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Humans are good at being anxious due to the precariousness of life. Especially for things we don’t fully understand. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wi

Humans are good at being anxious due to the precariousness of life. Especially for things we don’t fully understand. For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet#1910 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet#1910 Why is the environment any different?

jacquesm 7y ago
Because the rate of change is too slow to perceive it as something that is critical. When looked at on a geological time-scale this is all happening in an eye blink. When looked at on a human timescale it is spread out over many years and so there is time enough to get accustomed to the new baseline as the change is happening. The only thing different between an explosion and wind is the rate of change.
otikik 7y ago
> we don’t fully understand. That's a language trap. It's true that we do not understand the environment fully, in the sense that we don't know how every single living creature on it will die. But we understand it well enough: we can see the big trends. We don't know exactly how times we will hit the cliff as we fall, but we can see clearly that we're falling.
jaredklewis 7y ago
I agree that humans are, in a sense, evolved to stress out, but this is a horrible example. Like so Michu astronomy, Flammarion's theory was merely conjecture with no experimental evidence. Further, many other scientists correctly contested his hypothesis at the time. Compare that with overfishing, where we have strong evidence that tuna populations have drastically declined in the past 50 years [1]. These declines are very likely due to overfishing, particularly of immature fish that have not had a chance to reproduce. Without a change of trajectory, many tuna species will almost certainly go extinct. Yes, we should be skeptical and not give into hysteria. But that doesn't instead mean we should just stick our heads in the sand. Don't you think oceans without fish are going to cause a lot of problems? 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251139/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251139/

jacquesm 7y ago

Because the rate of change is too slow to perceive it as something that is critical. When looked at on a geological time-scale this is all happening in an eye blink. When looked at on a human timescale it is spread out over many years and so there is time enough to get accustomed to the new baseline as the change is happening. The only thing different between an explosion and wind is the rate of change.

otikik 7y ago

> we don’t fully understand. That's a language trap. It's true that we do not understand the environment fully, in the sense that we don't know how every single living creature on it will die. But we understand it well enough: we can see the big trends. We don't know exactly how times we will hit the cliff as we fall, but we can see clearly that we're falling.

jaredklewis 7y ago

I agree that humans are, in a sense, evolved to stress out, but this is a horrible example. Like so Michu astronomy, Flammarion's theory was merely conjecture with no experimental evidence. Further, many other scientists correctly contested his hypothesis at the time. Compare that with overfishing, where we have strong evidence that tuna populations have drastically declined in the past 50 years [1]. These declines are very likely due to overfishing, particularly of immature fish that have not had a chance to reproduce. Without a change of trajectory, many tuna species will almost certainly go extinct. Yes, we should be skeptical and not give into hysteria. But that doesn't instead mean we should just stick our heads in the sand. Don't you think oceans without fish are going to cause a lot of problems? 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251139/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251139/