Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

https://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion

by waqasaday • 11 years ago

117 126 11 years ago

today.duke.edu

known• 11 years ago

This results in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_withdrawal

icebraining• 11 years ago

I'm not seeing the connection...?

venning• 11 years ago

My guess: As a problem that I feel threatened by becomes a greater target for action by society, the solutions enacted by society feel like an unnecessary imposition on me--since I don't believe the problem to be real--and the (potentially) building consensus around that problem makes me feel as more of an outsider. Not feeling like a part of a society's approach to that issue may lead me to withdraw from that society in a continued effort to deny the existence of that problem, which is to say not being confronted with society's narrative.

As my opinion on a problem diverges from society's, I fit less and less with that society, prompting me to withdraw from it.

guard-of-terra3• 11 years ago

See famous "The Black Knight" scene from Monthy Python.

Question remains, what can we do about people in denial? Because many problems won't solve themself.

tdyen• 11 years ago

World Population comes to mind. Will it solve itself? It might but in countries where it doesnt the consequences will be devestating and flow over to other parts of the world for sure.

_yosefk2• 11 years ago

It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that.

(Go programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by generics as real, C++ programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by garbage collection and boundary checking as real, Python programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by static typing as real, same for Haskell programmers & lazy evaluation, etc. This is "political" in the sense, for instance, that a more popular language is tremendously more useful, so you want a language you've invested into to be popular even if it fails badly at solving a real problem; there are real benefits to denying it being a real problem if others believe it isn't real and that belief makes the language more popular.)

asgard102412• 11 years ago

It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that.

I disagree, the two examples (climate change and gun control) aren't that different. Both are issues of personal freedom.

I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists (people like Chomsky), who I feel very close political sympathies to. I am (obviously) not aware of these blind spots.

I am not sure I entirely buy the idea of "everybody has blindspots" (EHB). It seems to me that liberal democracy, the idea that everybody is entitled to their moral opinion and should have the same influence over what we consider moral, is pretty much an attempt to get rid of any blindspots. The argument EHB is akin to saying "atheists are also believers".

panic• 11 years ago

Do you think something like the iPhone could have been produced under a collectivist economic regime?

nabla9• 11 years ago

I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists

The obvious blind spot is the problem caused by politicization of everyday life.

Faceless authority where your value is determined by market forces and laws that come far above you may feel problematic because it's faceless and impersonal. Impersonality is also benefit. When you do your job and go home, you don't have to suck up for the boss in free time and he don't care what your political views are.

In small democratic organization you have a face. The good thing is that you have a voice and can participate more. The bad thing is that you have a face. Your political opinions and your personal relationships and personality is part of the game. Your professional life is in the hands of your peers and the cliques that organically form.

_yosefk2• 11 years ago

If a "blind spot" is understood literally then to have no blind spots would require to see, well, everything there is to see at the same time, which is sorta impossible. I think it's pretty obvious that our ability to think - to take facts into account and work out their consequences - is necessarily very much limited by a finite input bandwidth, a finite storage capacity and a finite processing capacity, and so any finite brain will have mental blind spots. To believe otherwise is to be a great believer indeed, IMO...

speccy_geek• 11 years ago

A common liberal blind spot is the genetic basis of intelligence and other aptitudes, and the extent to which that determines life outcomes.

ArkyBeagle• 11 years ago

What Chomsky does is impeccable scholarship, but then he inevitably seems (to me!) to overreach on the conclusions. I don't know if it's blind spots or not.

As an example, I do not hold that any colonialist explanation for US involvement in Vietnam is necessary. There's an awful lot of ... circumstantial evidence to suggest that, but I don't know for a fact that anyone in the US explicitly wanted to do it for that reason - it's much more likely that simple anticommunism suffices.

After all, weren't the Chinese, in very complex ways, just wanting to "colonize" Vietnam through Ho Chi Minh?

But behind that is the message that power corrupts, and on that point, Chomsky is spot on. But I happen to think it's more about the powerful being constrained by circumstance and resources than by them simply being arbitrary. We have ample evidence of this from LBJ's White House tapes.

But that is perhaps my bias and blind spot, and maybe he's right.

