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> TLDR: Researchers in one big university survey in UK tend to prefer taking air travel (mostly juniors) than taking train or other alternative methods Perhaps

by Alupis 2y ago

> TLDR: Researchers in one big university survey in UK tend to prefer taking air travel (mostly juniors) than taking train or other alternative methods Perhaps they realized one fewer booking doesn't prevent the flight from happening - or change anything except inconvenience themselves? Even if 100% of academics committed to taking the train or heck, walking to conferences, nothing is different other than a lot of wasted time. Time that might be spent much more productively doing something else. The hypocrisy is the only real problem. But, we (both the US and UK) tolerate celebrities and politicians that fly on private jets to events just to scold us about the climate.

Cheer2171 2y ago
> Perhaps they realized one fewer booking doesn't prevent the flight from happening Ah, the good old "collective action by individuals is useless because individual action by individuals is useless" canard.
- Alupis 2y ago
  I think you missed the part where even if 100% of academics committed to not flying, still not one thing changes. The "do something, anything!" crowd needs reality checks from time to time. Consider yourself checked...
  - etrautmann 2y ago
    This is useless and lazy nihilism
    - timr 2y ago
      Arguing that travel you don't like is unnecessary because it harms the environment? Yes, that is useless and lazy nihilism. OP is arguing that observed preferences are far more reliable indicators of what people actually value than what people say to surveyors/the press/reddit/HN. That's not "nilhilism", it's just a fact. Presumably, academics travel to conferences because they're getting value out of it, and they deem that value worth whatever costs they believe it incurs.
      - etrautmann 2y ago
        I was in and among that set for the last 12 years. Plenty of people travel for fun because someone else is paying. Many conferences are nowhere near a central location and instead are in somewhere exotic because one of the organizers wanted it there. This never sat well with me, but is completely standard and almost never questioned.
        timr 2y ago
        Sure, ok. Let's posit that the value they're getting is that they enjoy travel, and wish to do it. My response is the same.
  - matsemann 2y ago
    This reminds a bit of the "it's useless to do anything here, China should cut their emissions, not us, we're a mere drop in the ocean!" Which of course means that we can solve climate change by dividing the earth into smaller countries, all too small to have any positive effect by cleaning up their act :)
    - Alupis 2y ago
      It's really unfortunate people cannot fathom how insignificant your butt in an airplane seat, that will take off with or without you, really is. This climate change thing really has become people's new religion. Deny anything that doesn't align with the religion. Commit to meaningless gestures. Say your three hail marys. Who can suffer the most in the name of our lord? It makes you a better person, don't you know?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - quantified 2y ago
        It's the sufficient collection of butts absent that gets the plane not to even be scheduled. Funny how the pandemic quieted things down. (Though perversely, airlines flew plenty of empty planes to keep their gates, just the way our economic incentives are structured.) So academics on their own, no, maybe just a couple of charter flights here and there. Broad-based reduction would be required, for example reducing the sizes of the planes on some routes. These aspects are more meaningless because of the way other humans behave, but it's all a question of degree. It's insignificant whether you urinate into someone's locker at the gym, so we can all do that every day, right?
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      Well the world isn't divided like that, so since there are groups big enough to have an impact that we can influence, why don't we focus on them?
  - Cheer2171 2y ago
