Reading about the Baltimore bridge disaster, I found myself very comforted to learn how quickly the sailors and bridge workers responded to stop traffic and keep the disaster from being even worse. I do think the world is mostly peopled by “Petrovs” — and that’s why we can live in this precarious sugar castle with only *occasional* disasters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There are major issues with the "billion dollar disaster" graph. See Roger Pielke analyses on The Honest Broker. In brief, damage is more expensive because we are wealthier. The physical impact (including on lives lost) is quite different.
If you write enough articles, you can be sure some will strike gold. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt and attribute the quality of this one to proficiency :)
> The way to solve this isn’t to just have a single silver bullet to create trust, but to have a large number of shots on goal to make even the unlikely of a higher statistical likelihood.
What if it was possible to develop a means to reliably detect when powerful people are engaged in wrongdoing or deceit (regardless of intent)? That would be a pretty powerful bullet, since most problems originate with a small number of super powerful people, politicians and experts being the most common.
Reading about the Baltimore bridge disaster, I found myself very comforted to learn how quickly the sailors and bridge workers responded to stop traffic and keep the disaster from being even worse. I do think the world is mostly peopled by “Petrovs” — and that’s why we can live in this precarious sugar castle with only *occasional* disasters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Very well said. I have a version of this I call the Free Rider theory of civilization. https://x.com/flantz/status/1775259023455240475?s=46&t=hUkz4VIFfbawd0Y-Rca3Kg
There are major issues with the "billion dollar disaster" graph. See Roger Pielke analyses on The Honest Broker. In brief, damage is more expensive because we are wealthier. The physical impact (including on lives lost) is quite different.
If you write enough articles, you can be sure some will strike gold. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt and attribute the quality of this one to proficiency :)
"The people have sharp eyes”. Mao was always pithy.
Had to read this very quickly so I'm just writing thank you for this extensive analysis, not to comment on it.
> The way to solve this isn’t to just have a single silver bullet to create trust, but to have a large number of shots on goal to make even the unlikely of a higher statistical likelihood.
What if it was possible to develop a means to reliably detect when powerful people are engaged in wrongdoing or deceit (regardless of intent)? That would be a pretty powerful bullet, since most problems originate with a small number of super powerful people, politicians and experts being the most common.