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This sounds just like a religious argument. "What if we do the good things that some religious book says we should do, avoid the bad, be decent human beings, an

This sounds just like a religious argument. "What if we do the good things that some religious book says we should do, avoid the bad, be decent human beings, and help others, and there's no afterlife to be rewarded by?" I suspect it elicits exactly the same visceral responses by the target audience.

biesnecker 9y ago
Sadly I think you're underestimating the appeal of religion. If this idea were as popular as religious ideas we'd have gone green a generation ago.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  Religious ideas are only popular when you don't have to put much effort and only pay a token sum of money. Once religion demands dedication most people will find paradigm where they skip working while still consider themself pious.
enugu 9y ago
That analogy is too generic - it will apply to any action which has two distinct kinds of benefits. Pascal's wager has many issues which wont apply here. A:'This approach to programming improves memory safety', B:'Not interested', A:'It also makes code more modular/reusable', B:'Pascal's Wager!' Also, if one is doing a cost benefit analysis - one has to include things like political instability caused by oil dependence(see Middle East politics), funding of extremist groups, and health benefits due to reduction of air pollution.
nonbel 9y ago
It sounds like Pascal's wager: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager It is not a good sign if your worldview rests on reasoning like this...
- Stanish 9y ago
  It's not as simple as that. Our economic model is objectively destroying life-giving and stability-maintaining ecosystems in many different ways. We really do need to rethink everything at a fundamental level to stop destroying the web of life. You think climate change is scary, talk to a soil scientist about what agriculture is doing to topsoil in the US, which developed over hundreds of thousands of years to be in some cases several hundred feet deep, and is now measured in inches... I don't accept every single catastrophic outcome predicted by many scientists, and I cede that there is great political gain to be made from catastrophic prediction in the name of grant funding, but the issue of whether we need to drastically change how we conceptualize the natural world and our place in it (starting with the often false distinctions drawn between natural and artificial, conservation and agriculture, urban and rural, etc.) is easy to see in my eyes. Many of the ways the current population of 7-10 billion humans live are objectively imperiling the life support systems of the planet, and that is a huge problem for us all. Each broken link makes the network more fragile and less capable of buffering shock events, producing clean water, air, food, medicine, fuel, etc. Additionally, as apex species, we have an enormously outsize effect on how these systems work (or don't). Thus our changing habits will have huge ramifications through that network, good or bad. It's like we are hanging from a tangle of threads above a ravine, and each thread that is broken brings us closer to falling, though no single one will certainly do it. Taken from a sufficiently atomistic perspective, and assuming the regeneration of those threads, breaking almost any single thread is acceptable. Taken as whole, the idea of breaking any of those threads is absurd and completely outweighed by the increased risk of falling. This is a mistake made by our current economic models which too often assume complete fungibility, regeneration, and replicability of natural systems (or don't even consider them at all). Tragedy of the commons. I guess my point is that it really doesn't boil down to Pascal's Wager except in the sense that everything does!
- burke 9y ago
  The reason Pascal's wager is bullshit is that it rests on two assumptions to convince non-believers: 1. Infinite badness of hell; 2. Infinitesimal possibility of religious truth. Reasoning about climate change doesn't really involve multiplying infinity by zero. There is more evidence to back up a non-zero chance of catastrophe, and we don't have to rely on inifinite badness to make action worthwhile. Finite badness does the trick just fine. Unlike Pascal's wager, the question of climate change action is rooted in knowable quantities. Unfortunately, a lot of these are still unknowns to a degree, and a lot of misinformation exists, making it difficult for non-experts to keep up.
Arizhel 9y ago
>This sounds just like a religious argument. "What if we do the good things that some religious book says we should do, avoid the bad, be decent human beings, and help others, and there's no afterlife to be rewarded by?" The problem is that the religious books want you to do a bunch of things that really are bad and awful. Aside from the bits about murdering unbelievers and apostates, and stoning your disobedient children, and not eating pork (which is actually good for the pigs I guess if you follow it), they'd also have you do things like forgo all contraception, leaving you with a bunch of children you're not prepared to take care of, or being celibate, which really isn't fun or healthy, and basically living like they did in Victorian times (see the other article here today about the "scandalous" behavior at Victorian beaches with some men and women actually swimming together--the horror!). If there isn't a really good reason to enjoy various human activities that really aren't harmful, then why shouldn't you?
nikdaheratik 9y ago
Well it's only a "religious argument" if you also assume that the fossil fuels our economy currently relies upon are somehow never going to run out. Renewable energy is the only long term solution to a number of energy problems, the climate change issue just makes the need for it that much more important.