Climate change is different in that cheap energy props up people who struggle economically in the US. So that's why I don't like carbon taxes as well as a solution.

pekk3• 11 years ago

Rather than being examples of solution aversion, these are examples of trade-offs. Garbage collection solves some problems, but causes others, which is why not all software uses it. Static typing might help with some things, but causes other problems, which is why dynamic typing exists.

Though you are trying to make a point about communities like Go, C++, Python, and Haskell, you yourself are showing certain prejudices as far as language features that are not objectively justifiable, and it's not really any different.

nostrademons4• 11 years ago

The causation may work the other way. Go programmers may be Go programmers because problems caused by generics aren't common for them. Python programmers might be using Python because they're working in a domain where static typing causes more problems than it solves.

Similarly, many people may choose their political party because the issues the party ignores just aren't that important to them.

That's pretty much what making a values trade-off is: accepting some problems as normal and unfixable because the fix, in your eyes, isn't worth the trouble it causes.

atemerev• 11 years ago

If "we don't like the solutions", this means that proposed measures are not "solutions", as they do not solve the problem properly. It's better to keep looking.

Nemcue• 11 years ago

Sometimes a solution — or a variety of different solutions — still have a significant pain point attached to them.

Just because of that, you can't derive with absolute certainty that there's "a better solution". It might just be the nature of the problem has no solutions that everyone "likes".

jedrek• 11 years ago

With something like climate change, issue is that the pain point for the problem is time deferred. An obvious comparison would be to lead in gasoline, cookware and paint: The problems that it caused took many years to surface. Getting rid of it was both expensive and required new solutions. Thankfully, we got out ahead of that problem... I'm curious if in the current political climate that would be possible.

Udik2• 11 years ago

I wonder if the study is able to make a distinction between solution aversion and what could be called "proponent aversion". That is, it is normal to be skeptical of a statement when it comes from somebody we don't trust. And our level of trust can be dependent from another statement coming (or perceived to be coming) from the same source. In this case, the proposed solution to the problem.

I've concocted an example:

Statement: The rate of suicides among teenagers in the US has been growing steadily in the last two decades, to the point of constituting now a real public health emergency.

Solution 1: Naturopathic nutrition, holistic and homeopathic medicine are fundamental to ensure the well being of the young generations - courses in these subjects should be part of the standard curriculum starting from primary schools.

Solution 2: Standard psychological welfare assessment tests that can help detecting early signs of depression should be conducted at regular time intervals in schools starting from sixth grade, and counselling should be provided to those who display early symptoms of depression.

Now, I've no clue of whether the statement is true (I made it up). But I'll dismiss it readily as BS if it's followed by proposed solution 1. I'll take mental note if it's followed by proposed solution 2. I simply don't trust any statement coming from proponents of snake oil.

ownagefool• 11 years ago

Pretty much both soltions can be followed up with who's trying to make money here?

And I know it's besides the point, but I'd argue learning about vitimins is probably less harmful than being forced to undertake psychological testing. YMMV.

pekk3• 11 years ago

I wonder if we can make that distinction either.

It would be solution aversion if you denied that the rate of suicides has been growing because you perceive that the main use of citing an increasing suicide rate is to push homeopathic education.

If your aversion to certain proponents relates back to what it is they are proposing, it is not really an aversion to those proponents but to their proposals.

Maybe proponent aversion would be if you denied that the rate of suicides has been growing because Obama (or black people, "liberals" etc.) had made that claim, independent of the qualities of proposed solutions.

If someone's statements can't be trusted to be true, that doesn't rationally mean their statements are evidence of their contradictions. Even if you don't trust anything Obama says, that shouldn't normally mean that "Obama says that P" is evidence of not-P.

Udik2• 11 years ago

It would be solution aversion if you denied that the rate of suicides has been growing because you perceive that the main use of citing an increasing suicide rate is to push homeopathic education.

It's not as I understood it. Solution aversion would be denying that the rate of suicides has increased just because I don't think anybody should be administered psychological well being tests. Maybe because I'm secretly afraid that the effectiveness of those tests would prove my ideologically-motivated position wrong. Other than that, I shouldn't be able to provide much logical support for my stance.

If your aversion to certain proponents relates back to what it is they are proposing, it is not really an aversion to those proponents but to their proposals.

