Some of this is selection bias, but lots of this is active work by the organizers.
Burning Man has slowly re-created the regulatory state in response to the standard pressures of civilization. To their credit, this has often been in response to near-misses, but sometimes in response to fatalities. It started with sanitation (potties), and banning guns/explosives. You can have 100 people shooting guns at a party in the desert without sanitation and muddle through. At 10k, you are building a cholera-mad-max experiment. A car running over a sleeping person prompted a designated road network. And then they adopted zoning, with hush-ville and the large sound installation ends. All supported by the ranger team preventing injury every day. Civilization is work.
The funny thing is that in spite of reinventing so much of it, the event still feels dangerous and leaves you to make your own decisions.
Burning Man still enables and allows dangerous art that you can fuck up your shit on. The organization has an interesting take on this: they allow dangerous art, so long as it looks as dangerous as it is. They don't want participants to be surprised that something was dangerous, because they want you to be able to do your own reasonable risk assessment.
(Though, I think the really impressive installations are the ones that look/feel more dangerous than they actually are.)
For what it's worth, I think this is a great exercise that should be undertaken now and again: you may not realize the ways in which a system is good or bad until you endeavor to tear it down and rebuild it from scratch.
In the case of Burning Man, there's structure that let's people be mostly safe by default, while supporting some reasonable risk taking. In the case of crypto, I think we've seen use cases where there's value in having a means of storing and transferring wealth outside of government control, which we saw the benefits of early on as governments tried to financially wall off groups like Wikileaks.
Does that mean we want all of the safe guards gone? No. Does that necessarily mean society and its structures are perfect and should never change? I think obviously, also no.
In 2023 there was a giant cube made out of IBC water tanks. You can see a video here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FTwpt0OuW_U" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FTwpt0OuW_U
This is actually what I was thinking of when I made this comment. I witnessed someone in some position of authority (from either DPW/Artery/someone else clearly sent to check it out) on the first day talking to one of the artists. They were literally watching people climb it and were like "yep, that looks pretty dangerous" and then went on their way.
It felt safe-ish to climb at first, until about halfway up when you could feel it swaying back and forth in the wind. I am usually the "climb dumb shit at Burning Man" type, but had my stomach drop about 3/4 of the way up and had to abort. It was very easy to grip, nothing felt insecure, etc, so it was definitely "safe" if you knew what you were doing. But if you ate it off the top of that, you'd be fucked.
>so it was definitely "safe" if you knew what you were doing.
Those quotation marks doing a lot work...I guess those IBCs are 1m tall? so 8m at the top. A fall from 8m could result in severe injury if not fatality. Fucked indeed...
I think the implicit assumption you may be missing is that "know what you are doing sufficiently" includes knowing when not to do something because it involves unpredictable risks.
Like free solo rock climbing: it's actually fairly safe if you do it on a route you know inside out, that is well within your ability, and in good condition. But if it's not in good condition and holds might come loose, nobody in their right mind - and the knowledge to recognize the condition - would free solo it.
Of course if you don't do something you're never going to be at risk from whichever activity it was.
Some activities always have risk, for example ski-touring (backcountry if you're a Yank). If there's skiable snow, avalanche danger is never zero.
It's not just a truism. The point is that sufficient knowledge allows you to understand and avoid or mitigate risks much more specifically. With your example, if you have only freshly fallen snow, and a slope of less than 30 degrees with nothing above it, avalance danger is so ridiculously small that it counts as "safe" for practical purposes.
well, no, because the individual doing the thing isn't the only factor. You may very well know what you're doing but that doesn't mean all aspects are under your control.
michael1999 · · focus · HN ↗
Burning Man has slowly re-created the regulatory state in response to the standard pressures of civilization. To their credit, this has often been in response to near-misses, but sometimes in response to fatalities. It started with sanitation (potties), and banning guns/explosives. You can have 100 people shooting guns at a party in the desert without sanitation and muddle through. At 10k, you are building a cholera-mad-max experiment. A car running over a sleeping person prompted a designated road network. And then they adopted zoning, with hush-ville and the large sound installation ends. All supported by the ranger team preventing injury every day. Civilization is work.
ManuelKiessling · · focus · HN ↗
supern0va · · focus · HN ↗
Burning Man still enables and allows dangerous art that you can fuck up your shit on. The organization has an interesting take on this: they allow dangerous art, so long as it looks as dangerous as it is. They don't want participants to be surprised that something was dangerous, because they want you to be able to do your own reasonable risk assessment.
(Though, I think the really impressive installations are the ones that look/feel more dangerous than they actually are.)
For what it's worth, I think this is a great exercise that should be undertaken now and again: you may not realize the ways in which a system is good or bad until you endeavor to tear it down and rebuild it from scratch.
In the case of Burning Man, there's structure that let's people be mostly safe by default, while supporting some reasonable risk taking. In the case of crypto, I think we've seen use cases where there's value in having a means of storing and transferring wealth outside of government control, which we saw the benefits of early on as governments tried to financially wall off groups like Wikileaks.
Does that mean we want all of the safe guards gone? No. Does that necessarily mean society and its structures are perfect and should never change? I think obviously, also no.
ambicapter · · focus · HN ↗
Can you give some examples?
supern0va · · focus · HN ↗
This is actually what I was thinking of when I made this comment. I witnessed someone in some position of authority (from either DPW/Artery/someone else clearly sent to check it out) on the first day talking to one of the artists. They were literally watching people climb it and were like "yep, that looks pretty dangerous" and then went on their way.
It felt safe-ish to climb at first, until about halfway up when you could feel it swaying back and forth in the wind. I am usually the "climb dumb shit at Burning Man" type, but had my stomach drop about 3/4 of the way up and had to abort. It was very easy to grip, nothing felt insecure, etc, so it was definitely "safe" if you knew what you were doing. But if you ate it off the top of that, you'd be fucked.
cr1895 · · focus · HN ↗
Those quotation marks doing a lot work...I guess those IBCs are 1m tall? so 8m at the top. A fall from 8m could result in severe injury if not fatality. Fucked indeed...
<a href="https://pdf.journalagent.com/travma/pdfs/UTD_19_6_529_535.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://pdf.journalagent.com/travma/pdfs/UTD_19_6_529_535.pd...
bawolff · · focus · HN ↗
willtemperley · · focus · HN ↗
brazzy · · focus · HN ↗
Like free solo rock climbing: it's actually fairly safe if you do it on a route you know inside out, that is well within your ability, and in good condition. But if it's not in good condition and holds might come loose, nobody in their right mind - and the knowledge to recognize the condition - would free solo it.
willtemperley · · focus · HN ↗
Of course if you don't do something you're never going to be at risk from whichever activity it was.
Some activities always have risk, for example ski-touring (backcountry if you're a Yank). If there's skiable snow, avalanche danger is never zero.
brazzy · · focus · HN ↗
willtemperley · · focus · HN ↗
So not risk free.
brazzy · · focus · HN ↗
willtemperley · · focus · HN ↗
Exactly. If nothing is risk free then the original statement we’re discussing is untrue.
cr1895 · · focus · HN ↗