biesnecker 9y ago

Sadly I think you're underestimating the appeal of religion. If this idea were as popular as religious ideas we'd have gone green a generation ago.

thriftwy 9y ago
Religious ideas are only popular when you don't have to put much effort and only pay a token sum of money. Once religion demands dedication most people will find paradigm where they skip working while still consider themself pious.

enugu 9y ago

That analogy is too generic - it will apply to any action which has two distinct kinds of benefits. Pascal's wager has many issues which wont apply here. A:'This approach to programming improves memory safety', B:'Not interested', A:'It also makes code more modular/reusable', B:'Pascal's Wager!' Also, if one is doing a cost benefit analysis - one has to include things like political instability caused by oil dependence(see Middle East politics), funding of extremist groups, and health benefits due to reduction of air pollution.

nonbel 9y ago

It sounds like Pascal's wager: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager It is not a good sign if your worldview rests on reasoning like this...

Stanish 9y ago
It's not as simple as that. Our economic model is objectively destroying life-giving and stability-maintaining ecosystems in many different ways. We really do need to rethink everything at a fundamental level to stop destroying the web of life. You think climate change is scary, talk to a soil scientist about what agriculture is doing to topsoil in the US, which developed over hundreds of thousands of years to be in some cases several hundred feet deep, and is now measured in inches... I don't accept every single catastrophic outcome predicted by many scientists, and I cede that there is great political gain to be made from catastrophic prediction in the name of grant funding, but the issue of whether we need to drastically change how we conceptualize the natural world and our place in it (starting with the often false distinctions drawn between natural and artificial, conservation and agriculture, urban and rural, etc.) is easy to see in my eyes. Many of the ways the current population of 7-10 billion humans live are objectively imperiling the life support systems of the planet, and that is a huge problem for us all. Each broken link makes the network more fragile and less capable of buffering shock events, producing clean water, air, food, medicine, fuel, etc. Additionally, as apex species, we have an enormously outsize effect on how these systems work (or don't). Thus our changing habits will have huge ramifications through that network, good or bad. It's like we are hanging from a tangle of threads above a ravine, and each thread that is broken brings us closer to falling, though no single one will certainly do it. Taken from a sufficiently atomistic perspective, and assuming the regeneration of those threads, breaking almost any single thread is acceptable. Taken as whole, the idea of breaking any of those threads is absurd and completely outweighed by the increased risk of falling. This is a mistake made by our current economic models which too often assume complete fungibility, regeneration, and replicability of natural systems (or don't even consider them at all). Tragedy of the commons. I guess my point is that it really doesn't boil down to Pascal's Wager except in the sense that everything does!
burke 9y ago
The reason Pascal's wager is bullshit is that it rests on two assumptions to convince non-believers: 1. Infinite badness of hell; 2. Infinitesimal possibility of religious truth. Reasoning about climate change doesn't really involve multiplying infinity by zero. There is more evidence to back up a non-zero chance of catastrophe, and we don't have to rely on inifinite badness to make action worthwhile. Finite badness does the trick just fine. Unlike Pascal's wager, the question of climate change action is rooted in knowable quantities. Unfortunately, a lot of these are still unknowns to a degree, and a lot of misinformation exists, making it difficult for non-experts to keep up.

Arizhel 9y ago

>This sounds just like a religious argument. "What if we do the good things that some religious book says we should do, avoid the bad, be decent human beings, and help others, and there's no afterlife to be rewarded by?" The problem is that the religious books want you to do a bunch of things that really are bad and awful. Aside from the bits about murdering unbelievers and apostates, and stoning your disobedient children, and not eating pork (which is actually good for the pigs I guess if you follow it), they'd also have you do things like forgo all contraception, leaving you with a bunch of children you're not prepared to take care of, or being celibate, which really isn't fun or healthy, and basically living like they did in Victorian times (see the other article here today about the "scandalous" behavior at Victorian beaches with some men and women actually swimming together--the horror!). If there isn't a really good reason to enjoy various human activities that really aren't harmful, then why shouldn't you?

nikdaheratik 9y ago

Well it's only a "religious argument" if you also assume that the fossil fuels our economy currently relies upon are somehow never going to run out. Renewable energy is the only long term solution to a number of energy problems, the climate change issue just makes the need for it that much more important.