Since he encourages us to take a walk with this chart and do some deductive reasoning, I’ve decided to try my hand at it. I noticed a couple of things that do seem to “poke a hole” in his argument and I’d like to address them.
First, his argument, in a nutshell is that “the world as we know it could end if we don’t take action, so let’s take action and even if we’re wrong, it’s better than the alternative.” Let’s apply it to some other situations:
“If you leave your house you could get hit by a truck and die. Therefore, the best course of action is to never leave your house. It’s better to guarantee that you’ll be broke and miserable than to risk the possibility of death.”
“If you don’t join our religion, God says you’ll go to hell. So it’s better to join up than to risk going to hell, even if you don’t believe we’re telling you the truth.”
“The earth is going to crash into the sun unless you appoint me Supreme Overlord and do exactly as I say. There’s a chance I could be wrong or lying, but you’d better just bow down to be on the safe side.”
So, when we explore the logic in other situations, it seems pretty silly to use it as a basis for decision making, but for the sake of argument, let’s roll with the whiteboard for a bit:
Another major thing he left out is that if the actions taken in column A cause a global depression, then they will occur regardless of other factors, and we can put “Global Depression” in both boxes for column A, not just one. Therefore, in this analysis of extremes, we’re guaranteeing a Global Depression if we take action, and we’re taking a chance at societal collapse if we don’t. So it’s not “Taking a chance at Global Depression” vs “Taking a chance at Societal Collapse” as the speaker posits, you are in fact, in this scenario at least, being asked to weigh a guaranteed catastrophe against the possibility of a catastrophe.
But let’s go a little deeper into the assumptions here. I’ll also point out that the last time we had a Global Depression, it resulted in World War II, which killed 60-85 million people and for all but a handful of places on the globe, did in fact result in complete Societal Collapse. If we extrapolate casualty figures by population, a repeat of WWII would result in 228-288 million deaths today. This of course is a linear assumption, and leaves out the fact that widespread proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons would very possibly result in exponentially higher death totals.
So, to summarize; using this whiteboard method, we are to choose between a guarantee of Global Depression, Societal Collapse and 228-288 million plus dead, or the mere possibility of Global Depression, Societal Collapse and 228-288 million plus dead. Applying the speaker's method fully demonstrates that the most logical conclusion is in fact, to do nothing: exactly the opposite conclusion that he presents.
This is why the debate must include the “rows” as well as the “columns”, and to leave part of the discussion out is to invite folly. We face risk decisions daily in every facet of our lives, and we have to weigh the severity of a potential threat with the credibility of the information presented to us. “Is this really going to occur?” “Is it really going to be that bad?” “Is the science really sound or is it groupthink in action?” “Is he being honest, or is he just trying to sell me something?”
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