Tail risk decisions are never easy. Because we lack sufficient data by definition. Should we focus on preventing terrorism? Well, if 9/11 was the worst case sc

Tail risk decisions are never easy. Because we lack sufficient data by definition. Should we focus on preventing terrorism? Well, if 9/11 was the worst case scenario then no. If on the other hand a terror attack could bring down the entire country it's certainly worth being paranoid about. Suppose terrorists poison our food and water supplies to the extent that we get country-wide food riots. A civilization is only 9 meals away from anarchy after all. So the essential question is this: - Is our civilization essentially fragile or fundamentally robust? If our civilization is fundamentally robust we can simply focus on growth and deal with setbacks (global warming, terrorism, imperialism, wars) as they come. In the long term prosperity will go up and up. Not always as fast as we'd like and not always in ways we deem fair but if we keep making progress we'll get there eventually. This is the whiggish view. The opposite view is that civilization is fragile. Kingdoms come and go and foolish decisions can and have lead to centuries of regression. The upward trend we've seen in the past couple of centuries does not mean our species has grown up in the slightest. Every new weapon of doom we discover we play with and we're no better than our imperialist and bloodthirsty forefathers. Our civilization is determined to self-destruct by either nuclear war, environmental disaster, political insanity or runaway capitalism. A civilization that is not capable of planning ahead will eventually walk like a lemming of a cliff. The best thing we can do is put tons of safeguards and regulations in place to improve our odds of surviving at all. Those are the two main views. And the kicker is we don't have enough data to know for certain which view is correct.