9 ms·

Regardless of the other three points, it is generally rational to mistrust authority because many authorities have repeatedly failed in the past to protect live

Regardless of the other three points, it is generally rational to mistrust authority because many authorities have repeatedly failed in the past to protect lives during emergency scenarios.

ttul 7y ago
And yet 99% of the time, the authorities do a great job of running everything here in the west. The 1% of the time they fail, it proves the conspiracy theorists and fear mongers’ point.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  In 2020 it's more like 90% of the time, but the point still stands
- tmpz22 7y ago
  Of all the national emergencies in the US since 2000, Katrina, Sandy, Puerto Rico, etc., does anyone know offhand how many were handled properly? Seems like ~20-40% are handled improperly if not more.
  - jopsen 7y ago
    The ones that were properly handled aren't news. You never heard about the lead poisoning that didn't happen.. but you'll hear about Flint Michigan. Try counting all the dams that didn't break and, thus, averted catastrophic floods. Also count the forest fires that didn't happen because of regulation. When something is declared a national emergency it's typically because society have failed to prepare.
    - DangitBobby 7y ago
      > You never heard about the lead poisoning that didn't happen.. but you'll hear about Flint Michigan. Not a great example for this point. Cynically, you heard about Flint because journalists rode the hype train for views and clicks, either failing to do research on other communities or failing to promote those stories to the level of hype required to break into the mainstream. They were close to notifying the public of a widespread public infrastructure and health issue, but for whatever reason fell short and became fodder for anti-"fear-mongering" attitudes. > . . . The Michigan city doesn't even rank among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America . . . > In all, Reuters found nearly 3,000 areas with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city's contamination crisis. And more than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher. > . . . > Like Flint, many of these localities are plagued by legacy lead: crumbling paint, plumbing, or industrial waste left behind. Unlike Flint, many have received little attention or funding to combat poisoning. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thousands-of-u-s-areas-afflicted-with-lead-poisoning-beyond-flints/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thousands-of-u-s-...
  - blowski 7y ago
    How many situations don’t become national emergencies because of good management?
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Since you're mostly counting hurricanes, here's a list of all category 4+ hurricanes that hit the US, although most were not that strength when they actually made landfall: * Hurricane Isabel (5, 2003) * Hurricane Charley (4, 2004) * Hurricane Ivan (5, 2004) * Hurricane Dennis (4, 2005) * Hurricane Katrina (5, 2005) * Hurricane Rita (5, 2005) * Hurricane Wilma (5, 2005) * Hurricane Ike (4, 2008) * Hurricane Matthew (5, 2014) * Hurricane Harvey (4, 2017) * Hurricane Irma (5, 2017) * Hurricane Maria (5, 2017) * Hurricane Florence (4, 2018) * Hurricane Michael (5, 2018) * Hurricane Dorian (5, 2019) That's 15 hurricanes. Of these, Katrina and Maria were the only ones where the response was considered botched. That's only 13%.
    - hackinthebochs 7y ago
      And how many of them required anything but the standard response from authorities? I can't think of any aside from Katrina and Maria. But it's when an atypical response is warranted that authorities ability to respond is tested. Based on that metric, the track record is poor. There's also the concern of incentives. The authorities are incentivized to treat every emergency as requiring nothing over and above the standard response, because statistically this is correct. And so you would not expect the authorities to be able to recognize, or be honest about when an unfolding emergency requires an atypical response.
      - jcranmer 7y ago
