4 ms·

The Problem with Consensus (2015)

37 points by luu 3y ago

roenxi 3y ago
This is focusing on a tree and ignoring the forest. If I die due to human activity, at the moment the top likely cause is still nuclear war due to the US-Russia conflict currently underway. The risks there are substantially higher than anything posed by climate change. Vocal environmentalists have, for decades, been focusing on abstract concepts of harm to the detriment of the very real problems caused by scare energy and high population. The pro-nuclear movement and the rise of family planning have done far more to control the risks than anything to do with beating people over the head with statistics. The fossil fuel industry would be an afterthought if people had responded to Chernobyl rationally instead of emotionally. Even the environmentalists have had more success by inspiring people to work on improving the cost efficiency of renewable energy than trying to convince people of their beliefs. Climate change just isn't the biggest issue facing humanity. We're facing, literally right now, a global wave of famine, war and suffering kicked off by the poorly-advised COVID response. All the problems that climate change might cause are solved if we can just keep average primary energy/capita ratios high enough - and if that drops, our lifestyles are doomed regardless. There is a reason the environmentalists struggle to gain traction on this issue. It isn't ignorance on the part of the people they are talking to.
- atoav 3y ago
  If you die due to human activity, you probably are going to die by a traffic accident, so "the environmentalists" do more to safe your skin than you probably think. Also: Climate change is not abstract, and we can already attribute individual catastrophes with actual costs (both economic and in human lives) to it. Maybe you are not well read enough to know, but that is a different problem. If you are a conservative and don't like migration, climate change should be your number 1 topic right now. Because guess what.
  - vixen99 3y ago
    'Maybe you are not well read enough to know, but that is a different problem' - is cheap abuse adding nothing to the discussion. To my mind, belittling someone in this way has a reciprocal effect.
    - atoav 3y ago
      I am not sure how many olive branches (olive trees?) one has to extend. The field of climate science is well established, the basic mechanisms behind global warming well understood, the pessimistic predictions for years surpassed by the actual data and by this point the consequences are being painted more and more clearly. At some point, pretending this is irrelevant can sadly only be explained by malice – or what I tend to fall back to when I don't know – incompetence. If someone came around and tried this in the field of math: "guys, I think linear algebra doesn't work" or in the field of basic physics: "guys, I think I inventend the perpetuum mobile", they would be either just ignored, corrected or laughed out of the room. Not because mathematicians or physicists are arrogant, but because what they say is so obviously wrong that it can be discarded as wrong by someone who finished high school and read on the topic once. At the danger of sounding condescending, but I believe at a certain degree of wrongness the burden to inform oneself is on the person being wrong and not on the room around them. I happily point out that they are wrong and maybe even why they are wrong, but it is not my job to do the reading for them. Although in some parts of the world the basic findings of climate science is still wrongly being seen as a matter of opinion, there are things in this world which don't care about ones political views – and if these things mean potentially mean the end of humanity my otherwise ever-present humour will dry up and the otherwise ever-present slack I will give people who are uninformed (who isn't at some topics) will not be given. If your reaction to someone saying a true thing in a bad tone is to "reciprocally" go and believe the wrong thing out of spite, I truly cannot help you.
- tobylane 3y ago
  The risk matrix for US-Russia nuclear war might not be higher than the climate crisis. We have estimates for the actual death toll of the latter, making it higher than certain. I don’t think the covid response initiated it, only made it worse/more inescapable to the west.
- watwut 3y ago
  It is Russian genocide in Ukraine against Ukrainians due to Russian imperial ambitions. Just that you know.
skissane 3y ago
(2015)
_y5hn 3y ago
Ecological carrying capacity has something to teach us: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-01/the-limits-to-growth-after-50-years-more-relevant-than-ever/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-01/the-limits-to-...
- aww_dang 3y ago
  https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/ https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Ah yes, the "things improved in the past so therefore they must also improve in the future" fallacy. There are such things as local maxima, and trends can't simply be arbitrarily projected into the future. The entire argument is ill-conceived.
    - aww_dang 3y ago
      In my reading it wasn't an empiricist validation of Whig historiography. Instead, a specific argument was made about the value of larger populations, division of labor and greater specialization resulting in increased productivity. This was the proposed explanation for an improving standard of living. Notably, there is room to depart from these improvements by tabooing population growth and centrally planning economies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
        The article is paywalled, so I was only going off the part that I was allowed to read. But yeah, sure he's making a slightly more complicated argument, but it's still making an implicit assumption that the upsides of population growth will scale indefinitely, and I just don't buy it. It's at best an open question. But on a fundamental level, there has to be some limit. That's simply due to physics.
user6723 3y ago
Knowledge of Birkeland currents kinda upends a good chunk of some of the narratives about atmosphere.
ricardo_nh 3y ago
I think that there is one side of the question missing: what ties people together in the process of decision? were they elected, are they being payed or are they giving their life to a cause? in all these different scenarios the decision process will be different regarding the importance and the role of consensus. I think that the contextual elements that impact on the very meaning of the concept "consensus" in each of these cases are not taken into account. There are specific practical needs that impose themselves over the general features.

