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Humanity’s broken risk perception is reversing global progress

151 points by r366y6 4y ago

blueflow 4y ago
Its like with accidental pregnancies or software complexity. People love the nice things "at the front" and prefer to ignore the tail of liabilities coming with it.
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
prometheus76 4y ago
"Global progress" is a very debatable phrase. It all depends on what you are optimizing for, I guess.
golemotron 4y ago
> World could undo social and economic advances and face 1.5 disasters a day by 2030, according to UN’s flagship Global Assessment Report. Now is a good time to talk about incentives. If you are the 'UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction' you have to find disasters or disband.
verisimi 4y ago
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 not enough governance, of course. But what about the risk of a corrupt global governance structure? If you think "democracy" was bad (where you vote once every 4/5 years, for someone else to represent you for that time), how much worse will it be if global policies are rolled out to everyone with no vote at all? Where if you disagree on what stakeholders (corporations, government and NGOs) have in mind for you, you're on your own. Which is where we are already.. No to a global tyrannical system - thanks. Next. I think the best way to manage risks is to roll back the mega governance structures, ignore or undo government diktats. Put power in hands of local people, and no I don't mean implementing the UN cookie-cut 'local sustainable development plan' templates that we are all getting. Can we discuss that? Of course not - imagine a government arguing for less government!! I want less government in every way - let local people decide for themselves what they want to do. In fact, we could have that today, if people stopped listening to these ridiculous self-authorising "authorities".
- MrMan 4y ago
  we essentially have global anarchy in much of the world, where governments control very little. more of this is a recipe for more destruction.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    We do not in fact have global anarchy in any significant part of the world. That's not what anarchy means. You're thinking of rampant cleptocracies and oligarchies. Anarchy is the absence of hierarchies, not just "the government is dysfunctional or extremely corrupt".
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  I stopped respecting the UN when they said they criticized Elon Musk for not giving them 6 billion dollars so that they could "solve world hunger". That's about as much as the state of Sweden donates to poverty every single year, and that is just Sweden alone. The total amount of charity donations worldwide is in the trillions of dollars yet there's always just more required. Bureaucrats with humanities degrees at the UN don't solve problems, if they were solved, their jobs would be purposeless. And yea, I know they releasased a "plan" showing how they would split the 6 billion to different areas and stop world hunger 2022. Amazing work!
  - baisq 4y ago
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    Charity highlights taxation doesnt work.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    If one time donation of 6 billion would be enough to solve the hunger I think the nations with hungry in them could easily lend this much money and solve it once and for all. That would certainly have net positive ROI in long run for them.
  - 4y ago
imtringued 4y ago
Don't worry. Economic activity primarily happens indoors so it isn't affected.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> The GAR2022 blames these disasters on a broken perception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility,” which leads to policy, finance and development decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and put people in danger. The most fatal expression I have heard is that "We need to push through". In Digital Vegan I describe this mentality thus: "I feel there is more hope that one can survive a car crash by accelerating at a wall to more cleanly demolish it. Instead we must learn the self-discipline and endure the pain of being able to disconnect first, in order to build new connections." [2] Iatrogenics and solutionism, by which we make things worse by trying to improve them as-is, is now our mode of existence. Stopping that requires humility. Falliblism is the ability to realise you are going the wrong way and turn around, despite the ego losing face. Surely I am an idiot, but I remain an optimist that human beings can pull ourselves out of a great collective delusion built on pride and greed. For example; the GAR2022 statement perfectly describes the state of cybersecurity. I recall a point around 2019, before the pandemic when major breaches and incidents got to occurring once per day. I had a feeling that the world was finally taking notice and something could now be done. Then suddenly it vanished from the news cycle. When something is happening daily, it's no longer news. Covid-19 then eclipsed all threads of reflection and we plunged deeper into the very forms of cybernetic technofascism and blind dependency we needed to avoid. It's now become impossible to research or teach anything but the most cartoon version of computer security - one that holds the established mythologies harmless and allows profitable abuses to continue. There is no permitted narrative that doesn't compound the errors we are already making [1] for the sake of those who have power. There is too much resting on not comprehending the big picture and finding human-centred solutions. A generation of smart young people who could help us are left frustrated. I think similar things are happening in other areas of human intellectual endeavour now, climate, transport, health, education. We have not valued competencies, but instead put prideful appearance before reality. We have a bleak crisis of leadership. We cannot face the onslaught of challenges by reason alone as we are all fatigued already by tyranny, pestilence, looming poverty and war. The first step is "When you're in a hole, stop digging". We need to curb enthusiasm and withdraw support, even tacit, for many of the "sacred" norms. We must reject monotonism and the idea that progress is a "inevitable" scalar. That is not a rejection of technology, or neo-Luddism. Computer people should at least recognise that it is called "back-tracking". [1] http://techrights.org/2021/11/29/teaching-cybersecurity/ http://techrights.org/2021/11/29/teaching-cybersecurity/ [2] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net
chrisco255 4y ago
