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Those are the extreme exception, not the rule. Right, it's not the average case we're discussing here. But I think we can both agree that wrecking a water tab

Those are the extreme exception, not the rule. Right, it's not the average case we're discussing here. But I think we can both agree that wrecking a water table in a geographic area of significant size (for example) would qualify as "extreme." Everything else can be fixed at some cost, with maybe ~$1 trillion for tail end risks, easily coverable by reinsurance networks. No - plenty of things in life cannot be fixed at any price. Environmental damage is bad, but it's not infinitely bad. Between "bad" and "infinitely bad" (the latter being obviously a red herring) there's another category which would seem to apply for the scale of mishap here: "unacceptably bad." If the costs were anything like you suggest, that would justify vigorous bans of most industrial operations, not some mere regulatory enforcement as could be accomplished even with jail time. Again, you're arguing by referring to extremes: "Yeah, drunk driving carries risks, but so does sober driving. If we really want to eliminate risk of death and dismemberment in horrifying accidents, then, we should ban all forms of driving." No -- I'm just saying we should ban drunk driving. Which -- the more we get into the basic research behind these activities -- (certain classes of) fracking and other forms of large-scale resource extraction are increasingly looking to be aptly analogous to.

SilasX 11y ago
>Right, it's not the average case we're discussing here. But I think we can both agree that wrecking a water table in a geographic area of significant size (for example) would qualify as "extreme." No, we can't. In the context of the specific point you were making, extreme means "no feasible amount of money could undo the damage". That's not true of damage to a water table, which can be remediated with a feasible amount of money. >... I'm just saying we should ban drunk driving. No, the point here is that, if drunk driving's effects were as uncountably bad as you claim the potential environmental damage is, we should ban driving, because the effect would wipe out all the benefit of driving, since the insurance cost would make it infeasible. But that's absurd, so we must conclude that your estimates of the harm size are as well. Remember, you're the one arguing that the extreme cases dominate the risk calculation (to the point of uninsurability), not me!
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  No, we can't [agree about large-scale water table damage being remediable with feasible amounts of money]. Well, we disagree then. As to the other stuff -- it seems you're doubling down on extremification techniques, attributing words ("uncountably bad") to me that aren't mine. All I can say is I don't find that line of reasoning helpful, and I don't know what to say to it.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    There are no "extremification" techniques; it's just that you made a very specific claim about the nature of environmental risks, that such harms are typically (at their worst) so bad as to be uninsurable. My point is that this claim cuts both ways -- in order for the environmental damage of industrial disasters to be that bad (above the ~$1 trillion that a reinsurance network could cover), it would also have to be so bad as to justify banning most classes of industrial activity -- not allowing them even with regulation. Since you probably don't believe that, then you're probably overstating the mangitude of this tail risk, and dismissing its applicability to your own alternative. (Remember, regulation doesn't turn off the extreme events; it's just one way to reduce their likelihood.) Which technique do you think that argument is unhelpfully using?
    - kafkaesq 11y ago
      It's just that you made a very specific claim about the nature of environmental risks, that such harms are typically (at their worst) so bad as to be uninsurable. "typically (at their worst)"? I'm not even sure what you mean by that. (I have some guesses at what you might be getting at, but they also point to things I didn't say, either). In order for the environmental damage of industrial disasters to be that bad (above the ~$1 trillion that a reinsurance network could cover), it would also have to be so bad as to justify banning most classes of industrial activity. (1) I don't agree (nor do I think most people would agree) that all environmental or human disasters have measurable impact (let alone have a dollar value -- even a very high one -- which would suffice to repair or compensate for the loss the incur). (2) The second half of your statement does not follow from the first. Which technique do you think that argument is unhelpfully using? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

SilasX 11y ago

>Right, it's not the average case we're discussing here. But I think we can both agree that wrecking a water table in a geographic area of significant size (for example) would qualify as "extreme." No, we can't. In the context of the specific point you were making, extreme means "no feasible amount of money could undo the damage". That's not true of damage to a water table, which can be remediated with a feasible amount of money. >... I'm just saying we should ban drunk driving. No, the point here is that, if drunk driving's effects were as uncountably bad as you claim the potential environmental damage is, we should ban driving, because the effect would wipe out all the benefit of driving, since the insurance cost would make it infeasible. But that's absurd, so we must conclude that your estimates of the harm size are as well. Remember, you're the one arguing that the extreme cases dominate the risk calculation (to the point of uninsurability), not me!

kafkaesq 11y ago
No, we can't [agree about large-scale water table damage being remediable with feasible amounts of money]. Well, we disagree then. As to the other stuff -- it seems you're doubling down on extremification techniques, attributing words ("uncountably bad") to me that aren't mine. All I can say is I don't find that line of reasoning helpful, and I don't know what to say to it.
- SilasX 11y ago
  There are no "extremification" techniques; it's just that you made a very specific claim about the nature of environmental risks, that such harms are typically (at their worst) so bad as to be uninsurable. My point is that this claim cuts both ways -- in order for the environmental damage of industrial disasters to be that bad (above the ~$1 trillion that a reinsurance network could cover), it would also have to be so bad as to justify banning most classes of industrial activity -- not allowing them even with regulation. Since you probably don't believe that, then you're probably overstating the mangitude of this tail risk, and dismissing its applicability to your own alternative. (Remember, regulation doesn't turn off the extreme events; it's just one way to reduce their likelihood.) Which technique do you think that argument is unhelpfully using?
  - kafkaesq 11y ago
    It's just that you made a very specific claim about the nature of environmental risks, that such harms are typically (at their worst) so bad as to be uninsurable. "typically (at their worst)"? I'm not even sure what you mean by that. (I have some guesses at what you might be getting at, but they also point to things I didn't say, either). In order for the environmental damage of industrial disasters to be that bad (above the ~$1 trillion that a reinsurance network could cover), it would also have to be so bad as to justify banning most classes of industrial activity. (1) I don't agree (nor do I think most people would agree) that all environmental or human disasters have measurable impact (let alone have a dollar value -- even a very high one -- which would suffice to repair or compensate for the loss the incur). (2) The second half of your statement does not follow from the first. Which technique do you think that argument is unhelpfully using? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum