately control what the richest people can and cannot do through politics. As long as the very rich are a tiny minority, they will always be at the mercy of the majority, that can 'democratically' decide to steal their wealth and do with it whatever they please.
I'm sure that any number of medieval serfs would have been interested in knowing that.
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They were quite interested, yes. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I understand, the point is that we are not concentrating on the biggest risks, but on the wrong risks. The measures we have taken to "protect" flights have resulted in more deaths (due to car accidents of people avoiding flying) than the deaths caused by the original incident that triggered the "security" measures.
All in all, we should not give up our freedoms for security theater that actually increases the overall risk.
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You operate under the assumption that people who avoid flying would drive instead. What if they just stay at home?
An increase of road deaths since 2001 but it doesn't look like it.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year> [wikipedia.org] the amount of road deaths in 2010 was the lowest since 1950, so not so sure about that.
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All in all, we should not give up our freedoms for security theater that actually increases the overall risk.
BFrank: Duh, noobs.
BFrank rolls over in his grave.
BFrank has quit (Quit: grumble... deserve neither... grumble...)
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:4, Interesting)
However, if we didn't have security measures, or some 'whistle-blower' leaked all of them, do you think that the people who don't like us wouldn't have continued to blow up or hijack plane after plane...
I believe the only worthwhile and moral safety measure that has been added since 9/11 is that cockpit doors are now reinforced; that's pretty much it. Everything else they've done violates people's fundamental liberties, and since I'm someone who cares far more about freedom than safety, I'd rather go without such security theater (the TSA is garbage and most likely doesn't do anything).
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You forgot the non-"measure" which is the fundamental truth that anyone trying to take over a plane might be heartily attacked by the passengers and crew. People get out of control or off their drugs once in a while, and some of them are accidentally killed while being restrained by other passengers or security forces for acting out.
An actual hijacker will probably face something quite a bit more brutal.
If the alternative is certain death, people will bite you to death on plane. THAT is keeping planes
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Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong focus (Score:5, Insightful)
But we do not even mitigate the biggest risk first. Arguably the biggest risk right now to us is cancer. However, in the US, the budget for cancer research is a pitiful 5 billion $/yr, which is rather small in comparison to the 79 billion $/yr for military research and testing.
Sources for budgets:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding [cancer.gov]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#By_title [wikipedia.org]
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There is an other side. Our tolerance towards failure has became much shorter too.
When we read articles about a cloud service going down for a few minutes we jump the gun and say "Well it looks like that sysadmin guy got fired for that mistake" or if a bridge fails, or a building collapses, or some rich guy losses money... There is always seems to be an investigation that will find the person who had made that critical mistake and have them fired or jailed.
We learn by failures, but our system punishes fail
Re:Diminishing returns (Score:5, Insightful)
The chances of dying are 100%. We all do it, it is just a case of when and how. As a society we are well into looking for very marginal returns - eat brocolli all your life to put off the chance of getting bowel cancer when you are 87 - and it is impossible to do valid experiments that show if measured take to mitgate one risk cause others.
I work on a large industrial site and management have voer the last few years been on a major safety push. One result of this is that they have been round and "risk assessed" all the walk ways and put barriers all over the place. The outcome is that walking from the car park to the office is now so convoluted that people just walk down the road ways. There never was any evidence that anyone was acutally injured in the areas where barriers were put up.
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But we're not even targeting the biggest risk. The USA's biggest spending is military and national security. Yet daily people are dying from treatable diseases, car accidents, and other such preventable causes.
What we should really focus on is protecting people from lightning strikes and shark attacks. They kill more people than terrorists.
Short version (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce is right. Even if our society managed to put enough measures in place to mitigate all but the risks associated with an asteroid impact, you surely would not want to live in that society, as the term "living" would be a loosely defined term at best. It would be a society essentially devoid of free will.
Re:Short version (Score:5, Insightful)
While you and I may not want to live in such a society there are those who would like nothing better. Many of them fancy themselves as the enforcers in such a regime, a chance to be a master instead of one of the many slaves. For people who live to control others every unjust law that makes life unbearable for the rest is yet another opportunity for them to exert their authority and feel that blissful, euphoric sense of power that is for them the ultimate drug.
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So things would have been less dystopian without the bailouts? I can't really imagine that..
Re:Short version (Score:5, Insightful)
So things would have been less dystopian without the bailouts? I can't really imagine that..
I'd have liked to have found out. Rewarding criminality only gets you more criminality. The banks could have been put into receivership and wound down and sold off in a controlled manner, preserving jobs and transitioning to new management. Shareholders and bondholders would have taken a haircut. But that would have meant the end of those banks as we knew them and their chief management would have been out of work and out of favor. Can't have that when you have powerful friends in government, eh?
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Many already do live in this society, it's called the USA.
Or any number of countries exhibiting the same symptoms. I still don't understand this urge to dump all the evils of the world on the US.
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buildings collapse less often
Is that each?
From the sample I know of, buildings collapse either 0 or 1 times.
So what does less often mean?
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A lot of this is not aversion to risk (Score:5, Interesting)
It's an aversion to being sued for not sufficiently managing that risk which leads to massive overreactions on the part of authorities and businesses.
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That isn't the reason for things like national-security policy; you cannot sue the federal government for its security policies (due to sovereign immunity). However you can vote politicians out of office, or vote them into office if they grandstand in a way you like, which is what they're worried about.
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Try buying a gas can to fill your mower. The new, low-risk, inflexible, spouts have multiple interlocks and extend, maybe 3" from the can. Pouring often results in gasoline spilling on the device you are filling - which may be hot from use. And while some risk is mitigated by keeping kids from accidentally pouring the gasoline, the greater risk of fire is only mitigated by large warning messages imprinted in the plastic. The prior technology was effective, with low risk to the consumer. The so
Re:A lot of this is not aversion to risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost but not quite - when something goes wrong, a large proportion of people start looking for some way to shift the responsibility from their own actions to some other party. Not quite everyone is like this, but the number that accept responsibility for themselves is diminishing and when you see one person after another getting away with shirking their responsibility it makes it harder and harder to justify and not go down that destructive path yourself.
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That's partly caused by another characteristic of modern society: EVERYTHING has somebody who is responsable of. We don't believe in accidents anymore. Shit happens, wait no, it doesn't. When something goes wrong people always start looking for someone to blame.
This seems to more or less track the mutation of responsibility from expecting people to be active to expecting them to be "pro-active".
I hate that word. It sounds ugly, is frequently mis-used when "active" would be sufficient and we managed to to quite well without it for many, many years.
Sorry, but where is the evidence? (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who is familiar with a lot of theoretical work on decision making and the work of Tversky and Kahneman, but not with current empirical research, I am wondering where he gets his data from. By looking at a few examples you cannot establish general claims about how risk prone or averse we have become. Likewise, how does he know that risk aversity depends on the culture? Perhaps it does, but I want to see the study. And yes, there are plenty of studies in this field, it just seems that Schneier doesn't read them, or otherwise he should mention them.
So how about some empirical evidence?
Re:Sorry, but where is the evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears you've been asleep for the last ten years, and possibly the twenty years preceding it that laid the foundation for the severe civil liberties issues we're facing now. Your UID indicates you should be old enough to understand this, unless you've led a rather sheltered life.
Re:Sorry, but where is the evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
3,000 lost lives have caused us to spend trillions on wars. A fraction of that invested in additional medical research would have saved far more.
A death in front of the cameras is worse more than a million deaths on a hospital bed...to a politician.
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Also, two can play at this game. Please cite your claimed sources, since you've made the bold statement of being so intimately familiar with the subject matter, and have noted that there are "plenty of studies in this field" that you must have sitting on your desk for rapid reference. Provide a BTC address and I'll be delighted to cover the costs of you shipping me a hardcopy. I'll be glad to review your studies and provide an analysis at length within fourteen days.
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Well, I've mentioned Tversky and Kahneman, and as it happens on my desk are currently (right now and very literally):
Bouyssou / Dubois / Prade / Pirlot (eds.): Decision Making process. Wiley 2006.
Gärdenfors /Sahlin (eds.): Decision, probability, and utility.Cambridge UP 1988.
as well as (not directly related) Amartya Sen's "Rationality and Freedom".
The older Gärdenfors volume has plenty of references to empirical research on risk taking in the contributions of Part IV ("Unrealiable psobabilities")
A good start (Score:5, Insightful)
Would be exterminating the lawyers.
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But don't forget to exterminate the politicians too.
By offing all lawyers, you'll get most politicians too.
But a better rule might be to first kill anyone wearing a tie. That should cover the above, plus a lot of other undesirables.
engineer who embraced risk (Score:2, Informative)
Here's an engineer who realized at an early age that discovery comes with some risk,
http://www.bentleypublishers.com/milliken [bentleypublishers.com] [bentleypublishers.com]
He died last year at 101, http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2012/08/27/william-f-milliken-1911-2012/ [hemmings.com] [hemmings.com]
In "Equations of Motion: Adventure, Risk and Innovation", Milliken vividly recounts his experiences pushing airplanes and race cars beyond their limits. His exciting life provides singular, real-world insight into the
Spending money costs lives (Score:3)
But that means spending X million dollars to save one life is pointless because you will kill - in a completely unpredictable way - one life to get the money!
