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That's an interesting perspective, and one I hadn't considered before. I have to admit that it only fuels my fatalism. If people can't be convinced not to (e.g.

That's an interesting perspective, and one I hadn't considered before. I have to admit that it only fuels my fatalism. If people can't be convinced not to (e.g.) throw their trash out the window, then I can't help but despair.

dwaltrip 9y ago
This is where public policy, international agreements (with teeth), and other such things come into play, as they have the potential to modify the dynamics and incentives driving the harmful activity. Not that this makes it easy...
TeMPOraL 9y ago
I wish I could tell you otherwise; I sometimes try to believe it, but then I go outside to intermingle with the general population, and all of this is plainly visible. Sometimes I wonder, who are those people who don't give a damn and just dump garbage wherever they please. I personally don't know any of them (or at least I don't know I know). But then I realize that current population levels mean we all live in our own filter bubbles. I did a back-of-the-napkin math recently and realized that personally, I've meaningfully interacted with at most 0.1% of people in the city I live in. In other words, I don't know a first thing about 99.9% of people I live next to. This probably explains why everyone seems so surprised come election days, or when they start discussing anything on a mainstream Internet portal. All of this suggests civilization is a fragile thing, and the only structure and semblance of stability it has is thanks to systemic incentives (I wonder how our streets would look like if you couldn't be fined for littering). There's too many of us, we don't know one another, and we can't agree on shit, unless indirectly compelled by self-interest. I think the only way to achieve some large-scale coordination is to work on the incentives and the environment in which they apply, but that itself is a hard thing - especially that for any change you'd like to make, there will be those who profit off status quo and want to oppose you. Really, designing a new nuclear reactor is trivial in comparison.

dwaltrip 9y ago

This is where public policy, international agreements (with teeth), and other such things come into play, as they have the potential to modify the dynamics and incentives driving the harmful activity. Not that this makes it easy...

TeMPOraL 9y ago

I wish I could tell you otherwise; I sometimes try to believe it, but then I go outside to intermingle with the general population, and all of this is plainly visible. Sometimes I wonder, who are those people who don't give a damn and just dump garbage wherever they please. I personally don't know any of them (or at least I don't know I know). But then I realize that current population levels mean we all live in our own filter bubbles. I did a back-of-the-napkin math recently and realized that personally, I've meaningfully interacted with at most 0.1% of people in the city I live in. In other words, I don't know a first thing about 99.9% of people I live next to. This probably explains why everyone seems so surprised come election days, or when they start discussing anything on a mainstream Internet portal. All of this suggests civilization is a fragile thing, and the only structure and semblance of stability it has is thanks to systemic incentives (I wonder how our streets would look like if you couldn't be fined for littering). There's too many of us, we don't know one another, and we can't agree on shit, unless indirectly compelled by self-interest. I think the only way to achieve some large-scale coordination is to work on the incentives and the environment in which they apply, but that itself is a hard thing - especially that for any change you'd like to make, there will be those who profit off status quo and want to oppose you. Really, designing a new nuclear reactor is trivial in comparison.