These comments are helpful but I’m still having a difficult time zeroing in on a guiding heuristic here. And I feel mildly frustrated by the counterexamples in the same way I do reading “well, they were always nice to me” comments on a post about a bad actor who deeply harmed someone or hearing someone who routinely drives drunk say “well, I’ve never caused an accident.” I think most (but not all) of my list falls into a category something like “fine or tolerable 9 times out of 10, but really bad, messy, or harmful that other 1 time such that it may make those other 9 times less/not worth it.” I’m not sure of the actual probabilities and they definitely vary by bullet point.
In your case in particular, I’ll note that a good chunk of your examples either directly involve Julia or involve you (the spouse of Julia, who I assume had Julia as a sounding board). This seems like a rare situation of being particularly well-positioned to deal with complicated situations. Arguably, if anyone can navigate complicated or risky situations well, it will be a community health professional. I’d assume something like 95% of people will be worse at handling a situation that goes south, and maybe >25% of people will be distinctly bad at it. So what norms should be established that factor in this potential? And how do we universalize in a way that makes the risk clear, promotes open risk analysis, and prevents situations that will get really bad should they get bad?
the point of the example, as i see them, is to demonstrate that the positives are actually really high. it’s not situation when the positive is 10 and the negative is −1000, so the in expectation the value is negative.
those are situations when the positive value is 100 and maybe 1000, and it’s not clear to me that the −1000 value is good enough reason to avoid the sweet, sweet +1000 value.
so the disagreement is maybe about how high value it actually is. it’s not “fine or tolerable” it’s really important and valuable, in way that people who advocate against fail to see and account for. and this is why this comment was so valuable. it’s demonstrated, with examples, that it’s much more then just fine, but actually good. that choosing not-that would have been small tragedy.
These comments are helpful but I’m still having a difficult time zeroing in on a guiding heuristic here. And I feel mildly frustrated by the counterexamples in the same way I do reading “well, they were always nice to me” comments on a post about a bad actor who deeply harmed someone or hearing someone who routinely drives drunk say “well, I’ve never caused an accident.” I think most (but not all) of my list falls into a category something like “fine or tolerable 9 times out of 10, but really bad, messy, or harmful that other 1 time such that it may make those other 9 times less/not worth it.” I’m not sure of the actual probabilities and they definitely vary by bullet point.
In your case in particular, I’ll note that a good chunk of your examples either directly involve Julia or involve you (the spouse of Julia, who I assume had Julia as a sounding board). This seems like a rare situation of being particularly well-positioned to deal with complicated situations. Arguably, if anyone can navigate complicated or risky situations well, it will be a community health professional. I’d assume something like 95% of people will be worse at handling a situation that goes south, and maybe >25% of people will be distinctly bad at it. So what norms should be established that factor in this potential? And how do we universalize in a way that makes the risk clear, promotes open risk analysis, and prevents situations that will get really bad should they get bad?
the point of the example, as i see them, is to demonstrate that the positives are actually really high. it’s not situation when the positive is 10 and the negative is −1000, so the in expectation the value is negative.
those are situations when the positive value is 100 and maybe 1000, and it’s not clear to me that the −1000 value is good enough reason to avoid the sweet, sweet +1000 value.
so the disagreement is maybe about how high value it actually is. it’s not “fine or tolerable” it’s really important and valuable, in way that people who advocate against fail to see and account for. and this is why this comment was so valuable. it’s demonstrated, with examples, that it’s much more then just fine, but actually good. that choosing not-that would have been small tragedy.