People around here sometimes reference the “Unilateralist’s Curse”, especially when they want to keep someone else from doing something that might cause harm. Briefly, the idea is that “unilateral” actions taken without the consent of society at large are especially likely to be harmful, because people who underestimate the resulting harm will be the most likely to take the action in question.
The canonical formulation of the argument is in a paper by Bostrom, Douglas, and Sandberg, most recently updated in 2016. I highly recommend reading the “Introduction” and “Discussion” sections of the paper. (I found the toy mathematical models in the middle sections less useful.)
While the paper mostly gives arguments that... (read 443 more words →)
This is true of approximately every worthwhile conference and convention. In my entire life I've been to exactly one conference where the scheduled programming provided more than 10% of the event's value.