Mistakes Are Inevitable. It’s The Ratio Of Total Benefits To Total Costs That Counts
The fact that an institution makes mistakes doesn’t mean that it should be abolished. The world is analog & nothing is perfect
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
People who are incapable of evaluating a risk and comparing that risk to the potential reward make really, really bad decisions. The adjective best describing those people is: “Stupid.”
Consider the people who refuse to travel by plane because they’re afraid that the plane will crash.
Most statistics about the risk of flying versus the risk of driving are expressed in terms of fatalities per mile traveled. Wikipedia will tell you that you’re 750 times more likely to be killed on a trip made in an automobile than you are if you make that same trip in a commercial airplane.
If you include injuries/mile as well as fatalities/mile the numbers really become shocking.
I calculate that you’re over 5,000 times more likely to be killed or injured if you drive 500 miles than if you make that same 500 mile trip in a commercial airplane.
Driving to L.A. is 5,000 times more likely to kill or injure you than flying to L.A. — 5,000!
But if you question someone who won’t fly because “planes aren’t safe” they’ll often say something like this:
- “Airlines are supposed to be safe, but what about that plane that crashed in Chicago last year and a hundred and fifty people were killed? And then there was that plane crash in Houston. And what about the crash last month in Italy? It seems like every week a plane is crashing someplace or other. Those things just aren’t safe.”
- “So, you’re not going to your brother’s wedding in L.A. this summer?”
- “Oh, no, I can’t miss that. I’m going to drive.”
This moron is going to drive to L.A. instead of flying to L.A. because airplanes aren’t 100% safe.
He’s never stopped to face the fact that driving is ALSO not 100% safe, or to consider that, in fact, driving is about 5,000 TIMES more unsafe than flying.
At this point someone should be screaming: “MORON!” and slapping a big, red “IDIOT!” sticker across the middle of that fool’s forehead.
We see this dumb, dumb, dumb thinking all the time. A prime example is the people who won’t get vaccinated for COVID because the vaccine has a one in one million OR LESS chance of making them sick.
Here’s how these people think:
- They find something they don’t like. Some mistake. Some failure, some cost that proves that a company, a system, a technology or an institution is not 100% perfect, and they jump to the moronic conclusion that because the company, system, technology or institution is not 100% perfect that it’s therefore 100% bad.
In their little pea brains they’ve got the idea that if something is not 100% safe, 100% reliable, or 100% perfect then it is 100% worthless.
They think digitally. Black or white. Completely safe or completely unsafe. Completely good or completely bad.
The idea of evaluating risk versus reward as an analog result, considering cost versus benefit, is totally alien to them.
I heard about a survey where a group of people were told that a commercially available substance was very flammable, had to be handled under very strict controls, was known to explode, and that in the U.S. each year it killed over 250 people and caused millions of dollars in damages. Then they were asked what if anything should be done about it.
Substantial numbers of people said that this substance should be made illegal and its use prohibited.
When they were told that the “substance” was the natural gas that was available in almost every home and commercial building in the United States, including their own homes, they didn’t know what to say.
Some of them still thought that all natural-gas use should be made illegal because it blew up more than 250 houses per year.
In their dumb, malfunctioning little brains, if something wasn’t 100% safe it should be prohibited. They could not comprehend evaluating the risk from homes having natural gas versus the reward from homes having natural gas.
I’m sick of people criticizing the government by complaining, “The government did this stupid thing, therefore we should not have a government” or “The government is the worst because this government agency did X.”
There is no human organization that is anywhere close to 100% right, 100% efficient, or 100% effective. None. Do you think General Motors doesn’t do stupid things? Google? Amazon? Wells Fargo? Your local school board? The grocery story down the street? Your spouse? Your kids? You?
Every person, every organization and every institution makes stupid mistakes, stupid choices, stupid decisions every single day. Every manufacturer builds automobiles with defects. Every airline flies planes that at one time or another will crash.
You don’t disown your child or divorce your spouse because they made a mistake, lost some money, made a bad choice, etc. You look at institutions and people as a whole, their many strengths and their many weaknesses, and you judge them based on everything they’ve done and who they are, not on some all-or-nothing policy of “One mistake and you’re dead to me.”
Life is not perfect. People are not perfect. Failure is inevitable. Inevitable. What counts is the ratio of successes to failures, the magnitude of total benefits to total costs.
So, the next time someone condemns capitalism or the government or education or any institution or company or group or industry or idea or person because of specific failures or mistakes, ask yourself “What’s the size of those failures/mistakes/losses compared to the size of their successes/benefits/rewards?”
The question intelligent people ask is not, “Is this person, group, organization, system, or activity perfect?”
Intelligent people ask:
- “What’s the magnitude of the expected cost from this person, group, organization, system or activity versus the magnitude of its expected rewards?”
- “What’s the likely total cost versus the likely total benefit?”
When someone says that we should make natural gas illegal because we know that it will kill over 250 people next year, or that we should not travel by airplane because we know that some planes will crash, or that we should not get a COVID vaccination because we know that there is a chance that we might suffer a side-effect, or that we should abolish the government because we know that there will be screw-ups and mistakes, get out your “MORON!” sticker and slap it real hard on their forehead.
It’s just plain stupid to extrapolate the specific, even inevitable, mistakes/damages that prove that a thing is not perfect into a condemnation of an entire system, technology, institution or human being without first balancing that likely cost against the benefits that that entity will bestow.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
