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I'd venture the opposite, that people have an inherent need to believe that humanity is special in an objective sense, that drastic change and collapse cannot h

I'd venture the opposite, that people have an inherent need to believe that humanity is special in an objective sense, that drastic change and collapse cannot happen in the timescales we operate in. An adult variant of "pulling yourself under the covers and hoping the monster goes away". After all, wasn't this sentiment one of the reasons we collectively failed to address this issue using the reasonable mitigations that were available to us when it was possible? A belief that the "scaremongering" being done by climate scientists for decades was out of proportion? > Cool-headed rationality and straigthforward honesty don't have the same downsides of excessive demoralization or creating a credibility fatigue. I'm confused as to what part of my commentary you found irrational or dishonest.

acituan 5y ago
> I'm confused as to what part of my commentary you found irrational or dishonest. Climate predictions are complicated but the negative valence coupled with the confidence in your predictions doesn't represent that. That is what I am calling out as proportionality error. It is a version of "this plane crashing would be horrible, even though the probability multiplier is likely to be very small, I can so vividly envision the horrible outcome that I will behave as if it is more probable and have a panic attack". There is a lot of affective/emotional (so-called) reasoning. Not only that, we don't know to what extend (not if) we are projecting our unconscious, personal, perennial problems such as fear-of-death onto a global wish of world not existing after we die for example. Human beings are deeply religious creatures, and in absence of a structured spiritual approach to these problems, we are prone to deify and mythify what is around us. (To be crisply clear, I am not calling anthropogenic climate change a myth by any stretch of imagination, but it is a certainty that our responses are not in 100% correspondence to the reality of it, including as you rightly point out "pulling yourself under the covers and hoping the monster goes away".) > After all, wasn't this sentiment one of the reasons we collectively failed to address this issue using the reasonable mitigations that were available to us when it was possible? A belief that the "scaremongering" being done by climate scientists for decades was out of proportion? It wasn't the sentiment, it was the act of humbuggery around the inflated immediacy and absurd dramatization of outcomes, from the likes of Al Gore to Hollywood, that either turned people into apathetic nihilism or burned out defeatism. I am not saying these are single handedly responsible for this response; post-WWII onwards especially during the Cold War people have been culturally trained for these types of thinking and today we are seeing their protracted influence.
- moistly 5y ago
  You keep insinuating that you are not a denier, but really, you are. Climate change is going to rip through society like a wrecking ball. At the very least, massive crop failures are going to result in a global starvation crisis. This is absolutely the truth of the situation, but you dismiss it: “affective/emotional.” You turn to apathetic nihilism because your only alternative is panic. I myself have turned to opt-out nihilism—I try not to own stuff, don’t have progeny, looking to isolate on a small farm. Greta seems to be on a much better track: trying to influence the people who can make the decisions that will improve the outcomes. Maybe you should give it a shot.
  - acituan 5y ago
    I think you're confused about the forum you're in. If you have a counter argument to people's arguments, all the power to you and you're more than welcome to discuss, in the hopes that we can learn something more about it. But if your argument is mere willful assertion of what is already stated, or is calling people names, kindly back off. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Normally I wouldn't want to honor your manner of discourse by responding to it, but I want to make the case that one can still discuss the contents of an argument despite emotionality; > You turn to apathetic nihilism because your only alternative is panic. I myself have turned to opt-out nihilism—I try not to own stuff, don’t have progeny, looking to isolate on a small farm. I personally am pretty optimistic and excited regarding the prospects of tackling this problem, because embedded in it a plethora of large scale multi-agent coordination problems we ought to solve, and we do have the capacity for it. Incidentally, I think individual level solutions don't necessarily have the strategic depth to address what is essentially a problem of scale. But if you think you're doing the right thing, more power to you, at least at your scale you couldn't harm things even if you wanted to. > Greta seems to be on a much better track: trying to influence the people who can make the decisions that will improve the outcomes. Does her influence look like a success to you? It doesn't to me. Maybe there is a self-fulfilling prophecy in talking down to people, or appeals to romantic emotionality, instead of bringing the best and the most rational in them. Maybe rampant consumerism and lack of higher-order thinking to maneuver climate change are sibling problems, both intimately related to the problem of stupefaction of the masses. Maybe calling people names is part of the shame-politics that attempt to turn adults into temporary children. Hijacking our deepest fears of ostracism in the name of some ostensible "greater good", but inadvertently reducing people's agency and higher order thinking, both of which are deeply needed to steer out of the problem.