If it were just an aversion to their proposals, it wouldn't reflect itself onto the statement that is ultimately being denied. I could be completely averse to the teaching of homeopathy, but that wouldn't influence my attitude towards the stated problem. In order to be so, there might have to be the relation:

Proposed solution -> assessment of the proponent -> assessment of their original statement.

because Obama (or black people, "liberals" etc.) had made that claim, independent of the qualities of proposed solutions.

The proposed solution in fact allows me to place the proponent into a classification bin: scientist vs homeopath, conservative vs liberal, alarmist vs denialist. Or just savy vs fool.

shouldn't normally mean that "Obama says that P" is evidence of not-P.

Not strictly, but remember that, in general terms, non-P is not equally probable to P. P is a specific statement about reality; non-P is any possible other configuration of reality that negates P. That's why the burden of the proof is generally on who makes assertions, not on who denies them.

lotharbot3• 11 years ago

"Proponent aversion would be if you denied that the rate of suicides has been growing because Obama ... had made that claim"

Another example might be gun/crime statistics from the NRA vs gun/crime statistics from gun-control advocates.

There's the inherent suspicion that the statistics had been twisted to fit an agenda, because you've caught that proponent or someone from the same ideological group doing it before, and that therefore the statistics themselves are untrustworthy.

I apply a mental correction factor when dealing with a group I think lies for agenda purposes -- I figure they're spinning things maximally in their favor, so what they claim forms one end of my error bars. Sometimes my expectations regarding the size of the error bars in that field lead me to believe that it's likely the data is actually centered all the way on the other side. In that sense, their statements can imply their own contradiction in some circumstances.

asgard102412• 11 years ago

I was almost sure that is going to be about climate change. It reminds me of: http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/

Even though the article proposes something (green energy as opportunity for capitalism), I think there is a huge problem with climate change for free market proponents, and deeply inside they know it. I don't see how the issue, which is "the fossil fuels have to stay in the ground", can be dealt with free market only.

And I wish it had a solution, so we could get these people to cooperate and acknowledge that there is a climate change problem (for which there is a lot of scientific evidence).

kaybe• 11 years ago

Actually the issue is later in the chain, "don't increase the atmospheric amount of climate gas" in first order.

You're free to take out the fossil fuels if you do not use them as fuels but make plastic or whatever (which may lead to other unrelated problems), or if you manage to someone keep the CO2 from being emitted it should also be ok (and again can lead to problems, this time related, such as local and global risk of leakage etc).

On the other hand, other greenhouse gases such as methane or those from deforestation are also problematic. The order of magnitude right now is a lot smaller than the first problem, but that may not stay so. There are also some talks of deliberate climate engineering, which, in first order, may have chances to work (most involved on a deeper level think it's too risky).

All in all, the issue is quite complicated and there are a lot of possible (technical, not just economical/social) solutions with advantages and disadvantages, which I think makes the issue even harder to acknowledge.

Asbostos2• 11 years ago

Yes, it's certainly more complicated than most proponents or opposers of it claim. I think that's because they both have a "solution affinity" for their preferred solution. Geoengineering has all sorts of promising ideas but talking about them publicly is like talking about making a safer cigarette - it's dilutes the arguments of people who've already been charmed by another solution (stop using oil and cars and grow your own vegetables).

Asbostos2• 11 years ago

I notice in a lot of writing about climate change that people tend to try to convince the reader that it exists, both you and the article's authors mentioned the lot of scientific evidence. It makes it sound like permanent argument mode.

It also helps us forget that there's no reliable scientific evidence and certainly no consensus about what, if any, harm climate change will do to us and if it does, whether we'll have time to adapt. Somehow the debate seems to be between "it's true and there's lots of evidence" and "it's not true and I don't believe it" but in reality we really have no idea what it will do. Maybe we don't actually have to leave all the oil in the ground afterall and a few extra degrees turns out to be not much of a problem.

asgard102412• 11 years ago

whether we'll have time to adapt

I wish you were right. Unfortunately, the very same vocal people (for example former Czech president Vaclav Klaus) who proclaimed that "adaptation is not a problem" now cry a river when there is a couple thousands refugees at the border from regions that are in war, probably due to drought, probably due to global warming.

Maybe we don't actually have to leave all the oil in the ground afterall and a few extra degrees turns out to be not much of a problem.

We can always burn it. I don't see how we lose anything by leaving it there.

clarkmoody• 11 years ago

dealt with free market only

Show me a truly free market, then we'll talk.

