> Reading that myself, it sounds like a gotcha question, but under this entirely arbitrary 2-but-not-1 threshold, the answer seems like it should obviously be yes.
I think that's because the question implicitly assumes that the threshold applies for all things and all purposes. It doesn't. First the threshold is about adjusting your baselines, and second even if the threshold were for when to pull the "stop everything" cord, it all depends on your specific goals. The FAA might have completely different goals and targets than someone else in some other industry. Or to put it another way, the FAA has grounded all 737 Max 9's after a single incident with no fatalities. As of Jan 16, 11 people have been killed in homicides in Chicago. By the same "one threshold for everything", the entire city should be on complete lockdown until such time as it can be made safe by the proper authorities.
On the other hand, if you assume that one could have a very low "stop the world" response threshold for "sudden mechanical failures leading to explosive decompression" of planes, and simultaneously have a higher "stop the world" threshold for "people dying in Chicago", then it seems completely reasonable that one could have a third different threshold for the number of mass shooters that come out of any given arbitrary social clustering that trigger the "I should re-evaluate whether these people are entirely sane" routines in your brain.
Thank you for phrasing it like that. I think maybe my hang up is that the author doesn’t allow that different people and groups can have different baselines and update responses. Implicitly it seems that if everyone is perfectly rational, all responses to an event would be the same, but that’s not really true due to our subjective human experience. In the shooting example the quote came from, the Left and Right he caricatures have different priors, knowledge, experiences, and motivations than the author, someone who likes to think of themselves as rational and aloof of politics. Of course they’re going to have a different response, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re acting irrationally.
I think that's because the question implicitly assumes that the threshold applies for all things and all purposes. It doesn't. First the threshold is about adjusting your baselines, and second even if the threshold were for when to pull the "stop everything" cord, it all depends on your specific goals. The FAA might have completely different goals and targets than someone else in some other industry. Or to put it another way, the FAA has grounded all 737 Max 9's after a single incident with no fatalities. As of Jan 16, 11 people have been killed in homicides in Chicago. By the same "one threshold for everything", the entire city should be on complete lockdown until such time as it can be made safe by the proper authorities.
On the other hand, if you assume that one could have a very low "stop the world" response threshold for "sudden mechanical failures leading to explosive decompression" of planes, and simultaneously have a higher "stop the world" threshold for "people dying in Chicago", then it seems completely reasonable that one could have a third different threshold for the number of mass shooters that come out of any given arbitrary social clustering that trigger the "I should re-evaluate whether these people are entirely sane" routines in your brain.