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"Expedient" is a common (or at least not rare) English word that means something like "practical and effective even if not directly attending to higher or deepe

• circlefavshape 2y ago
  > For example, if we solve climate change with geoengineering instead of by addressing thoughtless consumerism, corporate impunity, and lack of international accountability, many people would feel frustrated or let down by the solution because it would solve the problem without addressing the moral shortcomings that led to the problem. Oof. Now I understand something I didn't before
  • downWidOutaFite 2y ago
    No you don't because there is no expedient solution.
  • MikeTheGreat 2y ago
    Are you sure? No offence, but I don't think there's anything to understand here. If we could solve climate change without "addressing thoughtless consumerism, corporate impunity, and lack of international accountability" we would all be f'ing _thrilled_. As I type this Hurricane Helene just destroyed a good chunk of inland North Carolina (!!!) and Hurricane Wilton was just upgraded to a "category 5" storm. If we could solve climate change the easy way we'd all be _thrilled_, because then we'd actually solve climate change.
    • clarity20 2y ago
      I don't see why climate change needs "solving" per se, or how it can be "solved." To take your example, there have always been hurricanes. It's not correct to infer there's a human-induced tendency toward destruction that can be reversed by humans, or that yet another hurricane is actually a change to the climate in the first place.
      • moomin 2y ago
        It isn’t correct to infer that from the fact that hurricanes exist, no. Nor is it correct to ignore the decades of peer-reviewed research that concludes that we really are causing more hurricanes on the basis that hurricanes have always existed.
    • inglor_cz 2y ago
      "we would all be f'ing _thrilled_." I think the argument is pretty much the opposite: not everyone would be thrilled. The wannabe priest class (think of Greta and her How dare you!), which is always with us, would be frustrated from the lack of something to preach about. Of course there is always Israel vs. Palestine.
      • tovej 2y ago
        I myself am convinced that man-made global warming can't be stopped without changing the way our political economies work, and I happen to believe that Palestinians are people and therefore deserve basic human rights (which they do not currently have). I'm also a researcher. I _would_ be thrilled if there was an expedient way to solve climate change. But the best systems models for the earth all tell us that there's one way to solve the issue: just leave the carbon in the ground. That's it. Stop extracting it. Nothing else will solve the problem, it's a really simple, really bad, feedback loop. This characterization of environmental or Palestinian activists as wanting to have the moral high ground is, imo, a knee jerk reaction. The people on the street aren't in it for clout, they're doing it because it is the right thing and they feel compelled to act. What gets me moving is not wanting to feel morally superior (a religious aspect, more at home in right wing politics), but an anxiety for the future, which is projected to include horrible death and suffering due to obvious problems that we could all fix if we just decided to recognize them.
  • hoseja 2y ago
    It's the meme: A:"Only Global Communism can solve Climate Change." B:"Nuclear power also solves climate change." A:"I don't want to solve Climate Change, I want Global Communism."
• hinkley 2y ago
  See also: war crimes
• KerrAvon 2y ago
  I think this is misleading -- geoengineering + social change will be necessary. You're not going to Scotty your way out of climate change.
  • ambicapter 2y ago
    What's misleading here? He was using that as an example of usage of the word 'expedient', not actually suggesting climate change solutions.
    • samplatt 2y ago
      A lot of people in this thread seem to think OP was suggesting that geoengineering is a possible way forward right now, when they were just positing it as an example.
      • groestl 2y ago
        Since OP provided a different example, an expedient solution would be to edit OPs post and remove that paragraph about geoengineering, and delete all comments referring to it.
  • adastra22 2y ago
    Why not? Really, why not? If we had a profitable way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere at scale, to deacidify the oceans, clean up toxic waste, etc., what would be left? How would that not solve the problem?
    • downWidOutaFite 2y ago
      why are you fantasizing? none of that is going exist (caveat: unless we figure out infinite clean energy).
      • adastra22 2y ago
        It’s not fantasy. I’m working on a startup to enable this technology. It’s a hard problem, but not impossible. And the energy needs are not as great as you think. A relatively small patch of the Sahara or Gobi desert or open ocean would be sufficient.
• raincole 2y ago
  > if we solve climate change with geoengineering instead of by addressing thoughtless consumerism, corporate impunity, and lack of international accountability, many people would feel frustrated or let down If some people feel frustrated or let down because we achieve a literal miracle (by today's technology standards) that saves millions of lives I'm willing to call them mentally unhinged.
  • computably 2y ago
    Presuming said miracle is possible, geoengineering at a scale capable of "solving" climate change would be a massive gamble. Humanity's ability to model the climate simply isn't at a point where we could say with any confidence what the long-term effects of any particular geoengineering "solution" would be, and short of an abrupt technological singularity, won't be for centuries. Without any appeal to moral judgments whatsoever, it's safe to say geoengineering would only be seriously attempted out of total desperation and signal persistent unresolved issues.