The solution to pollution might just be allowing for property rights in the rivers, oceans, and air, which is not the case now. Since the state owns those regions of the environment, then market forces cannot be brought to bear in the air and water, only state misadventures and mismanagement.

giaour5• 11 years ago

There's always the possibility that solar energy will become so cheap that it doesn't make economic sense to waste resources extracting fossil fuels from the ground.

Qwertious• 11 years ago

That's possible, but we don't have a mechanism that can cause it and it's unlikely to happen anytime soon on its own.

ThomPete• 11 years ago

Not sure the climate debate is a good example, given both sides mean there are solutions they are just very different.

erikb• 11 years ago

While it sounds very reasonable as far as I can read it's one study, three experiments, less than a thousand data points total. Let's not jump to conclusions here. Usually you need quite a few studies and a paper that repeats and summarizes them before you can say you have a conclusion, right?

ilaksh• 11 years ago

I think its simpler than that. No one looks at scientific evidence or anything else objectively. Everyone has pre-existing beliefs. And the nature of a belief is that you don't change it easily and it overrides everything else.

So its not that people don't like science or don't know how to think rationally. Everyone is just really good at rationalizing their pre-existing worldview.

afarrell• 11 years ago

I am curious if this is hurt by people denying[1] the pain a solution would cause. A massive shift away from petrocarbon exploration would cause a great deal of unemployment (and consequently suicide, domestic violence, etc) in areas like Houston.

[1] http://m.imgur.com/r/energy/up6yu

a3n3• 11 years ago

And probably a great deal of employment in [location where alternatives are produced].

Nothing deserves forever, and survival of civilization in the modern world depends on adaptation, not holding fast.

a3n3• 11 years ago

And probably a great deal of employment in [location where alternatives are produced].

Apparently that location is ... Texas.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/tex...

"Second, Texas has way more wind power than any other state. In 2014, wind accounted for 4.4 percent of electricity produced in the United States. Texas, which has more installed wind capacity (15,635 megawatts) than any other state and is home to nearly 10,000 turbines, got 9 percent of its electricity from wind in 2014."

JesperRavn• 11 years ago

Another related fallacy I see all the time is dismissing a problem by inventing a terrible solution.

E.g.

Climate change is real -> "So you are saying we should just shut down all industry and go back to the dark ages"

The establishment of Israel was unethical -> "So you are saying we should just push all the Jews currently living in Israel into the sea."

Even asking a question shows a fallacy, since it implies that the existence of an adequate solution is related to the truth of the existence of the problem. A very common example is

There might be innate differences in ability/interests between men and women -> "If this was true, what would that imply? What is your end goal here"

pernaflert• 11 years ago

Problem denial can take the form of claiming there's nothing wrong at all. But more common seems to be the attempt to jump straight to a 'solution', without any trial and error thinking in between. Which is OFC impossible. Either way I guess it takes a certain amount of imagination to perceive problems in the first place.

guscost19• 11 years ago

Time to spend some karma.

Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same tactic.

The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as p̶r̶o̶o̶f̶ evidence of any long-term trend we can expect to continue in a non-linear system as complex as the global climate.

I guess these folks think I must be unhappy about the "necessary solution" (oh hey, it turns out to be reorganizing society according to their political beliefs!) but that amounts to an elaborate and silly ad hominem, nothing more. I think I'll write more about the "psychology journal ad-hominem" because it has become annoyingly common in recent years.

The science of climate is not settled, and will not be settled in your lifetime. Get used to it.

[0]http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00...

AC__2• 11 years ago

You should share your beliefs with the geoengineers running seeding programs creating algal blooms in the Pacific before they kill the whole fucking thing...

guscost19• 11 years ago

Well, that is what bothers me the most about this whole train wreck. If and when there are environmental issues more deserving of our attention than the CO2 thing, many anti-intellectuals are going end up dismissing them as politically motivated propaganda without even bothering to learn about them. Congratulations.

a3n3• 11 years ago

Very few really big problems are ever settled in our lifetime, and yet we have to act (which can include deciding to not act) on imperfect information. We do our best. Get used to it.

guscost19• 11 years ago

Very good, please continue doing that. Arguing about and working on the issues you believe to be important can be a constructive thing no matter your perspective. Likewise I will continue to argue my perspective and work on those issues I believe to be important. Dismantling pernicious groupthink is one of them.

pekk3• 11 years ago

You missed the point of the paper, which isn't about climate change.

jfoutz4• 11 years ago

Have the models really changed that much in 35 years though? This one has all the highlights, radiation balance, 1D and 3D modeling, climate sensitivity, the main feedbacks (water vapor, lapse rate, clouds, ice- and vegetation albedo); solar and volcanic forcing; and ocean heat uptake.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/213/4511/957

They predict about half a degree C, and that seems to be holding up.