acituan 5y ago

> I'm confused as to what part of my commentary you found irrational or dishonest. Climate predictions are complicated but the negative valence coupled with the confidence in your predictions doesn't represent that. That is what I am calling out as proportionality error. It is a version of "this plane crashing would be horrible, even though the probability multiplier is likely to be very small, I can so vividly envision the horrible outcome that I will behave as if it is more probable and have a panic attack". There is a lot of affective/emotional (so-called) reasoning. Not only that, we don't know to what extend (not if) we are projecting our unconscious, personal, perennial problems such as fear-of-death onto a global wish of world not existing after we die for example. Human beings are deeply religious creatures, and in absence of a structured spiritual approach to these problems, we are prone to deify and mythify what is around us. (To be crisply clear, I am not calling anthropogenic climate change a myth by any stretch of imagination, but it is a certainty that our responses are not in 100% correspondence to the reality of it, including as you rightly point out "pulling yourself under the covers and hoping the monster goes away".) > After all, wasn't this sentiment one of the reasons we collectively failed to address this issue using the reasonable mitigations that were available to us when it was possible? A belief that the "scaremongering" being done by climate scientists for decades was out of proportion? It wasn't the sentiment, it was the act of humbuggery around the inflated immediacy and absurd dramatization of outcomes, from the likes of Al Gore to Hollywood, that either turned people into apathetic nihilism or burned out defeatism. I am not saying these are single handedly responsible for this response; post-WWII onwards especially during the Cold War people have been culturally trained for these types of thinking and today we are seeing their protracted influence.

moistly 5y ago
You keep insinuating that you are not a denier, but really, you are. Climate change is going to rip through society like a wrecking ball. At the very least, massive crop failures are going to result in a global starvation crisis. This is absolutely the truth of the situation, but you dismiss it: “affective/emotional.” You turn to apathetic nihilism because your only alternative is panic. I myself have turned to opt-out nihilism—I try not to own stuff, don’t have progeny, looking to isolate on a small farm. Greta seems to be on a much better track: trying to influence the people who can make the decisions that will improve the outcomes. Maybe you should give it a shot.
- acituan 5y ago
  I think you're confused about the forum you're in. If you have a counter argument to people's arguments, all the power to you and you're more than welcome to discuss, in the hopes that we can learn something more about it. But if your argument is mere willful assertion of what is already stated, or is calling people names, kindly back off. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Normally I wouldn't want to honor your manner of discourse by responding to it, but I want to make the case that one can still discuss the contents of an argument despite emotionality; > You turn to apathetic nihilism because your only alternative is panic. I myself have turned to opt-out nihilism—I try not to own stuff, don’t have progeny, looking to isolate on a small farm. I personally am pretty optimistic and excited regarding the prospects of tackling this problem, because embedded in it a plethora of large scale multi-agent coordination problems we ought to solve, and we do have the capacity for it. Incidentally, I think individual level solutions don't necessarily have the strategic depth to address what is essentially a problem of scale. But if you think you're doing the right thing, more power to you, at least at your scale you couldn't harm things even if you wanted to. > Greta seems to be on a much better track: trying to influence the people who can make the decisions that will improve the outcomes. Does her influence look like a success to you? It doesn't to me. Maybe there is a self-fulfilling prophecy in talking down to people, or appeals to romantic emotionality, instead of bringing the best and the most rational in them. Maybe rampant consumerism and lack of higher-order thinking to maneuver climate change are sibling problems, both intimately related to the problem of stupefaction of the masses. Maybe calling people names is part of the shame-politics that attempt to turn adults into temporary children. Hijacking our deepest fears of ostracism in the name of some ostensible "greater good", but inadvertently reducing people's agency and higher order thinking, both of which are deeply needed to steer out of the problem.