[extropy-chat] Panicmongering (was Psychology of investments in infrastructure)

[Russell Wallace]

On 6/25/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Panicmongering?  Just whom are you so afraid will be panicked?
> Yourself? Probably not, if I may be so bold to guess.


Not in this case, though it's certainly a mistake I've made in the past!

If a gifted engineer chooses to speculate on possible vulnerabilities
> of rapid transit systems, that's just fine with me. I can choose to
> believe it plausible, or not. I can choose to argue with the specifics
> of it or not. I could even choose to skip those posts.


Well, there was a bit more to it in this case - what I was objecting to was
the proposal that we allow fear of terrorism to dominate our lives to the
extent of dismantling much of our infrastructure. This sort of thing has
cost lives already and will cost many more before all's said and done. The
reason I get frustrated from time to time is because I think this is a large
component of the last stage of the Great Filter: the mismatch between what
we are programmed to fear (because it was dangerous in our ancestral
environment) and what is dangerous now. If Earth-descended sentient life
dies out, it won't be from things that looked dangerous - it will be
precisely from decisions made in the name of safety.

So I can see where you're coming from and I'm certainly not saying everyone
who disagrees with Russell Wallace should be silent. What I'm saying is that
those of us who are trained to think in analytical and statistical terms [1]
should look dispassionately at the numbers, the hard evidence, before
sounding the alarm. Do you not see any merit in this position?

[1] Mind you, I think such training should be part of general education -
there's plenty of useless stuff on the curriculum that could be bumped to
make room - but unfortunately it isn't.
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