More interesting though, what would be convincing? Computers are fast. To paraphrase the red queen, we accurately predict 6 complex nonlinear systems before breakfast. Do you think there are other hidden effects that humans haven't observed? In what sense is it not settled?

guscost19• 11 years ago

This may come down to our individual philosophies, but I'm far more interested in what would convince you that a model is wrong. It's a Popperian sentiment, which may be considered quaint these days, but I rarely hear any kind of answer.

Anyway, I don't think we are talking about even close to the same meaning of "complex", but one possible situation that would help convince me is if we had a "control" planet, and an "experimental" planet, with nearly identical climates and biodiversity and so on, and then we raised the CO2 level of the experimental planet, keeping in mind that all kinds of other inputs to the non-linear system should remain the same, like land use, fishing, other industrial activities, etc. If the experimental planet diverged significantly from the control planet, it wouldn't be solid 100% irrefutable proof but it would be far better evidence than anything we have today.

erikpukinskis• 11 years ago

The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as proof of any long-term trend

The notion of "proving" a future trend doesn't make sense. That's not how science works. You test a model against past data, and then people use the model to help them make decisions until we find a better model. Things are only ever proved after the fact.

Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left.

That doesn't really follow. The promotion of a psychological study could be the result of alarmists running out of material as you describe, or it could just be one story in a queue of many others.

Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense

Making generic insults at unnamed people and ideas doesn't really add anything to the conversation. Could you describe some actual nonsense that has someone's name attached to it so we could talk about it?

guscost19• 11 years ago

Science isn't about demanding legislation either.

And the entire OP is a thinly-veiled insult aimed at the authors' political opponents. That's the point I'm trying to make, although perhaps it could be made more politely.

rorykoehler3• 11 years ago

I just want to live in a clean, healthy, diverse and vibrant environment regardless of any climate science. It's unfortunate that your standards are so low when it comes to pollution, the mass extinction human activity creates and the general destruction of the planets ancient ecosystems but seeing as you don't really care it would be wise to get out of the way of the people who do.

guscost19• 11 years ago

I also consider a healthy environment to be a valuable resource, and our disagreement is entirely about the best way to ensure it remains that way.

asgard102412• 11 years ago

I remain astonished that supposedly educated people could ever believe otherwise

Let me take a stab at this:

thoroughly insufficient as proof of any long-term trend we can expect to continue in a non-linear system as complex as the global climate

Sometimes, non-linearity doesn't really matter. Human body is complex system, we don't fully understand it, but you wouldn't stand in front of a car that runs 100kph. Because then we just know what is going to happen, from perfectly linear Newton's law.

In the 1950s, Plass did some equilibrium calculations of climate sensitivity to CO2. I think he came with a value around 2 degrees. Modern consensus is 3. This all happened despite decades of research, involving all sorts of additional non-linearities. What does that tell you? He was right in the ballpark, and he actually had a decent model!

Just as we cannot say what injuries you end up with in the first example, we cannot easily say what will happen to the Earth. But we are very certain it will heat up (and roughly how much). Unless of course humans on the Earth react non-linearly and decide not to emit more CO2, just like person in front of a car can somewhat non-linearly jump to the side.

guscost19• 11 years ago

Whoa, you're citing the consensus as an experimental result? What is this, economics? ;)

And Plass definitely missed at least one non-linearity. Out of curiosity do you have a list?

PavlovsCat• 11 years ago

misanthropic environmentalist nonsense

You're confusing hating cancer cells with hating all cells. Not everybody takes and exploits and degrades everything as a matter of course. A bunch of people do, and a whole lot don't stand up to them. If we don't destroy our environment it's not because we cared or payed attention, but just because we're lucky, once again. This doesn't do for me. That's all. What other people of "my generation" think is not my concern either.

paulsutter• 11 years ago

So Guscost, when you net it all out, what do you think is the probability that continuing use of carbon fuels will cause a significant climate problem? 10%? 30%? 0.01%? 0?

