11 ms·

Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

117 points by waqasaday 11y ago

known 11y ago
This results in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_withdrawal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_withdrawal
- icebraining 11y ago
  I'm not seeing the connection...?
  - venning 11y ago
    My guess: As a problem that I feel threatened by becomes a greater target for action by society, the solutions enacted by society feel like an unnecessary imposition on me--since I don't believe the problem to be real--and the (potentially) building consensus around that problem makes me feel as more of an outsider. Not feeling like a part of a society's approach to that issue may lead me to withdraw from that society in a continued effort to deny the existence of that problem, which is to say not being confronted with society's narrative. As my opinion on a problem diverges from society's, I fit less and less with that society, prompting me to withdraw from it.
    - ionised 11y ago
      > As my opinion on a problem diverges from society's, I fit less and less with that society, prompting me to withdraw from it. Huh. I'm finding myself experiencing this in a range of issues in recent years.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
See famous "The Black Knight" scene from Monthy Python. Question remains, what can we do about people in denial? Because many problems won't solve themself.
- tdyen 11y ago
  World Population comes to mind. Will it solve itself? It might but in countries where it doesnt the consequences will be devestating and flow over to other parts of the world for sure.
_yosefk 11y ago
It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that. (Go programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by generics as real, C++ programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by garbage collection and boundary checking as real, Python programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by static typing as real, same for Haskell programmers & lazy evaluation, etc. This is "political" in the sense, for instance, that a more popular language is tremendously more useful, so you want a language you've invested into to be popular even if it fails badly at solving a real problem; there are real benefits to denying it being a real problem if others believe it isn't real and that belief makes the language more popular.)
- asgard1024 11y ago
  > It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that. I disagree, the two examples (climate change and gun control) aren't that different. Both are issues of personal freedom. I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists (people like Chomsky), who I feel very close political sympathies to. I am (obviously) not aware of these blind spots. I am not sure I entirely buy the idea of "everybody has blindspots" (EHB). It seems to me that liberal democracy, the idea that everybody is entitled to their moral opinion and should have the same influence over what we consider moral, is pretty much an attempt to get rid of any blindspots. The argument EHB is akin to saying "atheists are also believers".
  - panic 11y ago
    Do you think something like the iPhone could have been produced under a collectivist economic regime?
    - asgard1024 11y ago
      Generally, yes! But it really depends on what you mean by "collectivist". Could iPhone be produced by IBM, a huge corporation with top-down command and control? It's about as likely, I would say. I work at medium American corporation and it's not really that different from what was called "socialist" enterprise here in Czech Republic. It is certainly more efficient, but sometimes pathologically - good ideas get killed all the time. And there is not really that much less stupidity to go around. And socialism here (I take it from your question that's what you imagine as "collectivist") certainly wasn't ideal system for liberal left, who would probably prefer some form of worker cooperatives or something like that. Perhaps I should emphasize what I mean by "collectivist" in my previous comment. I actually refer to empathy (or less selfishness) rather than form of ownership. What I mean is understanding that other side can have a different opinion and willingness to compromise (e.g. your personal freedom) with the needs/feelings of others. It doesn't mean you have to entirely ditch the free market, for instance.
atemerev 11y ago
If "we don't like the solutions", this means that proposed measures are not "solutions", as they do not solve the problem properly. It's better to keep looking.
- Nemcue 11y ago
  Sometimes a solution — or a variety of different solutions — still have a significant pain point attached to them. Just because of that, you can't derive with absolute certainty that there's "a better solution". It might just be the nature of the problem has no solutions that everyone "likes".
  - jedrek 11y ago
    With something like climate change, issue is that the pain point for the problem is time deferred. An obvious comparison would be to lead in gasoline, cookware and paint: The problems that it caused took many years to surface. Getting rid of it was both expensive and required new solutions. Thankfully, we got out ahead of that problem... I'm curious if in the current political climate that would be possible.
Udik 11y ago
I wonder if the study is able to make a distinction between solution aversion and what could be called "proponent aversion". That is, it is normal to be skeptical of a statement when it comes from somebody we don't trust. And our level of trust can be dependent from another statement coming (or perceived to be coming) from the same source. In this case, the proposed solution to the problem. I've concocted an example: Statement: The rate of suicides among teenagers in the US has been growing steadily in the last two decades, to the point of constituting now a real public health emergency. Solution 1: Naturopathic nutrition, holistic and homeopathic medicine are fundamental to ensure the well being of the young generations - courses in these subjects should be part of the standard curriculum starting from primary schools. Solution 2: Standard psychological welfare assessment tests that can help detecting early signs of depression should be conducted at regular time intervals in schools starting from sixth grade, and counselling should be provided to those who display early symptoms of depression. Now, I've no clue of whether the statement is true (I made it up). But I'll dismiss it readily as BS if it's followed by proposed solution 1. I'll take mental note if it's followed by proposed solution 2. I simply don't trust any statement coming from proponents of snake oil.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ownagefool 11y ago
