> Better safe than sorry MEANS do it right. It means that human life is more valuable than material wealth.
This is not accurate on both accounts.
First, material wealth can be converted into quality of life in multiple different ways. Consuming additional millions to push death rates down by a few percentage points is taking away from other places, ostensibly hurting others.
Second, better safe than sorry does not mean do it right. Mistakes will happen, and acting like nothing will ever go wrong is a fools errand. Planning for failure is a significant portion of project management and engineering in general. The goal is 0 mistakes, but severe negative overreactions in response to failure can have a net negative impact.
Re:Questions
by Karrot_Kream on Sunday September 30, 2018 @02:14PM
(#18107435)
A net negative impact on whom? A net positive impact on whom? How do you quantify this impact?
Better safe than sorry MEANS do it right. It means that human life is more valuable than material wealth.
If you are hiring amateurs to build your bridge, or you are “crossing your fingers”, then you are not being “better safe than sorry” — in the sense that what you are doing can not be an implentation of “better safe than sorry” that can be reconciled with the broader cultural context in which people use the phrase and discuss it.