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Someone good at statistics will probably be able to figure out X in the statement "when X million tax dollars are spent, on average one person will die in the effort of making that money".
In the US, the median income is $40k. $1M tax requires an 'extra' 25 jobs beyond what people would take to feed and clothe themselves. The workplace fatality rate is 3.5 per 100,000 ( source [aflcio.org]), or 1 per 28,600. This means you get $1.1B of revenue per fatality. US personal tax receipts are almost $2T, so you could argue that the federal government kills almost 1800 people per year through the tax burden.
This income include social security and medicare, and I'm quite certain that spending on those two progr
Why unpredictable? (Score:2)
It's more of "protect the children", (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
3000 people out of approximately 300,000,000 million people is a 0.001% chance that i will die in any given attack. At one attack per year i can expect that by the time i would be 100, the
This was foreseeable (Score:4, Insightful)
Big business is risk-averse. And in America today, big business runs everything.
Schneier is right, as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Though increasingly I start getting the impression that he's firing about a couple of "duh. You don't say..." statements. Or is it just 'cause I'm in the sec biz that it seems "duh" to me?
Why does anyone think security is in any way different from any other business? In EVERY business, every project, every goal you have, everything you do, the first 90% take 10% of the work, while the last 10% gobble up 90%. Be it 80/20 or 70/30 in yours, I won't split hairs, but that's how it is: A huge part of the project or goal is trivially implemented while a minimal part takes up the lion's share. I'd even go so far to say that in security, the ratio is 99-1.
The GOOD thing about security is that you can actually just do the first 99% and accept the risk for the rest, and get away with an incredible cost/benefit ratio. And you'll find that most companies actually use that strategy in their risk management and reach a security level of 95+ percent. Actually, the joke here is that most companies are, at least in my and I'd say "our" (yours too, I'd guess) definition of security standards, under-secured because of their IT-Governance and that "95% is good enough 'til everything is at 95%" rules. That's why trivial security mechanisms aren't implemented. We're already at 95 with sec. No need to throw money that way (and, believe it or not, most companies reach their "recommended" IT-Sec level easily. Simply because those 95% are SO dirt cheap, easy and painless to implement that they almost certainly ARE already in place, and if not a few pennies will do. You'll find the IT-Sec requirements usually in the "quick wins" quarter of the chart).
You see, companies already heed that advice. Mostly because they don't give a shit about customers complaining about shoddy security because, well, they'll still buy 'cause we're SO cheap. And yes, they do.
It's different with governments that won't just get a quick outcry when a security blooper happens (like a corporations would if they, say, lose every CC number of your customers). If a plane crashed anywhere into a building again, the press would have a field day. HOW could this happen? Didn't our law makers learn anything from 9/11? Did they simple ignore it and go on with their life? What do we have those useless twits for if they do not do ANYTHING? You may fill up here with statements of your choice, but one thing is certain: This administration is finished. Done. Nobody will give them credit for anything anymore. And you better forget about winning the next elections for at least half a decade. People tend to remember those things (and the other party will spend a lot of time and money reminding them of it).
So we need 100% security. Not because we really want it or need it. Not because the scenario is so dangerous to us, the people.
It's dangerous to them, and their place at the feeding trough.
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Bingo! Although avoiding physical risk is the most visible way in which our lives have become warped, the dangers of pursuing the asymptote are not limited to just that one area.
We've also spent the last half-century or so pursuing efficiency. The projected end to that path is seen as a case where everything is cheap, but no one has a job to be able to afford to buy it.
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In EVERY business, every project, every goal you have, everything you do, the first 90% take 10% of the work, while the last 10% gobble up 90%.
You must not have worked in the software industry.
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% of a project takes the other 90% of the time.
lawn darts... (Score:2)
I think there should be free lawn darts [wikipedia.org] for everyone.
Step out of your comfort zone (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with the article. Increasingly people relinquish life experiences, if not life itself, out of fear and an unwillingness to take any risks. People who avoid trips to far away countries because of fear of a plane crash are a common occurrence. Yet I also know people who avoid excursions on weekends because they are afraid of being involved in a traffic accident. People who are afraid to visit concerts out of fear of crowds or stampedes, people who love oriental style and culture yet would never visit a country such as Morocco out of fear of kidnap or a terrorist attack.
