[learc83]

>Low skilled immigration can clearly have major costs to our society and from all available data provides a very limited upside.

I thought you couldn't read the tea leaves? But here you are doing just that.

>high risk low reward

You're the one saying it's high risk low reward. That requires you to do a bit of prognosticating, and if you're predictions are admittedly know better then why should we trust you over the majority of economists?

America has been accepting high rates of non-merit based immigrants for our entire history. The majority of experts say that this has been beneficial. Why should we change the status quo now based on your unsupported and by your own admission, unsupportable predictions?

[sheepmullet]

> But here you are doing just that.

No I’m not. I’m talking about a possible outcome. I’m not assigning a likelihood to that outcome.

In theory there is some overlap in that I’m saying the odds are not so ridiculous that they can be dismissed out of hand.

> why should we trust you over the majority of economists?

I think you are misrepresenting the majority economic view which as far as I can tell is “more likely positive than not”.

What kind of guarantee do you think economists are offering?

> America has been accepting high rates of non-merit based immigrants for our entire history.

America is a dynamic system.

What would have happened if the Irish who couldn’t get jobs here went on welfare instead of going home?

Could you guarantee the same outcome?

The truth is in the real world lots of things are fine until suddenly they aren’t anymore.

> Why should we change the status quo now

I’m suggesting we apply basic risk management techniques.

The same techniques you would apply on a software project.

The same techniques doctors apply when recommending treatment options. Etc

I’m saying let’s apply a best practice used in medicine, law, engineering, and finance to government policy.

Why do you take issue with that?

[learc83]

>No I’m not. I’m talking about a possible outcome. I’m not assigning a likelihood to that outcome.

With no likelihood, this is completely pointless. You don't know the odds of any outcome, you're just arbitrarily deciding "high risk low reward".

I can bring up possible outcomes as well. Here's one: We don't know what will happen if population growth reverses. The native born American birth rate is below replacement, so without substantial immigration, our population will begin to quickly decline. We don't know how that will affect our economy, but it will likely cause massive damage even if we reverse our immigration policies once we are aware of the damage.

You don't get to arbitrarily decide what the inputs are to the cost benefit analysis and then declare that you're "just applying basic risk management techniques".

I've outlined a possible negative outcome to severely restricting immigration, you've outlined a possible negative outcome to staying with the status quo.

The only way to know which is more likely is to create models and predictions, which you think is futile, but economists tend to agree that my outcome is more likely than yours.

How do you feel about other issues with unknown outcomes? The clathrate gun hypothesis? AI taking over and killing us all?

Should we ban all software development just to be safe....just until we’re sure? Once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s too late to go back. It’s just basic risk management.

Risk management is useless if you insist that all predictions are just reading tea leaves and there is no way to know which outcome is more likely.

[sheepmullet]

> but economists tend to agree that my outcome is more likely than yours

Would you play a round of Russian Roulette for $100? The most likely outcome is positive.

> Should we ban all software development just to be safe....

Why do you keep trying to reduce the argument to the absurd?

I haven’t made any mention of banning immigration and yet you are contrasting my position to banning software development... like somebody working on a web browser will magically invent a new master AI.

[learc83]

>Would you play a round of Russian Roulette for $100? The most likely outcome is positive.

>Why do you keep trying to reduce the argument to the absurd?

Really?

In your Russian Roulette example, we know the risk, we know the rewards, and we know the probabilities of both.

With regards to immigration, you believe you can't estimate the probabilities, so you've arbitrarily decided that expected the risk outweighs the expected reward.

>I haven’t made any mention of banning immigration and yet you are contrasting my position to banning software development... like somebody working on a web browser will magically invent a new master AI.

So if that's the problem you have with the argument I’ll change it to just banning just AI research?

Let's go another route. Automation through software development has the potential to cause very similar problems to what you think immigration will cause--depressed wages, high unemployment etc…

There’s a big potential downside, we can’t realistically undo it once it’s done. We don’t know the probabilities because the experts can't be trusted. The sheepmullet doctrine says we should ban it (or severely restrict it?).

[sheepmullet]

> With regards to immigration, you believe you can't estimate the probabilities, so you've arbitrarily decided that expected the risk outweighs the expected reward.

Think about what you are saying.

What probability of serious harm are you willing to accept in return for a half percentage point pay rise?

You must be certain the chance of things going wrong is almost nil.

What gives you such certainty? Your economics experts certainly aren’t claiming to offer such certainty.

> Automation through software development has the potential to cause very similar problems

At the end of the day it’s a significantly easier problem to manage.

Software can’t vote, get welfare, etc. Software doesn’t have any rights.

And of course even on this much simpler problem we should still apply risk management techniques.

[learc83]

Just using the term "risk management techniques" to make your position sound more credible, doesn't actually make it more credible.

Again, you're completely ignoring the potential negative consequences of severely restricted immigration, and understating the likely positive benefits.