Comments on: What level of societal risk is too much to dismiss? https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2017/08/what-level-of-societal-risk-is-too-much-to-dismiss/ Tue, 15 Jul 2025 01:42:38 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 By: Karl Lehmann https://www.spencergreenberg.com/2017/08/what-level-of-societal-risk-is-too-much-to-dismiss/#comment-56000 Tue, 15 Jul 2025 01:42:38 +0000 https://www.spencergreenberg.com/?p=4400#comment-56000 Your question is unanswerable unless you include the potential benefits of accepting the risk. Of your examples:

1. The potential benefits of true A.I. are almost unlimited. Unfortunately the risk is seems impossible to quantify. We know it is not zero.
2. The benefits of pathogen research are very high. Is the knowledge to stop a pandemic worth the risk of creating one? It sort of depends on which happens first.
3. The benefits of ignoring climate change are vanishingly small, except to a tiny fraction of humanity with a lot of political power and great expertise at weaponizing disinformation (the fossil fuel industry).

Assuming we could actually quantify the risks, #1 would be worth accepting more risk than #2. They are both worth some amount of risk.

The risk of #3 is moot because the potential societal benefit to ignoring #3 is negative. Failure to address it will shrink the future economy in return for less equal distribution. Replacing fossil fuels with better, less expensive technologies will benefit society regardless of climate change.

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