You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Stefan_Schubert comments on The Argument from Crisis and Pessimism Bias - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: Stefan_Schubert 11 November 2014 08:25PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (40)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Stefan_Schubert 12 November 2014 03:05:56PM *  2 points [-]

Good. I actually gave one reason that shows that there is a rational difference between "crimes (or inequality) has gone up and we need to do something" and "crimes (or inequality) has gone down, but we still need to gain more":

"Another reason for why the Argument from Crisis is rhetorically effective is of course that we believe that whatever trend there is will continue (rightly or wrongly). Hence if we think that crime or inequality is increasing, we believe that it will continue do so unless we do something about it."

You point to another important such reason, however.

Still my hunch is that loss aversion is a major reason why the Argument from Crisis is so effective.