10 ms·

*edit: anecdote ahead My experience working as a clean air and water advocate in my early 20s was that people who don't buy into climate change also tend to r

by ch4s3 10y ago

*edit: anecdote ahead My experience working as a clean air and water advocate in my early 20s was that people who don't buy into climate change also tend to rationalize away things like potable water, wildlife, and preservation of natural resources. The venn diagram of people who don't "believe in" climate change and would support CO2 cuts to stop ocean acidification is tiny. However, I'd love to be proven wrong.

macintux 10y ago
Jesus is coming soon so why bother? (James Watt claims he never said it, but a family member of mine did.)
- unit91 10y ago
  Well for starters the Apostle Paul wrote the 2nd Thessalonian letter condemning this very attitude. Hence, in my experience, comments like this are generally offered by (1) nominal Christians who don't seem familiar with what Jesus and the apostles actually taught; or (2) atheists who use it as a straw-man argument against Christianity proper, instead of an admonishment to the nominals to actually know what they claim to believe.
  - betenoire 10y ago
    Or 3) people whose every interaction with said group of people seems to confirm the bias. At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole?
    - ch4s3 10y ago
      This sort of thing always seems to descend into some sort of odd "no true Scotsman" argument where people end up debate sincere vs insincere adherents of "X" belief. A lot of people are real pricks, may there is a correlation with belief system "X", but I've yet to see strong evidence that its causal. Now ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and global average temperature rise; thats a good causal relationship!
      - betenoire 10y ago
        Are you saying my observation isn't valid because it may descend into a non-sensical debate? If we are throwing around fallacies, I have one too then. My observation remains though. The Christians who literally follow the scriptures number far far fewer than those that don't. That is NOT a comment about "sincere" vs "insincere" christians. The "insincere" ones seem just as sincere to me.
        ch4s3 10y ago
        > Are you saying my observation isn't valid No. I'm just saying that it's hard to have a constructive conversation about in this forum based on my previous experience. I might also make the argument that to "literally follow the scriptures" is fundamentalism, and isn't necessarily a mark of a "true" adherent of the faith in question. But that is a bit of a tangent, and none of this has much to do with ocean trash so I don't have a lot more to add.
    - unit91 10y ago
      I'm not sure why you're being down-voted here. This a legitimate case of the problem of induction, "the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy" [1]. That said, it seems like the flaw in your reasoning (and ch4s3's) is the lack of an objective standard. Holding sincere beliefs and referring to oneself as a Christian don't in themselves make a person a Christian. For example, suppose you met a person who said "I'm a Christian. I don't believe in God and I think the Bible is fiction." Instead of "well ok, he's very sincere, he just doesn't follow the scriptures literally", I think we would rightly conclude "despite his sincere beliefs and identity claim, this person is not a Christian." That is, his identity claim is false. In order for a person's Christian identity claim to be true, he must hold and practice true (or approximately true) beliefs about the person, work, and teaching of Christ. So doesn't this deteriorate into a "no true Scotsman" argument? I don't think so. The hallmark of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is its ad hocness [2]. Otherwise, no taxonomy of any kind would be possible. But surely it isn't ad hoc to say "Christians follow Christ's teachings, and non-Christians don't." So what are Christ's teachings? That can only be adjudicated by examining scripture to find out what Jesus said. Some statements (e.g. "you shall love your neighbor as yourself") are pretty straightforward. Some are less so. But we shouldn't take the fact that people disagree about some of the interpretations to mean that Jesus had no meaning, or that his meaning in unknowable. Rather, this should prompt us to ask "what are your reasons for thinking that's what Jesus meant?". Getting back to your question, we're inductive creatures, and to an extent I don't think you can (or should) avoid drawing generic conclusions about cultures as a whole, given a large enough sample. But make sure that you're sampling persons whom you believe to be actual Christians, and not merely nominal Christians. For comparison, here are a couple of Jesus's metrics: "by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" [3] and "if you love me, you will keep my commandments" [4]. Sources: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman 3. John 13:35 4. John 14:15
      - betenoire 10y ago
        Thanks for the response. Admittedly, my pool of christians is very skewed, but it's still the sample of christians that I have to work with. You said my flaw is a lack of objective standard. How is that _my_ flaw though? If a Christian doesn't want to wear the stereotypes of christianity, then ... they shouldn't call themselves christian? Either embrace the label, shun it, or change it. What I mean is, Christians don't even agree what the word means. (mormons call themselves christians, but baptists strongly disagree). I dunno, we have definitely derailed. Thanks again for the reply.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - sbov 10y ago
      Just because someone is religious doesn't mean they wear it on their sleeve. There's probably more than 1 Christian on this forum - odds are you've interacted with them and you probably have no idea they're Christian. A lot of it probably has to do with where you live. Thinking rationally, the United States is a Christian majority country. If zero Christians believed in e.g. climate change or protecting the environment, it probably wouldn't be an issue that either party would pay attention to.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole? At the point where you've made sufficient study of the culture as a whole to have a reasonably justified belief that the criticism is valid for the group covered by the label, or, alternatively, to correctly identify the subgroup to which it does apply and direct the criticism appropriately.
      - betenoire 10y ago
        lol, no. That's not even rational or feasible. How exactly do you make it through the day with that level of scrutiny?
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        Learning to use words like "some", "many", and "most" helps. But, yeah, unwarranted generalizations are easy mistakes to make; accepting that they are mistakes rather than defending them on the basis that you should be allowed to make unsupported negative characterization of broad groups is the appropriate response; the alternative is justifying bigotry with laziness.
brennen 10y ago
Yeah. I think that, while there are people who value some classes of conservation without believing in climate change, climate change is in general a subset of what people don't believe in. Which is to say: Almost anything espoused by environmentalists, any program of environmental regulation, any restraint on resource extraction, etc.
fil_a_del_fee_a 10y ago
I always agreed that pollution should be a higher priority than climate change. The onus is on me to drive a hybrid to reduce my co2 output, but nothing is being done to curb polluting our waterways.
- debacle 10y ago
  Packaging is a great evil. Most of our waste is packaging. My family recycles a lot, buys glass/aluminum when possible, and still we generate 2-3 bags of garbage each week, mostly food packaging.
  - akovaski 10y ago
    Just for reference, what is the size of your family and what we the sizes of the garbage bags?
    - debacle 10y ago
      2 adults 1 teen and 1 child. Just normal sized garbage bags.
      - vacri 10y ago
        And the garbage bags themselves are packaging. It's hard to escape.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    The supermarkets discovered they can get you to buy more tomatoes when there are six of them in shiny cellophane, so that's what they do. It's maddening. Not only that, it's nearly impossible not to use plastic packaging if you're not handily located near a co-op (or Unverpackt, if you're in Germany). In many cases I've been looked at suspiciously when I said I didn't need a bag for my two items at the checkout, as though there were something wrong with me. Saying "it just winds up in the back of my car" usually convinced them (never mind that I cycled there...)
yourapostasy 10y ago
> ...people who don't buy into climate change also tend to rationalize away things like potable water, wildlife, and preservation of natural resources... This is emergent behavior from a lifetime inculcating conditioned responses to acute challenges in narrow fields of interest, combined with a lack of frame of reference to externalities. People who never plan beyond a horizon of a few decades, and only in very constrained domains, spending the vast majority of their time addressing perceived here-and-now challenges to their social/economic/personal domains are going to find it very difficult to connect with these long-term incubation period threats. It doesn't help that Upton Sinclair, Jr.'s The Jungle is not widely-read, or reading critical analysis non-fiction is not widespread. Nor does it help that our economic system doesn't account with a high fidelity for where we establish our entropy sinks (at our current technological level, aiming as close to the outer reaches of the solar system as we can is sufficient for now, and we move the aim point higher as we acquire more energy manipulation capabilities). Impactful stories and imagery can sometimes pierce this veil. Connecting to an imminent threat to personal, individual health seemed to galvanize the food safety and pollution control issues, which again points us back to presenting say, ocean acidification via the lens of an acute challenge to individuals.

by ch4s3 10y ago

macintux 10y ago

Jesus is coming soon so why bother? (James Watt claims he never said it, but a family member of mine did.)

unit91 10y ago
Well for starters the Apostle Paul wrote the 2nd Thessalonian letter condemning this very attitude. Hence, in my experience, comments like this are generally offered by (1) nominal Christians who don't seem familiar with what Jesus and the apostles actually taught; or (2) atheists who use it as a straw-man argument against Christianity proper, instead of an admonishment to the nominals to actually know what they claim to believe.
- betenoire 10y ago
  Or 3) people whose every interaction with said group of people seems to confirm the bias. At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole?
  - ch4s3 10y ago
    This sort of thing always seems to descend into some sort of odd "no true Scotsman" argument where people end up debate sincere vs insincere adherents of "X" belief. A lot of people are real pricks, may there is a correlation with belief system "X", but I've yet to see strong evidence that its causal. Now ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and global average temperature rise; thats a good causal relationship!
    - betenoire 10y ago
      Are you saying my observation isn't valid because it may descend into a non-sensical debate? If we are throwing around fallacies, I have one too then. My observation remains though. The Christians who literally follow the scriptures number far far fewer than those that don't. That is NOT a comment about "sincere" vs "insincere" christians. The "insincere" ones seem just as sincere to me.
      - ch4s3 10y ago
        > Are you saying my observation isn't valid No. I'm just saying that it's hard to have a constructive conversation about in this forum based on my previous experience. I might also make the argument that to "literally follow the scriptures" is fundamentalism, and isn't necessarily a mark of a "true" adherent of the faith in question. But that is a bit of a tangent, and none of this has much to do with ocean trash so I don't have a lot more to add.
  - unit91 10y ago
    I'm not sure why you're being down-voted here. This a legitimate case of the problem of induction, "the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy" [1]. That said, it seems like the flaw in your reasoning (and ch4s3's) is the lack of an objective standard. Holding sincere beliefs and referring to oneself as a Christian don't in themselves make a person a Christian. For example, suppose you met a person who said "I'm a Christian. I don't believe in God and I think the Bible is fiction." Instead of "well ok, he's very sincere, he just doesn't follow the scriptures literally", I think we would rightly conclude "despite his sincere beliefs and identity claim, this person is not a Christian." That is, his identity claim is false. In order for a person's Christian identity claim to be true, he must hold and practice true (or approximately true) beliefs about the person, work, and teaching of Christ. So doesn't this deteriorate into a "no true Scotsman" argument? I don't think so. The hallmark of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is its ad hocness [2]. Otherwise, no taxonomy of any kind would be possible. But surely it isn't ad hoc to say "Christians follow Christ's teachings, and non-Christians don't." So what are Christ's teachings? That can only be adjudicated by examining scripture to find out what Jesus said. Some statements (e.g. "you shall love your neighbor as yourself") are pretty straightforward. Some are less so. But we shouldn't take the fact that people disagree about some of the interpretations to mean that Jesus had no meaning, or that his meaning in unknowable. Rather, this should prompt us to ask "what are your reasons for thinking that's what Jesus meant?". Getting back to your question, we're inductive creatures, and to an extent I don't think you can (or should) avoid drawing generic conclusions about cultures as a whole, given a large enough sample. But make sure that you're sampling persons whom you believe to be actual Christians, and not merely nominal Christians. For comparison, here are a couple of Jesus's metrics: "by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" [3] and "if you love me, you will keep my commandments" [4]. Sources: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman 3. John 13:35 4. John 14:15
    - betenoire 10y ago
      Thanks for the response. Admittedly, my pool of christians is very skewed, but it's still the sample of christians that I have to work with. You said my flaw is a lack of objective standard. How is that _my_ flaw though? If a Christian doesn't want to wear the stereotypes of christianity, then ... they shouldn't call themselves christian? Either embrace the label, shun it, or change it. What I mean is, Christians don't even agree what the word means. (mormons call themselves christians, but baptists strongly disagree). I dunno, we have definitely derailed. Thanks again for the reply.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sbov 10y ago
    Just because someone is religious doesn't mean they wear it on their sleeve. There's probably more than 1 Christian on this forum - odds are you've interacted with them and you probably have no idea they're Christian. A lot of it probably has to do with where you live. Thinking rationally, the United States is a Christian majority country. If zero Christians believed in e.g. climate change or protecting the environment, it probably wouldn't be an issue that either party would pay attention to.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole? At the point where you've made sufficient study of the culture as a whole to have a reasonably justified belief that the criticism is valid for the group covered by the label, or, alternatively, to correctly identify the subgroup to which it does apply and direct the criticism appropriately.
    - betenoire 10y ago
      lol, no. That's not even rational or feasible. How exactly do you make it through the day with that level of scrutiny?
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        Learning to use words like "some", "many", and "most" helps. But, yeah, unwarranted generalizations are easy mistakes to make; accepting that they are mistakes rather than defending them on the basis that you should be allowed to make unsupported negative characterization of broad groups is the appropriate response; the alternative is justifying bigotry with laziness.

brennen 10y ago

Yeah. I think that, while there are people who value some classes of conservation without believing in climate change, climate change is in general a subset of what people don't believe in. Which is to say: Almost anything espoused by environmentalists, any program of environmental regulation, any restraint on resource extraction, etc.

fil_a_del_fee_a 10y ago

I always agreed that pollution should be a higher priority than climate change. The onus is on me to drive a hybrid to reduce my co2 output, but nothing is being done to curb polluting our waterways.

debacle 10y ago
Packaging is a great evil. Most of our waste is packaging. My family recycles a lot, buys glass/aluminum when possible, and still we generate 2-3 bags of garbage each week, mostly food packaging.
- akovaski 10y ago
  Just for reference, what is the size of your family and what we the sizes of the garbage bags?
  - debacle 10y ago
    2 adults 1 teen and 1 child. Just normal sized garbage bags.
    - vacri 10y ago
      And the garbage bags themselves are packaging. It's hard to escape.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  The supermarkets discovered they can get you to buy more tomatoes when there are six of them in shiny cellophane, so that's what they do. It's maddening. Not only that, it's nearly impossible not to use plastic packaging if you're not handily located near a co-op (or Unverpackt, if you're in Germany). In many cases I've been looked at suspiciously when I said I didn't need a bag for my two items at the checkout, as though there were something wrong with me. Saying "it just winds up in the back of my car" usually convinced them (never mind that I cycled there...)

yourapostasy 10y ago

> ...people who don't buy into climate change also tend to rationalize away things like potable water, wildlife, and preservation of natural resources... This is emergent behavior from a lifetime inculcating conditioned responses to acute challenges in narrow fields of interest, combined with a lack of frame of reference to externalities. People who never plan beyond a horizon of a few decades, and only in very constrained domains, spending the vast majority of their time addressing perceived here-and-now challenges to their social/economic/personal domains are going to find it very difficult to connect with these long-term incubation period threats. It doesn't help that Upton Sinclair, Jr.'s The Jungle is not widely-read, or reading critical analysis non-fiction is not widespread. Nor does it help that our economic system doesn't account with a high fidelity for where we establish our entropy sinks (at our current technological level, aiming as close to the outer reaches of the solar system as we can is sufficient for now, and we move the aim point higher as we acquire more energy manipulation capabilities). Impactful stories and imagery can sometimes pierce this veil. Connecting to an imminent threat to personal, individual health seemed to galvanize the food safety and pollution control issues, which again points us back to presenting say, ocean acidification via the lens of an acute challenge to individuals.