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Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

God, how I hate this quote. It's TR justifying his own worst qualities -- his impetuousity, his willingness to wade into things without thinking them through. Two years after he made that speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic) he would wade into the 1912 Presidential election, where his major accomplishment was splitting the Republican vote and therefore handing the election to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

Action, by itself, is not always the best thing. Sometimes action is wasted, or even counterproductive. Georges Danton called for "l'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" and ended up getting his head cut off. Then at the turn of the 20th century the French generals picked up his slogan again and marched a generation to death by machine-gun.

Lessig is actually a good example of this; his quixotic campaign has cost him a lot of goodwill among people who agree with him on the issues and should be his core supporters. He's going to have to spend some time over the next few years rebuilding bridges that would still be standing if he hadn't himself burned them. What a waste.

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Luckily for humanity, we have people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, and an adventurous can-do sensibility drives us all onward.

Unfortunately for humanity, we have other people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised because they are, in fact, ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, but has the virtue of mitigating disaster. And an adventurous can-do sensibility drives people onwards in all directions, including off cliffs.

Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq.

Absolutely true, so long as humanity is made of billions of individuals all pulling in their own direction, there will be risk, disaster, death, destruction, and amazing advancement.

I find the last worth all the preceding.

edit: missed some words

> Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq.

Or, possibly, the reason we didn't nuke Afghanistan. Remember, prior to the actual invasion Clinton sent more missiles into Iraq than the Bushes put together; JFK started and LBJ escalated the Vietnam Wars: who knows what Gore would have done, presented with the attacks on 11 September 2001?

There are a total of zero serious observers who believe Al Gore would have "nuked Afghanistan", but there's a nonzero number who believe 9/11 might not have happened had he been elected.

Al Gore is not a particularly great human being, but in addition to the banal malevolence George Bush shares with Al Gore and every other politician, and the additional evil he shares with the Neoconservative political movement he belonged to, Bush was also, as it turns out, alarmingly incompetent.

I think when in the hot seat most actors gravitate toward a status quo equilibrium. The left presidents will lean a little more right, the right will lean a little more left. Obama took us to Syria, would you have guessed he would do that when he was campaigning?

I think Gore would have been walked into Iraq warring and more by his advisers.

I'm no fan of Gore's, but I don't see a Gore administration using the opportunity that 9/11 presented to work out both a commitment to a new way of warfighting and a hyper-muscular American foreign policy by attacking what was well understood at the time to be an unrelated sovereign power.

This perspective totally ignores the history of the Iraq war, and the distinctive influence of Bush's idiosyncratic cabinet and vice president, all of whom had outsized influence due to Bush's own weakness.

The idea that Gore would have invaded Iraq in response to an attack from Afghanistan is not well supported by evidence, and not common among historians.

Just making this argument is a kind of "tell" that the arguer refuses to entertain the idea that third-party candidacies can harm the country by splitting the vote. I guess there are intellectually consistent ways to make that argument, but "Gore would have invaded Iraq" is not one of them.

Yeah, Gore clearly wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

Now, is there a colorable argument that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan and embroiled the US in costly military adventurism abroad? Sure. But somehow making 9/11 be about Iraq, which it patently was not, is a pathology unique to Bush.

The point of michael_nielsens comment has to be seen in the context it was posted. To tell the majority if the comments that it's easy to just critique but har to do things.

In that context it was actually a pretty relevant quote.

Someone putting themselves out no matter whether it turns good or bad always requires something most people don't have. It's rarely elegant or clean. Mostly just brute force and that of course have good and bad outcomes.

Normandy was bruteforce and in many ways ill-advised and a lot of men was lost in that battle, but luckily the germans kind of got caught of guard without their best general in the area.

Most are just here for the ride.

Of course it's easy to "just be a critique". But critiques of Lessig aren't "just critiques".

Lessig's critics understand something Lessig himself seems not to: his campaign is quixotic, his goal of being a "single-issue President" is incoherent given the structure of the US government, and, in a close election year, his prospects of somehow acting as a spoiler for the party he purports to support are far greater than his prospects of actually being an agent for change.

