[HN Gopher] The Silence of Risk Management Victory
___________________________________________________________________
The Silence of Risk Management Victory
Author : codexjourneys
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-08-20 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (riskmusings.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (riskmusings.substack.com)
| intrasight wrote:
| Risk management really is the unsung hero of the modern world. A
| good book on the topic is "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story
| of Risk".
|
| The answer to the question "why did a thriving capitalist economy
| emerge in Europe in the 17th century?" is simply "risk
| management". It was the intellectual leap that made it all
| possible.
| [deleted]
| chewz wrote:
| > A good book on the topic is "Against the Gods: The Remarkable
| Story of Risk".
|
| I wouldn't recommend that book. I would rather recommend
| reading A Treatise on Probability by John Maynard Keynes...
| which is insightful and genius like most of his work.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_Probability
|
| Some parts of Fooled by Randomness are also insightful (before
| Nassim Taleb became this weird, tin foil hat guy he is now)...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness
|
| As for capitalist economy - it is of course a matter of opinion
| but I would rather say that capitalist economy is more about
| rent seeking, externalising costs and taking crazy amounts of
| risk with moral hazard rather then about risk management...
|
| But perhaps it is because I am risk manager by trade and had
| seen too many insurance, banks and money managers from the
| inside...
|
| EDIT: Both books - as I have just realized - are saying more or
| less that probability and risks are real but rarely
| quantifiable. I guess that makes me a pessimist.
| wklm wrote:
| I loved Fooled by randomness, could you recommend further
| readings in a similar vein?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| >Yes, though as extreme climate events pile up, naysayers
| dwindle. But their pushback against climate change efforts has
| delayed mitigation by decades. We're now at a stage where we can
| no longer prevent some terrible effects of climate change. It
| would have been far better to risk naysayers' ridicule and dive
| in earlier and stronger.
|
| Many people that talk about Climate Change, aka, Global Warming,
| are so indoctrinated via ideological shades that they do not
| recognize basic facts, and understanding where we are with our
| own knowledge
|
| 1. Deglaciation, and Warming as climate trends preceded our oil-
| based economy by thousands of years
|
| 2. Glacial Maximums are associated with low CO2 environments
|
| 3. "Our understanding of the Global Climate System is in its
| infancy"
|
| 4. There are massive discrepancies between accurate space based
| weather observations, and in-situ measurements.
|
| 5. Renewable Energy currently is insufficient to replace
| petroleum sources, and will be for a long period of time.
| everly wrote:
| Sometimes when you do everything right no one knows you did
| anything at all.
| cardy31 wrote:
| The point about society-level threats paying better than Silicon
| Valley is a good one. I often look around in the tech industry as
| a programmer and wish I could be paid well to do something that
| actually matters, instead of just keeping kids addicted to social
| media.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Why is it always about the payment, why not choose a job you
| love doing?
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| It's about both, but the magnitudes matter. Would you do a
| job you love doing for free? Assuming the answer is no, then
| to paraphrase Churchill, we've established what kind of
| people we are; now we're just haggling over the price.
|
| Am I willing to take a 10% pay cut to work on things that are
| good for society instead of selling ads? Sure. 25%? Probably.
| But those aren't the magnitudes we're talking about. Total
| comp for a senior-to-staff level engineer at FAANG (or anyone
| competing with them) will be, let's say, 500k/year, plus
| best-in-the-world benefits. Total comp for government or
| charity work rarely cracks 100k, and even tech companies that
| are focused on good rather than profit, maybe 200.
|
| And it's not like the FAANG jobs are _bad_ - day-to-day, they
| 're incredibly interesting. There's lots of fun stuff to
| build with smart people. The only problem is the background
| existential dread. It's also hard to argue that they're
| actively _harming_ humanity in a lot of cases - maybe this
| line of reasoning works on potential Raytheon or Palantir
| employees, where the delta in morality is much greater, but
| convincing people to go from neutral-ish to good is harder
| than convincing them to go from bad to good.
|
| So the question you're asking is, are you willing to take a
| 60-80% pay cut to possibly do a less interesting job, in
| exchange for moral fulfillment and knowing that you're
| helping humanity? You might think the answer is yes, but I
| think it's hard to fault people for whom it isn't.
| kortilla wrote:
| > maybe this line of reasoning works on potential Raytheon
| or Palantir employees
|
| The people who work at Raytheon or Palantir think they are
| less harmful than the people who work for Google/Facebook.