  Pretty much both soltions can be followed up with who's trying to make money here? And I know it's besides the point, but I'd argue learning about vitimins is probably less harmful than being forced to undertake psychological testing. YMMV.
- pekk 11y ago
  I wonder if we can make that distinction either. It would be solution aversion if you denied that the rate of suicides has been growing because you perceive that the main use of citing an increasing suicide rate is to push homeopathic education. If your aversion to certain proponents relates back to what it is they are proposing, it is not really an aversion to those proponents but to their proposals. Maybe proponent aversion would be if you denied that the rate of suicides has been growing because Obama (or black people, "liberals" etc.) had made that claim, independent of the qualities of proposed solutions. If someone's statements can't be trusted to be true, that doesn't rationally mean their statements are evidence of their contradictions. Even if you don't trust anything Obama says, that shouldn't normally mean that "Obama says that P" is evidence of not-P.
asgard1024 11y ago
I was almost sure that is going to be about climate change. It reminds me of: http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/ http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/ Even though the article proposes something (green energy as opportunity for capitalism), I think there is a huge problem with climate change for free market proponents, and deeply inside they know it. I don't see how the issue, which is "the fossil fuels have to stay in the ground", can be dealt with free market only. And I wish it had a solution, so we could get these people to cooperate and acknowledge that there is a climate change problem (for which there is a lot of scientific evidence).
- kaybe 11y ago
  Actually the issue is later in the chain, "don't increase the atmospheric amount of climate gas" in first order. You're free to take out the fossil fuels if you do not use them as fuels but make plastic or whatever (which may lead to other unrelated problems), or if you manage to someone keep the CO2 from being emitted it should also be ok (and again can lead to problems, this time related, such as local and global risk of leakage etc). On the other hand, other greenhouse gases such as methane or those from deforestation are also problematic. The order of magnitude right now is a lot smaller than the first problem, but that may not stay so. There are also some talks of deliberate climate engineering, which, in first order, may have chances to work (most involved on a deeper level think it's too risky). All in all, the issue is quite complicated and there are a lot of possible (technical, not just economical/social) solutions with advantages and disadvantages, which I think makes the issue even harder to acknowledge.
  - Asbostos 11y ago
    Yes, it's certainly more complicated than most proponents or opposers of it claim. I think that's because they both have a "solution affinity" for their preferred solution. Geoengineering has all sorts of promising ideas but talking about them publicly is like talking about making a safer cigarette - it's dilutes the arguments of people who've already been charmed by another solution (stop using oil and cars and grow your own vegetables).
- deleted 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ThomPete 11y ago
Not sure the climate debate is a good example, given both sides mean there are solutions they are just very different.
erikb 11y ago
While it sounds very reasonable as far as I can read it's one study, three experiments, less than a thousand data points total. Let's not jump to conclusions here. Usually you need quite a few studies and a paper that repeats and summarizes them before you can say you have a conclusion, right?
ilaksh 11y ago
I think its simpler than that. No one looks at scientific evidence or anything else objectively. Everyone has pre-existing beliefs. And the nature of a belief is that you don't change it easily and it overrides everything else. So its not that people don't like science or don't know how to think rationally. Everyone is just really good at rationalizing their pre-existing worldview.
afarrell 11y ago
I am curious if this is hurt by people denying[1] the pain a solution would cause. A massive shift away from petrocarbon exploration would cause a great deal of unemployment (and consequently suicide, domestic violence, etc) in areas like Houston. [1] http://m.imgur.com/r/energy/up6yu http://m.imgur.com/r/energy/up6yu
- a3n 11y ago
  And probably a great deal of employment in [location where alternatives are produced]. Nothing deserves forever, and survival of civilization in the modern world depends on adaptation, not holding fast.
  - a3n 11y ago
    > And probably a great deal of employment in [location where alternatives are produced]. Apparently that location is ... Texas. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/texas_electricity_goes_negative_wind_power_was_so_plentiful_one_night_that.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/tex... "Second, Texas has way more wind power than any other state. In 2014, wind accounted for 4.4 percent of electricity produced in the United States. Texas, which has more installed wind capacity (15,635 megawatts) than any other state and is home to nearly 10,000 turbines, got 9 percent of its electricity from wind in 2014."
    - hga 11y ago
      Well, Texas is big. Big enough to run their own stable independent grid, avoiding a lot of Federal craziness. And big enough to have plenty of good places for turbines, without hardly as much NIMBY/BANANA as California, the next biggest state.
JesperRavn 11y ago
