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Tazeem Chowdhury
December 18, 2022
Mimetic Theory & Dread Risk
I’ve been seeing a lot of topical discussions around Rene Girard and his Mimetic Theory. Most of what I’ve read seem to make sense:
Why do elite colleges pump students into the same five industries: law, medicine, tech, investing, and management consulting?
For answers, let’s turn to the philosopher René Girard.
— David Perell (@david_perell)
1:04 PM • Dec 18, 2022
René Girard on physical versus metaphysical desire:
johnathanbi.com/interpreting-g…
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson)
12:52 AM • Dec 1, 2022
"how ought one live in the end times, with apocalypse around the corner? Girard's answer is brief as it is unsatisfying -- withdraw...You are only going to muddy your own moral character by trying to get involved...Stay away from it all so that you can nurture your soul."
I find condolence in withdrawing, I will withdraw and reset in the bat cave. One can slow down, breathe and focus on increasing his or her abilities.
So how does one navigate this increasingly tantalizing modern world. How does one assess risk? The only way forward is to become Risk Savvy. This is one of the goals of a risk maestro himself Gerd Gigerenzer. In the opening chapters Gerd expounds on how it is in the interest of big pharma for example to amplify certain stats over others. He distills this by explaining risks in terms of absolute risk and relative risk.
Gerd also expounds on the concept of Dread Risk. Dread risk as “a low-probability, high-damage event in which many people are killed at one point of time.” An interesting fact from 9-11: Osama bin Laden once explained how little money he used to cause such huge damages:
"Al-Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event," he said, "while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost -- according to the lowest estimate -- more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars." [1]
This example is a clear framing of dread risk. And the type of Black Swans that change the world. 9/11 resulted in security policies that in hindsight are clearly not well thought out. We now live in a world that has become further conveyor belt-erized with extra screening procedures that delay everyone's time and adds extra costs to the taxpayer to fund the TSA for example. [2]
Something's gotta give and we can start by becoming more actively more risk savvy.
Bibliography:
[1]
[2]