A silver bullet, to me, implies that all of our efforts should be going to that one solution.
GiveDirectly doesn't clear the "silver bullet bar" as this story suggests
Hi, I'm the author of this story :)
I think we're obviously using two different definitions of a "silver bullet." In fact kind of the entire point of writing it is to play with how the specific use of the term "it's not a silver bullet" has become a rhetorical tic to automatically dismiss something that should actually be given a more serious inquiry, just because it isn't literally perfect. I do this by imagining how actual silver bullets deployed against werewolves might fare against a "look, there are no silver bullets" rejoinder.
If I may point to the text itself, in this story all that a silver bullet is, is something that probably is good at killing werewolves, in a society that has an endemic and intractable werewolf problem, and in which the authorities don't seem to be particularly concerned about doing anything about werewolves other than the already-legible solutions they're comfortable with that have provably failed to do much of anything about the problem.
The silver bullet advocate, Larry Smith, makes many concessions that silver bullets could prove to be difficult or expensive in practice -- but that they would still be worth it compared to the horrific ongoing cost of doing nothing. Crucially, Larry Smith does not make the case that all the town's efforts should be going into that one solution, nor that it is the only solution, nor that it will necessarily be cheap, easy, or any other such thing.
All he seeks to convey is: a) all available evidence points to it as the directionally correct solution b) that we haven't tried it sufficiently yet c) we absolutely should try it before we dismiss it out of hand, and d) it is very likely we can improve on what little has already been tried e) generic bias against simple-sounding solutions in favor of complex-sounding solutions blinds us to important categories of interventions, regardless of whether they are "silver bullets" by the more common definition or not
Sarah Fletcher at the end points out that doing a small & simple empirical trial of it is a better way of settling the substance of debate than endlessly hypothesizing in the abstract.
Hi, I'm the author of this story :)
I think we're obviously using two different definitions of a "silver bullet." In fact kind of the entire point of writing it is to play with how the specific use of the term "it's not a silver bullet" has become a rhetorical tic to automatically dismiss something that should actually be given a more serious inquiry, just because it isn't literally perfect. I do this by imagining how actual silver bullets deployed against werewolves might fare against a "look, there are no silver bullets" rejoinder.
If I may point to the text itself, in this story all that a silver bullet is, is something that probably is good at killing werewolves, in a society that has an endemic and intractable werewolf problem, and in which the authorities don't seem to be particularly concerned about doing anything about werewolves other than the already-legible solutions they're comfortable with that have provably failed to do much of anything about the problem.
The silver bullet advocate, Larry Smith, makes many concessions that silver bullets could prove to be difficult or expensive in practice -- but that they would still be worth it compared to the horrific ongoing cost of doing nothing. Crucially, Larry Smith does not make the case that all the town's efforts should be going into that one solution, nor that it is the only solution, nor that it will necessarily be cheap, easy, or any other such thing.
All he seeks to convey is:
a) all available evidence points to it as the directionally correct solution
b) that we haven't tried it sufficiently yet
c) we absolutely should try it before we dismiss it out of hand, and
d) it is very likely we can improve on what little has already been tried
e) generic bias against simple-sounding solutions in favor of complex-sounding solutions blinds us to important categories of interventions, regardless of whether they are "silver bullets" by the more common definition or not
Sarah Fletcher at the end points out that doing a small & simple empirical trial of it is a better way of settling the substance of debate than endlessly hypothesizing in the abstract.