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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31611 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Covid is (potentially) infinitely more harmful than a dam collapse. The dam killed 200k, and Covid 6 million and counting.

Yes, a dam collapse has finite potential, and infectious diseases infinite. But other things do pose existential risk to humans. Or just existential risk in general. And if you believe climatologists, plenty of human activities right now are posing an existential risk to humans.

Your go-to an example is one where no one appears to have been placed with responsibility.

So? We don't live under your principle, so we wouldn't expect that.

There’s no evidence that dam-builders are cowards who would not sign off on “I stake limitless torture on my dam not killing 200k people.”

Even assuming there are such dam-builders, your plan filters for exactly the wrong ones. You're looking for the careful safety-conscious ones, and instead you'll get the fools who don't understand the risk and the arrogant cowboys who believe it will never happen to them.

We now need to find a way to use an enhanced virus to save, by the end of the century, 100 million lives. Only this would cancel out the harm that the leak caused.

100 million? You said COVID killed 6 million. Anyway, your principle didn't consider benefits, only risk.

I wrote 100mil at the end of the century.

In order for GoF to be demonstrably beneficial, to have been a good idea in practice, you will need to make up the 100mil dead by 2100. While it’s not impossible that GoF finds some use with malaria, it will likely be an eternal net negative for developed countries. To justify its existence, you now need GoF benefits to make up for the 1 million American lives lost so far and 16 trillion dollars. Do you think that’s actually going to happen?

It doesn't matter, because your principle considers only risks, not benefits.

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