We might be winning, but by developing technologically as much as we are, I think we are playing with fire when it comes to tail risk and Taleb’s idea of fragility.
Do you think this is a problem? It appears to me that no development is possible without some tail risk (which we obviously want to minimize wherever possible!). Can we come up with a realistic world in which technologic progress is used for peaceful purposes exclusively and never causes any negative surprises? Or a world that develops with zero tail risk?
IMO yes, it is a gigantic problem. I agree that there are tradeoffs where progress implies some amount of tail risk as a consequence. The thing is that I don’t think we are navigating those tradeoffs well. The analogy I like to use is that our technological progress is like giving a machine gun to a child. Bad things are bound to happen. To use that analogy, when/if we mature to the level of Competent Adult or something, that would be the time to start playing with machine guns.
We might be winning, but by developing technologically as much as we are, I think we are playing with fire when it comes to tail risk and Taleb’s idea of fragility.
Do you think this is a problem? It appears to me that no development is possible without some tail risk (which we obviously want to minimize wherever possible!). Can we come up with a realistic world in which technologic progress is used for peaceful purposes exclusively and never causes any negative surprises? Or a world that develops with zero tail risk?
IMO yes, it is a gigantic problem. I agree that there are tradeoffs where progress implies some amount of tail risk as a consequence. The thing is that I don’t think we are navigating those tradeoffs well. The analogy I like to use is that our technological progress is like giving a machine gun to a child. Bad things are bound to happen. To use that analogy, when/if we mature to the level of Competent Adult or something, that would be the time to start playing with machine guns.