You're welcome to disagree with any or all of that, but I don't think you can say that they don't constitute a colorable argument, and you can't dismiss them as insubstantial points. Which is, of course, the implication of the actual words quoted upthread!

It's not enough just to "put yourself out there". Anyone who does anything dramatic, good or bad, is "putting themselves out there". Boldness makes for good copy, but can't reasonably be taken as a shield from commentary.

Thats an opinion you are entitled to have but which I do not share.

Politics is the art the possible and sometimes it takes several years for something to gain momentum, something that often starts in futile attempts and yes often ends with not succeeding. But once in a blue moon it does and that is the important part.

You keep arguing as if there is a right way to think about these things. If that is your claim then I do not share that belief.

Doing is the only way of discovering.

That there are plenty of people that do obvious stupid things which end bad in hindsight does not cancel out that there are plenty of people who do obvious stupid things and in hindsight succeed.

We have plenty of critical thinkers in this world, it's the constructive thinkers we lack.

No. Stop. I'm not telling you to agree with me about Lessig. I'm saying that you can't suppress my critique of Lessig by arguing that criticisms is easy, and starting a doomed Presidential campaign is hard. You know what else is hard? Perpetual motion. I get to criticize people for trying that too.

Who is suppressing anything here?

Michael_nielsen simply referenced a quote because there was a lot of critique from people who have no stake in lessigs attempt and so I guess Michael felt the urge to point that it's easy to critique and even if people fails, even obviously it's quite a lot more impressive that they even try than the million of reviewers out there.

The comment I was referring to, took issue with that quote and as far as I can see TR. And have nothing to do with Lessig.

So if you want to stop anything then please stop that strawman.

No one is suppressing yours or anyones critique of lessig, but just like you are entitled to have an opinion about him I am entitled to have one about the critique of TRs quote.

That's the intent behind the quote upthread you're defending. This part of the thread is getting pretty boring, though.

No it's not an attempt at that. Its simply putting a welcome perspective on things since everyone was busy second guessing without having any stakes. He simply tried to enrich the discussion and IMO did.

Claiming someone is trying to suppress your critique, when no one is, now IS the "Peak HN" though :)

Whether or not you agree with this it has always been the core message of Lessig's campaign: Getting special interest money out of politics should be first priority, and until we get enough citizens to care about that, it'll be extremely difficult to pass legislation that goes against any special interest.

Yes, his strategy for getting the message out was broken, but he understands his campaign was quixotic in its initial state (referendum president), and has since agreed the idea was "stupid". Since the beginning, he made known what he really wanted, at a minimum, was the chance to make this issue more of a priority among all candidates.

This is just my opinion, but being a "spoiler" for the party never really appeared to be a likely outcome for Lessig, nor did being an agent for change. The only prospect he ever really had was one of failure. Failure to deliver his message to the masses. And it's a shame, because I think a grass roots movement focused on this message might be successful with the right person and strategy behind it.

People on "our" side of the ideological spectrum are going to have an unpleasant reckoning soon with the fact that the governing that really matters happens at the state and local level. State office campaigns build a back-bench for federal politics, and the states actually do serve as laboratories for democracy, and most of the rulemaking people come into contact with are state and city rules, not federal ones.

If you want to fight corruption in politics, start by finding a way to do it in your city or state, and then try to get the idea to spread to other states. That's how cannabis is going to end up legalized; it's how death- with- dignity legislation will happen; it's also how the GOP is going to carve out reproductive health rights.

Liberals suck at this. We control a fraction of the state legislatures that the GOP does and we haven't managed to leverage control over urban centers to mitigate that.

Meanwhile, the "outsider" liberals all tilt at federal windmills. What did Lessig think was going to happen in the parallel universe where he won? The President doesn't set campaign finance policy.

He could have run for a state government office and won.

Evidence that you are correct that the focus should be on state legislatures: Matt Yglesias's Vox story, "Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble." http://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9565119/democrats-in-deep-trou...

Wow, and here I thought I was just parroting a line Josaiah Bartlett had about school board elections in New Hampshire.

Whether nationally or at the state level, it helps the movement to have a figure on the presidential stage doing everything they can to bring special interest issues to light. Lessig's strategy was wrong, but don't think its failure should cause those after him to be discouraged. Although he probably would've had better success running for state office, Citizens United needs to be reversed, and I don't think a state-by-state movement while giving the issue little attention nationally is enough.

