idk. I pay $250 a month on loan for a car the size of a piñata, which goes fast and holds absolutely no cargo. I'm sure I've spent at least $2k on edge cases in the past few years renting or hiring when I had to move heavy objects on interstate journeys. Spread that out monthly, I could have saved money on a truck. Heck, I coulda bought a truck cheaper than my car. In my own calculation it's not worth it (because I don't want to drive a truck).
>> There are an infinite number of edge cases that can lead to total failure, so it is not rational to try to account for something solely on that basis.
I disagree here, because again you need to divide the probability by the severity of the consequences and only then rank the priorities. A $500k house on the side of a volcano that only erupts every thousand years is substantially different from the same house on a prairie, because the chance of total annihilation measurably increases the volatility of your bet. In gambling parlance, "risk of ruin". Once you see a possible risk of ruin you need to avoid it. I'll tell you why. Imagine that you had thought of it and discarded it as wildly unlikely. You did nothing to mitigate or plan for it. And a year later, it happened. You'd feel pretty stupid. You'd wish you had never even imagined it.
I didn't initially want to bring this up as an example, but it was actually the first on my mind: I live in a dangerous neighborhood. Some nights I fall halfway asleep without remembering to take my gun out of the safe and put it next to my bed. I look at the clock; it's 5am; it's probably fine; I don't want to get up. Then I think, imagine if ten minutes after I make this decision some guy breaks in and points a gun at me, how stupid I'd feel.
>> There are an infinite number of edge cases that can lead to total failure, so it is not rational to try to account for something solely on that basis.
I disagree here, because again you need to divide the probability by the severity of the consequences and only then rank the priorities. A $500k house on the side of a volcano that only erupts every thousand years is substantially different from the same house on a prairie, because the chance of total annihilation measurably increases the volatility of your bet. In gambling parlance, "risk of ruin". Once you see a possible risk of ruin you need to avoid it. I'll tell you why. Imagine that you had thought of it and discarded it as wildly unlikely. You did nothing to mitigate or plan for it. And a year later, it happened. You'd feel pretty stupid. You'd wish you had never even imagined it.
I didn't initially want to bring this up as an example, but it was actually the first on my mind: I live in a dangerous neighborhood. Some nights I fall halfway asleep without remembering to take my gun out of the safe and put it next to my bed. I look at the clock; it's 5am; it's probably fine; I don't want to get up. Then I think, imagine if ten minutes after I make this decision some guy breaks in and points a gun at me, how stupid I'd feel.