    Thanks for the reality check, buddy. You're right that nothing any of us does ever really matters in the grand scheme of things. There is no way we could ever try to get others to change their behavior by first changing our own. Collective action has never, ever worked. I'd been keeping my used batteries and motor oil for a special trip to the recycling center, but I just threw them in the river behind my house, because it turns out nothing we do matters because climate change actually can't be fixed unless we fix corrupt multinational corporations or governments or China, or maybe climate change is all a hoax, or whatever lets you sleep at night and feel morally superior to all the other sheep. Thanks for the inspiration, friend.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      > Collective action has never, ever worked. This is a gross misreading of what they said. They said that one particular collective isn't big enough.
      - Cheer2171 2y ago
        No, they said that one fewer butt in one particular seat won't make a difference. That's true about everything any one particular individual can do about climate change. You could commit euthanasia and never be responsible for another gram of carbon emitted, and that would not have a measurable effect on CO2 levels. OP is trying to force a very narrow utilitarian framework in which actions are evaluated based only on their immediate consequences. By that logic, nothing any ordinary, median individual does will directly have a measurable impact on climate change. The fallacy is that these kinds of boycotts and self-restrictions, which are part of the "religion" OP is objecting to in other replies, is the way to get large numbers of individuals to change their behavior collectively in ways that do measurably impact the bottom line. If demand for air travel drops, fewer planes will burn carbon. The other fallacy is that utilitarianism is only one way of considering how to act ethically in the world.
        Alupis 2y ago
        So if the UK banned all airplanes - what changes for the world? Oh, that's right. Still nothing. You are hyper-focused on a meaningless gesture that you were told to believe by people who continue to fly private jets around the world - like the academics this very thread is about. Seriously... let that sink in for a few moments. You should suffer, while they enjoy the lavishes of life. Kind of like a tv megachurch evangelist. If you want to be principled and refuse to ever fly again - fine. It doesn't harm anyone but yourself. The world won't even thank you for this meaningless gesture and countless wasted hours. Just don't stand on a busy street corner shouting "repent" into your megaphone.
ForHackernews 2y ago
We have mechanisms for solving collective action problems. If air travel is bad and we want people to take trains, just tax airplanes and subsidize high speed rail. I don't know how you expect people to pay twice the price and take twice the time to travel somewhere. Prices are information. Tax externalities.
jltsiren 2y ago
Do you vote in elections? You must realize it's a waste of time, at least outside local elections. It's very unlikely that your vote will affect the outcome of any election in your lifetime. And it's even more unlikely that the effect will actually matter. It's good to realize that you are almost certainly a nobody. Your life will probably have no measurable effect on the world. And that's good, because the world would be a terrible place if many people could change it individually. But when a million nobodies make a choice, the world may change. You should act in ways that would be good for the society if everyone did the same. That's a pretty universal idea in moral philosophy. You can find it in most philosophical traditions and most religions. Utilitarianism fails on a large scale, because individual choices have a major effect on the individual but a negligible effect on the society. But if everyone makes choices that are individually good, everyone may come off worse. Civilized societies depend on people occasionally choosing the right thing over the thing that benefits them. To be a human, you need moral agency. It's not enough to be a utilitarian automaton reacting to incentives.

