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I thought the setup for that book was interesting, but it's probably his worst book IMHO (though I haven't read all of them). Normally I'm careful about attribu

by ch4s3 5y ago

I thought the setup for that book was interesting, but it's probably his worst book IMHO (though I haven't read all of them). Normally I'm careful about attributing the actions of characters to novelists, but Robinson seems to be increasingly advocating terrorism in his books and it's getting really off-putting.

jillesvangurp 5y ago
I agree, I did not actually finish the book. The setup was interesting but it was all a bit too moralistic and righteous for my taste. Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock is much more fun in that respect. The terrorism aspect is interesting though. He's not the only one that is predicting conflict as a direct result of global warming. Mass population displacements due to things like wet bulb heat events, droughts, the middle east routinely hitting temperature of over 50/60 degrees Celcius, etc. have the potential to get really ugly.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
There's an internally consistent moral argument that terrorism is warranted in this situation eg Malm's "How to Blow Up a Pipeline." The basic argument is that peaceful protest is effective when it is an alternative to a more militant and disruptive extremist movement with the same goals. You negotiate with the peaceful side so the violent side doesn't tear your shit down. When there is no extremist movement, you really have no powerful incentive to acquiesce to the demands of the peaceful movement. At this point mass peaceful climate protest is decades old but we've seen virtually no meaningful changes addressed. We're tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths into the climate crisis and it's only just barely getting started and those with the most agency to change it very obviously have no intent to. Why is ecoterrorism considered a morally abhorrent line that cannot ever be crossed, but their choice is not? The normative answer is "that is bad too they should stop" but by what means can we make them? Our options seem very limited.
- kevin_morrill 5y ago
  I get what you’re saying but is the track record of terrorism any better at causing constructive change? Really we need to engage a lot of people’s minds, and that just turns out to be really hard in our current culture no matter what angle you come at it from.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    No, what I'm saying is that understanding peaceful movements separate from violent ones is missing the point. For example martin luther king jr's peaceful civil rights movement was effective in part because there was a credible threat of a violent movement on its wing. There was conflict and cooperation between these movements, they can't be cleanly separated. A lot of the reason white people came to the negotiating table at all was because of fear of what would happen instead if they didn't. Whose minds do we need to change? Climate change is a major issue with massive popular support. There are relatively few people actually able to take action on it and they will not under the current circumstances. Specifically because there's no credible non-peaceful consequence they have to confront, they can ignore the demands of everyone else. The actual historical effectiveness of terrorism alone is questionable. It's not a reliable or sustainable way to change the minds of a large mass of people. But that's not actually what we need to do here. Making a powerful few frightened enough to do what they ought may be sufficient. And the effectiveness of the credible threat of violence, combined with a mass peaceful movement, is well attested.
    - ramblerman 5y ago
      You should be placed on some kind of watch list. Also, How many innocent people do you think you need to kill exactly to sway the CCP.
      - giraffe_lady 5y ago
        Again I will make this point, again and again. Here, today, on HN, in this comment section, we have people endorsing mass population culling of the most dispossessed people on earth, and the least responsible for climate change. How am I the moral transgressor for arguing, abstractly, that redirecting the harm towards those actually perpetrating it is preferable? The CCP isn't my problem honestly. Most of the major contributors to climate change are operated from within my own country, so I'll focus on that. There's plenty of work to go around, I'm sure someone over there can handle that part of the project. The fact that people can never really come up with anything except "but well CHINA" speaks volumes to me. You aren't rejecting this stance because you abhor violence. Climate change IS VIOLENCE. Where is your outrage, what are you willing to do about it?
- helloworld11 5y ago
  Want to substantiate your claim that we're as many as hundreds of thousands of death into the climate crisis? Weather has always killed people, perfectly natural weather by the way, so if you're going to attribute deaths specifically to human-caused climate change, a source or two would be nice to see.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    No not really. There is enough information that is easy to access that anyone who wants to can. If it's not convincing to you then changing your mind in this forum isn't a project I'm interested in right now.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      No, there is plenty of models showing increased likelihood of various types of weather events due to extremes. Nobody has done meaningful analysis on deaths avoided or caused by these probabilities.
- radford-neal 5y ago
  For terrorism to be morally justified, you have to be right that the alternative is millions of deaths. Have you considered the possibility that you are not right? I mean, really considered? Not, my friends all think the same way, and so do the charismatic politicians I prefer, so it must be true? You could start with your "tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths into the climate crisis" claim, which is highly dubious. Have you swallowed the false claim that hurricanes and tornadoes are worse now than before? Are you looking at net deaths, for instance counting not just higher deaths in heat waves, but also fewer deaths in cold snaps? And are you accounting for the beneficial effect of higher food production due to CO2 fertilization?
  - marssaxman 5y ago
    It would be hard for anyone thinking carefully about climate change not to have considered the possibility that they are not right, given the decades of relentless, well-funded industry propaganda making such claims, to which you have apparently fallen victim.
    - radford-neal 5y ago
      I think you've fallen victim to propaganda about how much propaganda each side has put out.
      - marssaxman 5y ago
        You're deep in it, aren't you? Oh well! The reality of the situation is already making itself obvious. Come out to the small coastal town I've spent the last few months in and try telling the people here that hurricanes aren't getting worse. Try to work out why everyone who can afford to do so has been getting their whole house lifted up off its foundation, onto stilts... But this place is not special, this kind of thing is happening everywhere. You can see it easily enough, if you let yourself look. Up to you. Can't blame you for wanting excuses to ignore it, though; the future we are barrelling along into is a scary place.
        5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

by ch4s3 5y ago

jillesvangurp 5y ago

I agree, I did not actually finish the book. The setup was interesting but it was all a bit too moralistic and righteous for my taste. Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock is much more fun in that respect. The terrorism aspect is interesting though. He's not the only one that is predicting conflict as a direct result of global warming. Mass population displacements due to things like wet bulb heat events, droughts, the middle east routinely hitting temperature of over 50/60 degrees Celcius, etc. have the potential to get really ugly.

