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Tracy Gustilo's avatar

To act or not to act, risk or not risk (as if not acting is not risky). I was despairing of real conversation happening between equals on Substack as platform, but here it is. Yay. 😁

To the point, isn't there a difference between personal action and policy creation (business or government)? Governments in particular, when they act, are using public resources (coercively extracted) and committing them over whatever time frame (often way too long), subjecting them to political machinations and fallout, often with little to no adequate oversight and minimal democratic redress.

Time scales -- a critical factor in gauging uncertainty -- are tough to crack, on a par with spatial scales. Humans can only think so far ahead. Should we act beyond a reasonable time scale of thought? Humans can only think so far abroad. Should we act beyond a reasonable spatial scale of thought? It's not just a matter of uncertainty or risk in deciding whether and how to act (or refrain from).

By personality, I tend to be risk-taking in thought, risk-averse in action. There's a self-contradiction there. My action (lack thereof) fails the integrity test vis a vis thought. I wouldn't be a fan of doing without thinking, but doing -- with reflection -- offers the best food for improved thought after the fact (assuming we survive). Else, the thinking is all just speculation. All the more reason to "think what we are doing" -- implying we *are* doing!

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Stephen Greenleaf's avatar

You’ve addressed a real set of problems, especially regarding the relationship between beliefs and action. To act is to believe that some desired outcome can be gained. The probability of achieving the desired outcome may vary greatly, from virtual certainty to a snowball’s chance in hell. And in the realm of human affairs, predictability is most fraught. Nature has laws, humans have habits. Nature can vary from the essentially certain (the “law” of gravity) to the overwhelming complexity of predicting the weather very far out (or even this afternoon), down to the quantum level of uncertainty. And then we humans add to all this our strategic interactions (we’re constantly playing “games” with one another) and our hidden agendas. In view of all this, I suggest that the legal system (common law, anyway) with its varying standards of proof has a lot to offer, also our legal concept of torts, especially negligence. Probability standards abound! In negligence, we look at the probability of a given harm arising from a given course of conduct AND the magnitude of the anticipated (or possible) harm. We all have to act on suppositions and we all hold opinions, but how strongly and how wisely we choose to act (or not) on those suppositions varies greatly with each circumstance. What we need is wisdom to discern the dependable from the faulty. It’s an attainment that never allows rest.

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