| Nobody who has decided to work there thinks they are just
| drone striking children.
| twic wrote:
| Some people who work at Lockheed Martin wrote the
| software for the missiles being fired by Ukrainian
| HIMARSs. They might even be quite proud of that.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| As the sibling comment also said, I don't think the the
| difference in ethics of working for Facebook/Google vs
| Palantir/Raytheon as obvious as you state. I would have to
| think pretty hard about this, but my knee jerk moral
| evaluation has them all about equal.
|
| Not to criticize you directly, but just sharing this
| perspective.
| Shugarl wrote:
| >. Raytheon or Palantir employees, where the delta in
| morality is much greater, but convincing people to go from
| neutral-ish to good is harder than convincing them to go
| from bad to good.
|
| Did palantir do shady things ? I now that the CEO got in
| trouble for looking down on poor people ( or something
| along those lines ?), but is there more ?
| chowells wrote:
| Now? The _name_ of the company is Palantir. That 's not
| an accident. They're telling you exactly what they do,
| what they always have done, and always will do. If you're
| comfortable selling surveillance technology to abusive
| governments, that's up to you. But this isn't some
| surprise new thing.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| In my case I work for a defense contractor and make decent
| money. I could work for another company doing more meaningful
| work. But I almost certainly would make less money. This
| would cause me to fall behind my peers pay scale wise. This
| is not terrible, as I live well within my means, but this
| impacts my future pay, and the money I can set aside for
| investing. If I take that step now, I'd be leaving a lot of
| personal wealth on the table.
|
| But if I build up enough investment wealth to pay for my life
| in the future, I could take on more meaningful work in the
| future. If I leave for meaningful work now, I may be making
| money at that pay scale trajectory for the rest of my career,
| similar to how people who graduated in 2008 have never caught
| up to their peers wealth wise.
|
| I think it comes down to control about your financial
| options. Relinquishing income puts you at a disadvantage.
| nine_k wrote:
| My honest and obvious answer: because my family (wife, kids)
| need the money.
|
| It's always a balancing act though. I won't go to do a job I
| loathe, because I won't stick there for long enough. I choose
| jobs that I'm fine doing, and pass many jobs that I might
| love doing but which won't pay the bills.
|
| I was fortunate enough to have a job I outright loved, and
| which also paid well; it lasted 3.5 years. I'm immensely
| happy to have had such luck.
| rexpop wrote:
| The Sheriff will evict me at gunpoint if I don't pay the
| exorbitant rents in regions with an active job market.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Oh my such image so drama.
|
| The problem is merely rent, not that you are forced to work
| a particular job at gunpoint.
|
| Did you think many people would not roll their eyes at this
| attempted assosciation?
| rexpop wrote:
| > Did you think many people would not roll their eyes
|
| On the contrary, it's your cavalier viewpoint which is in
| the global minority.
|
| I'll engage with your dismissive, bad faith argument for
| the sake of earnestly inquisitive bystanders: no, we are
| not "forced to work" but we are compelled to do so under
| an economic systems which, at its leaf nodes, enforces
| noncompliance with violence. Try thinking through a few
| nth-order consequences of chronic unemployment.
|
| As for the "particular job" aspect, no it's not that one
| (1) "particular job" is the requisite, but to attain
| particular living standards, one can't realistically look
| outside categories of jobs that share particular aspects.
| So think of it not as "a particular job," but rather a
| particular category of jobs which pay enough, in the
| right regions, for the right qualifications.
|
| So, really, I am referring to a limited category and a
| structural eventuality, while you are referring to "a
| particular job at gunpoint." I think your extrapolations
| have imported greater histrionics than my original post.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I don't see a single invalidation of my ridicule.
| Sinidir wrote:
| Then you're blind.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Perhaps you are hallucinagenic if you actually see a
| gunpoint, rather than me being blind for not seeing it.
| bagels wrote:
| I want to retire comfortably. I'm probably going to be alive
| for a long time after I'm no longer employable. Money can
| make this possible.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| The honest answer nobody will give.
|
| They like the idea of doing something good, but not enough to
| sacrifice much for it.
|
| I am the same way. I work on boring as heck ad tech and
| security stuff.
|
| I could do much more interesting work, but I would make less.
| Interesting and beneficial to the world is even less.
