Of Risk, Traffic Accidents, and Giant Flaming Meteors of Death
"The question of risk, and risk pricing has been on my mind. In particular, the difficulty in portraying the significance of small, contained, individual risk vs. global, catastrophic, highly correlated, and/or existential risk. This is a distinction which is poorly captured in much discussion...."
"we see discussion of individual risks and social risks both premised on the individual impact"
A very good point - and one that stems from our modern (post-1970s) libertarian-individualist shift, where it's simply taken for granted that social or group outcomes (especially devastating ones) simply don't matter *because the individual impact eclipses them*.
It's the same shallow thinking that gives us both 'doesn't bother me, I'll be dead first' and 'I don't care, I got mine'.
@dredmorbius Compared to, eg, Chinese - and even older English, eg Ww2 - fiction where the heroes are *always* thinking carefully about their impact on the country, family, etc.
I feel we've become, quite recently, a civilisation of very shallow, selfish, shortsighted thinkers. Not even sure we can call such a state a civilisation. More just a collapse.
But maybe there's hope.