# The Scary Bridge

Residents of the isolated town line up at the microphone at the emergency town hall meeting. Timor, a concerned citizen, starts to speak to the assembled council and audience of townspeople.

TIMOR: The bridge situation is completely terrifying. I can't sleep because of this. There is only one bridge off of this island, and it's too dangerous to drive on - it's unsafe. The guardrails are insufficient, the painted median-line is out of control. The accident earlier this week should be a wake-up call to us all. I hope that we can organize to come together before a potentially devastating nightmare scenario takes place.

MAYOR: Thank you, sir. We hear you. So, concretely, you're asking for better guardrails and a more carefully painted median.

TIMOR: Yes. Thank you.

Timor takes his seat.

The next citizen, Equa, takes the mic.

EQUA: Excuse me, but I'm not sure if that's really the message we should take away regarding the bridge. I am a civil and structural engineer by profession. A more accurate description of the situation is that the bridge will predictably fail under loads exceeding two regular-sized sedans. The bridge requires structural reinforcement. There are standards of rigor and design margins that were not met in the design phase. Additionally, the bridge design exhibits a predictable oscillatory failure mode that can be mitigated with correct engineering design. None of these mechanistic problems are really addressed by addressing the superficial situation with the guardrails and the median line.

Equa sits down. Timor cuts in line to return to the mic.

TIMOR: Yes, that's what I was trying to say. My p(collapse) is 90% because the bridge was not designed with a proper safety mindset. The designers obviously didn't exercise adequate caution, and now we're here, and we should all be very afraid.

Equa, seeming to wrestle with herself, ultimately stands up and takes the mic. Luckily, the woman in line behind them is scrolling X and has forgotten that she's in line.

EQUA: I appreciate the support but I don't really think the mindset of the designers is particularly relevant. Also, probability doesn't really come into it. To be blunt, *fear* doesn't come into it either. There are simply some objective ways in which the bridge design is not adequate. I can calculate exactly how and why it will collapse. It's actually pretty boring stuff. We just need the council-members to vote to authorize the retrofit. I estimate it will cost the town treasury no more than $1 million.

Perdi, who is sitting near the microphone, stands up and joins Timor and Equa hovering by the mic.

PERDI: Whoah, hold up there. Let's not get histrionic. You're saying it's going to cost $1 million to fix this scary bridge? Take a Xanax, sister. The bridge has done fine for years, setting aside what happened earlier this week. I like Timor's idea better, let's slap some fresh paint on the road and tie down those guardrails better. Then we'll wait and see if anything goes wrong, and we can repair it if it does.

EQUA: No, I'm sorry, this is what I mean. I am not speaking from fear. I am simply telling you with professional certainty that people will die if we don't do an expensive retrofit. My emotional state is not relevant.

The woman in line behind Equa looks up from her phone. She sees Timor kneading his hands fearfully and Equa being defensive and talking about her emotional state, and Perdi looking smug and confident. She concludes, in the fragment of thought that she spares for the judgement, that Equa and Timor are weak and on losing ground, and thus probably wrong, and that Perdi, whose visage does not admit a single iota of self-doubt, must be right. She sits back down, planning to vote against the retrofit measure.