I don't understand these arguments that global warming is "true" (100% likely) or "false" (0% likely). Because those probabilities are nonsensical.

Reasonable people might assign anywhere from 10% to 90% to that. Even if a person thinks it's 30% likely, that person might still find it prudent to take steps to avoid it. Or maybe not. But at least they have some thought process behind their viewpoint.

guscost19• 11 years ago

Everything depends on your definition of "significant" so I certainly can't just guess at a number. More significant than any other problem humanity is facing, perhaps?

If that is what you mean, my completely unscientific guess would be a decimal, then a whole lot of zeros, then a one. And I would not find it prudent to do anything to avoid that possibility that takes longer than five seconds. The steps usually recommended are much bigger than that.

brrt3• 11 years ago

No, you are wrong. You are clearly posting out of ignorance.

The earth climate system is not impossibly complex. The global temperature is at it's core determined by an energy balance. Visible light from the sun enters, infrared radiation leaves. Some of that infrared radiation is blocked, then temperature has to rise before the balance is restored. Simple as that, and completely uncontroversial, because proven by spectrum analysis of our neighboring planets (and the moon).

Now I know that doesn't give you hard answers to questions policymakers want, like 'will New Orleans flood from increased tropical storms? Will the Middle East and India dry out?' We don't know that, and yes, that sucks.

But we do know the effect of increased amounts of greenhouse gases. (And, for what it's worth, we do also know that carbon dioxide taxes work much better than an emission trading system does, as proven by e.g. Norway vs. European Union, and as proven by the fact that industry and fossil fuel companies actually prefer it).

And the fact that the top comment on HN is about climate change denial rather than the actual article is excellent proof of the study's truth.

guscost19• 11 years ago

Of the many factors you are not considering, albedo affects how much solar radiation (not all of it visible) is reflected back into space.

emp_zealoth3• 11 years ago

Norway is hardly comparable to EU energy wise, mainly because they biggest energy production is hydro, which in turn comes from unique geography.

Germany little experiment with solar is already causing massive issues, ecology wise too. Factories are already saying fuck it, building their own local generators, with worse exhaust and lower efficiency.

Keep adding more nonsense costs to industry in EU. And you know what? China would pick up the slack, and they hardly give a shit about anything. Right now,overdoing this locally actually increases net pollution. I guess we get to feel good.

jazzyk• 11 years ago

A lot of the data we have is incredibly inaccurate, to say the least. A recent study from Yale stated that the actual number of trees on Earth is almost 8 times the number previously estimated. EIGHT times! If we can't even count freaking trees, do you expect me to trust numbers concerning much more complex models of the atmosphere?

Also, claiming the parent post is "clearly out of ignorance" is both arrogant and disrespectful. There are published reports from reputable sources postulating vastly different theses/opinions.

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell

dang• 11 years ago

You are clearly posting out of ignorance.

This seems to me a form of calling names, which the HN guidelines ask you not to do. Instead of telling someone that they are ignorant, it's more civil and substantive to simply post better information. They may or may not become less ignorant, but everyone else can learn something.

CarVac2• 11 years ago

Why do you regard this as "evidence that the alarmists have very little material left"?

Are you suggesting that this was a "last resort" after "running out" of research in favor of the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis? Do you think that the Duke Fuqua School of Business is so tightly knit with the climate science community?

I think you may be biased by your hope that no further evidence surfaces; otherwise, how could you continue believing what you believe?

Take this not as criticism of your beliefs, but as criticism of how you cling to your beliefs. I try to be happy to be proven wrong, no matter the consequences. Can you say the same?

guscost19• 11 years ago

Are you saying I have been proven wrong? The assertion is not really backed up by anything, so I guess I could be totally wrong about the amount of remaining alarmist material.

Paraphrasing Popper, it is easy to find confirmations for any theory if you are looking for confirmations. So we will see plenty more global warming anecdotes in the coming years.

But the last proxy study to get big attention was Marcott 2013, no? And I'm sure you didn't read about it on CNN, but the meaning of the abstract had to be "clarified" on that one.

krschultz• 11 years ago

I've noticed that a common tendency on HN to avoid downvoted is to start your comment by saying something like 'time to spend some karma'. It seems surprisingly effective, I think because many on HN want to think they're contrarian so expressing that your opinion is contrarian is a way to garner support.

