The "Reasonable Risk" Hypothesis

I've got two points to make today.

The first point: there are a mind-blowing many types of people in the world, of course, but for illustration purposes I'm going to pretend there are only two: procrastinators and ex-Marines.  I've noticed that those people who always get up at the crack of dawn and their lawns are mowed before I stir are mostly ex-military, where they apparently teach this behavior as a skill.  (This, of course, is my own observation and not fact, and I have obviously never served in the military.)  Procrastinators have a tendency to wait until the last minute, stating the obvious, and therefore try to crunch more productivity in less time.  In doing so, Procrastinators often don't leave enough time for the work, and often have to cut corners.  Yes, I know this is superhyperovergeneralization.  But the point is, when we do not leave adequate time to prepare, we are often not adequately prepared.  The Ex-Marine type, on the other hand, is prepared in a way that most of us find a little distasteful, as if they're rubbing in the fact that they're productive morning people, that they get to eat breakfast seated at a table, finish the day's work with time to lounge around in the evening with cup of coffee and watch the sunset.  The Ex-Marine is too much of a good thing for most of us.  Good for him (or her), but they sort of point out the self-imposed difficulties of our lives.

The second point is that we sometimes will fear and work toward the mitigation of some risks when they affect us personally, even though they're invisible and theoretical.  I remember when, two years ago at age 35, my doctor told me my cholesterol was too high.  To most people, this would mean that a heart attack is imminent, but it doesn't mean that at all.  In fact, what it means is there is a slightly higher probability that I might have a heart attack than another white thirty-something male that has LDLs that are lower.  In either case, it might or might not happen.  So what did I do?  Started antihyperlipidemics and exercise.  I found that, after a year, I did better, but was still above the standard for hyperlipidemia, so my dose was raised.  In other words, on the chance that something bad might happen I've rearranged my whole life and made massive lifestyle changes, when it really will, even if successful, only postpone my death, not prevent it.  How many times do we make such changes?  Many of us (decreasing in number all the time, of course) will never make it to retirement, yet, as is prudent, we put money away as though we'll live to be 100 years old.  We put money away for our kids' education even though they might get a scholarship or they might decide to be high school custodians (not that there's anything wrong with that, they just won't need that expensive college education.)  People save for all sorts of scenarios, besides just college, such as owning a home.  We build houses to be hurricane-resistant or purchase flood insurance, even though these calamities may never come to pass.  We might horde gold in case money collapses, even around the discussion of dollar solvency.  Some of the more conspiratorial among us stockpile weapons for a future battle with a docile government.  There's sunscreen, burglar alarms, water purification, and many others.  The point is, we're a species that is willing to mobilize on future risk (only risk and not certainty) when it affects us in certain, personal ways.

So, let's take a logical leap that synthesizes these two points into something useful.  Let's say there's a measurable, set amount of oil on Earth (this is actually true, though nobody claims knowledge of what that exact amount is).  I'm going to pour a quart of it into a barrel and light it on fire.  Doesn't that mean that there is now the amount of oil on Earth minus one quart?  Okay, based on that, as long as people are using oil (also a demonstrable fact) there will continually be less of it until there is none.  This follows logically.  Drilling for more in the Americas or in the ANWR will not change that fact, only postpone it.  Look at global climate change.  If human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are increasing, and mitigating factors such as rain forests and forests in general are decreasing (though climate-change skeptics will deny this, these are both also established, demonstrable facts), then it's safe to say the Earth will be dirtier (i.e. more carbon-y) tomorrow than it is today, and that this will continue into perpetuity (in fact will accelerate).  This one's a bit more of a leap, but still demonstrably true: if there's a limit to how much climate change will allow the current economic systems to function, we will, at some point, definitely pass it.

So, here's the punchline: like the heart attack, the flood, the college education, or the war with the government, there's a chance that none of this will happen.  But there's also a chance that it will--a good chance (and a logical leap that says it's inevitable).  And if there's a chance that it will, wouldn't any reasonable person, one that would take Crestor, start running, voluntarily pay into Social Security, buy insurance, save for retirement, horde gold, or assume any other preparatory action against future problems, at least consider starting to make some preparations for these impending problems?  If we used less oil, compelled businesses to do less polluting, recycled more, built infrastructure, such as public transportation systems that work, that would mitigate carbon emissions while we work actively to find other sources of energy, and climate change turned out to be false (it isn't), what have we lost?  If I wouldn't have had a heart attack with this new lifestyle I live, hopefully, I'll never know it.  I call this the "Reasonable Risk Hypothesis," which states that if there's a chance that something bad will happen in the future, we should take action as if it is, because it doesn't hurt us to take such action, but betting against the bad occurrence is certain to lead to catastrophe, if the event does come to pass...