|
| I won't even sacrifice pay for interesting.
|
| This is the same with climate change. Emergency? Many will
| say so. Enough of an emergency not to fly to Thailand this
| winter or not buy a monster house? Nope.
|
| I am the same way. I consider climate change a problem. But
| I'm also likely going to eat beef every day for the rest of
| my life in a meal or two.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| >This is the same with climate change. Emergency? Many will
| say so. Enough of an emergency not to fly to Thailand this
| winter or not buy a monster house? Nope.
|
| I think many of us common folks have fairly low energy
| demands.
|
| But, the same set that goes to Davos, and is preaching to
| us about cutting our consumption, is the same that has the
| private jet, 3 mansions and a football field sized yacht.
|
| I'm so over the entitled elite telling us what to do.
| Victerius wrote:
| Why don't terrorist groups hire the best chemical engineers to
| engineer chemical weapons? Or the best bioscientists to
| engineer the deadliest plagues? Or the best hackers to engineer
| the best computer viruses?
|
| Or not even the best, just average/competent enough scientists
| and engineers?
|
| Phrased a little differently, would you accept being paid a
| life-changing amount of money in exchange for anonymously
| engineering a deadly threat to some people far from home and
| knowing you could get away with it? Would you let your morals
| stop you?
| JackFr wrote:
| Non-state actors typically don't have life changing amounts
| of money.
| markvdb wrote:
| Some do, but even if they wouldn't, there's still state
| terrorism.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Even if you were fine with it in theory there is a massive
| risk to it in practice.
|
| In essence you're giving up most legal protections (since
| you've got as much to lose as anyone else if the police catch
| you) while working with people who likely have no moral
| issues with killing you. Will they pay you or will they
| kidnap your family and cut off someone's toe every time you
| complain?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Given that there are many people who work for defense
| contractors, and for middling pay, I think we can safely say
| that plenty of people would not let their morals stop them.
| [deleted]
| filoleg wrote:
| I don't think the comparison here is valid even in the
| slightest, and I am not even talking about it from the
| "terrorist groups and defense contractors are not morally
| equal" angle at all.
|
| I simply think that the venn diagram of people willing to
| do software dev work for a defense contractor like Boeing
| or Raytheon and people willing to do software dev work for
| the cartels/terrorist groups is not even close to
| approaching a full circle.
|
| Sure, most people willing to do software dev work for the
| cartels/terrorist groups are probably totally morally ok
| with doing work for a defense contractor. But I am willing
| to bet that most people willing to work for a defense
| contractor will not feel morally alright working for the
| cartels/terrorist groups even in the slightest.
| lupire wrote:
| The "terrorist" thinks they are defense contractor and
| that Raytheon is the terrorist. It's fully symmetric.
|
| The difference is that many or most won't cross borders
| to work for the opposing team.
|
| ISIS has many engineers.
| kortilla wrote:
| Maybe for some of the terrorist groups, but it's
| certainly not the case for people working for the
| cartels.
|
| There is no "both sides" argument to working for a group
| that just wants to get filthy rich using brutal violence,
| bribery, and disregard for the downsides of hard drug
| addiction. The cartels don't have a recruiting story of
| bringing justice to the oppressed, etc. It's just
| opportunity for money and power for people with limited
| opportunities otherwise.
|
| Totally orthogonal to recruiting for "mission focused"
| orgs like terrorist groups.
| JackFr wrote:
| Can we somehow find a middle ground between saying "Thank
| you for your service" every time we see a uniform and
| writing off the entire military and defense industry as
| immoral?
| lupire wrote:
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a projection of guilt, immaturity or ignorance.
|
| Everything is awful, except for what pays _your_
| mortgage. The world is about shades of grey, not black
| and white.
|
| That applies to all peddlers of moral indignation. The
| most strident patriots are usually pasty old men who bear
| no cost for their actions.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Maybe for a hypothetical military or defense industry,
| but not for the ones that we have, who will tear through
| five children to get to one "terrorist."
|
| edit: this is even a problem for people who write FOSS
| (unfortunately leading to some of them putting moral
| clauses in licenses), never mind those taking a check
| from some of the worst people in the world.
| sinenomine wrote:
| Just an idea: you could always prep for an algo interview and
| jump ship from developing infra for google.com to developing
| infra for the next generations of cures in
| https://www.isomorphiclabs.com/
| dinvlad wrote:
| Out of curiosity, which TC ranges do you normally offer?
