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I was talking about threats that actually kill people day to day. If I'm ignorant about the finer points of green house effects, it's not really that big a dea

I was talking about threats that actually kill people day to day. If I'm ignorant about the finer points of green house effects, it's not really that big a deal to my life, or that of my children. Perhaps every generation has to have a "catastrophe is just around the corner". I remember being taught at school how we'd run out of oil, coal, etc by the year 2000.

lawn 17y ago
What if it turns out it'll kill 90% of all humans in say a hundred years? And what if we could have saved everyone if we just wasn't so ignorant? Now it doesn't really matter if you and I are ignorant, but if everyone is then that's potentially disastrous. You could draw similarities to medicine I think. What if nobody would've taken the first seemingly unnecessary steps towards creating the first vaccine, the first medicine etc etc. Where would be now? Sure there would be more acute things for these first "doctors" to do, but thanks to them we've now saved countless of people.
- bumblebird 17y ago
  I find it extremely far fetched that if it was that imminent (Next 100 years), that there's anything we could do to prevent it.
  - lawn 17y ago
    You're missing the point. In our little what if scenario, the point isn't how long it would take, but that it would happen and we had the power to prevent it.
    - bumblebird 17y ago
      How are we going to prevent it?
      - lawn 17y ago
        Still not getting it. It doesn't matter how. Just imagine for a while that we could. Please reread what I said without focusing too much if it's really going to happen and if so how and to what extent. Is it so wrong to focus some effort in studying the climate change? After all we all depend on it and we definitely don't want to loose our home, however probable or improbable.
        bumblebird 17y ago
        Given the lack of consensus about what is or isn't happening, I'm really extremely skeptical that we could reach consensus on a way to prevent it. Sure, it's nice to spend some money researching potential threats, but this one seems to have been blown way out of proportion. Although it's probably been overtaken now by swine flu.
thaumaturgy 17y ago
You and many, many other people, are not merely ignorant about the finer points of greenhouse effects. On the contrary, you are all too willing to jump into a discussion about the finer points of greenhouse effects -- a subject which you admittedly are ignorant about -- with counter-arguments based only on a quick gut feeling or guess on your part, and which have already been answered in the conversation that you're jumping into. Please understand, I'm not just singling you out here; this is an observable and strange pattern of behavior in many different social gatherings, including HN. Instead of coming up with a question about what you had read, and then doing even a few minutes' diligence to see if there was an answer, you stopped after coming up with the question and pronounced that it "didn't seem like a water tight argument at all". The flaw in thinking that causes that kind of behavior surely carries over into other aspects of your life and career, so it is a big deal to your life. And furthermore, your children likely learn first by your example. If you think that way, your children are more likely to also, and that's going to have a negative impact on their lives. If nothing else, it will destroy their curiosity, and curiosity is something that should be revered on a forum like HN: it is one of the greatest drivers of human inventiveness and ingenuity. And ignorance does kill. There are numerous other countries where the example is so blatantly stark that it shouldn't even need citing. In Uganda, for one example, simple water quality improvements would save numerous lives every year [1]. But there's ignorance, and there's willful ignorance, willful ignorance being the more evil of the two. It disregards and dismisses the efforts of those that would advance human society and promote peace. It values its "gut feelings" over research, study, and experimentation. It believes that its "freedoms" are being trampled every time its environment changes, with no acknowledgement of history or context, and no forward thinking for the future. Those things are a big deal, and they do kill people. [1]: An in-the-field look at some of the water quality problems in Uganda: http://gondauganda.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html http://gondauganda.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
- bumblebird 17y ago
  Come on. All I said was that the argument didn't seem water tight. For me, it was like observing that a server stops responding to pings, and concluding there must be a memory leak in the kernel. I want water tight isolated tests that prove categorically what is happening. And my main point is that I'd far rather spend effort on things like water quality which you mention, that have a direct measurable impact on peoples lives, rather than spending so much time, effort and money researching climate change.

lawn 17y ago

What if it turns out it'll kill 90% of all humans in say a hundred years? And what if we could have saved everyone if we just wasn't so ignorant? Now it doesn't really matter if you and I are ignorant, but if everyone is then that's potentially disastrous. You could draw similarities to medicine I think. What if nobody would've taken the first seemingly unnecessary steps towards creating the first vaccine, the first medicine etc etc. Where would be now? Sure there would be more acute things for these first "doctors" to do, but thanks to them we've now saved countless of people.

bumblebird 17y ago
I find it extremely far fetched that if it was that imminent (Next 100 years), that there's anything we could do to prevent it.
- lawn 17y ago
  You're missing the point. In our little what if scenario, the point isn't how long it would take, but that it would happen and we had the power to prevent it.
  - bumblebird 17y ago
    How are we going to prevent it?
    - lawn 17y ago
      Still not getting it. It doesn't matter how. Just imagine for a while that we could. Please reread what I said without focusing too much if it's really going to happen and if so how and to what extent. Is it so wrong to focus some effort in studying the climate change? After all we all depend on it and we definitely don't want to loose our home, however probable or improbable.
      - bumblebird 17y ago
        Given the lack of consensus about what is or isn't happening, I'm really extremely skeptical that we could reach consensus on a way to prevent it. Sure, it's nice to spend some money researching potential threats, but this one seems to have been blown way out of proportion. Although it's probably been overtaken now by swine flu.

thaumaturgy 17y ago

You and many, many other people, are not merely ignorant about the finer points of greenhouse effects. On the contrary, you are all too willing to jump into a discussion about the finer points of greenhouse effects -- a subject which you admittedly are ignorant about -- with counter-arguments based only on a quick gut feeling or guess on your part, and which have already been answered in the conversation that you're jumping into. Please understand, I'm not just singling you out here; this is an observable and strange pattern of behavior in many different social gatherings, including HN. Instead of coming up with a question about what you had read, and then doing even a few minutes' diligence to see if there was an answer, you stopped after coming up with the question and pronounced that it "didn't seem like a water tight argument at all". The flaw in thinking that causes that kind of behavior surely carries over into other aspects of your life and career, so it is a big deal to your life. And furthermore, your children likely learn first by your example. If you think that way, your children are more likely to also, and that's going to have a negative impact on their lives. If nothing else, it will destroy their curiosity, and curiosity is something that should be revered on a forum like HN: it is one of the greatest drivers of human inventiveness and ingenuity. And ignorance does kill. There are numerous other countries where the example is so blatantly stark that it shouldn't even need citing. In Uganda, for one example, simple water quality improvements would save numerous lives every year [1]. But there's ignorance, and there's willful ignorance, willful ignorance being the more evil of the two. It disregards and dismisses the efforts of those that would advance human society and promote peace. It values its "gut feelings" over research, study, and experimentation. It believes that its "freedoms" are being trampled every time its environment changes, with no acknowledgement of history or context, and no forward thinking for the future. Those things are a big deal, and they do kill people. [1]: An in-the-field look at some of the water quality problems in Uganda: http://gondauganda.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html http://gondauganda.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html

bumblebird 17y ago
Come on. All I said was that the argument didn't seem water tight. For me, it was like observing that a server stops responding to pings, and concluding there must be a memory leak in the kernel. I want water tight isolated tests that prove categorically what is happening. And my main point is that I'd far rather spend effort on things like water quality which you mention, that have a direct measurable impact on peoples lives, rather than spending so much time, effort and money researching climate change.