Re: Campaign 2016 - Run-HRC? Honest Injun? Gott Mitt Himmel? RyanRubioCruzCrud?
The one area where we are ridiculously intolerant of failure is when it comes to human life. I swear that some people would reject a technology that would indirectly save 10,000 lives if it directly killed 10 people (e.g. I bet someone would campaign to ban ambulances if the fact that ambulance crashes kill many people each year ever went viral). Another example: I read an study of the Apollo XI that indicated that if it were analyzed with modern safety analysis methods, it would have been rated with about a 1% chance (1 in 100) of catastrophic failure. The goal for missions to the ISS is less than 1 in 1000, 10x safer. This makes our space program roughly 10x more expensive - we'd rather have dozens of programs die on the vine because of expense rather than have 1 program that kills a few people who are HAPPY to volunteer for the risk in the first place. We design military jets to have less than 1 in 10,000,000 chance of crashing due to mechanical failures - now that's risk averse.
I doubt that this sort of risk-aversion has a significant impact on pure scientific discovery and invention, though - I don't see how this would play into the probability of success of developing a new type of steel, for example. That is, if we relaxed the workplace safety standards and accepted more risk of injury or death to the workers, would a breakthrough suddenly become any more likely? I think not.
I don't mind GOOD questions, and that is a good one. I would say it depends; we are certainly still failure tolerant in some ways - financially, for example, the left doesn't mind pumping $$$ into failure after failure of green energy and the right doesn't mind cutting taxes even though we are clearly on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. Politically, for another - we keep electing those bums over and over regardless of their failure to do anything.
The one area where we are ridiculously intolerant of failure is when it comes to human life. I swear that some people would reject a technology that would indirectly save 10,000 lives if it directly killed 10 people (e.g. I bet someone would campaign to ban ambulances if the fact that ambulance crashes kill many people each year ever went viral). Another example: I read an study of the Apollo XI that indicated that if it were analyzed with modern safety analysis methods, it would have been rated with about a 1% chance (1 in 100) of catastrophic failure. The goal for missions to the ISS is less than 1 in 1000, 10x safer. This makes our space program roughly 10x more expensive - we'd rather have dozens of programs die on the vine because of expense rather than have 1 program that kills a few people who are HAPPY to volunteer for the risk in the first place. We design military jets to have less than 1 in 10,000,000 chance of crashing due to mechanical failures - now that's risk averse.
I doubt that this sort of risk-aversion has a significant impact on pure scientific discovery and invention, though - I don't see how this would play into the probability of success of developing a new type of steel, for example. That is, if we relaxed the workplace safety standards and accepted more risk of injury or death to the workers, would a breakthrough suddenly become any more likely? I think not.
