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Catastrophe: Risk and Response
Catastrophes, whether natural or man-made, that could destroy the human race are often dismissed as alarmist or fanciful, the stuff of science fiction. In fact the risk of such disasters is real, and growing. A collision with an asteroid that might kill a quarter of humanity in 24 hours and
the rest soon after; irreversible global warming that might flip, precipitating "snowball earth;" voraciously replicating nanomachines; a catastrophic accident in a particle accelerator that might reduce the earth to a hyperdense sphere 100 meters across; a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched
by bioterrorists; even conquest by superintelligent robots-all these potential extinction events, and others, are within the realm of the possible and warrant serious thought about assessment and prevention. They are attracting the concern of reputable scientists--but not of the general public or
the nation's policymakers.
How should the nation and the world respond to disaster possibilities that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, people find it hard to wrap their minds around? Richard Posner shows that what is needed is a fresh, thoroughly interdisciplinary perspective that will meld the insights
of lawyers, economists, psychologists, and other social scientists with those of the physical sciences. Responsibility for averting catastrophe cannot be left either to scientists or to politicians and other policymakers ignorant of science.
As in many of his previous books, Posner brings law and the social sciences to bear on a contemporary problem-in this case one of particular urgency. Weighing the risk and the possible responses in each case, Posner shows us what to worry about and what to dismiss, and discusses concrete ways of
minimizing the most dangerous risks. Must we yield a degree of national sovereignty in order to deal effectively with global warming? Are limitations on our civil liberties a necessary and proper response to the danger of bioterror attacks? Would investing more heavily in detection and
interception systems for menacing asteroids be money well-spent? How far can we press cost-benefit analysis in the design of responses to world-threatening events? Should the institutional framework of science policy be altered? we need educational reform? Is the interface of law and science awry?
These are but a few of the issues canvassed in this fascinating, disturbing, and necessary book.
the rest soon after; irreversible global warming that might flip, precipitating "snowball earth;" voraciously replicating nanomachines; a catastrophic accident in a particle accelerator that might reduce the earth to a hyperdense sphere 100 meters across; a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched
by bioterrorists; even conquest by superintelligent robots-all these potential extinction events, and others, are within the realm of the possible and warrant serious thought about assessment and prevention. They are attracting the concern of reputable scientists--but not of the general public or
the nation's policymakers.
How should the nation and the world respond to disaster possibilities that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, people find it hard to wrap their minds around? Richard Posner shows that what is needed is a fresh, thoroughly interdisciplinary perspective that will meld the insights
of lawyers, economists, psychologists, and other social scientists with those of the physical sciences. Responsibility for averting catastrophe cannot be left either to scientists or to politicians and other policymakers ignorant of science.
As in many of his previous books, Posner brings law and the social sciences to bear on a contemporary problem-in this case one of particular urgency. Weighing the risk and the possible responses in each case, Posner shows us what to worry about and what to dismiss, and discusses concrete ways of
minimizing the most dangerous risks. Must we yield a degree of national sovereignty in order to deal effectively with global warming? Are limitations on our civil liberties a necessary and proper response to the danger of bioterror attacks? Would investing more heavily in detection and
interception systems for menacing asteroids be money well-spent? How far can we press cost-benefit analysis in the design of responses to world-threatening events? Should the institutional framework of science policy be altered? we need educational reform? Is the interface of law and science awry?
These are but a few of the issues canvassed in this fascinating, disturbing, and necessary book.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
10 people are currently reading
220 people want to read
About the author
Richard A. Posner
130 books181 followersRichard Posner is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School.
Following his graduation from Harvard Law School, Judge Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. From 1963 to 1965, he was assistant to Commissioner Philip Elman of the Federal Trade Commission. For the next two years he was assistant to the solicitor general of the United States. Prior to going to Stanford Law School in 1968 as Associate Professor, Judge Posner served as general counsel of the President's Task Force on Communications Policy. He first came to the Law School in 1969, and was Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law prior to his appointment in 1981 as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, where he presided until his retirement on September 2, 2017. He was the chief judge of the court from 1993 to 2000.
