IMO, existential paranoia makes sense in the same way it makes sense for an engineer to be paranoid about a bridge, plane, or nuclear power plant they are building: Lives are at stake and there’s no “redo” button if you don’t get it right the first time.
Wait a minute, that is a non-epistemic justification for a propositional claim. You normatively should build huge safety margins into your bridges, but it’s still erroneous to falsely overestimate the risk of a bridge collapse, even if that belief motivates the engineer to work harder.
I agree. If I had paid more attention to the discussion, I might have realized that in this case “paranoia” was strictly in reference to probability estimates and not in reference to emotions or resource allocation. Sorry everybody.
IMO, existential paranoia makes sense in the same way it makes sense for an engineer to be paranoid about a bridge, plane, or nuclear power plant they are building: Lives are at stake and there’s no “redo” button if you don’t get it right the first time.
Wait a minute, that is a non-epistemic justification for a propositional claim. You normatively should build huge safety margins into your bridges, but it’s still erroneous to falsely overestimate the risk of a bridge collapse, even if that belief motivates the engineer to work harder.
I agree. If I had paid more attention to the discussion, I might have realized that in this case “paranoia” was strictly in reference to probability estimates and not in reference to emotions or resource allocation. Sorry everybody.
I don’t think that makes it OK to systematically paint an inaccurate picture of the risk to help drum up support for your cause.
I agree.