37 points by luu 3y ago

This is focusing on a tree and ignoring the forest. If I die due to human activity, at the moment the top likely cause is still nuclear war due to the US-Russia conflict currently underway. The risks there are substantially higher than anything posed by climate change. Vocal environmentalists have, for decades, been focusing on abstract concepts of harm to the detriment of the very real problems caused by scare energy and high population. The pro-nuclear movement and the rise of family planning have done far more to control the risks than anything to do with beating people over the head with statistics. The fossil fuel industry would be an afterthought if people had responded to Chernobyl rationally instead of emotionally. Even the environmentalists have had more success by inspiring people to work on improving the cost efficiency of renewable energy than trying to convince people of their beliefs. Climate change just isn't the biggest issue facing humanity. We're facing, literally right now, a global wave of famine, war and suffering kicked off by the poorly-advised COVID response. All the problems that climate change might cause are solved if we can just keep average primary energy/capita ratios high enough - and if that drops, our lifestyles are doomed regardless. There is a reason the environmentalists struggle to gain traction on this issue. It isn't ignorance on the part of the people they are talking to.

atoav 3y ago
If you die due to human activity, you probably are going to die by a traffic accident, so "the environmentalists" do more to safe your skin than you probably think. Also: Climate change is not abstract, and we can already attribute individual catastrophes with actual costs (both economic and in human lives) to it. Maybe you are not well read enough to know, but that is a different problem. If you are a conservative and don't like migration, climate change should be your number 1 topic right now. Because guess what.
- vixen99 3y ago
  'Maybe you are not well read enough to know, but that is a different problem' - is cheap abuse adding nothing to the discussion. To my mind, belittling someone in this way has a reciprocal effect.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I am not sure how many olive branches (olive trees?) one has to extend. The field of climate science is well established, the basic mechanisms behind global warming well understood, the pessimistic predictions for years surpassed by the actual data and by this point the consequences are being painted more and more clearly. At some point, pretending this is irrelevant can sadly only be explained by malice – or what I tend to fall back to when I don't know – incompetence. If someone came around and tried this in the field of math: "guys, I think linear algebra doesn't work" or in the field of basic physics: "guys, I think I inventend the perpetuum mobile", they would be either just ignored, corrected or laughed out of the room. Not because mathematicians or physicists are arrogant, but because what they say is so obviously wrong that it can be discarded as wrong by someone who finished high school and read on the topic once. At the danger of sounding condescending, but I believe at a certain degree of wrongness the burden to inform oneself is on the person being wrong and not on the room around them. I happily point out that they are wrong and maybe even why they are wrong, but it is not my job to do the reading for them. Although in some parts of the world the basic findings of climate science is still wrongly being seen as a matter of opinion, there are things in this world which don't care about ones political views – and if these things mean potentially mean the end of humanity my otherwise ever-present humour will dry up and the otherwise ever-present slack I will give people who are uninformed (who isn't at some topics) will not be given. If your reaction to someone saying a true thing in a bad tone is to "reciprocally" go and believe the wrong thing out of spite, I truly cannot help you.
tobylane 3y ago
The risk matrix for US-Russia nuclear war might not be higher than the climate crisis. We have estimates for the actual death toll of the latter, making it higher than certain. I don’t think the covid response initiated it, only made it worse/more inescapable to the west.
watwut 3y ago
It is Russian genocide in Ukraine against Ukrainians due to Russian imperial ambitions. Just that you know.

skissane 3y ago

(2015)

_y5hn 3y ago

Ecological carrying capacity has something to teach us: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-01/the-limits-to-growth-after-50-years-more-relevant-than-ever/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-06-01/the-limits-to-...

aww_dang 3y ago
https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/ https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  Ah yes, the "things improved in the past so therefore they must also improve in the future" fallacy. There are such things as local maxima, and trends can't simply be arbitrarily projected into the future. The entire argument is ill-conceived.
  - aww_dang 3y ago
    In my reading it wasn't an empiricist validation of Whig historiography. Instead, a specific argument was made about the value of larger populations, division of labor and greater specialization resulting in increased productivity. This was the proposed explanation for an improving standard of living. Notably, there is room to depart from these improvements by tabooing population growth and centrally planning economies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      The article is paywalled, so I was only going off the part that I was allowed to read. But yeah, sure he's making a slightly more complicated argument, but it's still making an implicit assumption that the upsides of population growth will scale indefinitely, and I just don't buy it. It's at best an open question. But on a fundamental level, there has to be some limit. That's simply due to physics.

user6723 3y ago

Knowledge of Birkeland currents kinda upends a good chunk of some of the narratives about atmosphere.

ricardo_nh 3y ago

I think that there is one side of the question missing: what ties people together in the process of decision? were they elected, are they being payed or are they giving their life to a cause? in all these different scenarios the decision process will be different regarding the importance and the role of consensus. I think that the contextual elements that impact on the very meaning of the concept "consensus" in each of these cases are not taken into account. There are specific practical needs that impose themselves over the general features.