| bagels wrote:
| Spoiler, they aren't likely to offer 500k in liquid comp.
| tene wrote:
| I desperately wish there was a country I could move to where
| civilization actually invested meaningfully in things that
| actually matter.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Nothing outside of like SV, finance, or being a doctor is
| probably going to get you $300k and above. However, you can do
| some important work and make above $100k in a fairly
| inexpensive area if you want.
| tene wrote:
| Having worked in SV for so long, it's hard to really imagine
| what this would actually look like.
|
| What are some examples of important work with decent pay in
| an inexpensive area that a SV tech worker could be good at?
| colechristensen wrote:
| To be fair there are plenty of jobs in SV which aren't tied to
| advertising or social media.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Highly-paid jobs? Would be good to hear some examples.
| planarhobbit wrote:
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| Sure! You can build infrastructure for companies that sell
| advertising or social media (which is... also advertising)
|
| Alternatively you can work for one of the companies burning
| through VC money selling products/services at a loss who
| need to advertise those services so they can sell more and
| more quickly to create the illusion that one day they
| _will_ be able to generate more than they spend! Don 't
| worry too much about the loses the VCs will just make it up
| in their investments in advertising companies and companies
| selling infrastructure to advertising companies.
|
| Huh, something sounds weird about that setup, well good
| thing money is cheap!
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think that's the opposite of what the GP was asking
| for.
| brazzy wrote:
| Yes, it was pretty obvious sarcasm.
|
| Well, just goes to show that sarcasm is always bad for
| factual debates.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| I make around $120ish working for a non-profit. I mean it's
| not SV money but no matter how much money I make I am
| eventually be lying on my death bed and the only thing I
| will have to comfort me will be the memories of good I left
| in this world, so I do it and am grateful I make a very
| comfortable living doing something positive.
|
| I'll also say that the idea of "Make lots of money now and
| then I'll give back later and retire early and enjoy my
| life" is a very risky proposition, you never know what
| tomorrow might bring a car crash, cancer, who knows?
|
| > And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a
| certain rich man brought forth plentifully: And he thought
| within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no
| room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I
| do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there
| will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to
| my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years;
| take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said
| unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required
| of thee - Luke 12:15-20
| motohagiography wrote:
| On the cybersecurity side, risk management is pretty tangible.
| It's technology governance, and security teams essentially act as
| a licensing body for tech in an organization, and provide
| intelligence about existential threats to the status quo of the
| line of business. Success is anticipating attempts on the org,
| and demonstrating how they were deflected or mitigated. There's
| very little that is vague about it. Just this week I discovered a
| new technique that some malware is using to bypass most sensors -
| we manage risk very concretely. I know portfolio risk managers
| who operate on instantaneous feedback about the P&L of their
| models and opportunity costs.
|
| Where I disagree with the article is that I think the author is
| seeing an opportunity to frame ideological concerns that exploit
| uncertainty by calling it risk and equating it to disciplines
| that he doesn't realize have very concrete competencies and
| performance metrics. Also, we have technology and economic
| solutions for our climate impact already. I'm still of the view
| that if your plan doesn't work unless you take over the planet
| and deprive entire nations of people of their freedoms, it's an
| objectively evil plan, and somehow that makes me a counter-
| revolutionary denialist.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Very well said with clear examples. This was a fantastic post,
| thanks.
| abbadadda wrote:
| This is a good article.
|
| I think about this a lot working in SRE: Disaster avoidance is
| invisible and often under-appreciated.
|
| I've also been reading Toby Ord's _The Precipice_ and avoiding
| getting too depressed while in a bit of awe how close humanity
| was/is to really destroying ourselves.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > It would have been far better to risk naysayers' ridicule and
| dive in earlier and stronger.
|
| It wasn't ridicule, it was propaganda intended to get people to
| vote against their own best interests (and therefore stop
| politicians from acting, by threatening them with consequences)
|
| And it worked, really well. Still does.
|
| If you're treating these issues as if it was a bunch of misled
| but ultimately well meaning individuals then you are in trouble
| before you start.
|
| For example, "we need new tech to solve this", which is both true
| and dangerous. True in the sense that a million little fixes have
| made things better, dangerous in that climate change deniers will
| use it to divert time, energy and money from known fixes:
|
| > Green energy cannot meet Germany's need for reliable
| electricity. That is why Germany still needs copious amounts of
| fossil fuels; German CO2-emissions have risen since the nuclear
| power phase-out of 2011, despite the incredible subsidies for
| renewables.
|
| > Germany is an example of how not to do green energy. Instead
| the solution is to research and develop better green energy
| technology.
|
| That was Bjorn Lomborg during the previous Ukraine gas crisis in
| 2014. Better technology than Wind and Solar, which are the two
| winners of a global, 4 decade race to produce cheap, clean
| energy. That's what he thinks we need. While at that time Wind
| energy was the cheapest source of energy available, and Solar was
| rapidly catching it up.
|
| And here he is on twitter a few months ago doubling down on that:
|
| > The idea that the Ukraine war could be fixed by choosing
| Western dependence on Chinese solar panels and batteries over
| Western dependence on Russian oil and gas reveals just how
| unserious the environmental movement really is
|
| So, it's a real problem, and we really need to do something about
| it, but what the consensus solution is, isn't a solution after
| all, we just need to invest in future tech that will solve the
| problem. We can't rely on the the Chinese manufactured solar
| panels that he himself claimed did not work. Now they work,
| they're just too Chinese.
|
| That's the depressing lesson of Climate Change and COVID, if
| right-wing politicians can buy a few votes and stall some
| regulations via attacking science, reason, fact etc., then they
| will.
| codexjourneys wrote:
| Yes, we need to take massive action now with what we have,
| while also developing future tech like better transport for
| solar energy. Pushing for further delays based on "future tech
| will save us someday" isn't anything I support. It's
| disheartening but unsurprising that some factions are framing
| it as either/or instead of both/and.
|
| Interesting background about Lomborg, thank you!
| scottLobster wrote:
| To be fair, he's making two separate points. One technological
| and one political.
|
| Germany is neither sunny nor windy nor has a long coastline.
| It's a poor candidate for those forms of energy regardless of
| who's making the panels and windmills. If they want zero
| emissions from power production they'll have to go nuclear or
| build out the infrastructure to import clean energy from
| countries with better renewable options.
|
| Solar and Wind as we know them are part of the solution, but
| aside from a few areas that are abnormally sunny or windy by
| global standards there's no way they can even theoretically be
| the entire solution, and that's not even touching on the
| inadequacy of current battery technologies and mineral inputs
| needed to manufacture all this stuff.
|
| From a political perspective, I'd say he's right that being
| beholden to China is little better than being beholden to
| Russia, only practical difference being China lacking options
| for military invasion.
|
| Simple fact is there is no solution to climate change at the
| moment. We're working on a number of things that might one day
| become pieces of the solution, but I see too much "we just have
| to do X, Y and Z and climate change will be solved!" rhetoric
| that is wishful thinking at best, and ivory tower edicts
| ignoring all externalities of said decisions at worst. The
| world isn't a computer model.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Buying photovoltaic panels does not make one beholden to
| anybody.
|
| What is completely different from buying fuel.
| ISL wrote:
| In the short term, yes, but in the long term, panel-
| production capacity will be a key pillar of a country's
| independence.
|
| Buying panels from another country helps that other country
| realize both enduring expertise and aides their economy of
| scale.
|
| Also, should solar-powered countries ever go to war, I
| suspect single airbursts of comparatively small
| conventional munitions will be sufficient to shatter large
| swaths of panels, making production capacity important.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The long term contains plenty of time to grow internal
| industry or find another seller.
|
| And yes, productive capacity of everything is important
| when you consider a war. Still, fuel supplies are much
| more fragile than solar generation.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Lomborg is Danish, a country famous for it's success with
| wind power.
|
| He's not making a specific point about Germany, he's
| attacking anything that might lead to government action on
| climate change:
|
| Seven years ago: > When considering climate change, most
| people think wind turbines and solar panels are a big part of
| the solution. But, over the next 25 years, the contribution
| of solar and wind power to resolving the problem will be
| trivial - and the cost will be enormous.
|
| Thirteen years ago: > A good illustration is Denmark, which
| early on provided huge subsidies for wind power, building
| thousands of inefficient turbines around the country from the
| 1980s onwards. Today, it is often remarked that Denmark is
| providing every third terrestrial wind turbine in the world,
| creating billions in income and jobs.
