{"id":1443,"date":"2005-08-20T09:18:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-20T14:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1443"},"modified":"2005-08-20T09:18:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-20T14:18:00","slug":"identifying-bad-habits-v-emergencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1443","title":{"rendered":"Identifying bad habits v emergencies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Awhile ago, posted<\/a> something about the failure of the housing bubble to burst, and how many people, including himself, me, and arguably, krugman<\/a>, have been warning of imminent doom that seems unlikely given a number of positive indicators for the economy. <\/p>\n

There is a vast gulf between “This is a terrible idea, we shouldn’t be doing it,” and “bad things are going to happen soon.” Unfortunately, the first one isn’t the most marketable message. And so it’s very easy to slide into the latter, because nobody pays attention to the former. It’s the difference between “Smoking increases your risk of lung cancer, heart disease, and asthma, while also generally decreasing lung performance,” and “Smoking’s gonna kill you”. The accuracy of the first one is uncontested, but the second is much more gripping. <\/p>\n

The truth is one of my grandfathers lived into his 90’s while smoking and drinking fairly regularly, as I understand it. I wasn’t terribly close to him, so I’m fuzzy on the details. Pointing to a man who died in his 90’s and saying “see, it was the pipe that did him in” isn’t terribly scary to a smoking teenager.<\/p>\n

But just because the bubble hasn’t burst, and my grandfather lasted as long as he did does not mean that the practices in question aren’t bad ideas, and don’t increase our risk of catastrophe, personal or economic. But how to convey this risk in a fashion that people will understand before the sky does fall (as happens occasionally) is a tricky question. Maybe they do understand, and are fine with that, but somehow I doubt if a catastrophe does come to pass, they will accept the consequences with the same quiet equanimity that they indulged in their risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Awhile ago, posted something about the failure of the housing bubble to burst, and how many people, including himself, me, and arguably, krugman, have been warning of imminent doom that seems unlikely given a number of positive indicators for the economy. There is a vast gulf between “This is a terrible idea, we shouldn’t be … Continue reading “Identifying bad habits v emergencies”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}