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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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The problem is the safetyists have no brakes. Nothing's ever "safe enough".

Clearly we need meta-safetyists to invent safetyist brakes. Of course then we will need meta-meta safetyists..and so ad inifinitum.

Clearly we need meta-safetyists to invent safetyist brakes.

This is generally called "the enemy tribe". The fact that, all else being equal, they'll outcompete you if they take more calculated risks is why safety cannot be first.

External enemies are the ultimate check against internal risk aversity, and when they stop existing that begins to spiral out of control. I don't see any external enemies around right now and life is generally better than it's ever been, so people just pay the toll and suffer the loss of dignity/productivity quietly since the bill will never come due... right?

I don't see any external enemies around right now and life is generally better than it's ever been,

Which suggests that in a climate without external threats safetyism does lead to (or contributes to) life being better than it has ever been? If there is no-one to compete against then your people don't need to be taking calculated risks (which will presumably lead to greater levels of injury/death).

In other words you only need to pull the goalie when you are losing. If you are winning, play safe.

safetyism does lead to (or contributes to) life being better than it has ever been?

All the things that make life better than it ever has been were created in a culture of calculated risk.

If there is no-one to compete against then your people don't need to be taking calculated risks

If they're not taking calculated risks, they're not developing/producing, and being undeveloped/unproductive is Bad, Actually. There's a balance between safety and dignity, and cutting dignity out of the picture means you stop advancing. "But we don't need to advance, just masturbate in your own existing greatness until you die" is not how human beings are wired, and doing that kneecaps your ability to handle internal crises properly.

Were they? All of them? Even the safety features created put of safetyism we were originally talking about?

I think it's more likely that safetyism suffers from evaporative cooling. Most people who decry safetyism today still wear seatbelts (see this very thread), which was the safetyist perspective a hundred years ago (and remains the safetyist perspective in many countries today). Indeed there are some people who are never satisfied.

Okay, but in the meantime, cars keep getting safer?

Hard to say. Not a lot of movement since 2009, but there's a lot of confounding factors. But we keep getting more and more expensive features added in the name of safety.

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