Right now, we have a host of problems, almost all of them manmade, but no, they're not related to the state of nature or even mankind's influence on nature. We are on the brink of world war three and the UN's only reason for existing is to prevent that from happening again, but instead of doing its job it's playing propaganda games with the word 'disaster' to make you think a global carbon tax is the solution to all of your problems (even though deaths from natural disasters are at all-time lows: https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters). We've got major inflationary pressures triggered from man-made economic policy decisions compounded by the incredibly disastrous decision to attempt to shut down whole economies in the vain attempt to prevent human beings from breathing in the same air space as each other. That was a disaster. We are still living with the chain reaction of that stupidity, and China is still running with it in Shanghai, maybe because power is kinda addictive, even when it's horribly disastrous, I don't know. The last thing we need is more centralization of power vis-a-vis the UN.
- temp8964 4y ago
  Also do remember WHO played political game on the side of China at the beginning of the pandemic. That’s one of the reasons we got in this new SARS.
  - newsclues 4y ago
    And remember that western leaders and elites went along with Chinese leaders!
    - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
      Not all of them.
  - I_DRINK_KOOLAID 4y ago
    Wuhan had its first cases on Dec-17th , on Jan-14th the sequence was out and shipped across the globe. If you think that delay is bad wait and see if a pandemic develops in Yemen or in Sub-Saharan Africa...those countries would need 8-9 months to notice an outbreak not to mention sequencing. We have an example with HIV. It made the leap somewhere in Africa between 1945 and 1952. The world noticed it when it arrived to developed countries in the 1980s... Hatred against China is cheap talk, when it's time to discuss the quality of life haircut that a complete decoupling would cause all of a sudden each and every person (be it a professor, a dude at the bar or anybody else) is only looking for an off-ramp to get off the conversation and blame Davos/Schwab/the illuminati. This is true in NYC as well as Shanghai
throwawaymaths 4y ago
> 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 lower for "growth" we wouldn't be destroying the environment. But I guess it is hard to get someone who works for an organization like the UN, who is predisposed to meddle, to see that the problem is meddling, and not that the solution is more meddling.
- cryptica 4y ago
  This hits the nail on the head. Also, all the money-printing creates extreme market distortions, inequality and injustice. It greatly increases the role of luck and social connections in financial success (due to Cantillon effects) and therefore those who end up at the top, blinded by their extreme survivor bias, tend to be overly optimistic about reality and so they are among the worse qualified to be making complex decisions on a global scale which affect the majority (who are non-outliers by definition)... I doubt anyone is qualified to be making those decisions, let alone extreme outliers who don't fully understand the magnitude of the problems.
  - necroblogger 4y ago
    I read it: 'UN wants to curtail their 5-years-plan 'agenda 2030' to be finished in 2025 , cos they are planning to impose you with their might (davos 05-22-2022 who want to overrule health, stripping sovereignty and if thats succsessful, forbidding nationalism world wide) to use the same _scare_tactics_ - as other western nations (media-driven experiment) before (-migration -covid-19 -war in ukraine for example), saying now - 'The UN welcomes you to 1,5 disaster per day beginnig in 2030!' (-; No... and while that wasn't about money, have you ever thought 'rising markets are an equivalent of increased productivity' ? ^^ Some days ago there was a headline: 'productivity is on an 75-year low.' But in terms of asking 'Is that a participation-thing?', i might enjoy what you wrote, sry, won't sound offending... (-:
- 4y ago
blfr 4y ago
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 momentum here and there. Jet propulsion gave us space travel and satellites, we linked computer into networks, put them on the radio. Otherwise, it has been a time of stagnation. This managerial approach to risk management is in no small part to blame in my opinion. We should be bolder. This may be worse for individual people affected but better for humanity in general as it gives us tools to address truly existential risks (like a stray asteroid). We can't really make it up to the people affected in another managerial/coasian bargain. So in return, as healthy cultures did throughout the ages, we give our heroes glory.
- jhugo 4y ago
  "Risk" is incredibly broad. The linked article seems quite focused on disaster risk, which in terms of its increase is mostly climate-related. The perceived reduction in progress over decades may have more to do with societal changes in individual risk perception. For example, we were more comfortable with people dying in the name of progress in 1880-1950.
  - jcadam 4y ago
    Communist regimes well past that period were quite willing to sacrifice large numbers of people in the name of "progress." But those losses are large enough to be regarded as statistics rather than tragedies...
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  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 crisis of 2020-2021 and inability of the West to impose full oil and gas embargo on Russia.
rob_c 4y ago
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 <=1.0... 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...
I_DRINK_KOOLAID 4y ago
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kkfx 4y ago
It's not a matter of broken risk perception but a matter of thirst for power by some who tried to push the accelerator and optimism feeling invincible to bend the society to their desire. I call that the classic fallacy of the building contractor who think it's mix of quick actions and tolerance in the tech can do anything and scale to any level. The opposite effect of analyze-paralyze. Beside that, the recent autarkic drive fueled much by the neoliberals need of overturn the table to remain in power against emerging powers that in the end use the same techniques in slightly different sauces BUT do have industries and/or natural resources the west have lost, is not a reversal of globalization is just the need for another cyclic world war to reset an unsustainable system avoid being rightly annihilated by a mass of angry people, the need for resource and the global exchange system is still the same. For anybody.
