8 ms·
If you spend too long trying to convince someone there's a problem, then you are the problem.
by jon_richards 10y ago
If you spend too long trying to convince someone there's a problem, then you are the problem.
- Analemma_ 10y agoThis is one of those comments that sounds profound if you give it a cursory glance, but actually makes no sense whatsoever.
- mirimir 10y agoOh come on, sure it makes sense. It means that you failed to communicate effectively. Or that communicating to them was not an effective strategy.
- Apes 10y agoOr the person you are communicating to has a conflict of interest and has a strong incentive to feign ignorance. Usually referred to as being "corrupt" for short.
- mirimir 10y agoIn that case, "communicating to them was not an effective strategy".
- mikeash 10y ago"Their strategy is not effective" is quite different from "they are the problem." Anyway, what would you propose that they do?
- mirimir 10y agoIf B is ignoring A, for whatever reason, then A can talk to others. Or more generally, do whatever it takes to workaround B.
- mikeash 10y agoA does talk to others. It still hasn't worked, and now B is trying really hard to make A stop telling everybody about this stuff.
- mirimir 10y agoSo A has to get rid of B, or make them irrelevant.
- mikeash 10y agoHow? B has all the power. It's easy to say "get rid of them" but how do you actually do it?
- mirimir 10y agoMaybe B has overwhelming power now. But if B's position is untenable, that will eventually become apparent. And yes, that may take far too long to be of any good.
- tremon 10y agoBut if B's position is untenable, that will eventually become apparent. Sure. That's why B is investing heavily in its military.
- mirimir 10y agoI thought that this subthread was about US politics. That's so knife-edge that it could flip in four years. But yes, if the US goes full-moron, and takes a military approach to climate mitigation, all bets are off :(
- jon_richards 10y agoI may have butchered the quote a little bit (not a famous quote, just something told to me once). "If you spend too long convincing someone of a problem they can't see, they start to see you as the problem" gets the meaning better. It doesn't mean to give up, it just means that you are making yourself their enemy and thus probably making it harder to get your message across (look at the studies on showing scientific evidence to anti-vaxxers).
- ajmurmann 10y agoIf I'm not mistaken than the vast majority globally is convinced of man made climate change being an issue. The holdouts primarily seem to be a subset of US Americans. There is disagreement on what a fair solution would look like but the vast majority agrees on the problem.
- daxorid 10y agoLet us be honest: no they are not convinced. If they were legitimately terrified of existential disaster >400ppm, they would be IMMEDIATELY limiting industrial production and investing MASSIVELY into carbon sequestration and renewables. The fact that ALL NATIONS take half-hearted and half-assed measures to confront what the pro-AGW crowd paints as an extinction risk demonstrably contradicts your claim that "the vast majority globally is convinced".
- mikeash 10y agoCollective action problems are not that easy to solve, no matter how dire the consequences of failure.
- the8472 10y agoDid collective action not work for solving the hitler problem?
- ajmurmann 10y agoTaking down Hitler just needed one force to take down Hitler. We didn't need to convince the majority that Hitler needs to be taken down and agree on how to do it. There also was no competitive advantage to be won by preventing this from happening. If I keep my pollution deregulated on there other hand I have a big competitive advantage over everyone who does. Very different problem.
- rohamg 10y agoNot until it was almost too late.
- jon_richards 10y agoI see this was taken quite negatively. The point isn't that you _actually are_ the problem, the point is that you need to realize that they start to _see_ you as a problem. It means you have to consider what the other person is thinking and not just think "If I just keep telling them and showing them the facts, they'll see the light and come around to my side." Studies have shown that when you show scientific evidence to anti-vaxxers, they reject it and become more entrenched in their beliefs.
- mikeash 10y agoI understood the comment as saying that if you can't get your point across after a certain amount of time, it's your own fault. Thanks for clarifying, it makes much more sense now.