4 ms·

But isn't the past 5 years a pretty-clear demolition of the idea that bright, well-trained people have a handle on systemic risk?

jstanley 14y ago
I don't think so. I also don't think that risk as applied to one's personal life (e.g. riding a motorcycle for fun) has much bearing on risk as applied to one's work. Riding bikes is my main source of enjoyment in life (both racing and just going for a ride on the road), and I accept that in order to obtain that enjoyment I have to take a risk. That's OK. If I were building artificial lifeforms, sure I'd get a kick out of it, but I would be a lot more careful than when I'm just riding a bike for fun.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  The snarkier response is that Venter has apparently accurately gauged his personal risks for 65 years.
- jstclair 14y ago
  I just fund out that one of my co-workers raced in the Isle of Man TT last year, so perhaps motorcycles spurred thoughts in me of bug-eyed insanity
crusso 14y ago
The past 5 years is a pretty-clear demolition of the idea that we should allow so much concentration of power by the Corporatized State (or anyone, really). Bright? Hardly. They're good at winning popularity contests, certainly. Well-trained? At what? Amassing power? The people most in charge of my life (ie, over a third of my labor) aren't trained in jack. The guy at the top of the pile currently was a "community organizer", whatever the hell that is. The guy in charge of the pile before him was another big government average kind of guy who had his success handed to him by his daddy. So while I disagree with you as to the particular source of the problem for the last five years, I'm actually going to agree with you that overall human beings are bad at assessing systemic risk. While I really admire Craig Venter, I'm extremely distrustful of someone with grand ideas of releasing designer micro-organisms into the environment. I'm all for us pursuing designer micro-organisms, but we should clamp down hard on safety protocols. I didn't read every line of the whole article (as someone else mentioned, the writing is pretty pathetic) -- but I didn't see any real text given over to the extraordinary danger of releasing organisms into the environment. Really, I'd prefer if we restricted our organism construction for now to things that are big and can't really escape into the wild easily... say, that Woolly Mammoth project. It's hard to lose track of a Woolly Mammoth.

jstanley 14y ago

I don't think so. I also don't think that risk as applied to one's personal life (e.g. riding a motorcycle for fun) has much bearing on risk as applied to one's work. Riding bikes is my main source of enjoyment in life (both racing and just going for a ride on the road), and I accept that in order to obtain that enjoyment I have to take a risk. That's OK. If I were building artificial lifeforms, sure I'd get a kick out of it, but I would be a lot more careful than when I'm just riding a bike for fun.

maxerickson 14y ago
The snarkier response is that Venter has apparently accurately gauged his personal risks for 65 years.
jstclair 14y ago
I just fund out that one of my co-workers raced in the Isle of Man TT last year, so perhaps motorcycles spurred thoughts in me of bug-eyed insanity

crusso 14y ago

The past 5 years is a pretty-clear demolition of the idea that we should allow so much concentration of power by the Corporatized State (or anyone, really). Bright? Hardly. They're good at winning popularity contests, certainly. Well-trained? At what? Amassing power? The people most in charge of my life (ie, over a third of my labor) aren't trained in jack. The guy at the top of the pile currently was a "community organizer", whatever the hell that is. The guy in charge of the pile before him was another big government average kind of guy who had his success handed to him by his daddy. So while I disagree with you as to the particular source of the problem for the last five years, I'm actually going to agree with you that overall human beings are bad at assessing systemic risk. While I really admire Craig Venter, I'm extremely distrustful of someone with grand ideas of releasing designer micro-organisms into the environment. I'm all for us pursuing designer micro-organisms, but we should clamp down hard on safety protocols. I didn't read every line of the whole article (as someone else mentioned, the writing is pretty pathetic) -- but I didn't see any real text given over to the extraordinary danger of releasing organisms into the environment. Really, I'd prefer if we restricted our organism construction for now to things that are big and can't really escape into the wild easily... say, that Woolly Mammoth project. It's hard to lose track of a Woolly Mammoth.