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It might alternatively be an indication that they can't properly assess the risk and the outcome afterwards.... (More likely both: we are as a species absolute
by pm215 1y ago
It might alternatively be an indication that they can't properly assess the risk and the outcome afterwards....
(More likely both: we are as a species absolutely terrible about assessing low-probability risks.)
- cinntaile 1y agoYes, that is a valid point you make!
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI've benefitted from modern "safe" languages. I cut my teeth on things like Machine Code, ASM, and ANSI C. I don't miss them, at all. Nowadays, I write primarily in Swift, and I absolutely love not testing for leaks, anymore.
- cinntaile 1y agoHow does this support your original position? Now you're saying you want the guardrails, I don't get the point you're trying to make.
- franktankbank 1y agoI think he's happily retired.
- bluGill 1y agoI enjoy the non safe parts and proving with code in production for decades it works... it is sort of like code golf. however I use everytrick I tan to get memory safety when possible.
- darkerside 1y agoIt can also mean they properly assessed the risk and got incredibly unlucky
- pm215 1y agoIn that case they would not change their mind, though.
- ptero 1y agoNot necessarily. Having a painful accident often leads people to a position of "even if I know a mishap is very unlikely I am not doing this again".
- pm215 1y agoI think that falls into the "did not correctly assess the risk beforehand" bucket (and as you say and as the post I was replying to said, this is quite common). If they had correctly assessed "this is going to be really awful if it happens such that want to rule out even an unlikely possibility of it" they ought to not want to do it the first time.
- ptero 1y agoIn this definition I think virtually no one assesses the risk correctly. It is a human nature to overreact (post-factum) to an unlikely event to the extent that most languages have a dedicated saying ("having burned yourself on hot milk, one now blows on water" is the non-English version I heard as a kid). No offense intended, but I also yours is not a good definition of "correctly assessing the risk". If it were followed, an extremely unlikely possibility of a horrible outcome would stop people from doing most optional things. For example, a risk of a horrible disease while on travel will lead to no travel. Personalities differ and there are daredevils and scaredy cats that differ in pre-event risk assessments, but post (unlikely and traumatic) event assessment change is pretty universal. My 2c.
- pm215 1y agoCorrectly assessing the risk doesn't mean "I don't do anything that has an unlikely possibility of a horrible outcome", it can mean "I decide that I'm OK with that possibility and do it anyway, because I think the benefits outweigh the possible drawbacks". If you then do get unlucky and catch a nasty disease, that should not change your post-recovery decisions about going on holiday a second time: your risk/reward tradeoff should still be "I'm OK with the possibility of a bad outcome". Re "It is a human nature to overreact (post-factum) to an unlikely event" -- yes, absolutely agreed. This is what I mean by saying that humans as a species are terrible at assessing low-probability risks. That most people change their view just means that most people both underestimate the likelihood of low probability events that haven't happened to anybody they know, and overestimate the likelihood of low probability events that have happened to somebody they know.