Comment by jlos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jlos | Hacker News Reader

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I think the problem "de-risking" childhood is only an instance of the bigger problem of what Roger Scruton calls "Risk De-aggregation". Risk Deaggregation is taking a single point of risk (and its associated metric), and optimizing to reduce that risk as if it exists in isolation from other risks. I.e. Risk occurs in aggregate, not as individual threats. Risk deaggregation happens everywhere from Climate Change policy, to Covid, to children.

I think this type of risk deaggregation arises from the fact that in a sufficiently complicated space (climate, economy, children, etc) there are really only two heuristics:

1) Ignore all but a manageable number of variables and optimize for them

2) Recognize a larger number of necessary variable, acknowledge there is no optimal solution, and balance the trade offs between those variables. [0]

Heuristic 1 is the easiest, requires no nuance, and seems the type of thing our political and media class love to latch onto. Heuristic 2 actually requires admitting you don't get everything you want, or at least the things you want will cost you something you dont.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing

A related way of thinking of these might be legible Vs illegible.

Legible risks are mostly "heuristic 1." They can be measured, quantified, discussed in discrete terms. You can be yelled at over legible things, like ignoring stranger danger on a subway. It's harder to yell about nuance.

Illegible things are less discrete. The consequences, some hard to describe, many unknown, of growing up without freedom and self reliance. There are dangers here too, but they're more nebulous.

It's hard to justify, externally, a trade-off between illegible gains like building a personality and legible dangers like kidnapping. Hard, but not impossible.

> Illegible things are less discreet.

Illegible things are less discrete, but probably more "discreet", on average.

corrected

It's a problem everywhere, from bad KPI's to public policy. We have a bias towards metrics that are easy to measure.

It's much easier to measure large effects on a single metric, than small effects distributed over a wide range of metrics. Concentrated effects that affect one individual/org/group are favored over distributed effects that affect everyone. There are so many examples of policies where this thought process has been applied.

Not even easy to measure, just ones that feel like having big impact, unpredictable timing and are not cumulative. That's not a terrible heuristic as black swan events do happen, but then again common risks need to be optimized for too.

Humans don't seem to be very good at managing risks. From an evolutionary perspective, we can only look at what others are doing and follow along. Breaking it out in terms of percentage weights doesn't give us a feel for practical steps to take.

I’ve seen risk deaggregarion at work and wonder if it stems from how easy it is to shoot an idea down with a counter example.

E.g. Should we switch from “status quo” to “change”? Good idea, but if we move to “change” then “this one bad thing will happen”.

A solution might be to use the lieutenant’s cloud, an idea I learned on a thinking course.

With this you simply ask why “bad thing” and then offer a suggestion that solves the why, not necessarily the bad thing.

This is probably easier to do at a closed organisation. In the public eye with an emotive topic like possibility of child abduction, a lot of sensitivity is needed.

“Risk de-aggregation” sounds like it edifies an implicit perspective that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Is there a specific reference you might recommend looking at, for Roger Scruton’s take?

It's in his book "How to think seriously about the planet: a case for environmental conservatism"

The book itself is worth the read on its own. He has a very specific meaning of conservatism that doesn't map well to political landscapes. The book doesn't dispute climate change, and seems to basically accept it, but creates a framework for dealing with it from a grassroots bottom up perspective rather than an international top down perspective.

I'm trying to look this up but the only hit for "Roger Scruton Risk De-aggregation" is this comment. Any recommendations on where I can read more about this? I've found other Scruton articles that talk about swing sets and stuff but not the term specifically.

It's in his book "How to think seriously about the planet: a case for environmental conservatism"

Dont have the page, but the book is good enough that it's worth reading

Thanks! I'll check it out.

Just so I'm clear, risk de-aggregation is when I worry and optimise about the risks of drink driving, and end up killing myself by [drunk walking in front of a bus]/[accepting a lift from a serial killer]/[Cancer I got in the smokey bar I was really careful not to drive home from]

This is a terrible analogy though, because these aren't aggregate risks (one is a risk you present to other people because of your actions, the others are risks to yourself from your own actions).

maybe you worry about drunk driving, so you never leave your house again and die alone and penniless due to tremendous opportunity costs of avoiding all possibility of a drunk driver ever hitting you.

Thanks! That makes sense.

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