Because a black swan event has occurred, life is anything but normal right now, and people are generally concerned about things that are far more important.
As an individual, you are responsible for yourself, and preparing for every improbable event would not be a good time / life enjoyment trade off.
As a society, we are responsible for not only our society, but we also set the stage for the entire future of the human race. Though an improbable event probably won’t happen tomorrow, we can say with a certain amount of assurance that it will happen in the future.
Therefore we can and should prepare for these events.
A Black Swan in this context would be a shock to the system that no one saw coming nor could see coming. For instance a change in the sun which would drastically warm or cool the earth far beyond the effects of CO2. Maybe a natural disaster or an industrial accident that had a cascade effect that would reach beyond what anyone could have seen coming. You can't do anything about either of these things but that won't stop people from suggesting it could have been avoided with the right (or more of): "fill in the blank with your favorite solution to all problems in life."
The occasional occurrence of an unlikely event does not make it reasonable to arrange your life around avoiding it. See: kidnapping by a stranger, plane crashes, suddenly having a photo of yourself go viral on the internet.
Bad shit happens to a minority of people every day, permanently disrupting their lives and forcing them to abandon long-term plans. The majority remain oblivious and see an enduring status quo.
Suddenly a Black Swan craps on everyone at once, and a great many people are whining 'why is this happening to me' and 'when will someone fix this so I can go back to my routine'.
Guess what? Your routine is probably fucked. Throw it out, get used to the new normal, and accept that no one knows how to fix this (yet?), just like every other time we get hit by a context-changing problem.
Of course some people get too attached to their context, and those who come later and find their remains might label such events as 'out-of-context problems'...
You are arguing that because very negative but also very unlikely events that we can't control, may happen, we shouldn't as society try to improve the conditions of our lives?
Thinking you understand what a situation is going to be like ahead of time and seeing what that situation actually is like when it happens are 2 very different things.
The world is full of stories of people who attempt something and then get upset or disheartened or unhappy when it comes to pass. Why does everyone have to assume something nefarious here?
I agree with your premise, but let's just not forget that we're humans with a limited life-span and our brains aren't used to dealing with events that happen this rarely. It's understandable why we may all have been caught off-guard. It's a "black swan" relative to our understanding of life.
My opinion is that people who are negatively affected by difficult circumstances outside their control are usually driven to wishful thinking and operate under assumptions, and a mental model, that are far too removed from reality.
Just watch your friends the next time your group gathering is inconvenience by a forced change in plans, and watch out for the first person who becomes angry or yells out "oh great!", etc.
Things go wrong, sure. But at the same time you can't plan your life according to worst case scenario's, you won't get anywhere that way. Have some contingency plans, no need to overdo it.
OTOH, it is generally the case that the outcome is unpredictable and we like to tell the stories where it is destructive even if in the average case it is overall beneficial.
Sometimes things go very very wrong. That's why they invented insurance.
Most people act 'good' most of the time. That's why this whole society thing stays cohesive. But, everyone has a probability to act badly. Just consider someone who may have had a stroke that considerably changes their personality.
A small portion of people act 'evil' under more common situations.
It's odd that airbnb doesn't seem to risk mitigate these sorts of black swan events. They wouldn't lose much having a 100% loss redemption clause. It would seem that the property owner would be much less likely to game the system than the visitor.
Black swan events are unpredictable and outside of what is normally expected.
reply