It seems good and helpful in general for noticing a positive thing that happened, in history, that could serve as a positive case study, and I learned a lot from reading it.
If there is maybe a missing piece… I don’t see a clear model of balancing tests? In this case it seems likely that the best path through the Friedman Spaghetti Diagram might have been selected, but like… HOW?
Everything has a cost, and everything has a benefit. Institution design is like chainsaw design: it can be done well or poorly. If safety is so great, then why not have infinite amounts of safety? Surely umeshisms for safety apply just as much as for being late to things?
I’m not sure exactly what the tradeoffs here are, but I think maybe (1) “fraud” and (2) “making it de facto illegal for marginally competent people to own or run businesses that aren’t particularlyunsafe” might be more of a problem lately?
The fraud side of things is easier to illustrate, so I shall focus on that.
...working the example...
I would be quite surprised if there was LESS than $1B/year in worker’s comp fraud in the US but I would also be surprised if there was MORE than $1T/year.
Just hypothetically (to illustrate the math) if lives are worth $10,000,000=10^7 each and yet fraud per year amounted to $1,000,000,000,000=10^12 then (assuming we can take dollars as a valid unit of caring …and so on with “assume a spherical cow” simplifications) the two things would be a similar “amounts of badness to the common good” if there were 100,000 people=10^5 dying in industrial accidents every year.
Just be clear on the math: 10^12/10^7 = 10^(12-7) = 10^5 = 100,000.
I think the actual amount of fraud is maybe $3*10^10 and the actual amount of industrial deaths per year is roughly 5*10^3 lives? (The ratio I calculate is close enough to 1.0 that I’m slightly impressed. Did someone cause this? Who?)
But then also: just as cows are not spherical, similarly there’s almost certainly other costs or benefits to consider.
Maybe fraud isn’t even the worst part, because other things are worse or maybe fraud in such cases isn’t so bad because, I dunno… maybe stealing from insurance companies is somehow praiseworthy (and hilarious to watch when caught on tape)?
I don’t think this is true (the praiseworthy part is probably mostly false (the funny to watch part is kinda true))...
...generalizing some...
...humans engaged in moral discussion, are, in my experience, capable of incredible feats of mental gymnastics when the topic switches to differential benefits and losses, and the proper allocation of credit and blame. These topics are, empirically, not simple matters to reach agreement on.
I’m in favor of engineering things to be Intrinsically Safe because that’s just good design <3
I’m in favor of well designed nuclear power plants and against poorly designed nuclear power plants because: (1) cheap clean power is intrinsically awesome… unless (2) it causes a poisonous explosion by accident. But then like: Duh? Is this not obvious to someone?
I’m in favor of having properly designed BSL-5s (in rural places, surrounded by prison fences and a kill zone, with quarantine cottages so people on their way OUT according to Intrinscally Safe procedures have time for the longest possible disease to incubate inside them while they wait in the cottage for their second round of exit tests, and with armed guards who never enter the facility enforcing the boundary) and I’m even in favor of Gain-of-Function (GoF) research on horrible diseases… conditional on the research happening inside a BSL-5… because: (1) knowing how to treat and model and understand terrible communicable diseases is probably good, but then (2) spreading terrible communicable diseases by accident is bad, and then (3) intentionally spreading diseases around the world is even worse. But then like: Duh? Is this not obvious to someone?
The central problem feels to me like its that “obvious things are somehow not obvious to most people”?
Also, empirically, people cheat and lie for their own benefit a lot? But ALSO humans often deny that humans often cheat and lie for their own benefit! Its weird. Maybe Hanson understands it since he seems to have noticed big mechanistic chunks of related psychology so long ago.
I like the essay!
It seems good and helpful in general for noticing a positive thing that happened, in history, that could serve as a positive case study, and I learned a lot from reading it.
If there is maybe a missing piece… I don’t see a clear model of balancing tests? In this case it seems likely that the best path through the Friedman Spaghetti Diagram might have been selected, but like… HOW?
Everything has a cost, and everything has a benefit. Institution design is like chainsaw design: it can be done well or poorly. If safety is so great, then why not have infinite amounts of safety? Surely umeshisms for safety apply just as much as for being late to things?
I’m not sure exactly what the tradeoffs here are, but I think maybe (1) “fraud” and (2) “making it de facto illegal for marginally competent people to own or run businesses that aren’t particularly unsafe” might be more of a problem lately?
The fraud side of things is easier to illustrate, so I shall focus on that.
...working the example...
I would be quite surprised if there was LESS than $1B/year in worker’s comp fraud in the US but I would also be surprised if there was MORE than $1T/year.
Just hypothetically (to illustrate the math) if lives are worth $10,000,000=10^7 each and yet fraud per year amounted to $1,000,000,000,000=10^12 then (assuming we can take dollars as a valid unit of caring …and so on with “assume a spherical cow” simplifications) the two things would be a similar “amounts of badness to the common good” if there were 100,000 people=10^5 dying in industrial accidents every year.
Just be clear on the math: 10^12/10^7 = 10^(12-7) = 10^5 = 100,000.
I think the actual amount of fraud is maybe $3*10^10 and the actual amount of industrial deaths per year is roughly 5*10^3 lives? (The ratio I calculate is close enough to 1.0 that I’m slightly impressed. Did someone cause this? Who?)
But then also: just as cows are not spherical, similarly there’s almost certainly other costs or benefits to consider.
Maybe fraud isn’t even the worst part, because other things are worse or maybe fraud in such cases isn’t so bad because, I dunno… maybe stealing from insurance companies is somehow praiseworthy (and hilarious to watch when caught on tape)?
I don’t think this is true (the praiseworthy part is probably mostly false (the funny to watch part is kinda true))...
...generalizing some...
...humans engaged in moral discussion, are, in my experience, capable of incredible feats of mental gymnastics when the topic switches to differential benefits and losses, and the proper allocation of credit and blame. These topics are, empirically, not simple matters to reach agreement on.
I’m in favor of engineering things to be Intrinsically Safe because that’s just good design <3
I’m in favor of well designed nuclear power plants and against poorly designed nuclear power plants because: (1) cheap clean power is intrinsically awesome… unless (2) it causes a poisonous explosion by accident. But then like: Duh? Is this not obvious to someone?
I’m in favor of having properly designed BSL-5s (in rural places, surrounded by prison fences and a kill zone, with quarantine cottages so people on their way OUT according to Intrinscally Safe procedures have time for the longest possible disease to incubate inside them while they wait in the cottage for their second round of exit tests, and with armed guards who never enter the facility enforcing the boundary) and I’m even in favor of Gain-of-Function (GoF) research on horrible diseases… conditional on the research happening inside a BSL-5… because: (1) knowing how to treat and model and understand terrible communicable diseases is probably good, but then (2) spreading terrible communicable diseases by accident is bad, and then (3) intentionally spreading diseases around the world is even worse. But then like: Duh? Is this not obvious to someone?
The central problem feels to me like its that “obvious things are somehow not obvious to most people”?
Also, empirically, people cheat and lie for their own benefit a lot? But ALSO humans often deny that humans often cheat and lie for their own benefit! Its weird. Maybe Hanson understands it since he seems to have noticed big mechanistic chunks of related psychology so long ago.