And in deciding to take this action, are we going to be Procrastinators, and do too little now, or cut corners later, or Ex-Marines, and solve the problems ahead of the time of reckoning?

Someone else already used this hypothesis, but the "bad event" was a little different: Pascal's Wager....

Aside: Letter to John McCain

I got to thinking about something and decided to ask my representative about it (Jon Kyl is a reprehensible human being, so I don't consider him to be my representative).  While this has nothing to do whatsoever with my current string of posts, I'm interested to hear what those of you who read my blog have to say about it.

Dear Mr. McCain,

If cuts come, as they surely will, to Social Security and Medicare, doesn't that mean a guy in his 30s, like me, is entitled to at least a partial refund of the money I've paid into the system?  The logic goes something like this:  if people my age knew they would not be receiving those benefits as current retirees are receiving them, we would not have entered into the agreement to pay forward as readily, and furthermore, there would probably have been many widespread protests of paying better benefits to current retirees than we would receive for the same deductions in income.  I know you'll be gone out of office, and possibly from the planet, by the time it matters to me, but as my representative, it would be nice to know that the discussions of my financial security later in life have my well-being in mind, and not just the fancy of the Tea Party, which I understand you have some contempt for, anyways.

[Real Name Redacted]

The Trouble With Capitalism, Part 3

In Jared Diamond's book, Collapse (I am a huge fan of Diamond's writing),  he essentially writes about some of the environmental challenges that face us currently, and compares them to environmental challenges faced by past civilizations that were unable to overcome them, speaking in story-like prose but using archaeological evidence as the engine powering his argument, very tidy and scientific.  Reading the book, then, to the cognoscenti, becomes increasingly terrifying, but not in the look-behind-you sort of way that movies attempt to scare us with.  Instead, it's what Diamond fails to say in black and white which is the most terrifying thing I've ever read: all of those ghost towns, which still look today like people could just move right in and live comfortably, where great civilizations once stood, were killed where they stood, abrupt in the night, by depleting their local natural resources beyond survival, and they didn't see it until they collapsed.  In other words, in the absence of science to shine the light on the right hook coming in sharply from the blindside (or maybe in its presence, which I'll get to in a future post), it hit them, knocking them out cold and forever, and if they saw it coming, they never let on.

Al Gore, as John Stewart said, is an unlikely film star, but his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is a very good scare-umentary on the current science concerning global warming and its human causes.  I have much to say about this, but I'll get to most of it later.  When Al and other high-profile left-leaning politicians (our current president included) came out to say that "green jobs" were the future of this country, for the sake of political savvy, they left a large portion of what that means unsaid: "If we don't find another basis to power our country and its infrastructure, its manufacturing, farming, military and way of life, then that way of life will collapse.  Further, that collapse is avoidable but we've got to do it now and be serious about it."  Saying it that way makes a person sound like a conspiracy nut, but I don't think most Americans know how pervasive oil and other fossil fuels are in the economic lifestyle of the world right now.  The big one that comes to mind is plastics, but also chemicals, lubricants, and, of course, many different types of fuels powering many different vehicles.  Imagine if that oil were to suddenly dry up.  Even if the process is fairly slow, over a number of years or decades, we humans would have to find other ways to make/replace each and every one of those things.  Sure, it may be a spur of economic growth in and of itself to be in an age of such inventiveness, but only if people get cracking and now.  Are you cracking now?  I'm not.  We're being screened from seeing that we need to get cracking by those who profit from the black stuff, sweet crude.

I talked about the perverse incentives that capitalism gives to business executives, where the information that we should probably stop using oil as the basis for our whole economy and right now, is decidedly counterproductive to profits.  Also, allowing politicians to do so would be just as counterproductive.  So, like with Diamond and the Liberals, it's what goes unsaid.  In a country where money = free speech, those with the money, whose free speech is now far louder (corporations, PACs, and "think tanks"), can just depose the naysayers and put people in charge who are willing to cast doubt on science (future post) or pretend none of this is happening, real, or is part of a larger long-term process instead of being a temporary political setback that can be solved through rhetorical ideology, or both.  That's the trouble with capitalism:  it's primary concern with profits and influence necessarily means that it must keep secret those things which the public needs to know and put current profitability ahead of future sustainability.  It may be the case that socialism cannot address these concerns, either (future post) but the watchman is not sleeping, he's been paid to leave in a capitalist society.  It's not the unsaid, but the willfully silenced.

In my next post, I'd like to delve into that war on science raging through the debate.  Unfortunately, the belligerents on the side of ignorance wield much more substantial weaponry...