I have to admit, I also experience this fuzzy fear of doing something new, moving out of my comfort zone, leaving the safe haven of my apartment, my town, my daily routine, every time I leave to do something out of the ordinary. I blame the worldwide media and my addiction to news. It seems like bad things happen all the time, everywhere. But it's important to put things into perspective. The world is a very big place, and 99.998% of the time people are safe and nothing happens. Of course, on those very rare occasions where something unfortunate does happen, it makes news and penetrates into our awareness, tickling our fears.
Of course, just as important as putting things into perspective, is not to be stupid and take unnecessary risks. You want to experience oriental culture? By all means, visit Morocco: Casablanca, Marrakesh, Fes. The people are very friendly and there are beautiful things to see there. But please, stay out of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq... accepting risk does not have to encompass being reckless.
Looking back, I don't regret a single time I kicked myself in the butt, stepped out of my comfort zone, and experienced new things. Yes, I was anxious on numerous occasions, mostly at airports, nervous and afraid. It doesn't matter. In the end, it was all worth it.
Risk taking is always encouraged... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but failure is unacceptable.
Standard operating procedure in nearly all industries today.
Titanic misadventures (Score:3)
All of these have active accident prevention efforts in place when they occur. It is not that risk is not being addressed, it is that the high consequences of a mishap ultimately make blame in adequate proportion impossible. And so the system continues to set up for systematic failure. Airline safety is a pretty good example of how a systematic learning process can help to address this, but consequences still continue to grow. And, as risks get to be global, like nuclear winter, ocean acidification or global warming, the chance to learn from mistakes diminishes because there is no next time in which to be more careful.
I mostly agree with him (Score:4, Insightful)
Culture of blame (Score:2)
The attitude is "if I can fault someone else then I'm completely off the hook" along with "I can take out my anger on whoever did this to me and it will be OK".
And before the self righteous conservatives start whining about welfare, I would like to point out that both conservatives and Christians are some of the worst offenders. Just think about every time some self absorbed pulpit pounding assh
nanny-state government ruining our kids (Score:5, Informative)
When I was a kid, I used take my pocket money every Saturday morning, tear out of the house at who knows what speed, down the street, through the car park of the recreation center, across the sports oval and through to the corner store (all the while shouting who knows what at the top of my lungs). Then I would go and spend my pocket money on all kinds of lollies (most of which would probably be eaten by the time I got home).
All of this was done with no parental supervision whatsoever.
These days if that happened, the parents would be yelled at for allowing their kid to go out unsupervised, yelled at for allowing their kid to run so fast though car parks and sports ovals and things with such a high risk of being hurt in the process and quite possibly yelled at for allowing their kids to spend their money with no controls on what they are buying.
Note that I also did other "dangerous" things like walking/riding my bike to school, playing on playground equipment and accessing the Internet without a parent looking over my shoulder at all times.
Re:nanny-state government ruining our kids (Score:4, Interesting)
...
These days if that happened, the parents would be yelled at for allowing their kid to go out unsupervised, yelled at for allowing their kid to run so fast though car parks and sports ovals and things with such a high risk of being hurt in the process and quite possibly yelled at for allowing their kids to spend their money with no controls on what they are buying.
...
Or perhaps parents today just perceive they would be yelled at for allowing this because they read that some parents in New Jersey was once talked to by CPS years ago. The "Nanny-State" is more of a chilling effect than a real phenomenon. Better communication means that even if an activity has only a .0001% chance of causing injury, we've heard of a child that was injured by it.
There's a family in our neighborhood that practices that kind of "Free Range" childcare, AFAIK no-one has actually yelled at them, and their children haven't had any more injuries than any others.
Re:nanny-state government ruining our kids (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how that's the fault of a "nanny state government" rather than overprotective parents. Mind you, I agree that - on the whole - kids today are overly sheltered. (Ugh, as someone not even 30 it pains me to write 'kids today.') But as someone who works with middle and high school students, I also don't think the problem is as bad as it is made out to be. It's usually one parent out of ten or twenty who are truly the obnoxious ones. They're just loud enough, and insistent enough, to paint ALL parents as whiney and over-protective, and thus all youth as sheltered.
But there are still kids running through parks and cities, spending money on candy, and going to play at the skate park. You may just not be hanging out with them.
PS - I'm from a major city in the US, which shapes my view. It sounds like, from some of your language, that you're not from the US. I'd be curious how/if things differ elsewhere, but can only speak from my experience.
Not really (Score:2)
Well, we're still underestimating the level of risk related to peak oil and global warming.