jmyeet 4y ago
Another perspective: humanity's biggest problem is our inability to understand the exponential function [1]. As for climate change, the only way that ends is after massive death and destruction or due to economics (specifically: carbon emission sources get replaced because they're cheaper). It's too large, expensive and long-term for people to care otherwise. The pandemic should've dispelled any notions you may have had about humanity not being staggeringly selfish. The social and political disasters are more solvable. The world powers (and the US in particular) need to stop screwing with the rest of the world purely for their material gain. The US loves to sanction, incite a revolution or just outright invade any country that even talks about (let alone actually) nationalizes natural resources [2]. Cuba and Venezuela spring to mind. In Ecuador after Chevron caused massive environmental damage and the government secured a $9.5 billion judgement, the US reacted by empowering an oil law firm to criminally prosecute the US lawyer (Steven Donziger) for fraud in the US [3]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6E156F1A50BB7B72 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6E156F1A50BB7B72 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... [3]: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/04/science/mcgovern-calls-biden-pardon-embattled-attorney-steven-donziger/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/04/science/mcgovern-call...
- glitchc 4y ago
  Well, the US military might is reliant on a resource it does not actually produce locally (in sufficient quantities). If the govt. did not exert control over other sources, it would quickly lose access, rendering much of the heavy machinery useless. The Navy is the most vulnerable to an oil shortage.
  - eggsmediumrare 4y ago
    The US is an energy exporter now.
    - glitchc 4y ago
      All crude is not created equal. Jet fuel for instance is dominantly refined from light sweet crude, for which the Middle East is the best source. While one can refine shale oil into jet fuel, the process is more complicated and expensive. It is worth noting that US does refine most of its own jet fuel within the country, and it’s only raw crude that it needs to buy.
anovikov 4y ago
I would say our risk perception is broken in an opposite way: we became too risk-averse thus making simple things insanely more complicated. Think nuclear power.
fleddr 4y ago
"The GAR2022 blames these disasters on a broken perception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility,” which leads to policy, finance and development decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and put people in danger." Optimism? I'd say it's apathy. Doomsday reports, also very correct and alarming ones, have lost their effect. People have become numb, pessimistic and just assume or even accept that everything is going to shit. They feel powerless to do anything about it, or are too occupied with their own economic relevance.
seydor 4y ago
'risk perception' sounds like another name for fear. Maybe we ve proven to be good at preventing the wrong things. People expected a climate disaster but it was a pandemic instead
aeturnum 4y ago
I think a lot of folks here are missing the forest for the trees about this report. This is urging people to take a disaster studies inspired approach[1]. We need are in danger of over-optimizing; of accepting too many disruptions from foreseeable problems. There is nothing here about how many risks we should take - it's talking about the fact that we can model expected disruptions and that we are not using that knowledge to prepare for those disruptions which will, of course, make them worse. Nearly all disasters are foreseeable and mitigable. We will do better if we prepare ahead of time. Investing a comparatively small amount of resources will have returns down the line - but you have to do the investment and plan accordingly. A laser focus on investing all resources in "progress" will end up forseeably disrupted. [1] The work of Scott Gabriel Knowles is probably a good intro if people are not familiar.
- carapace 4y ago
  The metaphor that comes to mind is "Pacific Rim": we're being attacked by invisible kaiju but we're not building giant robots to fight them because they're invisible. They're saying "let's use radar to locate the monsters and build robots to be ready to fight them". But the "monsters" are things like floods, wildfires, tsunamis, etc. > the Hazard Definition and Classification Review, ... outlined over 300 hazard types that can contribute to disasters (UNDRR, 2020a). They include common events such as storms and floods and also less-frequent events such as pandemics and chemical accidents. https://www.undrr.org/publication/global-assessment-report-disaster-risk-reduction-2022 https://www.undrr.org/publication/global-assessment-report-d... And the giant robots are things like better communication, insurance, and paying a little attention.
  - aeturnum 4y ago
    Exactly - though I think I would go even further with the metaphor and say this report is pointing out that we can see the Kaiju on the radar right now but we are choosing not to build the robots! So it is warning that, given the Kaiju we can foresee, the projected output of our industry is going to dip into the negative.
renewiltord 4y ago
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 provide similar functionality. For catastrophic events, though, we'd like to keep things operational rather than have someone else pop in. But that's okay. I think the right model is that the state steps in for true catastrophes and mitigates the effects (like we did in the pandemic). And, to be honest, I don't see climate change as an extinction level risk. 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.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > 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-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of...
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Oh, I’m sorry. I misspoke. I meant to say “I care very much, like hundreds of millions of people, that the government act on climate change”. By the way, I’ll vote you out if gas becomes expensive, but make sure you do something about the climate change. I won’t vote you out over Climate Change or anything. But it is very important. Gas prices, in comparison, are not at all important. I’ll vote you out over them, but they’re not important. Just make sure you get the climate change thing right. Won’t win you my vote or anything but it is the most important thing in the world. Nothing is more important.

