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Mostly because of the way it reflects badly on climate change deniers. Climate change is going to suck, but I focus on the fact that we've been fighting agains

Mostly because of the way it reflects badly on climate change deniers. Climate change is going to suck, but I focus on the fact that we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills. Climate change is really basic chemistry; if we can't get people to agree on that how are we ever going to solve problems with any actual complexity? Climate change denial is associated with a ton of other ideological issues that cause a lot of people a lot of harm, today, in first world countries. Not all of them are as scientifically definitive, but they share a pattern of people expressing opinion as fact. I feel like painful mitigation efforts are too grand to even think about. A lot of issues come down to leaving people alone to make their own decisions, with no effect on anyone else, and we can't even have that. So for me the mitigations are less about dealing with climate change and more about hoping climate change deniers realize just how reprehensibly they've handled this entire thing. But I'm not optimistic about that.

baq 3y ago
> Climate change is going to suck, but I focus on the fact that we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills. Climate change is really basic chemistry; if we can't get people to agree on that how are we ever going to solve problems with any actual complexity? Dollars. People’s livelihoods depend on not understanding, so they don’t. We must incentivize understanding and propose a workable solution, which is basically a way to manufacture gasoline, diesel and natural gas out of literally thin air, because transitioning to electric everything is not happening due to natural resources constraints (thinking of mining primarily).
- blkhawk 3y ago
  uh sorta - while the livelihood of some deniers depend on dollars (commercial or political) I think its more correct to say that to make others doubt climate change is their primary task they get funding for. You can see this very well when compare American vs European climate change debate - in Europe is a very passive "not doing anything useful" while actually everybody gives at least lip service that something has to be done. This is because there was less opportunity to couple the debate into politics in an concentrated way. In the US the 2 party thing makes that very easy and the whole thing has staying power as an "issue" so it probably needs comparatively little or even no investment to keep alive. In the EU I can only directly speak for Germany but to me it seemed like there were no direct attacks against the concept of climate change directly (although we get some splash damage from the US). most issues stem from single big companies or industry groups trying to bend things to their advantage. A good example that is maybe best known international is the "Clean Diesel" thing that VW so disastrously chose because it was short term cheaper than investments into EV technology. This is what in the end lead to the diesel scandal. There are better examples but they get too local to be as easy to explain.
mistermann 3y ago
> Climate change is going to suck, but I focus on the fact that we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills. Whereas exerting effort to antagonize a portion of the public despite knowing what the consequences of that are (they will dig in even harder) is something other than bad reasoning. This planet is an exhibition of unrealized mass delusion, fuelled by mass specialized education, which further amplifies the phenomenon. > Climate change is really basic chemistry... It is also an extremely complex metaphysical phenomenon (watch out for that word "is", it is a doozy - also: it underlies most everything in our "reality"). Have you ever read any history of science, of times before we knew far less than we do now? How likely do you think it is that we have everything about causality figured out now, despite humanity (mostly) only studying the physical realm (while laughing at and calling names of those who do otherwise, some of whom actually recognize the folly in the current Streetlight Effect approach)? > ...if we can't get people to agree on that how are we ever going to solve problems with any actual complexity? Well, we always have the option of pulling the most powerful toolset in our arsenal out of storage: philosophy. Well, at least in theory we have this option (it is physically possible, but it may not be metaphysically possible). > Climate change denial is associated with a ton of other ideological issues that cause a lot of people a lot of harm, today, in first world countries. Not all of them are as scientifically definitive, but they share a pattern of people expressing opinion as fact. All ideologues state opinions as fact - take your comment for example. Even worse: doing so is a strongly enforced cultural norm - doing otherwise "is" "being pedantic". > I feel like painful mitigation efforts are too grand to even think about. The grandness is surely a problem, but our lack of capabilities in general thinking abilities is an even bigger problem in my view (a self-reinforcing problem, which makes it extremely possible to even realize). > So for me the mitigations are less about dealing with climate change and more about hoping climate change deniers just how reprehensibly they've handled this entire thing. Are you familiar with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation To add to the controversy, I will add this gem: why during these conversations is the question of the degree to which our "democracy" is illusion[1] so rarely mentioned? It is (or at least could be) the primary coordinating force of humans, and human coordination is a pre-requisite for solving if we're going to address this problem - why is it that people are not able to care about such things? What is it about the system we live in that makes it not possible for people who are experts in systems analysis to analyze as a system? Will we now stick with convention and see an exhibition of 2023 memetics in response to this "hot take" of mine? [1] I would like to hope that we've moved past the binary question of is it an illusion by this point.
netsharc 3y ago
Your last paragraph seems to be missing a verb: "more about hoping climate change deniers just how reprehensibly they've handled this entire thing". I guess denial is a tough shell, some people even manage to be world leaders even if they deny reality all the way. We are some funny irrational apes aren't we...
- jfengel 3y ago
  Thank you. I've edited it. I don't mind that we're irrational apes. It's just that all of the other apes don't go around telling each other how rational they are and demanding that we keep providing proof over and over.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I watched a movie on Netflix called Leave The World Behind. In it, there are 3 distinct families that are faced with an unknown event occurring in real time. Family one is calm and logical. Has a good idea of what’s going on but up until the very end doesn’t believe it could be that. Family two is a couple where the wife is someone who’s natural demeanor is “People Suck” and the husband is a professor (re: intelligent) but still entirely uninformed about the world, having resigned any sense of responsibility to anything but his family The third is a conservative “prepper” type, who is similar to family one but believes everything is the work of outside forces who “hate the US” to be at fault, missing many signs of dysfunctional society around them (while being aware of a few others) Why am I bringing this up? Because my thesis is that the middle familty represents the average American mindset, which is truly only concerned with their immediate problems and thoughts at the end of the day and is incapable of reasoning about the importance of solving major problems facing society. The other two families seek to sway as many people from this average bloc as much as possible to their causes, but both also have a fatal flaw: they’re unable to believe that it’s our own society that is at fault, either entirely or until it’s too late, and the kind of honest reflection it takes to have that very real conversation with ourselves and the country as a whole. That, in essence, is what I think is the root of the problem
junofan 3y ago
> we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills > A lot of issues come down to leaving people alone to make their own decisions Stupid people still have a sense of right and wrong. I would suggest you are hoping for things that many people find wrong while reframing the conversation to discredit them.
- jfengel 3y ago
  That's my point. They are discredited. They don't have to stop having opinions but they do need to spend some time on why they were so spectacularly and obviously wrong on that specific one. Not merely incorrect, but so convinced that the only way to hold their opinion was to believe in an epic, comic-book-villain conspiracy against them.
jandrewrogers 3y ago
> Climate change is going to suck, but I focus on the fact that we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills. Climate change is really basic chemistry... The reality is worse than this. Most people that strongly believe in climate change are also ignorant of basic chemistry, promulgating solutions that betray their lack of understanding of e.g. the laws of thermodynamics. On top of this, most people's understanding of chemistry is at the naive level of basic lab chemistry. When you need to scale chemistry, especially at planetary scales, it plays by a completely different set of rules and we largely pretend these rules don't exist because 1) they are too complex for most people to understand and 2) they are inconvenient for those selling easy solutions. I am a climate doomer of sorts, having working on climate off and on for decades, but not because the problem cannot be mitigated in theory. Currently, both "sides" are delusional about the science and economics of regulating the climate. The public discourse is almost entirely soundbites from people disinterested in the science while trying to smuggle in unrelated ideological agendas, regardless of the side they claim to represent. As long as scientifically literate perspectives are considered a fringe take, progress on this matter will be limited and in many cases coincidental. I don't see this changing anytime soon.