Dylan16807• 11 years ago

Or is it just that most comments don't get downvoted, especially well-written ones?

Guzba• 11 years ago

This almost certainly isn't true, it's far more likely you've only noticed it when it worked. Every other time, when it didn't, the comments were buried at the bottom of the article.

guscost19• 11 years ago

I'm pleasantly surprised (a lot depends on which people happen to click on the link), but was totally willing to spend 20 or so karma to say that.

elipsey• 11 years ago

We already tax economic externalites. A carbon tax is hardly "reorganizing society". If you want to stop doing that in general, then it's _you_ that wants to reorganize society according to your political beliefs.

Frankly, I'm sure you feel like you're winning a Bravery Contest (http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/18/against-bravery-debates...) by posting this here, and I hate pile on, but this was blantant hyperbole.

ocschwar• 11 years ago

"The science of climate is not settled, and will not be settled in your lifetime. Get used to it. "

The science of the shape of the earth isn't settled either. Nothing is ever really settled. But to "un-settle" a matter of science, you need actual evidence. Which the deniers do not have.

jameshart2• 11 years ago

That is a peculiar reaction to this research.

I take it from your argument that

1) you reject the IPCC scientific concensus that climate change is largely caused by human activity and will lead to significant impacts in the next century and

2) you disagree with the introduction of regulatory frameworks to, for example, build the external costs of carbon emissions into the economy in the form of carbon taxation.

I also assume that you think you believe 2) BECAUSE you believe 1).

Faced with a research paper that suggests that often people adjust their opinion of research based on the palatability of proposed solutions, I find it interesting that you don't see this paper as evidence that you should go back and reconsider whether your rejection in 1) is, at least in part, driven by your distaste for the kind of solution proposed in 2).

What I don't see is any reason why this research gives you further confirmation for your position with respect to 1), which would therefore reinforce your commitment to 2).

Can you explain your logic a little more clearly?

guscost19• 11 years ago

OK, I'll try. I'm calling out what I see as an example of the "psychology journal ad-hominem" mentioned above, and perhaps having a little fun with the folks who are nodding along.

To clarify, the basic problem is that anyone talking about this story at face value will either a) presuppose that each problem is legitimate, or b) get accused of being affected by the psychology under discussion. The choice of global warming combined with the description of the effect as one of "aversion" and "denial" implies that people who don't agree with the mainstream argument are affected, while those who do agree are not. Notice how this release does not mention the equally valid conclusion that people who like a solution might be more inclined to believe that the problem it solves is real.

Being an unconventional environmentalist myself, I've seen this tactic several times before and am simply pointing out what it is: a retreat from the actual issue under consideration, and an attempt to re-frame the debate as one of psychology and the mental shortcomings of members of the opposition. Don't get me wrong, I can totally agree that some version of this phenomenon is real. In fact I've wondered many times over the years how much I might be personally affected by it. The general case is called "confirmation bias" and I'm not typically that optimistic about my own immunity to it, although I have made and will continue to make efforts to recognize and counter it. Thank you for your reminder and for being tactful and polite about it, but the idea is not news to me.

In summary, whether I may believe some version of 2) in part because I believe 1) or vice versa is an interesting question. However, immediately framing this particular research in this particular way amounts to (or will be used as) an elaborate and silly ad-hominem, nothing more. Anyone who uses it is grasping at very fine straws.

specialist• 11 years ago

People who believe in anthropocentric climate change are misanthropes?

tikhonj• 11 years ago

In the past I've felt that arguing "X is not a problem" is sometimes a proxy for "we should not solve X" because it's taken as axiomatic that if X is a problem it should be solved. (And the solution, of course, usually involves compulsory rules enforced by the government or some administrative body.)

I wonder if it goes in the other direction too: people exaggerate problems and evidence if they like the proposed solution. Not even for personal gain, but for emotional reasons. (So not somebody exaggerating the threat of terrorism to consciously expand their power or sell detectors but unconsciously because of patriotism or a desire to get the terrorists.)

nostrademons4• 11 years ago

I've got somewhat unorthodox views on global warming that might make for a good test of this:

I fully accept that global warming is real, human-caused, and a major problem in the coming century. However, I don't believe we should limit carbon emissions. Instead, we should earmark all the money that would've gone into reducing carbon emissions (a carbon tax could be useful for this) into developing comprehensive evacuation plans for every major city, as well as a fund for rebuilding. As the effects of global warming hit (which will more likely be in the form of severe weather events than a global rise in sea levels), we migrate away from the hardest hit areas and rebuild in the areas made more hospitable by climate change.