Judge Posner has written a number of books, including Economic Analysis of Law (7th ed., 2007), The Economics of Justice (1981), Law and Literature (3rd ed. 2009), The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990), Cardozo: A Study in Reputation (1990), The Essential Holmes (1992), Sex and Reason (1992), Overcoming Law (1995), The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform (1996), Law and Legal Theory in England and America (1996), The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999), Antitrust Law (2d ed. 2001), Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (2003), Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004), Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (2005), How Judges Think (2008), and A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (2009), as well as books on the Clinton impeachment and Bush v. Gore, and many articles in legal and economic journals and book reviews in the popular press. He has taught administrative law, antitrust, economic analysis of law, history of legal thought, conflict of laws, regulated industries, law and literature, the legislative process, family law, primitive law, torts, civil procedure, evidence, health law and economics, law and science, and jurisprudence. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Legal Studies and (with Orley Ashenfelter) the American Law and Economics Review. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and he was the President of the American Law and Economics Association from 1995 to 1996 and the honorary President of the Bentham Club of University College, London, for 1998. He has received a number of awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Award in Law from the University of Virginia in 1994, the Marshall-Wythe Medallion from the College of William and Mary in 1998, the 2003 Research Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, also in 2003 the John Sherman Award from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Learned Hand Medal for Exellence in Federal Jurisprudence from the Federal bar Council in 2005, and, also in 2005, the Thomas C. Schelling Award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Following his graduation from Harvard Law School, Judge Posner clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. From 1963 to 1965, he was assistant to Commissioner Philip Elman of the Federal Trade Commission. For the next two years he was assistant to the solicitor general of the United States. Prior to going to Stanford Law School in 1968 as Associate Professor, Judge Posner served as general counsel of the President's Task Force on Communications Policy. He first came to the Law School in 1969, and was Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law prior to his appointment in 1981 as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, where he presided until his retirement on September 2, 2017. He was the chief judge of the court from 1993 to 2000.
Judge Posner has written a number of books, including Economic Analysis of Law (7th ed., 2007), The Economics of Justice (1981), Law and Literature (3rd ed. 2009), The Problems of Jurisprudence (1990), Cardozo: A Study in Reputation (1990), The Essential Holmes (1992), Sex and Reason (1992), Overcoming Law (1995), The Federal Courts: Challenge and Reform (1996), Law and Legal Theory in England and America (1996), The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory (1999), Antitrust Law (2d ed. 2001), Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy (2003), Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004), Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (2005), How Judges Think (2008), and A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (2009), as well as books on the Clinton impeachment and Bush v. Gore, and many articles in legal and economic journals and book reviews in the popular press. He has taught administrative law, antitrust, economic analysis of law, history of legal thought, conflict of laws, regulated industries, law and literature, the legislative process, family law, primitive law, torts, civil procedure, evidence, health law and economics, law and science, and jurisprudence. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Legal Studies and (with Orley Ashenfelter) the American Law and Economics Review. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and he was the President of the American Law and Economics Association from 1995 to 1996 and the honorary President of the Bentham Club of University College, London, for 1998. He has received a number of awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Award in Law from the University of Virginia in 1994, the Marshall-Wythe Medallion from the College of William and Mary in 1998, the 2003 Research Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, also in 2003 the John Sherman Award from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Learned Hand Medal for Exellence in Federal Jurisprudence from the Federal bar Council in 2005, and, also in 2005, the Thomas C. Schelling Award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 8, 2018
As someone who works in an area focused on improbable risks (though not nearly as dire as those discussed in this book), I was very interested in the topic. There were a few interesting ideas in this book, although I had to persevere through Posner's quasi-Talebian self-importance and needless swipes at things he doesn't like. Off the top of my head, I recall him basically putting down the entire genre of science fiction as not worthy (although he feels OK as long as he can use the fancier name of "speculative fiction"), and taking repeated digs at disaster movies for featuring "plucky racial- and gender-diverse groups" who save the world, as though the idea that anyone but a group of white guys saving the world is risible. Honestly, I almost put the book down because of this, and I wouldn't blame others who did. Perhaps worst of all, because not only boorish but also illustrating Posner's substantive blind spots, is a passage (I meant to mark it but can't find it now) where he says that we should focus more resources on science education and less on fields such as sociology, ethnic studies, and literature--but parenthetically, that we should still provide resources for foreign language education, because that could help us prevent bioterrorism! This was so laughable to me--as though sociology, the study of colonialism and oppression, and of course most of all history, were completely irrelevant for understanding and responding to terrorism—that other people are like machines you should learn to talk at but needn’t understand.