|
| > A few years ago, however, the Danish Economic Council
| conducted a full evaluation of the wind turbine industry,
| taking into account not only its beneficial effects on jobs
| and production, but also the subsidies that it receives. The
| net effect for Denmark was found to be a small cost, not
| benefit.
|
| > Not surprisingly, the leading Danish wind producer is today
| urging strong action on climate change that would imply even
| more sales of wind turbines.
|
| Turning round after 20 years of saying solar is bullshit and
| attacking the wind industry in his home nation as if they're
| part of a climate hoax and then complaining that they're all
| made in China is shockingly brazen.
| legulere wrote:
| > they'll have to go nuclear
|
| Germany built up more renewables in 20 years than there ever
| was nuclear and the speed is still accelerating: https://de.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Energiemix_Deutschland.s...
|
| Nuclear currently is too slow to be built and too expensive
| for fighting climate change in time. France is partially to
| blame for the current energy crisis in Europe, because they
| put pride in their nuclear power plants before realistic
| replacements for their old reactors that are way over their
| initial designed runtimes.
| rpdillon wrote:
| My prediction: we'll need nuclear in the end. Time to get
| serious and invest in new tech. Light water reactors were
| invented roughly 70 years ago, and it shows. There are much
| more modern designs we can employ. I wish we didn't discuss
| 'nuclear' as though it's one technology.
|
| Have no problem with renewables in the meantime.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| I don't see any realistic, actionable analysis or solutions in
| here.
|
| > People need to get paid (very!) well for their work on the
| endeavor
|
| Good luck with that one. Who, exactly, is going to pay? And if
| you did somehow pass a bill mandating $500/hour wages, how would
| the flood of applicants be managed?
|
| > Similarly, with climate change, programs to develop ways to
| transport solar energy could help, if implemented at scale and
| with vigorous commitment and funding. (It would be fairly easy to
| produce the solar energy; the challenges are reducing toxicity of
| manufacturing solar panels and batteries, increasing storage
| capacity, and figuring out transmission or transportation over
| long distances)
|
| I had the impression that many people already _were_ working on
| all those. Is he saying that throwing more money at the problem
| would solve it faster?
|
| Finally, Y2K and Ebola are only two examples. How about "nuclear
| war over Taiwan"? That seems like the ultimate risk, and it's not
| by any means improbable.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Who, exactly, is going to pay?
|
| Well, he clearly said the government. Who else would pay? Or
| could pay?
|
| > if you did somehow pass a bill mandating $500/hour wages, how
| would the flood of applicants be managed?
|
| We manage people going to work at FAANG and people becoming
| CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and people becoming actors and
| sports stars. "More people want this job than are applying" is
| something that most places that pay above minimum wage deal
| with.
|
| > Is he saying that throwing more money at the problem would
| solve it faster?
|
| Probably. With a lot of these problems more funding leads to
| faster solutions. Moreover, if you knew that solving those
| problems was a valid career move, the smartest people would
| stop aiming towards software and wall street.
|
| > How about "nuclear war over Taiwan"?
|
| This seems unlikely. Putin using nukes over losing in Ukraine
| seems far more possible, although if other countries retaliated
| is an open question. China seems really patient about Taiwan.
| nradov wrote:
| Where would Putin even use nukes in Ukraine? Tactical nuclear
| weapons are only really useful against troop concentrations.
| At this stage of the war, Ukrainian forces are already
| dispersed and dug in. Many of them are engaged in close
| combat with Russian forces, so a Russian nuclear strike would
| end up being an "own goal" to some extent.
|
| Putin could use strategic nuclear weapons to destroy Kyiv, or
| other civilian population centers or infrastructure. But to
| what end? That wouldn't align with any of his war goals.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > But to what end? That wouldn't align with any of his war
| goals.
|
| "If I can't have it, no one can".
|
| Besides, it looks like Ukraine might be able to retake land
| Russia has been occupying. If he destroys one city with
| nukes, the "surrender or I will take out cities one by one"
| is a valid plan to win a war. If the alternative is losing
| Crimea (which he was successfully holding) I can see him
| taking such a step.
|
| Also, Ukraine would have fallen (and still might) without
| constant aid from the West. Using nukes to raise the danger
| level might be enough to stop the shipments of arms and
| intelligence.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| People in history have quite often done dangerous things
| that were against their interests, even as understood at
| the time.
|
| Czar Nicholas mobilized his troops in the run-up to WW I,
| which ultimately led to his and his family's executions,
| as well as the deaths of millions of people.