Although the example of marijuana legislation gaining momentum is relevant, I think it's incomparable as corruption and campaign finance reform legislation would have loads more money invested by special interest groups to oppose it.

I think it's a tough fight to be waged at any level, and the more exposure given to it the better.

And armchair liberals sit back and whine in their elitist towers. "You're doing it wrong!!!!!"

Ralph Nader reason for Iraq invasion? http://www.globalresearch.ca/ralph-nader-letter-to-george-w-...

Of the three major candidates in 2000, there's no question Nader was the least likely to support military intervention anywhere. His policy intentions, many of which I support unreservedly, aren't the issue.

The issue is that he had no chance of winning the 2000 election, and by staying in, he probably cost Gore the Presidency. There's a "dispute" over whether Nader was a spoiler, but that dispute relies on the notion that a very significant fraction of Nader's voters would have broken for George W. Bush, and --- remember the margin in Florida was razor thin --- ignores the indirect impact of Nader's campaign on Gore's support and turnout.

What gives the Nader spoiler charge so much electricity is the fact that his campaign was obviously and hopelessly doomed far in advance of election day, and yet he stuck with it in order to make a point. Well, he sure made his point alright.

Nader even concentrated on states where Bush and Gore were neck-and-neck.

> A first, eloquent protest came 10 days ago from a group of a dozen former 'Nader's Raiders,' who asserted that their former mentor had broken a promise not to campaign in states where he could hurt Gore and begged him to reconsider doing so.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-in...

It's an interesting point. How does one determine when one is past the point of being a spoiler and into being a serious candidate? It seems that there is a self-fulfilling prophesy here, wherein if one is concerned about being a spoiler, then one will begin drawing votes away from other viable candidates as soon as they enter politics, and thus spoil; but yet, in order to ever become a viable candidate in the first place, one must do that.

Perhaps the counter-argument is that you could enter politics away from an election, to "test the waters" without drawing support away from other candidates. But that's not a serious way to enter politics. Or you could enter politics at a different level, a lower level. I don't know if that's a viable way for Lessig to accomplish his aim. The same type of problems he's talking about might exist in other political spheres, but they aren't the ones that seem to concern him primarily. I can buy those arguments, but they leave me uneasy for a reason I can't characterize. It reminds me somewhat of the process of becoming the mayor of the city of London [1], where you're only allowed to run once several groups of people approve of you.

It seems like Lessig is being held to a different standard, almost, because he is entering politics with a specific policy objective in mind, rather than because he himself wants to become a leader. Most politicians enter politics simply to win and become leader, and so they can be judged by whether they win. Lessig is entering to accomplish an aim, and so it is possible to criticize his candidacy on the basis of whether he'll accomplish the aim, to a degree greater than other candidates. "By entering politics to accomplish that policy, you are being disruptive rather than helpful" is the charge, and I agree that it is a reasonable charge. A President needs to be an overall effective leader, and not ignore everything but their single pet issue. From that perspective I agree with the criticism. Yet I still feel that the charge of being a spoiler is a circular argument in some way. He's only a spoiler because he's a spoiler, and once you stop defining him as a spoiler, he becomes a serious candidate. Now of course, we have reason to believe that he is not in fact a serious candidate, which is a valid criticism, but it seems like that should be the criticism ("you are going to be a bad leader because you're only focused on one issue"), rather than "you are a spoiler".

The underlying problem seems to be with how winner-takes-all voting works.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c

Lessig and Nader are so different though. Lessig is being perhaps overly cautious, and bailing after the Democratic Party changed the rules and excluded him from the debates (boo). Nader stayed in the 2000 race until the end, even campaigning in states where Gore and Bush were neck-and-neck.

He's not bailing. He specifically refused to rule out running as an independent and is still taking donations. He also left the primary trashing the Democratic party.

While Nader realized he would lose the election, he made a big point of trying to capture 5% of the vote and also trying to raise additional awareness of his core agenda.

Winning 5% of the vote would have enabled the party to qualify for Federal Election Funds in the following election. http://www.fec.gov/press/bkgnd/fund.shtml

Dont forget that these days $$$ = share of voice.