Another related fallacy I see all the time is dismissing a problem by inventing a terrible solution. E.g. Climate change is real -> "So you are saying we should just shut down all industry and go back to the dark ages" The establishment of Israel was unethical -> "So you are saying we should just push all the Jews currently living in Israel into the sea." Even asking a question shows a fallacy, since it implies that the existence of an adequate solution is related to the truth of the existence of the problem. A very common example is There might be innate differences in ability/interests between men and women -> "If this was true, what would that imply? What is your end goal here"
pernaflert 11y ago
Problem denial can take the form of claiming there's nothing wrong at all. But more common seems to be the attempt to jump straight to a 'solution', without any trial and error thinking in between. Which is OFC impossible. Either way I guess it takes a certain amount of imagination to perceive problems in the first place.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
guscost 11y ago
Time to spend some karma. Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same tactic. The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as p̶r̶o̶o̶f̶ evidence of any long-term trend we can expect to continue in a non-linear system as complex as the global climate. I guess these folks think I must be unhappy about the "necessary solution" (oh hey, it turns out to be reorganizing society according to their political beliefs!) but that amounts to an elaborate and silly ad hominem, nothing more. I think I'll write more about the "psychology journal ad-hominem" because it has become annoyingly common in recent years. The science of climate is not settled, and will not be settled in your lifetime. Get used to it. [0]http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00...
- AC__ 11y ago
  You should share your beliefs with the geoengineers running seeding programs creating algal blooms in the Pacific before they kill the whole fucking thing...
  - guscost 11y ago
    Well, that is what bothers me the most about this whole train wreck. If and when there are environmental issues more deserving of our attention than the CO2 thing, many anti-intellectuals are going end up dismissing them as politically motivated propaganda without even bothering to learn about them. Congratulations.
    - AC__ 11y ago
      Be sure not to confuse condescension with intellectualism.
- a3n 11y ago
tikhonj 11y ago
In the past I've felt that arguing "X is not a problem" is sometimes a proxy for "we should not solve X" because it's taken as axiomatic that if X is a problem it should be solved. (And the solution, of course, usually involves compulsory rules enforced by the government or some administrative body.) I wonder if it goes in the other direction too: people exaggerate problems and evidence if they like the proposed solution. Not even for personal gain, but for emotional reasons. (So not somebody exaggerating the threat of terrorism to consciously expand their power or sell detectors but unconsciously because of patriotism or a desire to get the terrorists.)
nostrademons 11y ago
I've got somewhat unorthodox views on global warming that might make for a good test of this: I fully accept that global warming is real, human-caused, and a major problem in the coming century. However, I don't believe we should limit carbon emissions. Instead, we should earmark all the money that would've gone into reducing carbon emissions (a carbon tax could be useful for this) into developing comprehensive evacuation plans for every major city, as well as a fund for rebuilding. As the effects of global warming hit (which will more likely be in the form of severe weather events than a global rise in sea levels), we migrate away from the hardest hit areas and rebuild in the areas made more hospitable by climate change. There are two advantages of this: The first is that many climate scientists believe that it's already too late, and a tipping point was reached around 2000 that's set in motion a catastrophic climate shift that we can't reverse now. Cutting carbon emissions now is a bit like closing the barn door after the horses have left. It won't actually fix our predicament, though it may slow it. The second advantage is that this covers a number of contingencies other than climate change. A freak hurricane sweeps up the Gulf Coast, headed for Houston or New Orleans? No problem, all of the evacuation routes have been mapped out, we've built enough roads that the population can get out (as an additional plus, this helps rush-hour traffic), and the insurance companies are ready to pay out to help the victims. Drought in California? Move to Seattle or Portland and stop buying beef and almonds. It'd help if we let the price of affected commodities (water, and the things it helps grow) float to reflect their true scarcity rather than subsidize them. The idea is to fix the problem closer to the symptoms rather than trying to get to the source. Accept that the planet's climate will change, and then work to adapt to that with minimal dislocation rather than prevent it from changing. Thoughts? It's certainly not the party line, but it makes sense to me. And if you're currently a climate-change denier, would this proposed solution make you reconsider the facts?
- mdorazio 11y ago
  I see two problems with this proposal. 1) Migrating an entire city's population elsewhere is a MASSIVE undertaking. Not just in cost, either; we're talking about uprooting an entire population's lives and moving them elsewhere, which has all kinds of social problems. Look at New Orleans and Katrina for a great example of this. Under your strategy, pretty much the whole city should have just been abandoned and rebuilt elsewhere, but for the people who lived and worked there, this simply wasn't even on the table psychologically. 2) How do you propose to both earmark enough funds for realistic relocation/rebuilding efforts, and keep those funds safe from political interests over the span of 100+ years. It's been damn near impossible to keep Medicaid and Social Security funding in place, and those are being used by millions of people every day. "Rainy day" funds are an easy target for reallocation when budgets start getting tight. Realistically, I think we're going to see individual cities deal with this in different ways, mostly on their own.
refurb 11y ago
This works both ways. You may be more likely to believe something is a problem if you like the solution being offered.

