This past Saturday I was in lovely Kiama and decided to go for a wander through the cliffs past the Kiama blowhole. Just before the path to the cliffs, the council put up a sign to the effect of: “Warning! This is risky business.
Going past this sign places in you in danger of: slipping and falling off a rock, breaking your bones, death and injury, being swept out to sea by a wave, etc etc. Proceed entirely at your own risk.”
How stupid, I thought in a kneejerk reaction, and what a waste. Is this a case of the council cynically covering themselves legally or a case of hyper-political-correctness? I mean how stupid do you have to be to be careful when near cliffs? But as I walked on I thought a bit more and realised I was wrong. For instance, even the average person might not have thought of the extra danger of being swept away by a wave, and having seen the sign they are probably a little less likely to be swept away. And, even if someone really is really stupid, to the point of having no survival instinct, isn’t being against the sign the equivalent of saying stupid people deserve to die? I think so.
It’s common to decry warning signs that seem to be stupid as an example of “political correctness gone awry”. And of course when done to avoid lawsuits it is stupid since it’s ridiculous to be able to sue when you get hurt from a lack of common sense. But a lack of common sense should not be a capital crime — and in fact I was conscious that the Kiama sign probably made me pay a tiny bit more attention. A sign is cheap, even a stupid sign. And yet, if that Kiama blowhole sign has been there 10 years, it’s likely that it’s saved one life. That’s a whole lot cheaper than a $100,000 helicopter rescue we’re willing to perform on the same lack of common sense when it actually sends someone over a cliff. I guess it’s because the victim’s already there, it’s hard to say they shouldn’t get a rescue. But a future victim you’ve never met? It’s a lot easier to say, “stuff em, let’s not put stupid signs up”.
Another ironic thing is that a lot of people against stupid warning signs are also against the death penalty. So, they are not ok with someone dying for murder or rape but seemingly ok with letting the universe inflict a capital punishment for mere stupidity. (I know the analogy’s imperfect since the death penalty is after the crime whereas a warning sign requires pre-planning, but still…) I’m sure I’ve done several things in my life that were as stupid as not being careful about waves sweeping you away — by that count I shouldn’t be here. I’m sure you’ve done the same too, where survival was the result of NOT being unlucky. Like Eliezer Yudkowsky (can’t find a link to his specific post), I don’t believe in capital punishment full stop. No buts.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know I’m anti-death (more on this later). Of course, the death of some is no tragedy since for those with enough evil behind them the world immediately becomes a better place.
tragedy of loss (evil people). But regardless of this — and even if you’re not specifically anti-death — these warning signs show that the death of most people is an unfathomable and irredeemable tragedy. It is so high that I don’t think there’s much difference between the death of someone who needs a warning sign and the death of an intelligent person making reasonable contributions to society (I’d put the first at say 10000 badness points and the second at 11000).
Which brings me to the Darwin Awards. It’s nice to laugh at stupidity, and I think laughing at death and tragedy is an essential part of being a person. But the problem with something like the Darwin Awards is they make it easy to forget that it’s still a tragedy. People say as a joke that the award winners have done us a “Darwinian” favour by dying, but of course they haven’t. And again the same people would decry eugenics (which is the non-jokey version of the Darwin Awards). But if you read such stuff regularly, the line between jokeyness and reality becomes blurred.
A final point of provocation. Cryonics are available in many countries and whatever your opinion on the feasibility of it working, I hope you’ll agree that signing up for cryonics raises your chance of being revived after death from 0% to something greater. So, in a way, most of the deaths in industrialised nations are at least probabilistically preventable. In a way, all of our deaths from natural causes are Darwin Awards…
15 comments ↓
For a really stupid sign, look here.
I saw you post this before but I didn’t stop for that sec for the sign’s true stupidity to sink in!
You have fallen into the nanny state’s trap.
How dare you think it okay to forcibly take money from me to stop stupid people doing stupid things? Are we not adults? Are we not big enough to make a risk assessment and act accordingly?
Your problem is that you think there’s a pool of money coming from nowhere and you think it cost effective to put up a sign:
If the rescue service is government provided then it is right that the government put up a sign, but that calls into question whether the service should be a public service!
If the rescue service is charitable organisation then they can put up a sign as that is good value for them, but the government should not!
I agree with you being anti-death, but not at any cost. There is no value or need to trample my rights to liberty and/or property to stop an autonomous adult doing something reckless – that is their right; but they have no right to expect the rest of society to bail them out if their reckless act gets them into trouble.
I think your sign needs to be supplemented – by a sign saying:
“This end is the wrong end: =>”
It’s not about how stupid people are, or the medical costs. It’s about the protection that the sign affords against frivolous law suits. The risk is clever lawyers, not dopey pedestrians.
They are good for a laugh, but hardly praiseworthy.
Keddaw, my post did not say anything about funding, rather about the fact that it’s silly to support much more inefficient services like rescues (whether by the government or otherwise) whilst being against warning signs.
Another comparison might be with public funding for medical research. If you think it’s ok to tax people to fund medical research then from my post you should be ok with the same being used for warning signs. If on the other hand you don’t think publicly funded medical research is ok then I don’t think this is a position it’s even worth the time to mount an argument against.
James, I did mention the legal aspect but as per the post there is a good reason to think these signs save enough lives to be cost effective so that even if the threat of frivolous lawsuits is removed (as I think it should be), I would still be for a certain amount of warning signs, even those you think good enough for a laugh.
“If on the other hand you don’t think publicly funded medical research is ok then I don’t think this is a position it’s even worth the time to mount an argument against.”