The book’s overall message, once you push past all of that garbage, is fairly straightforward: we face some highly improbable risks, such as an asteroid strike, that could have enormous negative consequences, and thus may have high costs even when converted to an expectation and discounted to present value—yet public policy tends to pay fairly little attention to such risks, and thus we may be under-investing in preventative measures. Posner’s main point is to argue for more application of cost-benefit analysis to policy, particularly in assessing and combating catstrophic risks. He focuses on a small subset of those risks: asteroid strikes, particle accelerator disasters that would essentially create a black hole, bioterrorism, and climate change. So far, so credible. I think his argument is particularly compelling in the case of asteroid strikes, where probabilities and severities are reasonably knowable (if not currently known), and the costs basically consist of fiscal outlays to develop better detection mechanisms and research defensive technology.
But on the other hand, we have the risk of bioterrorism—in Posner’s analysis, primarily the risk of an attack that would wipe out a large proportion of the species (with, say, a genetically engineered super-smallpox). This is one where the risks and severities are extremely difficult to estimate, and the costs of preventive measures even more so. Prominently, Posner discusses curbs on civil liberties, “enhanced interrogation” techniques, and restrictions on non-Americans studying certain subjects at U.S. universities. To me, this quickly gets into territory where cost-benefit analysis is simply no longer a practical tool, because the probabilities and marginal policy impacts are almost impossible to estimate. Posner largely handwaves this practical question. One of the most difficult challenges of extreme and hard-to-quantify risks, in my view, is that sort of by definition, it is even more difficult to estimate the marginal impact of any countermeasure. In fact, even though Posner mentions the marginal vs. total impact issue, he completely borks it with one of his key concepts. He proposes a variety of quasi-cost-benefit methods to be used in cases where some costs or benefits are difficult to quantify. One of these is “inverse cost-benefit analysis,” which entails dividing total spending on a risk by the estimated cost of the catastrophe’s occurrence to imply out an approximate probability of the catastrophe (and then comparing that with independent probability estimates to see if we are spending too much or too little). What Posner misses is that this only works if you further assume that the defensive spending has reduced the probability to zero, and furthermore, it only works in one direction, since it can be rational to spend less than the expected cost to prevent a catastrophe—either if countermeasures are extremely cost effective, or if they would not be effective at all. Therefore, this technique might provide a clue that spending was too high, but can never reliably tell you that spending is too low. (To take a silly example, note that federal spending to combat the Rapture is zero. This doesn’t tell you that the government thinks there is a zero probability of this happening, but only that no countermeasures are known.)
I was hoping that Posner would address some more philosophical related questions, such as whether the total extinction of the human race should have some additional negative utility value beyond the sum of all the individual lives lost, or the rationality of people’s implied life valuations changing with the order of magnitude of the probability of the relevant risk. But he really doesn’t get into any of this—I think he is just not that type of thinker, unfortunately.