117 points by waqasaday 11y ago

known 11y ago

This results in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_withdrawal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_withdrawal

icebraining 11y ago
I'm not seeing the connection...?
- venning 11y ago
  My guess: As a problem that I feel threatened by becomes a greater target for action by society, the solutions enacted by society feel like an unnecessary imposition on me--since I don't believe the problem to be real--and the (potentially) building consensus around that problem makes me feel as more of an outsider. Not feeling like a part of a society's approach to that issue may lead me to withdraw from that society in a continued effort to deny the existence of that problem, which is to say not being confronted with society's narrative. As my opinion on a problem diverges from society's, I fit less and less with that society, prompting me to withdraw from it.
  - ionised 11y ago
    > As my opinion on a problem diverges from society's, I fit less and less with that society, prompting me to withdraw from it. Huh. I'm finding myself experiencing this in a range of issues in recent years.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

See famous "The Black Knight" scene from Monthy Python. Question remains, what can we do about people in denial? Because many problems won't solve themself.

tdyen 11y ago
World Population comes to mind. Will it solve itself? It might but in countries where it doesnt the consequences will be devestating and flow over to other parts of the world for sure.

_yosefk 11y ago

It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that. (Go programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by generics as real, C++ programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by garbage collection and boundary checking as real, Python programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by static typing as real, same for Haskell programmers & lazy evaluation, etc. This is "political" in the sense, for instance, that a more popular language is tremendously more useful, so you want a language you've invested into to be popular even if it fails badly at solving a real problem; there are real benefits to denying it being a real problem if others believe it isn't real and that belief makes the language more popular.)