|
| Napoleon III declared war on Prussia, which led to
| France's loss of Alsace-Lorraine and his own capture by
| the enemy.
|
| So saying "he would never do it" is pretty irresponsible.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| > With a lot of these problems more funding leads to faster
| solutions
|
| Evidence, please. Would more funding for nuclear fusion lead
| to faster commercial-scale electric plants? Explain how the
| fundamental physics problems can get solved faster.
|
| > China seems really patient about Taiwan.
|
| I'd call that "wishful thinking." Given that they just
| demonstrated how they can effectively blockade the island
| without an invasion.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > explain how the fundamental physics problems can get
| solved faster.
|
| That's not what I said. For _engineering_ projects, even
| novel ones, funding leads to faster results. I mean, look
| at what you can do in WWII when you literally decided that
| physicists should get so many resources because the A-Bomb
| was that important.
|
| And if your concern is storing and transmitting energy,
| there are engineering ways to do that at scale. It's
| expensive, but doable.
|
| > Given that they just demonstrated how they can
| effectively blockade the island without an invasion.
|
| A multi-year blockade is pretty patient. I'm not saying
| China will never act. Clearly, they are slowly moving. I'm
| saying they'll go slow enough that it will never come to
| nukes.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| You said "With a lot of these problems." Maybe you should
| clarify which problems you mean. And which ones (e.g.
| toxic chemicals in solar array manufacturing) really are
| fundamental physics and not engineering.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Toxic chemicals are only required for photovoltaic solar
| generation. Focused heat solar generation (which is only
| possible at a large scale) both produces no toxic
| chemicals and is more efficient.
|
| But the answer to "which problems" is "the ones keeping
| us from green energy". I though that was pretty obvious.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| OK. Then the question is "would adding more money speed
| it up, or are all available resources already being used
| as effectively as they can be?"
|
| I don't know the answer to that, but I'm always
| suspicious when the answer is always "more!" no matter
| how much is already being spent. It suggests that simply
| saying "more" is a substitute for any detailed analysis.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I understand this position normally, but we
| unquestionably need many orders of magnitude more
| investment in non-carbon-producing forms of energy and
| energy storage if we have any hope at all of
| decarbonizing at some large fraction of current living
| standards. The situation right now is really dire and
| almost any cost is worth paying.
|
| IMO we definitely will not do this investment, so the
| remaining likely scenarios are grim. Either we
| successfully decarbonize but at much lower standards of
| living OR we just keep burning stuff we found in the
| ground and the biosphere collapses.
| mattzito wrote:
| I agree somewhat that the article seems more structured around
| "managing risk is important", rather than talking about
| concrete actions.
|
| But the idea of paying people more to work on issues to
| mitigate risk is very valid. Lots of people are working on
| climate change, it's true, but it's not hard to imagine a world
| where we subsidize that sort of work (assuming a reasonable
| qualification process), and the result is more people working
| on the solution.
|
| To put another way - if fewer people were working on it, would
| it take less, more, or the same amount of time? Presumably
| there is some optimal range where enough smart people are
| working on a problem to speed things up, but not enough to
| where there's a lot of wasted make-work.
|
| To the last point, there are always going to be risks that we,
| individually or collectively, can't do anything about- nuclear
| war over Taiwan being one of those. Our inability to influence
| those risks does not obviate the opportunity to mitigate
| others.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| We can't do anything about the Taiwan risk? I beg to differ.
| Are our political leaders, who are elected, ignoring it in
| hopes it'll go away, actively making it worse, or mitigating
| it?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This is so true. I especially agree about the "self-interest"
| thing.
|
| Many good manipulators (politicians, managers, influencers,
| etc.), take it a step further, and convince others to work
| against their own self-interests, in order to serve the interests
| of the manipulators. We've seen plenty of this, lately (I won't
| go into specifics).
|
| Here's a rather pithy approach to risk management that I've used:
| https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/risky-business/
| civilized wrote:
| This is a perennial problem in the insurance industry, but in
| kind of the opposite way. In insurance, your job is to take on
| financially predictable risk at a premium that matches the
| predicted risk. You exclude risks that you're not comfortable
| predicting. But excluding risks usually also means you don't get
| detailed data about them, making it difficult to justify
| continuing _or_ discontinuing the exclusion.
| dllthomas wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox
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