Risk managment is not rational at all times. If you have a reasonable expectation that the risk has increased, doing nothing is far worse than crying wolf with good intentions. Especially if you are responsible for the consequences afterwards.
Imagine the story would go like this: a girl heard the story about the boy who cried wolf. Uppon seeing a pack of wolves the girl doesn’t cry wolf because she wasn’t 100% sure that it wasn’t in fact a pack of stray dogs. Villagers die.
The original story teaches kids not to lie to gain attention, because nobody will believe you when you for once have a serious risk at hand. It has nothing to do with how we should treat real risks, where we have real indicators of increased risk.
Climate change is the ultimate example of such a risk. Better safe than sorry, because beeing sorry can easily become the end of the species here. Some airplane failing is arguably a tiny thing in comparison — but once you have been warned about a risk you can mitigate and you do nothing, you own it. Living is dangerous and everything has a remaining risk that stays dangerous even after any reasonable risk has been mitigated.
But this isn’t about totally ruling out all remaining risks, it is about ruling out risks that are easy to rule out.
If somebody told you the brakes of your bicycle are both broken, you would probably not lend it to someone until you convinced yourself of the condition of your brakes. You will do this despite the fact that cyling can be dangerous with a fully functional bicycle too.
I think a shorter way to express the concept is that there are "known unknowns" - risks we can quantify, and "unknown unknowns" - risks we can't quantify. When people become aware of the possibility of the latter, they may panic. Of course, sometimes that proves to be the right decision and sometimes not. There is no "rational" solution.
Imagine the story would go like this: a girl heard the story about the boy who cried wolf. Uppon seeing a pack of wolves the girl doesn’t cry wolf because she wasn’t 100% sure that it wasn’t in fact a pack of stray dogs. Villagers die.
The original story teaches kids not to lie to gain attention, because nobody will believe you when you for once have a serious risk at hand. It has nothing to do with how we should treat real risks, where we have real indicators of increased risk.
Climate change is the ultimate example of such a risk. Better safe than sorry, because beeing sorry can easily become the end of the species here. Some airplane failing is arguably a tiny thing in comparison — but once you have been warned about a risk you can mitigate and you do nothing, you own it. Living is dangerous and everything has a remaining risk that stays dangerous even after any reasonable risk has been mitigated.
But this isn’t about totally ruling out all remaining risks, it is about ruling out risks that are easy to rule out.
If somebody told you the brakes of your bicycle are both broken, you would probably not lend it to someone until you convinced yourself of the condition of your brakes. You will do this despite the fact that cyling can be dangerous with a fully functional bicycle too.