asgard1024 11y ago
> It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that. I disagree, the two examples (climate change and gun control) aren't that different. Both are issues of personal freedom. I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists (people like Chomsky), who I feel very close political sympathies to. I am (obviously) not aware of these blind spots. I am not sure I entirely buy the idea of "everybody has blindspots" (EHB). It seems to me that liberal democracy, the idea that everybody is entitled to their moral opinion and should have the same influence over what we consider moral, is pretty much an attempt to get rid of any blindspots. The argument EHB is akin to saying "atheists are also believers".
- panic 11y ago
  Do you think something like the iPhone could have been produced under a collectivist economic regime?
  - asgard1024 11y ago
    Generally, yes! But it really depends on what you mean by "collectivist". Could iPhone be produced by IBM, a huge corporation with top-down command and control? It's about as likely, I would say. I work at medium American corporation and it's not really that different from what was called "socialist" enterprise here in Czech Republic. It is certainly more efficient, but sometimes pathologically - good ideas get killed all the time. And there is not really that much less stupidity to go around. And socialism here (I take it from your question that's what you imagine as "collectivist") certainly wasn't ideal system for liberal left, who would probably prefer some form of worker cooperatives or something like that. Perhaps I should emphasize what I mean by "collectivist" in my previous comment. I actually refer to empathy (or less selfishness) rather than form of ownership. What I mean is understanding that other side can have a different opinion and willingness to compromise (e.g. your personal freedom) with the needs/feelings of others. It doesn't mean you have to entirely ditch the free market, for instance.

atemerev 11y ago

If "we don't like the solutions", this means that proposed measures are not "solutions", as they do not solve the problem properly. It's better to keep looking.

Nemcue 11y ago
Sometimes a solution — or a variety of different solutions — still have a significant pain point attached to them. Just because of that, you can't derive with absolute certainty that there's "a better solution". It might just be the nature of the problem has no solutions that everyone "likes".
- jedrek 11y ago
  With something like climate change, issue is that the pain point for the problem is time deferred. An obvious comparison would be to lead in gasoline, cookware and paint: The problems that it caused took many years to surface. Getting rid of it was both expensive and required new solutions. Thankfully, we got out ahead of that problem... I'm curious if in the current political climate that would be possible.

Udik 11y ago

I wonder if the study is able to make a distinction between solution aversion and what could be called "proponent aversion". That is, it is normal to be skeptical of a statement when it comes from somebody we don't trust. And our level of trust can be dependent from another statement coming (or perceived to be coming) from the same source. In this case, the proposed solution to the problem. I've concocted an example: Statement: The rate of suicides among teenagers in the US has been growing steadily in the last two decades, to the point of constituting now a real public health emergency. Solution 1: Naturopathic nutrition, holistic and homeopathic medicine are fundamental to ensure the well being of the young generations - courses in these subjects should be part of the standard curriculum starting from primary schools. Solution 2: Standard psychological welfare assessment tests that can help detecting early signs of depression should be conducted at regular time intervals in schools starting from sixth grade, and counselling should be provided to those who display early symptoms of depression. Now, I've no clue of whether the statement is true (I made it up). But I'll dismiss it readily as BS if it's followed by proposed solution 1. I'll take mental note if it's followed by proposed solution 2. I simply don't trust any statement coming from proponents of snake oil.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ownagefool 11y ago
Pretty much both soltions can be followed up with who's trying to make money here? And I know it's besides the point, but I'd argue learning about vitimins is probably less harmful than being forced to undertake psychological testing. YMMV.
pekk 11y ago
I wonder if we can make that distinction either. It would be solution aversion if you denied that the rate of suicides has been growing because you perceive that the main use of citing an increasing suicide rate is to push homeopathic education. If your aversion to certain proponents relates back to what it is they are proposing, it is not really an aversion to those proponents but to their proposals. Maybe proponent aversion would be if you denied that the rate of suicides has been growing because Obama (or black people, "liberals" etc.) had made that claim, independent of the qualities of proposed solutions. If someone's statements can't be trusted to be true, that doesn't rationally mean their statements are evidence of their contradictions. Even if you don't trust anything Obama says, that shouldn't normally mean that "Obama says that P" is evidence of not-P.

asgard1024 11y ago

I was almost sure that is going to be about climate change. It reminds me of: http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/ http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/ Even though the article proposes something (green energy as opportunity for capitalism), I think there is a huge problem with climate change for free market proponents, and deeply inside they know it. I don't see how the issue, which is "the fossil fuels have to stay in the ground", can be dealt with free market only. And I wish it had a solution, so we could get these people to cooperate and acknowledge that there is a climate change problem (for which there is a lot of scientific evidence).

kaybe 11y ago
Actually the issue is later in the chain, "don't increase the atmospheric amount of climate gas" in first order. You're free to take out the fossil fuels if you do not use them as fuels but make plastic or whatever (which may lead to other unrelated problems), or if you manage to someone keep the CO2 from being emitted it should also be ok (and again can lead to problems, this time related, such as local and global risk of leakage etc). On the other hand, other greenhouse gases such as methane or those from deforestation are also problematic. The order of magnitude right now is a lot smaller than the first problem, but that may not stay so. There are also some talks of deliberate climate engineering, which, in first order, may have chances to work (most involved on a deeper level think it's too risky). All in all, the issue is quite complicated and there are a lot of possible (technical, not just economical/social) solutions with advantages and disadvantages, which I think makes the issue even harder to acknowledge.
- Asbostos 11y ago
  Yes, it's certainly more complicated than most proponents or opposers of it claim. I think that's because they both have a "solution affinity" for their preferred solution. Geoengineering has all sorts of promising ideas but talking about them publicly is like talking about making a safer cigarette - it's dilutes the arguments of people who've already been charmed by another solution (stop using oil and cars and grow your own vegetables).
deleted 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ThomPete 11y ago

Not sure the climate debate is a good example, given both sides mean there are solutions they are just very different.

erikb 11y ago

While it sounds very reasonable as far as I can read it's one study, three experiments, less than a thousand data points total. Let's not jump to conclusions here. Usually you need quite a few studies and a paper that repeats and summarizes them before you can say you have a conclusion, right?

ilaksh 11y ago

I think its simpler than that. No one looks at scientific evidence or anything else objectively. Everyone has pre-existing beliefs. And the nature of a belief is that you don't change it easily and it overrides everything else. So its not that people don't like science or don't know how to think rationally. Everyone is just really good at rationalizing their pre-existing worldview.

afarrell 11y ago

I am curious if this is hurt by people denying[1] the pain a solution would cause. A massive shift away from petrocarbon exploration would cause a great deal of unemployment (and consequently suicide, domestic violence, etc) in areas like Houston. [1] http://m.imgur.com/r/energy/up6yu http://m.imgur.com/r/energy/up6yu

a3n 11y ago
And probably a great deal of employment in [location where alternatives are produced]. Nothing deserves forever, and survival of civilization in the modern world depends on adaptation, not holding fast.
- a3n 11y ago
  > And probably a great deal of employment in [location where alternatives are produced]. Apparently that location is ... Texas. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/texas_electricity_goes_negative_wind_power_was_so_plentiful_one_night_that.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/tex... "Second, Texas has way more wind power than any other state. In 2014, wind accounted for 4.4 percent of electricity produced in the United States. Texas, which has more installed wind capacity (15,635 megawatts) than any other state and is home to nearly 10,000 turbines, got 9 percent of its electricity from wind in 2014."
  - hga 11y ago
    Well, Texas is big. Big enough to run their own stable independent grid, avoiding a lot of Federal craziness. And big enough to have plenty of good places for turbines, without hardly as much NIMBY/BANANA as California, the next biggest state.

JesperRavn 11y ago

Another related fallacy I see all the time is dismissing a problem by inventing a terrible solution. E.g. Climate change is real -> "So you are saying we should just shut down all industry and go back to the dark ages" The establishment of Israel was unethical -> "So you are saying we should just push all the Jews currently living in Israel into the sea." Even asking a question shows a fallacy, since it implies that the existence of an adequate solution is related to the truth of the existence of the problem. A very common example is There might be innate differences in ability/interests between men and women -> "If this was true, what would that imply? What is your end goal here"

pernaflert 11y ago

Problem denial can take the form of claiming there's nothing wrong at all. But more common seems to be the attempt to jump straight to a 'solution', without any trial and error thinking in between. Which is OFC impossible. Either way I guess it takes a certain amount of imagination to perceive problems in the first place.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

guscost 11y ago

Time to spend some karma. Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same tactic. The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as p̶r̶o̶o̶f̶ evidence of any long-term trend we can expect to continue in a non-linear system as complex as the global climate. I guess these folks think I must be unhappy about the "necessary solution" (oh hey, it turns out to be reorganizing society according to their political beliefs!) but that amounts to an elaborate and silly ad hominem, nothing more. I think I'll write more about the "psychology journal ad-hominem" because it has become annoyingly common in recent years. The science of climate is not settled, and will not be settled in your lifetime. Get used to it. [0]http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00...

AC__ 11y ago
You should share your beliefs with the geoengineers running seeding programs creating algal blooms in the Pacific before they kill the whole fucking thing...
- guscost 11y ago
  Well, that is what bothers me the most about this whole train wreck. If and when there are environmental issues more deserving of our attention than the CO2 thing, many anti-intellectuals are going end up dismissing them as politically motivated propaganda without even bothering to learn about them. Congratulations.
  - AC__ 11y ago
    Be sure not to confuse condescension with intellectualism.
a3n 11y ago

tikhonj 11y ago

In the past I've felt that arguing "X is not a problem" is sometimes a proxy for "we should not solve X" because it's taken as axiomatic that if X is a problem it should be solved. (And the solution, of course, usually involves compulsory rules enforced by the government or some administrative body.) I wonder if it goes in the other direction too: people exaggerate problems and evidence if they like the proposed solution. Not even for personal gain, but for emotional reasons. (So not somebody exaggerating the threat of terrorism to consciously expand their power or sell detectors but unconsciously because of patriotism or a desire to get the terrorists.)

nostrademons 11y ago

I've got somewhat unorthodox views on global warming that might make for a good test of this: I fully accept that global warming is real, human-caused, and a major problem in the coming century. However, I don't believe we should limit carbon emissions. Instead, we should earmark all the money that would've gone into reducing carbon emissions (a carbon tax could be useful for this) into developing comprehensive evacuation plans for every major city, as well as a fund for rebuilding. As the effects of global warming hit (which will more likely be in the form of severe weather events than a global rise in sea levels), we migrate away from the hardest hit areas and rebuild in the areas made more hospitable by climate change. There are two advantages of this: The first is that many climate scientists believe that it's already too late, and a tipping point was reached around 2000 that's set in motion a catastrophic climate shift that we can't reverse now. Cutting carbon emissions now is a bit like closing the barn door after the horses have left. It won't actually fix our predicament, though it may slow it. The second advantage is that this covers a number of contingencies other than climate change. A freak hurricane sweeps up the Gulf Coast, headed for Houston or New Orleans? No problem, all of the evacuation routes have been mapped out, we've built enough roads that the population can get out (as an additional plus, this helps rush-hour traffic), and the insurance companies are ready to pay out to help the victims. Drought in California? Move to Seattle or Portland and stop buying beef and almonds. It'd help if we let the price of affected commodities (water, and the things it helps grow) float to reflect their true scarcity rather than subsidize them. The idea is to fix the problem closer to the symptoms rather than trying to get to the source. Accept that the planet's climate will change, and then work to adapt to that with minimal dislocation rather than prevent it from changing. Thoughts? It's certainly not the party line, but it makes sense to me. And if you're currently a climate-change denier, would this proposed solution make you reconsider the facts?

mdorazio 11y ago
I see two problems with this proposal. 1) Migrating an entire city's population elsewhere is a MASSIVE undertaking. Not just in cost, either; we're talking about uprooting an entire population's lives and moving them elsewhere, which has all kinds of social problems. Look at New Orleans and Katrina for a great example of this. Under your strategy, pretty much the whole city should have just been abandoned and rebuilt elsewhere, but for the people who lived and worked there, this simply wasn't even on the table psychologically. 2) How do you propose to both earmark enough funds for realistic relocation/rebuilding efforts, and keep those funds safe from political interests over the span of 100+ years. It's been damn near impossible to keep Medicaid and Social Security funding in place, and those are being used by millions of people every day. "Rainy day" funds are an easy target for reallocation when budgets start getting tight. Realistically, I think we're going to see individual cities deal with this in different ways, mostly on their own.

refurb 11y ago

This works both ways. You may be more likely to believe something is a problem if you like the solution being offered.