151 points by r366y6 4y ago

Its like with accidental pregnancies or software complexity. People love the nice things "at the front" and prefer to ignore the tail of liabilities coming with it.

aaron695 4y ago

[dead]

prometheus76 4y ago

"Global progress" is a very debatable phrase. It all depends on what you are optimizing for, I guess.

golemotron 4y ago

> World could undo social and economic advances and face 1.5 disasters a day by 2030, according to UN’s flagship Global Assessment Report. Now is a good time to talk about incentives. If you are the 'UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction' you have to find disasters or disband.

verisimi 4y ago

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 not enough governance, of course. But what about the risk of a corrupt global governance structure? If you think "democracy" was bad (where you vote once every 4/5 years, for someone else to represent you for that time), how much worse will it be if global policies are rolled out to everyone with no vote at all? Where if you disagree on what stakeholders (corporations, government and NGOs) have in mind for you, you're on your own. Which is where we are already.. No to a global tyrannical system - thanks. Next. I think the best way to manage risks is to roll back the mega governance structures, ignore or undo government diktats. Put power in hands of local people, and no I don't mean implementing the UN cookie-cut 'local sustainable development plan' templates that we are all getting. Can we discuss that? Of course not - imagine a government arguing for less government!! I want less government in every way - let local people decide for themselves what they want to do. In fact, we could have that today, if people stopped listening to these ridiculous self-authorising "authorities".

MrMan 4y ago
we essentially have global anarchy in much of the world, where governments control very little. more of this is a recipe for more destruction.
- hnbad 4y ago
  We do not in fact have global anarchy in any significant part of the world. That's not what anarchy means. You're thinking of rampant cleptocracies and oligarchies. Anarchy is the absence of hierarchies, not just "the government is dysfunctional or extremely corrupt".
raspberry1337 4y ago
I stopped respecting the UN when they said they criticized Elon Musk for not giving them 6 billion dollars so that they could "solve world hunger". That's about as much as the state of Sweden donates to poverty every single year, and that is just Sweden alone. The total amount of charity donations worldwide is in the trillions of dollars yet there's always just more required. Bureaucrats with humanities degrees at the UN don't solve problems, if they were solved, their jobs would be purposeless. And yea, I know they releasased a "plan" showing how they would split the 6 billion to different areas and stop world hunger 2022. Amazing work!
- baisq 4y ago
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  Charity highlights taxation doesnt work.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  If one time donation of 6 billion would be enough to solve the hunger I think the nations with hungry in them could easily lend this much money and solve it once and for all. That would certainly have net positive ROI in long run for them.
- 4y ago

imtringued 4y ago

Don't worry. Economic activity primarily happens indoors so it isn't affected.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

