(highlight:: Human Systems are Biased Towards Taking Risky Action
Key takeaways:
• Human beings are programmed to look for untapped opportunities and ways to improve efficiency.
• Our ability to exchange abstract ideas through language allows us to solve difficult technical problems.
• We may not always know if the risks involved in pursuing a solution are worth it.
• Nuclear power may appear environmentally friendly, but the risks of spilling nuclear waste are often not anticipated.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
We've plugged a bunch of systems into each other in as that our protections don't anticipate. So we human beings, it turns out, are biological critters. Speaking of biological criters, a cat has just landed on the desk here. But all biological criters are programmed, in some sense by selection to look for untapped opportunities, right? And we human beings do this in a way that special. We're uniquely conscious and somewhat obsessed with the little annoyances in our lives where something could be done more efficiently. And in any case, that bent has been a key to human success. Because human beings, by virtue of our ability to exchange abstract ideas through language, can teem up, and we can solve really difficult technical problems and come up with solutions Really are liberating. But the problem is we don't know when the problem that we are pointing ourselves towards has a solution that isn't worth the risk. This is especially bad when the risks are particularly delayed. Rights of nuclear power, for example, that is to say, uranium base nuclear power can look exceedingly green, right? It looks like very clean technology. But the point is that's because the spilling of the nuclear waste into the environment is a rare circumstance that is very intense when it occurs. Write so we don't anticipate it. And basically, even if nine people out of ten would look at the prospects of making nuclear power safe enough and conclude, actually, probably can't be done, it only takes the one out Of ten who says, actually, i don't see the big deal.)
- Time 0:11:37
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(highlight:: The Meta-Crisis is a Result of Our Bias Towards Reductionism
Transcript:
Speaker 3
Meta crisis is, and then add my owna, which, of course, they're all, they're all entangled with one another, for both better ar worse. A, the problem is evolutionary onea, but i think ah ad its t it's most a pristine. What you're talking about is the problem of reductionism, the problem of not, of not seeing complex systems and understanding complex systems for what they are, and instead taking Individually easily measurable things, things that are quantifiable, things that can be basically debased into metrics. And then the human tendency, which will be the tendency of anything that does a conscious work like humans do, is to imag that what you've measured is the whole, and to take that easily Measured thing, which is also analogous to the short time horizon, as the bigger, more complex thing, which is itself analogous to the longer time horizon.)
- Time 0:15:02
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