3 ms·

> without a near 100% guarantee Well, what percent guarantee would you need? Is 99.9% per year per well good enough? 99.999%? Seven nines? And how do you propo

> without a near 100% guarantee Well, what percent guarantee would you need? Is 99.9% per year per well good enough? 99.999%? Seven nines? And how do you propose to measure that risk? These types of situations are after all inherently unforeseen. Anyway, by admitting that a near 100% guarantee is good enough for you (no matter what that "near" is), you've admitted that you're willing to put a price on it. That price is, naturally, the dollar amount that would be required to reach the level of guarantee you want. So yes, the rest of this conversation has just been you being difficult.

thaumaturgy 16y ago
No, and your accusation that I'm "just being difficult" is starting to piss me off. I think you're a short-sighted, self-centered, argumentative, nihilistic, and stubborn little annoyance -- but I didn't yet disrespect you enough to say so. Look, requiring a guarantee that such a disaster cannot occur is exactly the opposite of placing a value on disaster. It is in effect saying, "If this disaster cannot be impossible, then it is not worth it." I prefaced that guarantee with the word "near" because I pragmatically don't believe there's such a thing as a complete and total guarantee. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, there were maintenance schedules, safety checks, inspections, safety valves, backup valves for the safety valves, and so on and so forth, and every single one of those failed. Shit happens sometimes, and that has nothing to do with placing a dollar amount on anything. Tell ya what: if you can't see values or costs in things like this without putting a dollar sign in front, then -- OK, sure, I will readily agree to a formula for calculating dollar value that should make you quite happy. Are you ready? It's this: the cost of a disaster is the dollar amount required to reverse all of the effects of the disaster. Lemme know when you've finished totaling that one up on your calculator.
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  > but I didn't yet disrespect you enough to say so Sure you did; you were just passive-aggressive about it with that "to be polite" bit at the start. You're the one who took the dialogue to this level. I'm just more direct. > the dollar amount required to reverse all of the effects of the disaster Holding the debate hostage with demands for physical impossibilities is definitely a red flag in a conversation partner. There are other adjectives to describe it but I think the one I've already used is apt. Anyway, I'm sure you don't mean this, or wouldn't if you would just think about what you're asking for for a second. Since I can't seem to get a thoughtful, honest answer out of you, continuing this is probably not productive . . . although that was probably true several posts ago.
  - whichdokta 16y ago
    >> the dollar amount required to reverse all of the effects of the disaster >Holding the debate hostage with demands for physical impossibilities is definitely a red flag in a conversation partner. But holding the debate hostage with demands for ethical impossibilities is somehow okay? That said, by allowing for a dollar cost thaumaturgy was not holding the debate hostage. In fact, he accepted your challenge to debate him in the frame of reference YOU set up. A frame of reference which, btw, is not the only one in common use to decide such questions. What you need to respond with now to keep your credibility is whether the 'true' dollar cost is: a) The cost to mitigate every single effect from the disaster. or b) Some other, smaller, amount along with a list of the effects you have discounted from the full amount and justification for such discounting. Alternatively, you can be gracious and concede the point that if there are alternatives to high-risk offshore oil wells then perhaps we should explore them rather than drilling.
    - houseabsolute 16y ago
      > But holding the debate hostage with demands for ethical impossibilities is somehow okay? It's not an ethical impossibility. It's a pragmatic imperative. AND it's the root of the entire conversation. It's what I started this comment tree about! How can it possibly be holding up the debate to talk about it? > b) Some other, smaller, amount along with a list of the effects you have discounted from the full amount and justification for such discounting. Well it's certainly got to be this one since reversing every effect is entropically impossible. Some obvious things I don't really care about are restoring BPs bottom-line to its pre-disaster levels. As a general rule I'm also not interested in paying to mitigate damage to wildlife that would fall under ICUN's Least Concern designation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_Concern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_Concern) even after all harm to populations from the spill are taken into account. I feel this way except inasmuch as human beings depend on such wildlife for economic sustenance. Although it sucks that the animals die, if they are not used directly by humans the utility lost when a common animal dies is typically far less than the cost of saving it in an oil spill like this. Endangered animals I do want to protect, but once again there's a line somewhere (I don't know where) where their protection costs more than its worth. For example, if there is a rare mosquito in the marshes of southern Louisiana that ends up being wiped out entirely because of this crisis, I would not assign a cost of a billion dollars to that lost. Some cost, yes, but not a billion dollars. If the oil slick bears out to be very large but cause small or questionable harm across a huge region, I also don't think we should necessarily spend money compensating the victims of such small harms. (For example, even if the oil spill stopped now some amount of oil would probably disperse even as far as the west coast of the U.S. after enough time.) To assign a metric, if the amount of compensation we might provide to a given victim is less than ten times the administrative cost of giving that compensation, we should not compensate. Looking at the worst case scenario: let's say that the entire gulf becomes unfishable for the next fifty years except if the U.S. spends a quarter of its total output during that time period cleaning it up. Obviously this would be a really bad trade because the fishing in that region accounts for a much smaller portion of GDP than a quarter. BP should have to pay to support the people in that region, but realistically even the profits of an oil giant like BP would quickly be quenched under such a deluge of liability. Maybe the government can help them move and pay for their retraining, but in the end there is no point throwing good money after bad. They would need to do something else or maybe relocate to another place. Obviously all these numbers are sketches. I can hardly tell you what the actual numbers are (if you'll recall, my initial comment was a request for speculation on what that number might be). But there is no question that there is a number, or a range of reasonable numbers, to describe the cost of this disaster. > Alternatively, you can be gracious and concede the point that if there are alternatives to high-risk offshore oil wells . . . That is not even a point under discussion. Why did you bring it up? What makes you think I support offshore drilling? We are talking about whether it makes sense to assign a numeric cost to the disaster, which it obviously does.
- mistermann 16y ago
  Mate, I think you should seriously reread what he wrote. It seems like you literally don't understand what he wrote, not that you understand but disagree.
SapphireSun 16y ago
Ah when a teleologist meets a deontologist...
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  I try to live deontologically in my personal life. With limited success, as you can see by my harassing this guy even though I should just leave him alone. But it just gets too complicated when you apply it to large systems like society . . . it becomes impossible to reason about. Nice observation though.
  - billswift 16y ago
    I left this comment: I am a virtue ethicist for consequentialist reasons. While good results (consequences) are the end of my ethics, the real world is too complex for a real time evaluation of the likely results of even relatively simple decisions. So you use virtues (my definition is slightly non-standard) - rules that are more likely than not to result in better outcomes. in a discussion on Less Wrong http://lesswrong.com/lw/2aa/virtue_ethics_for_consequentialists/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/2aa/virtue_ethics_for_consequentiali... early this month.

thaumaturgy 16y ago

No, and your accusation that I'm "just being difficult" is starting to piss me off. I think you're a short-sighted, self-centered, argumentative, nihilistic, and stubborn little annoyance -- but I didn't yet disrespect you enough to say so. Look, requiring a guarantee that such a disaster cannot occur is exactly the opposite of placing a value on disaster. It is in effect saying, "If this disaster cannot be impossible, then it is not worth it." I prefaced that guarantee with the word "near" because I pragmatically don't believe there's such a thing as a complete and total guarantee. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, there were maintenance schedules, safety checks, inspections, safety valves, backup valves for the safety valves, and so on and so forth, and every single one of those failed. Shit happens sometimes, and that has nothing to do with placing a dollar amount on anything. Tell ya what: if you can't see values or costs in things like this without putting a dollar sign in front, then -- OK, sure, I will readily agree to a formula for calculating dollar value that should make you quite happy. Are you ready? It's this: the cost of a disaster is the dollar amount required to reverse all of the effects of the disaster. Lemme know when you've finished totaling that one up on your calculator.

houseabsolute 16y ago
> but I didn't yet disrespect you enough to say so Sure you did; you were just passive-aggressive about it with that "to be polite" bit at the start. You're the one who took the dialogue to this level. I'm just more direct. > the dollar amount required to reverse all of the effects of the disaster Holding the debate hostage with demands for physical impossibilities is definitely a red flag in a conversation partner. There are other adjectives to describe it but I think the one I've already used is apt. Anyway, I'm sure you don't mean this, or wouldn't if you would just think about what you're asking for for a second. Since I can't seem to get a thoughtful, honest answer out of you, continuing this is probably not productive . . . although that was probably true several posts ago.
- whichdokta 16y ago
  >> the dollar amount required to reverse all of the effects of the disaster >Holding the debate hostage with demands for physical impossibilities is definitely a red flag in a conversation partner. But holding the debate hostage with demands for ethical impossibilities is somehow okay? That said, by allowing for a dollar cost thaumaturgy was not holding the debate hostage. In fact, he accepted your challenge to debate him in the frame of reference YOU set up. A frame of reference which, btw, is not the only one in common use to decide such questions. What you need to respond with now to keep your credibility is whether the 'true' dollar cost is: a) The cost to mitigate every single effect from the disaster. or b) Some other, smaller, amount along with a list of the effects you have discounted from the full amount and justification for such discounting. Alternatively, you can be gracious and concede the point that if there are alternatives to high-risk offshore oil wells then perhaps we should explore them rather than drilling.
  - houseabsolute 16y ago
    > But holding the debate hostage with demands for ethical impossibilities is somehow okay? It's not an ethical impossibility. It's a pragmatic imperative. AND it's the root of the entire conversation. It's what I started this comment tree about! How can it possibly be holding up the debate to talk about it? > b) Some other, smaller, amount along with a list of the effects you have discounted from the full amount and justification for such discounting. Well it's certainly got to be this one since reversing every effect is entropically impossible. Some obvious things I don't really care about are restoring BPs bottom-line to its pre-disaster levels. As a general rule I'm also not interested in paying to mitigate damage to wildlife that would fall under ICUN's Least Concern designation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_Concern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_Concern) even after all harm to populations from the spill are taken into account. I feel this way except inasmuch as human beings depend on such wildlife for economic sustenance. Although it sucks that the animals die, if they are not used directly by humans the utility lost when a common animal dies is typically far less than the cost of saving it in an oil spill like this. Endangered animals I do want to protect, but once again there's a line somewhere (I don't know where) where their protection costs more than its worth. For example, if there is a rare mosquito in the marshes of southern Louisiana that ends up being wiped out entirely because of this crisis, I would not assign a cost of a billion dollars to that lost. Some cost, yes, but not a billion dollars. If the oil slick bears out to be very large but cause small or questionable harm across a huge region, I also don't think we should necessarily spend money compensating the victims of such small harms. (For example, even if the oil spill stopped now some amount of oil would probably disperse even as far as the west coast of the U.S. after enough time.) To assign a metric, if the amount of compensation we might provide to a given victim is less than ten times the administrative cost of giving that compensation, we should not compensate. Looking at the worst case scenario: let's say that the entire gulf becomes unfishable for the next fifty years except if the U.S. spends a quarter of its total output during that time period cleaning it up. Obviously this would be a really bad trade because the fishing in that region accounts for a much smaller portion of GDP than a quarter. BP should have to pay to support the people in that region, but realistically even the profits of an oil giant like BP would quickly be quenched under such a deluge of liability. Maybe the government can help them move and pay for their retraining, but in the end there is no point throwing good money after bad. They would need to do something else or maybe relocate to another place. Obviously all these numbers are sketches. I can hardly tell you what the actual numbers are (if you'll recall, my initial comment was a request for speculation on what that number might be). But there is no question that there is a number, or a range of reasonable numbers, to describe the cost of this disaster. > Alternatively, you can be gracious and concede the point that if there are alternatives to high-risk offshore oil wells . . . That is not even a point under discussion. Why did you bring it up? What makes you think I support offshore drilling? We are talking about whether it makes sense to assign a numeric cost to the disaster, which it obviously does.
mistermann 16y ago
Mate, I think you should seriously reread what he wrote. It seems like you literally don't understand what he wrote, not that you understand but disagree.

SapphireSun 16y ago

Ah when a teleologist meets a deontologist...

houseabsolute 16y ago
I try to live deontologically in my personal life. With limited success, as you can see by my harassing this guy even though I should just leave him alone. But it just gets too complicated when you apply it to large systems like society . . . it becomes impossible to reason about. Nice observation though.
- billswift 16y ago
  I left this comment: I am a virtue ethicist for consequentialist reasons. While good results (consequences) are the end of my ethics, the real world is too complex for a real time evaluation of the likely results of even relatively simple decisions. So you use virtues (my definition is slightly non-standard) - rules that are more likely than not to result in better outcomes. in a discussion on Less Wrong http://lesswrong.com/lw/2aa/virtue_ethics_for_consequentialists/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/2aa/virtue_ethics_for_consequentiali... early this month.