        > And how many of them required anything but the standard response from authorities? What do you mean by "standard response"? It seems to me that you have a working definition that is less an objective standard and more a subjective, circular definition of "anything that didn't fail." Take Hurricane Harvey for example. The rain Houston received was record-breaking: ~30" in the course of a day or so, when the previous monthly record was 19". Does that require merely the "standard response"?
        hackinthebochs 7y ago
        What I mean by the "standard response" are actions that are just some variation of: mobilize national guard, provide emergency shelter, distribute emergency rations of food, provide mobile health care, etc, and usually to some reasonably localized geographic location. Basically the sort of responses where simply modeling your response after the previous similar disaster is sufficient. The problem with Katrina and Maria was precisely that the playbook from prior disasters was inadequate either due to the type or scale of problems faced.
johnwheeler 7y ago
Conspiracy theorists tend to mistake incompetence for malice; or partial incompetence for total incompetence. Hurricane Katrina doesn’t invalidate health and building codes; education; law enforcement and EPA, FAA, and SEC regulations. Decisions made are both bad and good, but it’s irrational to think the decision makers are generally untrustworthy.
- jjallen 7y ago
  Didn’t all of these agencies come about after some incident happened that was disastrous? The SEC came about after/during the Great Depression. Building codes stiffened after terrible hurricanes.
  - johnwheeler 7y ago
    Sure, but what’s your point? Decisions _should_ be based on past information. You don’t expect politicians to be clairvoyant do you? There’s no doubt that politics, especially US politics and government, are pretty screwed up, but it doesn’t automatically follow that anarchy is better. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
    - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
      I think you have a point because this fear also creates incentives for scammers to profit from it. There is a difference in how people "act" on the collective level (administrative bodies and bureaucracies, even companies) and how we respond on the individual level (employees, bread-winners, family members). There is no serious / open conversation about this inside companies right now - some places I know even discourage you and slap you with the fear-monger label, while hoping it will just blow over. Especially in Tech where we could just send people home right away and work remotely hardly anyone does this (if it hasn't already been policy). > Decisions _should_ be based on past information. Making decisions only on past information is what makes Black Swans a scary reality. Maybe good time for us all to re-read Taleb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_...
toofy 7y ago
This could easily be an issue of colloquial interpretation barriers, but there is a significant difference between healthy skepticism and a mistrust driven by assuming the other party is always acting in bad faith. Like I said, this could be a simple misunderstanding of concepts, but there is a percentage of the population who have drifted from a healthy skepticism into paranoidTown where they assume good faith people/humanity are out to get them. This mistrust is causing many of them to fail to apply basic logic in their decision making. Hopefully your post was advocating for what I would call a healthy skepticism.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  > always acting in bad faith. Not just that, they're always acting in bad faith and most of time even against their own interest! To cause harm to _$you_ specifically because $you're so important.
- isoskeles 7y ago
  > there is a percentage of the population who have drifted from a healthy skepticism into paranoidTown where they assume good faith people/humanity are out to get them And how big is that percentage? I’m starting to believe, sincerely, that views like the one you expressed are more paranoid and driven by fear-mongering than the views described in your comment. I call these people flat eartherers, e.g. those who believe there are many flat earthers all over the place who are a problem.

Regardless of the other three points, it is generally rational to mistrust authority because many authorities have repeatedly failed in the past to protect lives during emergency scenarios.

ttul 7y ago

And yet 99% of the time, the authorities do a great job of running everything here in the west. The 1% of the time they fail, it proves the conspiracy theorists and fear mongers’ point.

_bxg1 7y ago
In 2020 it's more like 90% of the time, but the point still stands
tmpz22 7y ago
Of all the national emergencies in the US since 2000, Katrina, Sandy, Puerto Rico, etc., does anyone know offhand how many were handled properly? Seems like ~20-40% are handled improperly if not more.
- jopsen 7y ago
  The ones that were properly handled aren't news. You never heard about the lead poisoning that didn't happen.. but you'll hear about Flint Michigan. Try counting all the dams that didn't break and, thus, averted catastrophic floods. Also count the forest fires that didn't happen because of regulation. When something is declared a national emergency it's typically because society have failed to prepare.
  - DangitBobby 7y ago
    > You never heard about the lead poisoning that didn't happen.. but you'll hear about Flint Michigan. Not a great example for this point. Cynically, you heard about Flint because journalists rode the hype train for views and clicks, either failing to do research on other communities or failing to promote those stories to the level of hype required to break into the mainstream. They were close to notifying the public of a widespread public infrastructure and health issue, but for whatever reason fell short and became fodder for anti-"fear-mongering" attitudes. > . . . The Michigan city doesn't even rank among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America . . . > In all, Reuters found nearly 3,000 areas with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city's contamination crisis. And more than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher. > . . . > Like Flint, many of these localities are plagued by legacy lead: crumbling paint, plumbing, or industrial waste left behind. Unlike Flint, many have received little attention or funding to combat poisoning. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thousands-of-u-s-areas-afflicted-with-lead-poisoning-beyond-flints/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thousands-of-u-s-...
- blowski 7y ago
  How many situations don’t become national emergencies because of good management?
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Since you're mostly counting hurricanes, here's a list of all category 4+ hurricanes that hit the US, although most were not that strength when they actually made landfall: * Hurricane Isabel (5, 2003) * Hurricane Charley (4, 2004) * Hurricane Ivan (5, 2004) * Hurricane Dennis (4, 2005) * Hurricane Katrina (5, 2005) * Hurricane Rita (5, 2005) * Hurricane Wilma (5, 2005) * Hurricane Ike (4, 2008) * Hurricane Matthew (5, 2014) * Hurricane Harvey (4, 2017) * Hurricane Irma (5, 2017) * Hurricane Maria (5, 2017) * Hurricane Florence (4, 2018) * Hurricane Michael (5, 2018) * Hurricane Dorian (5, 2019) That's 15 hurricanes. Of these, Katrina and Maria were the only ones where the response was considered botched. That's only 13%.
  - hackinthebochs 7y ago
    And how many of them required anything but the standard response from authorities? I can't think of any aside from Katrina and Maria. But it's when an atypical response is warranted that authorities ability to respond is tested. Based on that metric, the track record is poor. There's also the concern of incentives. The authorities are incentivized to treat every emergency as requiring nothing over and above the standard response, because statistically this is correct. And so you would not expect the authorities to be able to recognize, or be honest about when an unfolding emergency requires an atypical response.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      > And how many of them required anything but the standard response from authorities? What do you mean by "standard response"? It seems to me that you have a working definition that is less an objective standard and more a subjective, circular definition of "anything that didn't fail." Take Hurricane Harvey for example. The rain Houston received was record-breaking: ~30" in the course of a day or so, when the previous monthly record was 19". Does that require merely the "standard response"?
      - hackinthebochs 7y ago
        What I mean by the "standard response" are actions that are just some variation of: mobilize national guard, provide emergency shelter, distribute emergency rations of food, provide mobile health care, etc, and usually to some reasonably localized geographic location. Basically the sort of responses where simply modeling your response after the previous similar disaster is sufficient. The problem with Katrina and Maria was precisely that the playbook from prior disasters was inadequate either due to the type or scale of problems faced.

johnwheeler 7y ago

Conspiracy theorists tend to mistake incompetence for malice; or partial incompetence for total incompetence. Hurricane Katrina doesn’t invalidate health and building codes; education; law enforcement and EPA, FAA, and SEC regulations. Decisions made are both bad and good, but it’s irrational to think the decision makers are generally untrustworthy.

jjallen 7y ago
Didn’t all of these agencies come about after some incident happened that was disastrous? The SEC came about after/during the Great Depression. Building codes stiffened after terrible hurricanes.
- johnwheeler 7y ago
  Sure, but what’s your point? Decisions _should_ be based on past information. You don’t expect politicians to be clairvoyant do you? There’s no doubt that politics, especially US politics and government, are pretty screwed up, but it doesn’t automatically follow that anarchy is better. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
  - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
    I think you have a point because this fear also creates incentives for scammers to profit from it. There is a difference in how people "act" on the collective level (administrative bodies and bureaucracies, even companies) and how we respond on the individual level (employees, bread-winners, family members). There is no serious / open conversation about this inside companies right now - some places I know even discourage you and slap you with the fear-monger label, while hoping it will just blow over. Especially in Tech where we could just send people home right away and work remotely hardly anyone does this (if it hasn't already been policy). > Decisions _should_ be based on past information. Making decisions only on past information is what makes Black Swans a scary reality. Maybe good time for us all to re-read Taleb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_...

toofy 7y ago

This could easily be an issue of colloquial interpretation barriers, but there is a significant difference between healthy skepticism and a mistrust driven by assuming the other party is always acting in bad faith. Like I said, this could be a simple misunderstanding of concepts, but there is a percentage of the population who have drifted from a healthy skepticism into paranoidTown where they assume good faith people/humanity are out to get them. This mistrust is causing many of them to fail to apply basic logic in their decision making. Hopefully your post was advocating for what I would call a healthy skepticism.

Aperocky 7y ago
> always acting in bad faith. Not just that, they're always acting in bad faith and most of time even against their own interest! To cause harm to _$you_ specifically because $you're so important.
isoskeles 7y ago
> there is a percentage of the population who have drifted from a healthy skepticism into paranoidTown where they assume good faith people/humanity are out to get them And how big is that percentage? I’m starting to believe, sincerely, that views like the one you expressed are more paranoid and driven by fear-mongering than the views described in your comment. I call these people flat eartherers, e.g. those who believe there are many flat earthers all over the place who are a problem.