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Why listen to a 16 years old girl, or even blindly trust her? You'd be an idiot if you did that. You might, however, consider listening to / reading the IPCC r

Why listen to a 16 years old girl, or even blindly trust her? You'd be an idiot if you did that. You might, however, consider listening to / reading the IPCC reports, and then start to form an opinion.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
I agree with you, but there is no shortage of people who believe the IPCC is no more credible than Thunburg. Asking people to read those reports doesn’t seem to motivate anyone to do so. I often wonder what a valid alternative would be. It’s a hard problem.
- acqq 6y ago
  IPCC is a huge report and it is a result of a work of international cooperation of more than a hundred of countries. As such it's not an easy read. Here are some book suggestions, some of them could be easier to read: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/climate-change-books.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/climate-cha... But the typical people denying the thing even existing will seldom be willing to hear from anybody but those they trust -- it's a kind of tribal thing. You can try to give the facts to somebody, but for that you should first learn yourself enough answers to the issues they will typically raise. Basically you should really expect all the arguments like in the links and learn enough to understand the topic and be able to give a reliable answer: https://grist.org/series/skeptics/ https://grist.org/series/skeptics/ or https://opr.ca.gov/facts/common-denier-arguments.html https://opr.ca.gov/facts/common-denier-arguments.html But people don't tend to believe just the "facts" if these are just told to them, even the opposite happens, they have to be involved in the process of learning -- the whole process of coming to new perspectives they can relate -- and that takes a lot of time and patience.
  - acqq 6y ago
    How hard it is: "Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds -- New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason -- Elizabeth Kolbert (2017)" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont... Seriously discussed twice on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23757135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23757135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099488 I believe it is possible to reach others, but it's far from being easy, and involves much, much more than just telling the facts. Which doesn't mean that you don't have to understand what you want to talk about.
- mistermann 6y ago
  A valid alternative to me is to put some serious effort into understanding in detail why people hold (or seem to hold) particular beliefs about climate change, as well as some effort into the general field of human cognition and belief formation. Or, look into whether the comically coarse structure of our "democratic" political structures may have some effect. Perhaps we could also scale back a tad on making our phones thinner and take better pictures, and figuring out how to get people to click on advertisements on the internet, and redirect those efforts into finding a way to actually do something about this so called climate crisis (that doesn't seem urgent enough that we'd dare to question any of our axioms, institutions, or theories (mind reading) and approaches (propaganda) we've come up with so far). Or, we can keep going on the path we're on and see how Mother Nature rewards us in return.

steve_adams_86 6y ago

I agree with you, but there is no shortage of people who believe the IPCC is no more credible than Thunburg. Asking people to read those reports doesn’t seem to motivate anyone to do so. I often wonder what a valid alternative would be. It’s a hard problem.

acqq 6y ago
IPCC is a huge report and it is a result of a work of international cooperation of more than a hundred of countries. As such it's not an easy read. Here are some book suggestions, some of them could be easier to read: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/climate-change-books.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/climate-cha... But the typical people denying the thing even existing will seldom be willing to hear from anybody but those they trust -- it's a kind of tribal thing. You can try to give the facts to somebody, but for that you should first learn yourself enough answers to the issues they will typically raise. Basically you should really expect all the arguments like in the links and learn enough to understand the topic and be able to give a reliable answer: https://grist.org/series/skeptics/ https://grist.org/series/skeptics/ or https://opr.ca.gov/facts/common-denier-arguments.html https://opr.ca.gov/facts/common-denier-arguments.html But people don't tend to believe just the "facts" if these are just told to them, even the opposite happens, they have to be involved in the process of learning -- the whole process of coming to new perspectives they can relate -- and that takes a lot of time and patience.
- acqq 6y ago
  How hard it is: "Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds -- New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason -- Elizabeth Kolbert (2017)" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont... Seriously discussed twice on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23757135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23757135 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099488 I believe it is possible to reach others, but it's far from being easy, and involves much, much more than just telling the facts. Which doesn't mean that you don't have to understand what you want to talk about.
mistermann 6y ago
A valid alternative to me is to put some serious effort into understanding in detail why people hold (or seem to hold) particular beliefs about climate change, as well as some effort into the general field of human cognition and belief formation. Or, look into whether the comically coarse structure of our "democratic" political structures may have some effect. Perhaps we could also scale back a tad on making our phones thinner and take better pictures, and figuring out how to get people to click on advertisements on the internet, and redirect those efforts into finding a way to actually do something about this so called climate crisis (that doesn't seem urgent enough that we'd dare to question any of our axioms, institutions, or theories (mind reading) and approaches (propaganda) we've come up with so far). Or, we can keep going on the path we're on and see how Mother Nature rewards us in return.