One important way in which they are different is that Lessig (and his zany wacky deeply unserious I-don't-wanna-be-president campaign for president) has no appreciable constituency.

Yes, it was totally Nader and Nader voters that caused the invasion of Iraq, not the 50 million people who voted for Bush, nor the hordes of people who cheered on going to war, nor the butthurt NYPD that suppressed protests (only mentioned due to personal experience), nor the mass media that started fanning the flames and beating the drums before the dust had even settled.

Let us remember, Bush II ran on a platform of no nation building. Then an opportune event happened that made it time to perform some already-planned nation building. Why are we so sure Gore would not have approved the same invasion?

The protest vote is called so for a reason. This system takes your dissent and converts it to support by frightening you with a scarier bogeyman. I would respect its elegance if we weren't all trapped in it.

This argument might make you feel better, and it sure sounds sympathetic, but it doesn't change the fact that Nader's hopeless campaign gave the election to Bush. It's not as if the concept of spoiler candidates is new to US politics; it's how we got Clinton, the President in office at when Nader ran!

I feel fine with my decision and would do the same thing again. In fact, I voted third party in 2k4 as well.

The thing is, I don't really care that Bush II won. In fact I miss those days when most of my peers were anti-government since their team hadn't won.

I am not particularly interested in what flavor of shit I will be forced to eat, and I won't legitimize the process by asking for the one that seems less foul.

I don't blame you. There was no reason for you to know any better. I blame Nader.

I could say the exact same thing about my younger self with respect to having voted at all.

The argument that a vote for nader is a vote for bush is flawed. The basic premise of voting is that you vote to support a candidate and or a set of ideas you align with. Its a step better than voting "none of the above" as it provides an idea of what you would prefer.

The concept of voting for the "lesser of two evils" just further perpetuates the mess that we find ourselves in today.

Ideologically, from a single voter's perspective, you're right. But practically, and looking at the entire population, it's not. The first past the post voting system we use will always result in two prominent parties, and the spoiler effect certainly exists.

I've always found this video a good explanation of the problems of our voting system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

That's a rather intriguing causal chain of responsibility, though. You didn't say that Nader was a potential chain reaction for the election of Bush leading up to Iraq. No. You quite clearly said he was the reason for Iraq, and that is nothing but frothing lunacy. What kind of perverse ethics could lead to anyone but the actor who affirmed invasion (Bush) bearing responsibility for it? Or, to paraphrase from a scene in Kieslowski's film Przypadek, is someone who bumps into a person causing them to miss a train, leading them to encounter an old acquaintance, reuniting, becoming a doctor and taking the place of a colleague to deliver a lecture in another country, only to die in a plane crash - is the one who bumped him responsible for the doctor then dying in the crash? Preposterous.

I'm going to assume, I think safely, that a response that characterizes my comment as "frothing lunacy" is not one asking for further discussion with me.

Not necessarily, it's just a dramatic expression of bewilderment. Besides the whole issue of whether Nader being a spoiler and costing Gore the election as a result is even factual [1][2] (or just another intriguing but ill-supported legend like that of the disparate perceptions of Nixon/JFK on TV and on radio), there is the problem of whether blaming the person subject to an inefficiency in FPTP is overly disproportionate relatively to blaming the FPTP inefficiency itself, or the person actually responsible for the military intervention. Blaming the spoiler strikes me as a compositional fallacy at best, ethically repugnant at worse. Hell, we could even make the case that the spoiler is a victim.

[1] http://prorev.com/green2000.htm

[2] http://politizine.blogspot.com/2004/02/debunking-myth-ralph-...

This is another example of an exculpatory analysis for Nader trying to convince readers that many of his voters would have broken for Bush instead of Gore if he had dropped out. Like Wikipedia, it points out that Floridian Democrats voted in anomalous numbers for Bush, implying that Floridian Naderites were the same --- which of course they were not.

You do realize that if Nader dropped out, "his" voters could have voted for another third party, a write-in, or even simply not voted, right?

Sure they could have. But statistically, we know that they wouldn't. They'd have handed the election to Gore. Nader's core supporters are liberal, and Bush was decidedly not that.

