Monday, March 31, 2008
If you can’t learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.
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I met my man at the halfway point this evening for dinner and conversation. One of the many topics was the CERN risk thing from the previous post.
I have a method for deciding on a course of action. I formulate a plan of action that seems reasonable, then I try to look at all the possible things that could go wrong. I don't consider the probability. For planning purposes I figure that each of the bad things could happen, in fact, that they WILL happen.
(I was pleased to discover that he thinks in much the same way. You can say that there's a .01% chance of something happening if you do A, but that doesn't make A safe. In reality, either the bad outcome will happen, or it won't, so it's actually 50-50, and you have to think of it that way.)
Then I figure out what I will do if that bad thing does happen, make a recovery plan or figure out a way to ensure that it won't happen. If there is no recovery or avoidance plan, then I decide whether or not I can accept the bad thing, balanced against the possible benefit. If I can't accept the bad thing, then I have to reject that course of action, and look for another.
Repeat - the probability of the bad outcome is not a consideration, only whether it is recoverable, avoidable, or acceptable.
There have been times when my death was a possible outcome, and since there's no recovery plan for that, if I couldn't find a way to entirely eliminate that possibility, I had to decide whether it was acceptable. There have been occasions when I have accepted that risk. (I can't think of a single thing where the death of my daughter would be acceptable.)
When I was working, I always had backup plans for every project and schedule. There was never an unacceptable outcome, no matter what happened. In my investing now there is no stock, bond, mutual fund, account, no single area that has more than I can afford to lose. It's possible to lose everything in some area overnight, so by spreading things out, I've ensured that a loss is acceptable.
So, back to the CERN thing of the previous post, there's a one in a bazillion chance that they will create a self-sustaining black hole that will instantaneously feed upon and destroy Earth. The scientists consider those odds acceptable. They think "Big number. Ain't gonna happen".
They've forgotten something. When you count from 1 to a bazillion, the bad thing could happen at 1 as easily as at a bazillion. Kind of like when they say that on average, 1 in 400 people die in a certain surgery. Well, when you go into that operating room, you have a 50-50 chance of being that 1 in 400. Therefore, there's a 50-50 chance a bad black hole could happen, or not happen, any point.
I DO NOT CONSIDER DESTROYING THE EARTH AN ACCEPTABLE OUTCOME! No matter what the possible benefits are.
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3 comments:
I agree. But isn't that the same thing they said about the atom bomb? Not that either of these are good things, but we are still here. Well. Most of us. I suspect that would not play in certain Japanese cities.
There are two concerns with the bomb:
a) With the first atom bomb, they were worried that detonation would set the atmosphere on fire. That was shown to not be a possibility. No risk.
b) With atom and nuclear, the risk is that some crazy nation will set a whole bunch off, making the world uninhabitable. That's still a possibility, but you have to set them off for that to happen. A decision to do so and an overt act is required.
The problem with CERN is that a self-sustaining black hole is a possible byproduct of ongoing experiments. The experts have already admitted that a black hole is a possibility, but they think (hope? are simply telling us?) that it could not be sustained and would dissolve before causing any damage. I don't know a whole lot about black holes, but some experts disagree that once started it would stop, and there is no evidence that any black hole has ever reversed.
I'd like to get Steven Hawkings' (sp? you know who I mean) UNBIASED opinion.
The "Chins Syndrome" has been a concern with nuclear power plants. If any were to go China, one would think it would have been Chernoble (SP? again, you know what I mean), and it didn't. But that still worries me. The operators think they have put "my" avoidance planning in effect, but I worry that complaicency has set in.
[Man, I need spell check in comments!]
"China", not "Chins". Bleck.
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