I’m not trying to say folks who espouse robustness are fools—Until I encountered it, I had not thought of this line of reasoning myself. As I understand it, the point is that sometimes the connotations of such words lead in different directions from if we thought more carefully. Yes, >1km asteroid detection is well-covered now. So is next thing to move onto is asteroid deflection? You can see how an argument would run, that since physical annihilation is so final and well-understood, it wins on robustness grounds...
I’m not trying to say folks who espouse robustness are fools—Until I encountered it, I had not thought of this line of reasoning myself. As I understand it, the point is that sometimes the connotations of such words lead in different directions from if we thought more carefully. Yes, >1km asteroid detection is well-covered now. So is next thing to move onto is asteroid deflection? You can see how an argument would run, that since physical annihilation is so final and well-understood, it wins on robustness grounds...