baq 3y ago

> Climate change is going to suck, but I focus on the fact that we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills. Climate change is really basic chemistry; if we can't get people to agree on that how are we ever going to solve problems with any actual complexity? Dollars. People’s livelihoods depend on not understanding, so they don’t. We must incentivize understanding and propose a workable solution, which is basically a way to manufacture gasoline, diesel and natural gas out of literally thin air, because transitioning to electric everything is not happening due to natural resources constraints (thinking of mining primarily).

blkhawk 3y ago
uh sorta - while the livelihood of some deniers depend on dollars (commercial or political) I think its more correct to say that to make others doubt climate change is their primary task they get funding for. You can see this very well when compare American vs European climate change debate - in Europe is a very passive "not doing anything useful" while actually everybody gives at least lip service that something has to be done. This is because there was less opportunity to couple the debate into politics in an concentrated way. In the US the 2 party thing makes that very easy and the whole thing has staying power as an "issue" so it probably needs comparatively little or even no investment to keep alive. In the EU I can only directly speak for Germany but to me it seemed like there were no direct attacks against the concept of climate change directly (although we get some splash damage from the US). most issues stem from single big companies or industry groups trying to bend things to their advantage. A good example that is maybe best known international is the "Clean Diesel" thing that VW so disastrously chose because it was short term cheaper than investments into EV technology. This is what in the end lead to the diesel scandal. There are better examples but they get too local to be as easy to explain.