by Alupis 2y ago

Cheer2171 2y ago

> Perhaps they realized one fewer booking doesn't prevent the flight from happening Ah, the good old "collective action by individuals is useless because individual action by individuals is useless" canard.

Alupis 2y ago
I think you missed the part where even if 100% of academics committed to not flying, still not one thing changes. The "do something, anything!" crowd needs reality checks from time to time. Consider yourself checked...
- etrautmann 2y ago
  This is useless and lazy nihilism
  - timr 2y ago
    Arguing that travel you don't like is unnecessary because it harms the environment? Yes, that is useless and lazy nihilism. OP is arguing that observed preferences are far more reliable indicators of what people actually value than what people say to surveyors/the press/reddit/HN. That's not "nilhilism", it's just a fact. Presumably, academics travel to conferences because they're getting value out of it, and they deem that value worth whatever costs they believe it incurs.
    - etrautmann 2y ago
      I was in and among that set for the last 12 years. Plenty of people travel for fun because someone else is paying. Many conferences are nowhere near a central location and instead are in somewhere exotic because one of the organizers wanted it there. This never sat well with me, but is completely standard and almost never questioned.
      - timr 2y ago
        Sure, ok. Let's posit that the value they're getting is that they enjoy travel, and wish to do it. My response is the same.
- matsemann 2y ago
  This reminds a bit of the "it's useless to do anything here, China should cut their emissions, not us, we're a mere drop in the ocean!" Which of course means that we can solve climate change by dividing the earth into smaller countries, all too small to have any positive effect by cleaning up their act :)
  - Alupis 2y ago
    It's really unfortunate people cannot fathom how insignificant your butt in an airplane seat, that will take off with or without you, really is. This climate change thing really has become people's new religion. Deny anything that doesn't align with the religion. Commit to meaningless gestures. Say your three hail marys. Who can suffer the most in the name of our lord? It makes you a better person, don't you know?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - quantified 2y ago
      It's the sufficient collection of butts absent that gets the plane not to even be scheduled. Funny how the pandemic quieted things down. (Though perversely, airlines flew plenty of empty planes to keep their gates, just the way our economic incentives are structured.) So academics on their own, no, maybe just a couple of charter flights here and there. Broad-based reduction would be required, for example reducing the sizes of the planes on some routes. These aspects are more meaningless because of the way other humans behave, but it's all a question of degree. It's insignificant whether you urinate into someone's locker at the gym, so we can all do that every day, right?
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Well the world isn't divided like that, so since there are groups big enough to have an impact that we can influence, why don't we focus on them?
- Cheer2171 2y ago
  Thanks for the reality check, buddy. You're right that nothing any of us does ever really matters in the grand scheme of things. There is no way we could ever try to get others to change their behavior by first changing our own. Collective action has never, ever worked. I'd been keeping my used batteries and motor oil for a special trip to the recycling center, but I just threw them in the river behind my house, because it turns out nothing we do matters because climate change actually can't be fixed unless we fix corrupt multinational corporations or governments or China, or maybe climate change is all a hoax, or whatever lets you sleep at night and feel morally superior to all the other sheep. Thanks for the inspiration, friend.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    > Collective action has never, ever worked. This is a gross misreading of what they said. They said that one particular collective isn't big enough.
    - Cheer2171 2y ago
      No, they said that one fewer butt in one particular seat won't make a difference. That's true about everything any one particular individual can do about climate change. You could commit euthanasia and never be responsible for another gram of carbon emitted, and that would not have a measurable effect on CO2 levels. OP is trying to force a very narrow utilitarian framework in which actions are evaluated based only on their immediate consequences. By that logic, nothing any ordinary, median individual does will directly have a measurable impact on climate change. The fallacy is that these kinds of boycotts and self-restrictions, which are part of the "religion" OP is objecting to in other replies, is the way to get large numbers of individuals to change their behavior collectively in ways that do measurably impact the bottom line. If demand for air travel drops, fewer planes will burn carbon. The other fallacy is that utilitarianism is only one way of considering how to act ethically in the world.
      - Alupis 2y ago
        So if the UK banned all airplanes - what changes for the world? Oh, that's right. Still nothing. You are hyper-focused on a meaningless gesture that you were told to believe by people who continue to fly private jets around the world - like the academics this very thread is about. Seriously... let that sink in for a few moments. You should suffer, while they enjoy the lavishes of life. Kind of like a tv megachurch evangelist. If you want to be principled and refuse to ever fly again - fine. It doesn't harm anyone but yourself. The world won't even thank you for this meaningless gesture and countless wasted hours. Just don't stand on a busy street corner shouting "repent" into your megaphone.

ForHackernews 2y ago

We have mechanisms for solving collective action problems. If air travel is bad and we want people to take trains, just tax airplanes and subsidize high speed rail. I don't know how you expect people to pay twice the price and take twice the time to travel somewhere. Prices are information. Tax externalities.

jltsiren 2y ago

Do you vote in elections? You must realize it's a waste of time, at least outside local elections. It's very unlikely that your vote will affect the outcome of any election in your lifetime. And it's even more unlikely that the effect will actually matter. It's good to realize that you are almost certainly a nobody. Your life will probably have no measurable effect on the world. And that's good, because the world would be a terrible place if many people could change it individually. But when a million nobodies make a choice, the world may change. You should act in ways that would be good for the society if everyone did the same. That's a pretty universal idea in moral philosophy. You can find it in most philosophical traditions and most religions. Utilitarianism fails on a large scale, because individual choices have a major effect on the individual but a negligible effect on the society. But if everyone makes choices that are individually good, everyone may come off worse. Civilized societies depend on people occasionally choosing the right thing over the thing that benefits them. To be a human, you need moral agency. It's not enough to be a utilitarian automaton reacting to incentives.