giraffe_lady 5y ago

There's an internally consistent moral argument that terrorism is warranted in this situation eg Malm's "How to Blow Up a Pipeline." The basic argument is that peaceful protest is effective when it is an alternative to a more militant and disruptive extremist movement with the same goals. You negotiate with the peaceful side so the violent side doesn't tear your shit down. When there is no extremist movement, you really have no powerful incentive to acquiesce to the demands of the peaceful movement. At this point mass peaceful climate protest is decades old but we've seen virtually no meaningful changes addressed. We're tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths into the climate crisis and it's only just barely getting started and those with the most agency to change it very obviously have no intent to. Why is ecoterrorism considered a morally abhorrent line that cannot ever be crossed, but their choice is not? The normative answer is "that is bad too they should stop" but by what means can we make them? Our options seem very limited.

kevin_morrill 5y ago
I get what you’re saying but is the track record of terrorism any better at causing constructive change? Really we need to engage a lot of people’s minds, and that just turns out to be really hard in our current culture no matter what angle you come at it from.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  No, what I'm saying is that understanding peaceful movements separate from violent ones is missing the point. For example martin luther king jr's peaceful civil rights movement was effective in part because there was a credible threat of a violent movement on its wing. There was conflict and cooperation between these movements, they can't be cleanly separated. A lot of the reason white people came to the negotiating table at all was because of fear of what would happen instead if they didn't. Whose minds do we need to change? Climate change is a major issue with massive popular support. There are relatively few people actually able to take action on it and they will not under the current circumstances. Specifically because there's no credible non-peaceful consequence they have to confront, they can ignore the demands of everyone else. The actual historical effectiveness of terrorism alone is questionable. It's not a reliable or sustainable way to change the minds of a large mass of people. But that's not actually what we need to do here. Making a powerful few frightened enough to do what they ought may be sufficient. And the effectiveness of the credible threat of violence, combined with a mass peaceful movement, is well attested.
  - ramblerman 5y ago
    You should be placed on some kind of watch list. Also, How many innocent people do you think you need to kill exactly to sway the CCP.
    - giraffe_lady 5y ago
      Again I will make this point, again and again. Here, today, on HN, in this comment section, we have people endorsing mass population culling of the most dispossessed people on earth, and the least responsible for climate change. How am I the moral transgressor for arguing, abstractly, that redirecting the harm towards those actually perpetrating it is preferable? The CCP isn't my problem honestly. Most of the major contributors to climate change are operated from within my own country, so I'll focus on that. There's plenty of work to go around, I'm sure someone over there can handle that part of the project. The fact that people can never really come up with anything except "but well CHINA" speaks volumes to me. You aren't rejecting this stance because you abhor violence. Climate change IS VIOLENCE. Where is your outrage, what are you willing to do about it?
helloworld11 5y ago
Want to substantiate your claim that we're as many as hundreds of thousands of death into the climate crisis? Weather has always killed people, perfectly natural weather by the way, so if you're going to attribute deaths specifically to human-caused climate change, a source or two would be nice to see.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  No not really. There is enough information that is easy to access that anyone who wants to can. If it's not convincing to you then changing your mind in this forum isn't a project I'm interested in right now.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    No, there is plenty of models showing increased likelihood of various types of weather events due to extremes. Nobody has done meaningful analysis on deaths avoided or caused by these probabilities.
radford-neal 5y ago
For terrorism to be morally justified, you have to be right that the alternative is millions of deaths. Have you considered the possibility that you are not right? I mean, really considered? Not, my friends all think the same way, and so do the charismatic politicians I prefer, so it must be true? You could start with your "tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths into the climate crisis" claim, which is highly dubious. Have you swallowed the false claim that hurricanes and tornadoes are worse now than before? Are you looking at net deaths, for instance counting not just higher deaths in heat waves, but also fewer deaths in cold snaps? And are you accounting for the beneficial effect of higher food production due to CO2 fertilization?
- marssaxman 5y ago
  It would be hard for anyone thinking carefully about climate change not to have considered the possibility that they are not right, given the decades of relentless, well-funded industry propaganda making such claims, to which you have apparently fallen victim.
  - radford-neal 5y ago
    I think you've fallen victim to propaganda about how much propaganda each side has put out.
    - marssaxman 5y ago
      You're deep in it, aren't you? Oh well! The reality of the situation is already making itself obvious. Come out to the small coastal town I've spent the last few months in and try telling the people here that hurricanes aren't getting worse. Try to work out why everyone who can afford to do so has been getting their whole house lifted up off its foundation, onto stilts... But this place is not special, this kind of thing is happening everywhere. You can see it easily enough, if you let yourself look. Up to you. Can't blame you for wanting excuses to ignore it, though; the future we are barrelling along into is a scary place.
      - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]