Since you really insist on analyzing things in a two party framework -

It seems then that the democrats simply overplayed their hand from 1992-2000. They were too brazenly incongruent with their grassroots support, causing their constituents to cry uncle and look elsewhere. Getting the people to line up for what their sponsors have bought is the fundamental game, and they failed.

So in effect, Bush's invasion of Iraq was actually set in motion by Clinton. I mean, in addition to that actual bombing he authorized.

I do not understand this argument at all. Clinton would not have invaded Iraq. Neither would Gore. To get an invasion of Iraq, you need to put Bush in the White House.

You misunderstand my above comment. I'm saying that by your reasoning with Nader, we can also say that Clinton caused Bush's actual invasion.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party each must maintain two different facets - the values they preach to their grassroots support (for votes), and the policies that their sponsors purchase (for money to run campaigns).

Clinton failed to sell his actions to traditionally democratic voters, causing them to look elsewhere instead of falling into line and voting for Gore.

We're sure Gore wouldn't have "approved the same invasion" because...

Wait. Were you even fucking AROUND in 2002? W didn't just "approve" the invasion. Are you aware of recent history?

Let me fill you in. Gore wouldn't have "approved" of invading Iraq because his entire fucking administration would not have been packed with Nixon-era holdovers who were criminally obsessed with re-invading Iraq. This isn't complex or controversial. There is no fucking chance that Gore would have invaded Iraq.

Sure, Bush II's administration was packed with such people. But it's a stretch to say the inverse would have been true for Gore, especially since he never named a cabinet. National policy had been decided some time before that - remember Clinton bombing etc? Your referenced gang of holdovers shows exactly how that works.

It's not a stretch to say that Gore would not have filled his cabinet with Neoconservatives. He would not have.

Only Neoconservatives can invade Iraq?

The democratic party is traditionally better at selling domestic totalitarianism, but what exactly would be the point of letting an opportunity such as 11SEP2001 pass them by? I don't think the democratic sponsorship had a different country lined up to attack, and going after Iraq was already on the agenda, so they would have been beating those exact same war drums. There would probably have been more sustained bombing and less ground forces, but I'd call that a flavor.

No, only Neocons would have invaded Iraq. They're called "Neocons" because they break from the Baker/Scowcroft isolationist foreign policy that was mainstream in conservatism at the time. The "neo" part is almost literally "new willingness to send ground troops".

I'll concede the point since "invasion" implies the large ground force and land occupation, and democrats seem to favor death from above. I do think that Iraq would still have been invaded sometime, given that repaving the country was on the bipartisan national agenda. Those rats in W's cabinet would have been waiting in the wings for 4 more years.

Fundamentally I'm not going to support terrible event A in an attempt to stop terrible event B from happening, especially when there is a large contingent of people with different priorities doing the reverse. That's a setup for manufacturing popular support for a lot of terrible events.

Also is predicated on the notion that Nader voters would have went for Gore. That's hilarious. Do these people actually know true leftists? I bet he even thinks if Sanders doesn't win (likely) that we would vote for Hillary.

Never going to happen.

I also think Lessig’s campaign was an absurdity.

But blaming Ralph Nader for the invasion of Iraq is far far below your usual standard Thomas. Even singling out Nader as an explanation for Bush’s election is pretty weak sauce.

You might first blame everyone in the Bush Administration who didn’t resign, everyone in Congress who voted to authorize Bush’s actions, foreign heads of state who went along and everyone at the UN who took the Americans WMD claims at face value, the entirety of the mainstream US media including especially the New York Times, the previous several Republican presidents who set the stage in the Middle East, US and international oil companies, the Saudis, etc.

Or if we’re just talking about the Bush/Gore election, how about blaming the Supreme Court who decided the election 5:4, Gore who gave up instead of fighting more about it, all the local officials around the country who supported efforts to disenfranchise voters, whoever designed that “butterfly ballot”, all the people in aggregate who voted for Bush or any of the above members of Congress, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in congress who were such opportunistic spineless SOBs that folks on the left spent years thoroughly fed up with them, whoever was running Gore’s ineffective grassroots campaign/GOTV efforts and did a terrible job of convincing anyone that he’d be at all different than Clinton, etc.

