Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Get over yourself times two
There's an op-ed in the New York Times today in response to the disaster in South Asia titled, "The Year the Earth Fought Back." What a dumb title. The editiorial itself is not bad at all; it goes over some theories about how geologic events are interrelated, no big whoop. But geez, what a silly title.
The idea of the Earth as a sentient being capable of revenge is a primitive, mythological one. The editorial was modern, scientific. If the point had been to show how our understanding of natural disasters has changed, then I'm buying an ironic title. But as it stands, just silly.
Judge Posner is a big legal dickhead that recently wrote a book on catastrophic events and what they're worth. (He values the Earth at $10 trillion -- where he got that number from only his proctologist knows for sure) In any case, he analyzes the tsunami phenomenon thusly (I'm making up my own numbers because I can't remember his) -- events like this one happen every 200 years or so and cost about 100,000 lives. Therefore, not taking precautions to prevent them costs 500 deaths per year. In the grand scheme of the problems in that area, that number per year is not significant enough to justify diverting money from other things, etc. etc.
I hate this kind of reasoning because to me, in this case 500 x 200 does not equal 100,000. This kind of economic analysis neglects both the psychological costs, which cannot be quantified, and the practical loss of so many people and possessions all at once.
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The idea of the Earth as a sentient being capable of revenge is a primitive, mythological one. The editorial was modern, scientific. If the point had been to show how our understanding of natural disasters has changed, then I'm buying an ironic title. But as it stands, just silly.
Judge Posner is a big legal dickhead that recently wrote a book on catastrophic events and what they're worth. (He values the Earth at $10 trillion -- where he got that number from only his proctologist knows for sure) In any case, he analyzes the tsunami phenomenon thusly (I'm making up my own numbers because I can't remember his) -- events like this one happen every 200 years or so and cost about 100,000 lives. Therefore, not taking precautions to prevent them costs 500 deaths per year. In the grand scheme of the problems in that area, that number per year is not significant enough to justify diverting money from other things, etc. etc.
I hate this kind of reasoning because to me, in this case 500 x 200 does not equal 100,000. This kind of economic analysis neglects both the psychological costs, which cannot be quantified, and the practical loss of so many people and possessions all at once.
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