Sorry, what?
Medical research can be done in research institutes (universities), charities or corporations. There is no need to take money by force (tax) and spend it on research. I’d rather they spent my tax on that than half the things they do spend it on, but they don’t need to is my point.
Just to explain/clarify, I consider the idea that nothing should be publicly funded (which includes medical research as the extreme case since there are such obvious problems with private-only funding) as an extreme form of libertarianism that I don’t take seriously enough to think it needs refutation.
You list universities as alternatives to public funding which I’m not sure about: most universities receive a combination of public and private funds but it seems the 2 are the only alternatives, it’s not like universities have funding that’s neither public nor non-public.
If medical research is your rock star example of why libertarianism is wrong (it is, and the extreme version certainly is, but for reasons that are not medical research – plus it is the only morally and logically consistent position to hold) then please give me one example of a government funded medical breakthrough that would/could not have happened through charitable donations or some other private sector means.
Your point about universities was expected, but you have to remember that even though universities often receive public funds the research they do is rarely directed by the central government so it is unfair to give a government credit for any breakthroughs they have. Also, universities could easily be funded without state funds, if every student signed an agreement to pay an extra 1% tax on earnings that went direct to the institute that trained them (possibly with an upper, or time, limit) then they’d be self-funded in no time – the successful ones anyway.
A lot of this I might have to delay for an upcoming post (ie a proper response). But before I make any response can you please clarify your bracketed statement?
(it is, and the extreme version certainly is, but for reasons that are not medical research – plus it is the only morally and logically consistent position to hold)
You seem to be saying that:
1. libertarianism is wrong
2. the extreme version is wrong
3. libertarianism is the only morally and logically consistent position to hold
I couldn’t manage any other reading than that and these obviously don’t square with each other
You are right they don’t square – how can that be? Well, we are dealing with irrational people so that is why we can see contradictory statements that are all true.
1. Libertarianism is not wrong, not exactly. People have come to have expectations of what is provided by the state, what socially acceptable rules we have to abide by, and to change that immediately would lead to social unrest (at best) hence libertarianism is unworkable in the short-term. Best example would be health care – if we removed state health care instantly and relied on charitable donations (insurance and/or a multitude of non-tax based schemes) then people would be dying in the streets. It would take generations for people to get used to the idea of giving the amount they have taken in tax to charity for their own good.
2. Extreme libertarianism has some obvious flaws, children and animal rights being the most obvious examples where there is no simple logical solution on the conflict of rights.
3. Libertarianism is the only system that demands equality and holds that no one person or group of people have any right to tell someone else what to do when it doesn’t impact them. It is an obvious extension of atheism as far as I can tell yet the vast majority of atheists are left of centre on economic issues and the vast majority of
libertarians are right wing Christians. Weird.
Every other philosophy has conflicting core beliefs or is inherently against human nature. e.g.
a. Communism can stand on its own beliefs but human nature dooms it to failure because we are 1. lazy and will take a free ride on those who work hard and the flip side is that we have a sense of fairness that will call out against those taking the free ride; 2. individual and autonomous which leads to massive dissent against an authoritarian state which will make communism crumble form the inside.
b. The centrist politics most democracies have values individuality, social cohesion, security and
That’s the quick version since it’s off topic – but it’s your blog and I can provide a longer (more coherent) argument if you like – or write up a decent response and provide a link. The reason I haven’t is because I am struggling with the difficult elements such as an individual’s right to own weapons (if they have that right it can have no limit up to WMDs imo) and children – they are humans and yet not autonomous, do parents have fundamental rights over them and/or do they have responsibilities towards them? Hard questions with easy answers under different political views but those views have their own logical problems.
I have something similar planned as a separate post some time so that might be when I respond to some of these. However what I found interesting is you said that privatising medicine all the way will cause people to die — what I mean by extreme libertarianism is the reaction that this is an unfortunate consequence but the “freedom” of such a scenario is so important it would trump the “merely” instrumental fact that people will be on average worse off.
The freedom to drive cars necessarily leads to the death of people in accidents. Freedom to mine coal leads to deaths of people in coal mines. etc. etc.
We allow people to choose to smoke, drink and eat fast food. These are all related to health issues and lead to people’s deaths, do you propose to ban them?
We allow people to die of curable diseases based on the cost of treatment and expected quality of life, so don’t try and tell me the current situation in any country is some kind of health utopia.
Every public policy decision goes through a cost benefit analysis which takes into account that people will die and places a value on that – which is ‘incidental’ in the final decision since that is based purely on the costs and benefits, not what constitute the costs.
I’m not sure why people get so caught up in healthcare and are so insistent that the incredibly inefficient, bureaucratic government are the only people who can run the whole system. Why not have them regulate and pay for it, but they are awful at running it. The NHS in the UK is approximately the 6th largest employer in the world, that can’t be right.
Was this meant as a reply to my last comment or a general statement?
Also does the NHS being the 6th largest employer in the world (actually the 3rd) really count to you as evidence that the government is awful at running healthcare?
France has a similar population but much better healthcare than the UK, but a much smaller employment footprint. It was simply pointing out that governments are useless at running almost everything – they could regulate healthcare and even pay for it, but there are too many conflicts of interest to get the best value for money.
It was meant as a reply to your seeming incredulity that anyone could see people dying as merely ‘instrumental’ (I assume you meant incidental) in changing policy on healthcare. I was pointing out that we do this ALL the time.
Principles must trump individual (especially statistical) suffering. Otherwise we reach a point where we are all perfectly safe but unable to do anything worthwhile as it might be risky.
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