  • reshlo 2y ago
    If we could solve climate change purely technologically, I wouldn’t feel let down by the fact that we solved climate change. I would absolutely support solving it in that way. I would also feel frustrated by the knowledge that there were many people who were willing to sacrifice unimaginable numbers of humans and animals for the sake of making more profit for themselves, who were not held to account for their actions. If a person acts in a way that they should know will lead to future suffering, the development of an unforeseen technological solution to that suffering should not wipe their moral slate clean. Trying to kill someone using a non-functional weapon, that you believe is functional, is not morally equivalent to taking no action just because it didn’t have an effect.
  • dkarl 2y ago
    Not unhinged, just human. There's even a logic to their views: when different approaches to a problem are on different sides of a line of political polarization, people see them as competing, and see the success of one as tending to invalidate the other. I've heard/read politically minded people on either end of the spectrum talk about global warming as a challenge that is going to discredit the other side, by which they mean that the success of their preferred approach will discredit other approaches. And I think there's a lot of truth to that, because of how most human beings see things. Thinking from an engineering mindset, we see different ways of solving a problem as complementary rather than mutually exclusive, and to us it's common sense to 1) pursue both of them simultaneously given the high stakes and uncertainty of success, and 2) continue to improve our understanding of different approaches so we can apply them all effectively in the future in situations that call for them. But thinking from an engineering mindset is not normal. That's not how most people see things. I think the way most people see things could be described as a zero-sum competition for mindshare. You can even see the tendency to see complementary approaches as competing at work in smaller divisions between people who are mostly politically aligned. For example, when one group wants to take immediate direct action to ameliorate a problem and another group wants to focus on longer-term fundamental solutions, they might fight bitterly and badmouth each other's approaches if they feel they are competing for a finite pool of resources such as funding, political backing, or public attention. For a more concrete example, think of how the issues facing Black Americans recently came to the forefront of public consciousness, books like Between the World and Me and Stamped from the Beginning were shaping the public conversation, and in this context, some people tried to harness that energy to get the public interested in social class as well. When they tried to inject class into the conversation, they often encountered pushback from people who were like, "Hey, the way the public is paying attention to the Black American experience is really special and amazing right now. Let's focus on maintaining this momentum. Save class consciousness for another day." It's not that the majority of people on the left disagreed about class being an important perspective for gaining insight. They simply believed that the public's appetite to learn about a topic like racism was limited and fragile, and it would collapse faster if they tried to add another topic on top. For a small minority of deeply ideological people, the feeling of competition was stark and intense. Some claimed that talk about class was an attempt to change the topic away from racism and put white people back in charge, and others claimed that identity politics was a class warfare weapon of distraction. But even people who valued both race and class as ways of understanding society perceived a competition for public attention.
• hnben 2y ago
  non-native speaker here > "Expedient" is a common (or at least not rare) English word that means something like "practical and effective even if not directly attending to higher or deeper considerations." I was not aware of the word "Expedient" before. From your example I conclude, that it has the same meaning as "pragmatic", i.e. if I sed i/expedient/pragmatic/g then your comment still makes perfect sense to me. A quick google search also seems to support this conclusion. --> is there a nuance of the word "expedient", that I am missing here?
  • dkarl 2y ago
    There's a lot of overlap, and you could certainly use "pragmatic" in the two example contexts I gave. The differences as best as I can sum them up are: - "Pragmatic" can also be used to describe a person (a pragmatic person) or a mindset (a pragmatic approach to a problem.) "Expedient" isn't used to describe people. - "Expedient" usually acknowledges the existence of a higher or more demanding standard that the solution does not meet, admitting that the solution is not perfect. You might choose a word like "pragmatic" to praise a solution with known shortcomings, but it doesn't imply known shortcomings as strongly as "expedient" does. - "Expedient" can be used euphemistically. ("Pragmatic" can, too, but not nearly as often, and not as harshly.) "They took the expedient route" might, depending on the context, mean that they did something lazy or unethical because it was easier. The euphemistic usage is common enough that for some people it has an overall unsavory flavor, but I don't think it's tipped over into the euphemistic usage being the assumed one.
  • mikelevins 2y ago
    "Pragmatic" connotes a choice that achieves a goal by practical means, possibly sacrificing some desirable features that are challenging to achieve. "Expedient" connotes a choice that achieves a goal quickly and conveniently, possibly by sacrificing some important but difficult features, and incurring some undesirable costs or consequences. So they're similar, but not identical. A pragmatic choice might be improved when you can afford it. An expedient choice will probably require some cleanup afterward.