> The GAR2022 blames these disasters on a broken perception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility,” which leads to policy, finance and development decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and put people in danger. The most fatal expression I have heard is that "We need to push through". In Digital Vegan I describe this mentality thus: "I feel there is more hope that one can survive a car crash by accelerating at a wall to more cleanly demolish it. Instead we must learn the self-discipline and endure the pain of being able to disconnect first, in order to build new connections." [2] Iatrogenics and solutionism, by which we make things worse by trying to improve them as-is, is now our mode of existence. Stopping that requires humility. Falliblism is the ability to realise you are going the wrong way and turn around, despite the ego losing face. Surely I am an idiot, but I remain an optimist that human beings can pull ourselves out of a great collective delusion built on pride and greed. For example; the GAR2022 statement perfectly describes the state of cybersecurity. I recall a point around 2019, before the pandemic when major breaches and incidents got to occurring once per day. I had a feeling that the world was finally taking notice and something could now be done. Then suddenly it vanished from the news cycle. When something is happening daily, it's no longer news. Covid-19 then eclipsed all threads of reflection and we plunged deeper into the very forms of cybernetic technofascism and blind dependency we needed to avoid. It's now become impossible to research or teach anything but the most cartoon version of computer security - one that holds the established mythologies harmless and allows profitable abuses to continue. There is no permitted narrative that doesn't compound the errors we are already making [1] for the sake of those who have power. There is too much resting on not comprehending the big picture and finding human-centred solutions. A generation of smart young people who could help us are left frustrated. I think similar things are happening in other areas of human intellectual endeavour now, climate, transport, health, education. We have not valued competencies, but instead put prideful appearance before reality. We have a bleak crisis of leadership. We cannot face the onslaught of challenges by reason alone as we are all fatigued already by tyranny, pestilence, looming poverty and war. The first step is "When you're in a hole, stop digging". We need to curb enthusiasm and withdraw support, even tacit, for many of the "sacred" norms. We must reject monotonism and the idea that progress is a "inevitable" scalar. That is not a rejection of technology, or neo-Luddism. Computer people should at least recognise that it is called "back-tracking". [1] http://techrights.org/2021/11/29/teaching-cybersecurity/ http://techrights.org/2021/11/29/teaching-cybersecurity/ [2] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net

chrisco255 4y ago

Right now, we have a host of problems, almost all of them manmade, but no, they're not related to the state of nature or even mankind's influence on nature. We are on the brink of world war three and the UN's only reason for existing is to prevent that from happening again, but instead of doing its job it's playing propaganda games with the word 'disaster' to make you think a global carbon tax is the solution to all of your problems (even though deaths from natural disasters are at all-time lows: https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters). We've got major inflationary pressures triggered from man-made economic policy decisions compounded by the incredibly disastrous decision to attempt to shut down whole economies in the vain attempt to prevent human beings from breathing in the same air space as each other. That was a disaster. We are still living with the chain reaction of that stupidity, and China is still running with it in Shanghai, maybe because power is kinda addictive, even when it's horribly disastrous, I don't know. The last thing we need is more centralization of power vis-a-vis the UN.

temp8964 4y ago
Also do remember WHO played political game on the side of China at the beginning of the pandemic. That’s one of the reasons we got in this new SARS.
- newsclues 4y ago
  And remember that western leaders and elites went along with Chinese leaders!
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    Not all of them.
- I_DRINK_KOOLAID 4y ago
  Wuhan had its first cases on Dec-17th , on Jan-14th the sequence was out and shipped across the globe. If you think that delay is bad wait and see if a pandemic develops in Yemen or in Sub-Saharan Africa...those countries would need 8-9 months to notice an outbreak not to mention sequencing. We have an example with HIV. It made the leap somewhere in Africa between 1945 and 1952. The world noticed it when it arrived to developed countries in the 1980s... Hatred against China is cheap talk, when it's time to discuss the quality of life haircut that a complete decoupling would cause all of a sudden each and every person (be it a professor, a dude at the bar or anybody else) is only looking for an off-ramp to get off the conversation and blame Davos/Schwab/the illuminati. This is true in NYC as well as Shanghai

throwawaymaths 4y ago

> 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 lower for "growth" we wouldn't be destroying the environment. But I guess it is hard to get someone who works for an organization like the UN, who is predisposed to meddle, to see that the problem is meddling, and not that the solution is more meddling.

