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Lumifer comments on US default as a risk to mitigate - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: bokov 15 October 2013 04:41PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 17 October 2013 12:22:55AM -1 points [-]

I think of societal collapse

...have you been around (as an intertubes-reading creature) in 1999? Beans and ammo were REALLY popular then. Among a certain kind of crowd, that is.

Comment author: bokov 17 October 2013 03:23:40AM 2 points [-]

Sure. Beans and ammo were really popular among IT dudes like me who understood the kind of shit-storm that was brewing and was narrowly averted. Silver dollars were also popular, and I still have mine stacked up somewhere.

Now it's vanished down the memory hole except for occasional cameo appearances as an example of why you shouldn't pay attention to alarmists.

I drew a different lesson from the experience: not all dire predictions are self-fulfilling. Some are self-negating, and they look exactly like that one. I fondly hope all today's doomsday alarmism also turns out to be this "unfounded".