At any rate, as I said, I do believe in the value of cost-benefit analysis for some more tractable cases, such as asteroid strikes. But I want to close with one more critique, which I think was actually my biggest issue with the book. I think there is an unspoken but notable class angle to an attempt to focus more attention on catastrophic risks. Surveying the wide range of meliorative expenditures we have available to us, the vast majority of them would naturally focus heavily on the worst-off humans. Thus, for example, the charitable research organization GiveWell (of which I am a big fan), which focuses on cost-effectiveness assessment of charities, recommends its donors to give money to charities distributing anti-malaria bednets and schistosomiasis de-worming medication in Africa, on the grounds that these are the most cost-effective known ways of combating human suffering (by individual donors anyway). There is a pretty air-tight economic logic to this—it’s obvious that it’s cheaper to “buy utility” for poor people, and generally speaking everything is cheaper in poor countries, so a given amount of money goes further. To me, the “catastrophic risks” angle has the effect, whether intentional or otherwise, of potentially re-focusing meliorative spending on things that equally benefit rich people in rich countries. (In fact, potentially more so, since life-valuation techniques are likely to imply that the life of a rich person is worth more than the life of a poor person—another philosophical issue Posner does not address.) The “name of the game” in catastrophic risks studies is to come up with a disaster that would be so costly that, even multiplied by its tiny probability, gives an expected cost greater than immediate challenges facing poor people. (Thank god this book was written before the current wave of AI-risk scaremongering, which allows negative utility to be increased almost without limit. See for example Maciej Ceglowski’s excellent presentation “The Idea That Eats Smart People.”) Posner waves a hand at this general concern by saying that spending more on one risk doesn’t necessarily mean spending less on others—we can always reduce farm subsidies or whatever—but of course we do have a limited budget of time, money, and attention. In general, rich people can spend an almost unlimited amount of money insuring themselves (and their heirs) against ever more improbable risks, and to my mind this book is sort of that mindset shifted to a policy context. I don’t mean to imply that Posner wrote the book with this intention at all, but I do think there is a risk (ha) of being seduced by this particular flavor of policy analysis for that underlying reason.
The book’s overall message, once you push past all of that garbage, is fairly straightforward: we face some highly improbable risks, such as an asteroid strike, that could have enormous negative consequences, and thus may have high costs even when converted to an expectation and discounted to present value—yet public policy tends to pay fairly little attention to such risks, and thus we may be under-investing in preventative measures. Posner’s main point is to argue for more application of cost-benefit analysis to policy, particularly in assessing and combating catstrophic risks. He focuses on a small subset of those risks: asteroid strikes, particle accelerator disasters that would essentially create a black hole, bioterrorism, and climate change. So far, so credible. I think his argument is particularly compelling in the case of asteroid strikes, where probabilities and severities are reasonably knowable (if not currently known), and the costs basically consist of fiscal outlays to develop better detection mechanisms and research defensive technology.
But on the other hand, we have the risk of bioterrorism—in Posner’s analysis, primarily the risk of an attack that would wipe out a large proportion of the species (with, say, a genetically engineered super-smallpox). This is one where the risks and severities are extremely difficult to estimate, and the costs of preventive measures even more so. Prominently, Posner discusses curbs on civil liberties, “enhanced interrogation” techniques, and restrictions on non-Americans studying certain subjects at U.S. universities. To me, this quickly gets into territory where cost-benefit analysis is simply no longer a practical tool, because the probabilities and marginal policy impacts are almost impossible to estimate. Posner largely handwaves this practical question. One of the most difficult challenges of extreme and hard-to-quantify risks, in my view, is that sort of by definition, it is even more difficult to estimate the marginal impact of any countermeasure. In fact, even though Posner mentions the marginal vs. total impact issue, he completely borks it with one of his key concepts. He proposes a variety of quasi-cost-benefit methods to be used in cases where some costs or benefits are difficult to quantify. One of these is “inverse cost-benefit analysis,” which entails dividing total spending on a risk by the estimated cost of the catastrophe’s occurrence to imply out an approximate probability of the catastrophe (and then comparing that with independent probability estimates to see if we are spending too much or too little). What Posner misses is that this only works if you further assume that the defensive spending has reduced the probability to zero, and furthermore, it only works in one direction, since it can be rational to spend less than the expected cost to prevent a catastrophe—either if countermeasures are extremely cost effective, or if they would not be effective at all. Therefore, this technique might provide a clue that spending was too high, but can never reliably tell you that spending is too low. (To take a silly example, note that federal spending to combat the Rapture is zero. This doesn’t tell you that the government thinks there is a zero probability of this happening, but only that no countermeasures are known.)