cryptica 4y ago
This hits the nail on the head. Also, all the money-printing creates extreme market distortions, inequality and injustice. It greatly increases the role of luck and social connections in financial success (due to Cantillon effects) and therefore those who end up at the top, blinded by their extreme survivor bias, tend to be overly optimistic about reality and so they are among the worse qualified to be making complex decisions on a global scale which affect the majority (who are non-outliers by definition)... I doubt anyone is qualified to be making those decisions, let alone extreme outliers who don't fully understand the magnitude of the problems.
- necroblogger 4y ago
  I read it: 'UN wants to curtail their 5-years-plan 'agenda 2030' to be finished in 2025 , cos they are planning to impose you with their might (davos 05-22-2022 who want to overrule health, stripping sovereignty and if thats succsessful, forbidding nationalism world wide) to use the same _scare_tactics_ - as other western nations (media-driven experiment) before (-migration -covid-19 -war in ukraine for example), saying now - 'The UN welcomes you to 1,5 disaster per day beginnig in 2030!' (-; No... and while that wasn't about money, have you ever thought 'rising markets are an equivalent of increased productivity' ? ^^ Some days ago there was a headline: 'productivity is on an 75-year low.' But in terms of asking 'Is that a participation-thing?', i might enjoy what you wrote, sry, won't sound offending... (-:
4y ago

blfr 4y ago

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 momentum here and there. Jet propulsion gave us space travel and satellites, we linked computer into networks, put them on the radio. Otherwise, it has been a time of stagnation. This managerial approach to risk management is in no small part to blame in my opinion. We should be bolder. This may be worse for individual people affected but better for humanity in general as it gives us tools to address truly existential risks (like a stray asteroid). We can't really make it up to the people affected in another managerial/coasian bargain. So in return, as healthy cultures did throughout the ages, we give our heroes glory.

jhugo 4y ago
"Risk" is incredibly broad. The linked article seems quite focused on disaster risk, which in terms of its increase is mostly climate-related. The perceived reduction in progress over decades may have more to do with societal changes in individual risk perception. For example, we were more comfortable with people dying in the name of progress in 1880-1950.
- jcadam 4y ago
  Communist regimes well past that period were quite willing to sacrifice large numbers of people in the name of "progress." But those losses are large enough to be regarded as statistics rather than tragedies...
ivan_gammel 4y ago
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 crisis of 2020-2021 and inability of the West to impose full oil and gas embargo on Russia.

rob_c 4y ago

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 <=1.0... 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...

I_DRINK_KOOLAID 4y ago

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kkfx 4y ago

It's not a matter of broken risk perception but a matter of thirst for power by some who tried to push the accelerator and optimism feeling invincible to bend the society to their desire. I call that the classic fallacy of the building contractor who think it's mix of quick actions and tolerance in the tech can do anything and scale to any level. The opposite effect of analyze-paralyze. Beside that, the recent autarkic drive fueled much by the neoliberals need of overturn the table to remain in power against emerging powers that in the end use the same techniques in slightly different sauces BUT do have industries and/or natural resources the west have lost, is not a reversal of globalization is just the need for another cyclic world war to reset an unsustainable system avoid being rightly annihilated by a mass of angry people, the need for resource and the global exchange system is still the same. For anybody.

jmyeet 4y ago

Another perspective: humanity's biggest problem is our inability to understand the exponential function [1]. As for climate change, the only way that ends is after massive death and destruction or due to economics (specifically: carbon emission sources get replaced because they're cheaper). It's too large, expensive and long-term for people to care otherwise. The pandemic should've dispelled any notions you may have had about humanity not being staggeringly selfish. The social and political disasters are more solvable. The world powers (and the US in particular) need to stop screwing with the rest of the world purely for their material gain. The US loves to sanction, incite a revolution or just outright invade any country that even talks about (let alone actually) nationalizes natural resources [2]. Cuba and Venezuela spring to mind. In Ecuador after Chevron caused massive environmental damage and the government secured a $9.5 billion judgement, the US reacted by empowering an oil law firm to criminally prosecute the US lawyer (Steven Donziger) for fraud in the US [3]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6E156F1A50BB7B72 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6E156F1A50BB7B72 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... [3]: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/04/science/mcgovern-calls-biden-pardon-embattled-attorney-steven-donziger/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/04/science/mcgovern-call...

glitchc 4y ago
Well, the US military might is reliant on a resource it does not actually produce locally (in sufficient quantities). If the govt. did not exert control over other sources, it would quickly lose access, rendering much of the heavy machinery useless. The Navy is the most vulnerable to an oil shortage.
- eggsmediumrare 4y ago
  The US is an energy exporter now.
  - glitchc 4y ago
    All crude is not created equal. Jet fuel for instance is dominantly refined from light sweet crude, for which the Middle East is the best source. While one can refine shale oil into jet fuel, the process is more complicated and expensive. It is worth noting that US does refine most of its own jet fuel within the country, and it’s only raw crude that it needs to buy.

anovikov 4y ago

I would say our risk perception is broken in an opposite way: we became too risk-averse thus making simple things insanely more complicated. Think nuclear power.

fleddr 4y ago

"The GAR2022 blames these disasters on a broken perception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility,” which leads to policy, finance and development decisions that exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and put people in danger." Optimism? I'd say it's apathy. Doomsday reports, also very correct and alarming ones, have lost their effect. People have become numb, pessimistic and just assume or even accept that everything is going to shit. They feel powerless to do anything about it, or are too occupied with their own economic relevance.

seydor 4y ago

'risk perception' sounds like another name for fear. Maybe we ve proven to be good at preventing the wrong things. People expected a climate disaster but it was a pandemic instead

aeturnum 4y ago

I think a lot of folks here are missing the forest for the trees about this report. This is urging people to take a disaster studies inspired approach[1]. We need are in danger of over-optimizing; of accepting too many disruptions from foreseeable problems. There is nothing here about how many risks we should take - it's talking about the fact that we can model expected disruptions and that we are not using that knowledge to prepare for those disruptions which will, of course, make them worse. Nearly all disasters are foreseeable and mitigable. We will do better if we prepare ahead of time. Investing a comparatively small amount of resources will have returns down the line - but you have to do the investment and plan accordingly. A laser focus on investing all resources in "progress" will end up forseeably disrupted. [1] The work of Scott Gabriel Knowles is probably a good intro if people are not familiar.

carapace 4y ago
The metaphor that comes to mind is "Pacific Rim": we're being attacked by invisible kaiju but we're not building giant robots to fight them because they're invisible. They're saying "let's use radar to locate the monsters and build robots to be ready to fight them". But the "monsters" are things like floods, wildfires, tsunamis, etc. > the Hazard Definition and Classification Review, ... outlined over 300 hazard types that can contribute to disasters (UNDRR, 2020a). They include common events such as storms and floods and also less-frequent events such as pandemics and chemical accidents. https://www.undrr.org/publication/global-assessment-report-disaster-risk-reduction-2022 https://www.undrr.org/publication/global-assessment-report-d... And the giant robots are things like better communication, insurance, and paying a little attention.
- aeturnum 4y ago
  Exactly - though I think I would go even further with the metaphor and say this report is pointing out that we can see the Kaiju on the radar right now but we are choosing not to build the robots! So it is warning that, given the Kaiju we can foresee, the projected output of our industry is going to dip into the negative.

renewiltord 4y ago

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 provide similar functionality. For catastrophic events, though, we'd like to keep things operational rather than have someone else pop in. But that's okay. I think the right model is that the state steps in for true catastrophes and mitigates the effects (like we did in the pandemic). And, to be honest, I don't see climate change as an extinction level risk. 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.

lapcat 4y ago
> 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-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of...
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Oh, I’m sorry. I misspoke. I meant to say “I care very much, like hundreds of millions of people, that the government act on climate change”. By the way, I’ll vote you out if gas becomes expensive, but make sure you do something about the climate change. I won’t vote you out over Climate Change or anything. But it is very important. Gas prices, in comparison, are not at all important. I’ll vote you out over them, but they’re not important. Just make sure you get the climate change thing right. Won’t win you my vote or anything but it is the most important thing in the world. Nothing is more important.