mistermann 3y ago

> Climate change is going to suck, but I focus on the fact that we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills. Whereas exerting effort to antagonize a portion of the public despite knowing what the consequences of that are (they will dig in even harder) is something other than bad reasoning. This planet is an exhibition of unrealized mass delusion, fuelled by mass specialized education, which further amplifies the phenomenon. > Climate change is really basic chemistry... It is also an extremely complex metaphysical phenomenon (watch out for that word "is", it is a doozy - also: it underlies most everything in our "reality"). Have you ever read any history of science, of times before we knew far less than we do now? How likely do you think it is that we have everything about causality figured out now, despite humanity (mostly) only studying the physical realm (while laughing at and calling names of those who do otherwise, some of whom actually recognize the folly in the current Streetlight Effect approach)? > ...if we can't get people to agree on that how are we ever going to solve problems with any actual complexity? Well, we always have the option of pulling the most powerful toolset in our arsenal out of storage: philosophy. Well, at least in theory we have this option (it is physically possible, but it may not be metaphysically possible). > Climate change denial is associated with a ton of other ideological issues that cause a lot of people a lot of harm, today, in first world countries. Not all of them are as scientifically definitive, but they share a pattern of people expressing opinion as fact. All ideologues state opinions as fact - take your comment for example. Even worse: doing so is a strongly enforced cultural norm - doing otherwise "is" "being pedantic". > I feel like painful mitigation efforts are too grand to even think about. The grandness is surely a problem, but our lack of capabilities in general thinking abilities is an even bigger problem in my view (a self-reinforcing problem, which makes it extremely possible to even realize). > So for me the mitigations are less about dealing with climate change and more about hoping climate change deniers just how reprehensibly they've handled this entire thing. Are you familiar with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation To add to the controversy, I will add this gem: why during these conversations is the question of the degree to which our "democracy" is illusion[1] so rarely mentioned? It is (or at least could be) the primary coordinating force of humans, and human coordination is a pre-requisite for solving if we're going to address this problem - why is it that people are not able to care about such things? What is it about the system we live in that makes it not possible for people who are experts in systems analysis to analyze as a system? Will we now stick with convention and see an exhibition of 2023 memetics in response to this "hot take" of mine? [1] I would like to hope that we've moved past the binary question of is it an illusion by this point.

netsharc 3y ago

Your last paragraph seems to be missing a verb: "more about hoping climate change deniers just how reprehensibly they've handled this entire thing". I guess denial is a tough shell, some people even manage to be world leaders even if they deny reality all the way. We are some funny irrational apes aren't we...

jfengel 3y ago
Thank you. I've edited it. I don't mind that we're irrational apes. It's just that all of the other apes don't go around telling each other how rational they are and demanding that we keep providing proof over and over.
no_wizard 3y ago
I watched a movie on Netflix called Leave The World Behind. In it, there are 3 distinct families that are faced with an unknown event occurring in real time. Family one is calm and logical. Has a good idea of what’s going on but up until the very end doesn’t believe it could be that. Family two is a couple where the wife is someone who’s natural demeanor is “People Suck” and the husband is a professor (re: intelligent) but still entirely uninformed about the world, having resigned any sense of responsibility to anything but his family The third is a conservative “prepper” type, who is similar to family one but believes everything is the work of outside forces who “hate the US” to be at fault, missing many signs of dysfunctional society around them (while being aware of a few others) Why am I bringing this up? Because my thesis is that the middle familty represents the average American mindset, which is truly only concerned with their immediate problems and thoughts at the end of the day and is incapable of reasoning about the importance of solving major problems facing society. The other two families seek to sway as many people from this average bloc as much as possible to their causes, but both also have a fatal flaw: they’re unable to believe that it’s our own society that is at fault, either entirely or until it’s too late, and the kind of honest reflection it takes to have that very real conversation with ourselves and the country as a whole. That, in essence, is what I think is the root of the problem

junofan 3y ago

> we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills > A lot of issues come down to leaving people alone to make their own decisions Stupid people still have a sense of right and wrong. I would suggest you are hoping for things that many people find wrong while reframing the conversation to discredit them.

jfengel 3y ago
That's my point. They are discredited. They don't have to stop having opinions but they do need to spend some time on why they were so spectacularly and obviously wrong on that specific one. Not merely incorrect, but so convinced that the only way to hold their opinion was to believe in an epic, comic-book-villain conspiracy against them.

jandrewrogers 3y ago

> Climate change is going to suck, but I focus on the fact that we've been fighting against really horrifically bad reasoning skills. Climate change is really basic chemistry... The reality is worse than this. Most people that strongly believe in climate change are also ignorant of basic chemistry, promulgating solutions that betray their lack of understanding of e.g. the laws of thermodynamics. On top of this, most people's understanding of chemistry is at the naive level of basic lab chemistry. When you need to scale chemistry, especially at planetary scales, it plays by a completely different set of rules and we largely pretend these rules don't exist because 1) they are too complex for most people to understand and 2) they are inconvenient for those selling easy solutions. I am a climate doomer of sorts, having working on climate off and on for decades, but not because the problem cannot be mitigated in theory. Currently, both "sides" are delusional about the science and economics of regulating the climate. The public discourse is almost entirely soundbites from people disinterested in the science while trying to smuggle in unrelated ideological agendas, regardless of the side they claim to represent. As long as scientifically literate perspectives are considered a fringe take, progress on this matter will be limited and in many cases coincidental. I don't see this changing anytime soon.