Those are bigger problems than buildings collapse.
Vaccines (Score:5, Informative)
People have responded to this with statements about terrorism/security and such, but the first thing I thought of was vaccines. The anti-vaccination folks constantly declare vaccines to be a bigger health risk than the disease they protect against. Part of the problem is that vaccines are so successful that most folks today don't remember a time when polio, measles, whooping cough, etc ravaged the world. They don't remember people dying or being permanently maimed by these diseases. (This includes me, by the way.)
To some people, this lack of personal experience makes them imagine the diseases as if they were a "bad cold." Then, they hear about the "toxins" in vaccines and the bad risk assessment kicks in. They figure that the high danger (as perceived by them) of vaccines outweighs the low chance of getting the disease and the low severity (again as seen by them) of the disease. So they skip the vaccinations - and then herd immunity breaks down, people get sick, and die.
Though I wouldn't trade being safe from these diseases, this state of safety has altered the ability of some people to make good risk assessments.
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The Empathy Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Two problems, actually. One is that we are dealing, not with a fear of risk, but a phobia towards it: the terms are related, to be sure, but the latter is taken to an irrational degree. If we don't want to spend our lives in padded rooms, then we must be willing to forego the mantra of "Never Again."
But the other problem comes in when the current political fashion of empathy-based arguments comes into play. We are asked to empathize with people who have been traumatized, in the moment of their trauma. Anyone would say "Never Again" in those circumstances: that's a large part of what it means to suffer trauma, and the very definition of empathy demands it from those practicing it. But the recently-traumatized are not known for their rational decision-making abilities. There's a reason we tell people to wait a year, or even longer, before making big decisions. There's a reason we devote whole branches of psychology to studying the effects of trauma. PTSD is no longer one monolithic thing, but a whole spectrum of defined conditions.
This, I think, is where the current phobias come from: a well-meaning but sorely misguided attempt to make decisions by empathizing with people who are in no condition to make those decisions. Pathos has its limits, and we have arrived at the current state by ignoring those limits. Certainly empathy has its place when it comes to the healing process, but when the time comes to make big decisions, we need to step back and look at things more rationally, even when rational thought means accepting the status quo.
risk takers (Score:4, Insightful)
Douglas Adams got it much closer. It was being sheltered and safe that led to the krikkit wars.
Humans are bad at small numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is, for the western world, risk is largely eliminated. Plague, famine, pestilence, and war - all are pretty nonexistent in the civilized world.
We evolved to deal with immediate, natural risk.
I'd suspect that the human brain is rather good at this in the aggregate - witness, for example, the breadth of 'home remedies' or natural herbs etc that have been determined to actually have some sort of core chemical that (surprising to scientists) actually DOES have a beneficial effect.
So now we're reduced to worry, more than risk-management.
Rather than facing starvation, we worry that we're eating too much.
Rather than facing working day and night to barely survive, we worry that we're too sedentary.
Rather than face the constant risk of agonizing death from the billions of germs trying to kill us like Typhus and Diptheria, we worry that there *might* be a vanishingly small cumulative risk of cancer from the additives that make our food safe from spoilage, mold, etc.
Rather than facing the imminent pillage, rape, or murder by a neighbor village that's decided we have something they want, we worry that there might be some crazy zealot somewhere who might harbor some resentment vaguely against our society.
Seriously, I suspect that worry is endemic to the human creature. If we don't have actual things to be concerned about, we invent / inflate them to fill that psychological space.
Oh, and Cracked has a wonderful article on this: http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-reasons-news-looks-worse-than-it-really-is/ [cracked.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd rather not. It's not like we can stop Flo from selling insurance or anything.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Just make a robot that every morning asks you what you had for dinner. If you can't remember, it shoots you in the face.
You found the cure to Alzheimer's!
(If you're really set up in the parachute fail thing, you can make the robot catapult you through a window. But then you'd have to sleep every night with a broken parachute.)
Re: (Score:3)
If you can't remember, it shoots you in the face.
Why get a robot when you could just get Dick Cheney to do it for free?
Re: (Score:2)
...using, developing, producing, buying, selling weapons and learn to be friends with others instead of trying to dominate. Until that happens, they will be hated by others and receive terror up their asses and keep being the scared cowards they are today.
Problem is: there is no other world force able to control that this happens without destroying the US. If they gave up all this, they will be attacked by all those people, groups, nations who were attacked by them. It will take generations to overcome this.
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Re: (Score:2)
Not the AC above, but if you really need to tack a name to that statement, use mine.