I agree with you. Saying Nader "turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq" was a really dumb way to have put it. I think my reaction to the "pox on both parties" notion is more allergic than rational.

I think there's some culpability with Nader, the magnitude of what went wrong with Bush is very high, so even a small multiplier is a big deal. But Nader is surely not the most important factor in the Iraq war.

When a team wins in football, don't you only count the final field goal that decided the game? Or do the other 60 minutes count too?

Gore lost his home state but Nader cost him the election. Gore wanted a partial recount in Florida (when a full recount would have been in his favor) but Nader cost him the election.

Curse those Green party voters for not falling in line!

Nader sapped support from Gore throughout the entire election.

Again, the problem isn't that it's wrong to run for President. The issue is that if you know you're pulling support in a close election, and you have no chance of winning, then it becomes legitimate to ask whether the point you're trying to make by running is worth the cost.

Our electoral system is broken in that it doesn't allow voters to reasonably express preferences which aren't one of the two mainstream options because of this spoiler effect. I'm not sure what the correct answer is, to complain about how "both parties are terrible" and vote for the mainstream party anyway and get more of the same and know that it will never change or to vote how you actually feel knowing that the system is rigged against allowing you to do that. I can't really fault someone for doing either.

I agree that our system is broken, but that's not news, and when you take actions within that system that cause harm, you remain culpable for the harm; you can't just appeal to a different electoral system.

The point is well-taken in that votes wasted on Nader were in all likelihood votes for Gore, which would have prevented all the subsequent Supreme Court nonsense, bypassed the "butterfly ballot" effect, and...I'm sorry, your other examples are just reaching. No Nader, Gore wins.

It seems to me that one should only run for President if one actually wishes to be President, and that's the absurdity of Lessig's campaign.

Don't lay the blame at his feet. Just as Bushies can't blame Perot for Clinton.

No, everyone deserves the votes they get (earned). He deserved those votes as much as Gore or Bush deserved the votes they got. Lest we forget, the congress with lots of Dems voted for the war. So, no, no politician can claim another "stole" "their" vote. They only get the votes they deserve by which I mean the ones they win fair and square. Nader won his votes fair and square.

This is almost exclusively an American ideal. Our founding was based on being ill-advised. I love that. Sometimes you have to be rogue.

Thats missing the essence of that quote IMO.

Of course people are going to fail even again and again. You are somehow assuming that there are ways to know. But if anything we learned it is that it's trough trial and error and luck that we mostly succeed not trough armchair strategy sessions.

You seem to have an issue with TR that clouds your ability to understand whats important in that quote IMO.

It's a kind of "Peak HN" when someone manages to accuse someone else of shilling for the anti-Teddy-Roosevelt lobby.

Yeah but thats not what I did.

He is not missing it, he is addressing when it does not fit the situation and points out that this is one of those moments.

There's a sweetspot with weighing planning and doing.

How many people do you think advised Obama against running for president?

You don't know before you try. You don't even know if Lessig very well knew that the didn't have a big chance but just wanted to see if he could build political momentum behind is case.

Of course we can have opinions about what he did but ultimately those are not important. Even my opinions about those opinions are not important.

The only thing that is important is that some people try and whether they fail or succeed the fact that they do, despite the obviousness of the failure that we can sit and look at afterwards it's more important that someone does that than someone comment on it.

In the political game giving voice even to minority of the voters is an important part of the democratic proces. If not enough voter gets behind it they fail but at least they have the opportunity to try.

At least to me that was the gist of the quote and the reason for the quote.

Being able to claim that Lessig was obviously wrong for even trying has zero value.

There are far more people in the world who will happily point out the obvious truth that if your undertaking doesn't succeed it will fail, than people who will give a rational analysis of why a given undertaking is a bad idea. Teddy Roosevelt's quote is addressed towards the former, not the latter.

There's a sleight of hand happening in your comment. He's not saying "if you don't succeed, you'll fail". He's saying "if you don't succeed, you'll fail, and could harm the world in the process". But by reframing it in the most uncharitable possible way, you've made that sensible point sound ridiculous.

Taking risks has no meaning if there are no downside consequences.

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