I was hoping that Posner would address some more philosophical related questions, such as whether the total extinction of the human race should have some additional negative utility value beyond the sum of all the individual lives lost, or the rationality of people’s implied life valuations changing with the order of magnitude of the probability of the relevant risk. But he really doesn’t get into any of this—I think he is just not that type of thinker, unfortunately.
At any rate, as I said, I do believe in the value of cost-benefit analysis for some more tractable cases, such as asteroid strikes. But I want to close with one more critique, which I think was actually my biggest issue with the book. I think there is an unspoken but notable class angle to an attempt to focus more attention on catastrophic risks. Surveying the wide range of meliorative expenditures we have available to us, the vast majority of them would naturally focus heavily on the worst-off humans. Thus, for example, the charitable research organization GiveWell (of which I am a big fan), which focuses on cost-effectiveness assessment of charities, recommends its donors to give money to charities distributing anti-malaria bednets and schistosomiasis de-worming medication in Africa, on the grounds that these are the most cost-effective known ways of combating human suffering (by individual donors anyway). There is a pretty air-tight economic logic to this—it’s obvious that it’s cheaper to “buy utility” for poor people, and generally speaking everything is cheaper in poor countries, so a given amount of money goes further. To me, the “catastrophic risks” angle has the effect, whether intentional or otherwise, of potentially re-focusing meliorative spending on things that equally benefit rich people in rich countries. (In fact, potentially more so, since life-valuation techniques are likely to imply that the life of a rich person is worth more than the life of a poor person—another philosophical issue Posner does not address.) The “name of the game” in catastrophic risks studies is to come up with a disaster that would be so costly that, even multiplied by its tiny probability, gives an expected cost greater than immediate challenges facing poor people. (Thank god this book was written before the current wave of AI-risk scaremongering, which allows negative utility to be increased almost without limit. See for example Maciej Ceglowski’s excellent presentation “The Idea That Eats Smart People.”) Posner waves a hand at this general concern by saying that spending more on one risk doesn’t necessarily mean spending less on others—we can always reduce farm subsidies or whatever—but of course we do have a limited budget of time, money, and attention. In general, rich people can spend an almost unlimited amount of money insuring themselves (and their heirs) against ever more improbable risks, and to my mind this book is sort of that mindset shifted to a policy context. I don’t mean to imply that Posner wrote the book with this intention at all, but I do think there is a risk (ha) of being seduced by this particular flavor of policy analysis for that underlying reason.
November 1, 2012
One sentence review: cost-benefit analysis should be used for everything.
Second sentence review: because it means you can avoid real policy analysis by reducing everything to money at the highest levels and telling somebody else to do the important work.
Third sentence review: if every economics department in the country were to catch on fire, would anybody care?
Second sentence review: because it means you can avoid real policy analysis by reducing everything to money at the highest levels and telling somebody else to do the important work.
Third sentence review: if every economics department in the country were to catch on fire, would anybody care?
January 4, 2009
Mildly informative at first but then either tedious or just dead wrong. For example, Posner thinks torture and collective punishment are two important tools in the "war on terror." WOW.
Read
July 28, 2010Very interesting...
April 3, 2014
A look at some of the more popular catastrophic risks of today and their potential mitigations. It all just seemed a bit far fetched. Funny, that was what he was trying to dis-spell.
June 6, 2016
Good book. Makes you consider possibilities. I would have like for it to have included additional data sets.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews