This is so true. I especially agree about the "self-interest" thing.<p>Many good manipulators (politicians, managers, influencers, etc.), take it a step further, and convince others to work against their own self-interests, in order to serve the interests of the manipulators. We've seen plenty of this, lately (I won't go into specifics).<p>Here's a rather pithy approach to risk management that I've used: <a href="https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/risky-business/" rel="nofollow">https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/risky-business/</a>
On the cybersecurity side, risk management is pretty tangible. It's technology governance, and security teams essentially act as a licensing body for tech in an organization, and provide intelligence about existential threats to the status quo of the line of business. Success is anticipating attempts on the org, and demonstrating how they were deflected or mitigated. There's very little that is vague about it. Just this week I discovered a new technique that some malware is using to bypass most sensors - we manage risk very concretely. I know portfolio risk managers who operate on instantaneous feedback about the P&L of their models and opportunity costs.<p>Where I disagree with the article is that I think the author is seeing an opportunity to frame ideological concerns that exploit uncertainty by calling it risk and equating it to disciplines that he doesn't realize have very concrete competencies and performance metrics. Also, we have technology and economic solutions for our climate impact already. I'm still of the view that if your plan doesn't work unless you take over the planet and deprive entire nations of people of their freedoms, it's an objectively evil plan, and somehow that makes me a counter-revolutionary denialist.
This is a perennial problem in the insurance industry, but in kind of the opposite way. In insurance, your job is to take on financially predictable risk at a premium that matches the predicted risk. You exclude risks that you're not comfortable predicting. But excluding risks usually also means you don't get detailed data about them, making it difficult to justify continuing <i>or</i> discontinuing the exclusion.
Risk management really is the unsung hero of the modern world. A good book on the topic is "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk".<p>The answer to the question "why did a thriving capitalist economy emerge in Europe in the 17th century?" is simply "risk management". It was the intellectual leap that made it all possible.
I don't see any realistic, actionable analysis or solutions in here.<p>> People need to get paid (very!) well for their work on the endeavor<p>Good luck with that one. Who, exactly, is going to pay? And if you did somehow pass a bill mandating $500/hour wages, how would the flood of applicants be managed?<p>> Similarly, with climate change, programs to develop ways to transport solar energy could help, if implemented at scale and with vigorous commitment and funding. (It would be fairly easy to produce the solar energy; the challenges are reducing toxicity of manufacturing solar panels and batteries, increasing storage capacity, and figuring out transmission or transportation over long distances)<p>I had the impression that many people already <i>were</i> working on all those. Is he saying that throwing more money at the problem would solve it faster?<p>Finally, Y2K and Ebola are only two examples. How about "nuclear war over Taiwan"? That seems like the ultimate risk, and it's not by any means improbable.
This is a good article.<p>I think about this a lot working in SRE: Disaster avoidance is invisible and often under-appreciated.<p>I’ve also been reading Toby Ord’s _The Precipice_ and avoiding getting too depressed while in a bit of awe how close humanity was/is to really destroying ourselves.
The point about society-level threats paying better than Silicon Valley is a good one. I often look around in the tech industry as a programmer and wish I could be paid well to do something that actually matters, instead of just keeping kids addicted to social media.
> It would have been far better to risk naysayers’ ridicule and dive in earlier and stronger.<p>It wasn't ridicule, it was propaganda intended to get people to vote against their own best interests (and therefore stop politicians from acting, by threatening them with consequences)<p>And it worked, really well. Still does.<p>If you're treating these issues as if it was a bunch of misled but ultimately well meaning individuals then you are in trouble before you start.<p>For example, "we need new tech to solve this", which is both true and dangerous. True in the sense that a million little fixes have made things better, dangerous in that climate change deniers will use it to divert time, energy and money from known fixes:<p>> Green energy cannot meet Germany’s need for reliable electricity. That is why Germany still needs copious amounts of fossil fuels; German CO2-emissions have risen since the nuclear power phase-out of 2011, despite the incredible subsidies for renewables.<p>> Germany is an example of how not to do green energy. Instead the solution is to research and develop better green energy technology.<p>That was Bjorn Lomborg during the previous Ukraine gas crisis in 2014. Better technology than Wind and Solar, which are the two winners of a global, 4 decade race to produce cheap, clean energy. That's what he thinks we need. While at that time Wind energy was the cheapest source of energy available, and Solar was rapidly catching it up.<p>And here he is on twitter a few months ago doubling down on that:<p>> The idea that the Ukraine war could be fixed by choosing Western dependence on Chinese solar panels and batteries over Western dependence on Russian oil and gas reveals just how unserious the environmental movement really is<p>So, it's a real problem, and we really need to do something about it, but what the consensus solution is, isn't a solution after all, we just need to invest in future tech that will solve the problem. We can't rely on the the Chinese manufactured solar panels that he himself claimed did not work. Now they work, they're just too Chinese.<p>That's the depressing lesson of Climate Change and COVID, if right-wing politicians can buy a few votes and stall some regulations via attacking science, reason, fact etc., then they will.
>Yes, though as extreme climate events pile up, naysayers dwindle. But their pushback against climate change efforts has delayed mitigation by decades. We’re now at a stage where we can no longer prevent some terrible effects of climate change. It would have been far better to risk naysayers’ ridicule and dive in earlier and stronger.<p>Many people that talk about Climate Change, aka, Global Warming, are so indoctrinated via ideological shades that they do not recognize basic facts, and understanding where we are with our own knowledge<p>1. Deglaciation, and Warming as climate trends preceded our oil-based economy by thousands of years<p>2. Glacial Maximums are associated with low CO2 environments<p>3. "Our understanding of the Global Climate System is in its infancy"<p>4. There are massive discrepancies between accurate space based weather observations, and in-situ measurements.<p>5. Renewable Energy currently is insufficient to replace petroleum sources, and will be for a long period of time.