Would you respond differently if someone else talked about every single person who becomes an amateur astronomer and searches for dangerous asteroids?
The parallel is a good one. I would think it sort of crankish if somebody went around trying to get people to engage in amateur astronomy and search for dangerous asteroids on the grounds that any new amateur astronomer may be the one save us from being killed by a dangerous asteroid. Just because an issue is potentially important doesn’t mean that one should attempt to interest as many people as possible in it. There’s an issue of opportunity cost.
Sure there’s an opportunity cost, but how large is that opportunity cost? What if someone has good data that suggests that the current number of asteroid seekers is orders of magnitude below the optimum?
The parallel is a good one. I would think it sort of crankish if somebody went around trying to get people to engage in amateur astronomy and search for dangerous asteroids on the grounds that any new amateur astronomer may be the one save us from being killed by a dangerous asteroid. Just because an issue is potentially important doesn’t mean that one should attempt to interest as many people as possible in it. There’s an issue of opportunity cost.
Sure there’s an opportunity cost, but how large is that opportunity cost? What if someone has good data that suggests that the current number of asteroid seekers is orders of magnitude below the optimum?