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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Living near something doesn't make one an expert in that thing. I live near a school, but I'm still fairly worthless as an elementary school teacher or administrator.

The actual experts agree with the parent poster.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/06/how-fore...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l...

https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...

https://www.vox.com/2015/9/17/9347361/wildfire-management-pr...

(We could also do what Australia does, and set better standards for buildings and neighborhoods for surviving fires.)

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The grandparent poster seems to be commenting about relative risk rather than personal expertise. You may not make a good elementary school teacher or administrator, but it would make sense for you to have an opinion on how the school manages traffic. Certainly you wouldn't value my opinion since I don't live by the school and even if I had expertise in school traffic management I might not have your interests in mind.

That said, I don't agree with the poster's attitude. (For the record, I live next to, and essentially in a large forest.) A controlled burn could get out of hand, but in general, controlled burns will do so less frequently than an unplanned wildfire if we aren't doing controlled burns. Or, in other words, whatever short term risk there is from a controlled burn near me is paid back by a reduced overall long term risk. Since I have no plans to sell my home (and even if I did, because I care about other people) controlled burns is a clear path forward from my point of view.

> it would make sense for you to have an opinion on how the school manages traffic

No, we have traffic engineers for that.

Decisions should be made based off expertise, not proximity.

Indeed. Why even have voters?

To have some accountability for people who are supposed to make tough decisions and resolve tradeoffs in some responsible way.

Notably this isn’t a direct democracy, where direct democrats have an unfortunate tendency to demand freedom from the consequences of the policies they themselves enact, and ask for the irreconcilable.

In order to do that, you have to have an opinion.

Controlled burns are a great idea. drones that can quickly put out unanticipated fires are also a great thing.

These ideas aren't mutually exclusive, I don't know why we are arguing about it.

I live in a location that is more or less impervious to the effects of climate change and rising sea levels but I still support the development of technology like dams that will save lives in the face of rising sea levels. This is no different

It is different. Its a solution to a symptom that will make the problem worse. This tech could be used to control small fires and direct them away from populated areas, but that's not how it's being sold. The saving grace for the company could be them educating customers on effective use to prevent large scale fires, but I'm unsure if they do such a thing.

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