There are two advantages of this:

The first is that many climate scientists believe that it's already too late, and a tipping point was reached around 2000 that's set in motion a catastrophic climate shift that we can't reverse now. Cutting carbon emissions now is a bit like closing the barn door after the horses have left. It won't actually fix our predicament, though it may slow it.

The second advantage is that this covers a number of contingencies other than climate change. A freak hurricane sweeps up the Gulf Coast, headed for Houston or New Orleans? No problem, all of the evacuation routes have been mapped out, we've built enough roads that the population can get out (as an additional plus, this helps rush-hour traffic), and the insurance companies are ready to pay out to help the victims. Drought in California? Move to Seattle or Portland and stop buying beef and almonds. It'd help if we let the price of affected commodities (water, and the things it helps grow) float to reflect their true scarcity rather than subsidize them.

The idea is to fix the problem closer to the symptoms rather than trying to get to the source. Accept that the planet's climate will change, and then work to adapt to that with minimal dislocation rather than prevent it from changing.

Thoughts? It's certainly not the party line, but it makes sense to me. And if you're currently a climate-change denier, would this proposed solution make you reconsider the facts?

mdorazio• 11 years ago

I see two problems with this proposal.

1) Migrating an entire city's population elsewhere is a MASSIVE undertaking. Not just in cost, either; we're talking about uprooting an entire population's lives and moving them elsewhere, which has all kinds of social problems. Look at New Orleans and Katrina for a great example of this. Under your strategy, pretty much the whole city should have just been abandoned and rebuilt elsewhere, but for the people who lived and worked there, this simply wasn't even on the table psychologically.

2) How do you propose to both earmark enough funds for realistic relocation/rebuilding efforts, and keep those funds safe from political interests over the span of 100+ years. It's been damn near impossible to keep Medicaid and Social Security funding in place, and those are being used by millions of people every day. "Rainy day" funds are an easy target for reallocation when budgets start getting tight.

Realistically, I think we're going to see individual cities deal with this in different ways, mostly on their own.

nostrademons4• 11 years ago

It is a massive undertaking, but probably less of an undertaking than bringing carbon emissions down to acceptable levels. Estimates of the latter run from around $300B [1][2] to $2T [3] to around $2.5T [4] per year. By comparison, estimates on the total cost of Hurricane Katrina rebuilding usually run around $125B. [5][6]

As for earmarking funds - one possible mechanism might be a carbon tax + insurance subsidy. The idea is to tax carbon emissions at a rate that is lower than what mandatory carbon reductions would cost, but higher than the expected value of new natural disaster rebuilding. Some of the proceeds would be distributed to existing insurance companies, which already have expertise in both investing and in paying out claims. Normal market discipline keeps this industry competitive, which eliminates the waste that would accrue if a government bureaucracy were created to do the work.

Regardless, we should have comprehensive evacuation plans for each major city worked out. That sort of work costs barely anything and has big payoffs in a lot of situations.

[1] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/what-would-it-really-c...

[2] http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=2&pi...

[3] http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcolleg...

[4] http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/sustainability/latest...

[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/04/hurricane-sandy-vs-...

[6] http://www.livescience.com/32181-how-much-did-hurricane-katr...

giaour5• 11 years ago

I don't think there would be nearly enough money to cover evacuation and rebuilding. Solar is already on track to become cheaper and more reliable than fossil fuel power, so the funds brought in by a carbon tax will diminish rapidly when there's no economic reason to use polluting power sources at a large scale.

emp_zealoth3• 11 years ago

Solar right now is hundreds of billions away from being ready. For a medium sized country

Cant give a source, but the figure ive seen is 150 billion € in Germany, for nearst future.

You need to install overcapacity and service it. You need to rebuild the grid from the ground up, overengineer it massively. You need to add storage, at great expense and huge drain (batteries tend to become worn out in a few years)

devinhelton• 11 years ago

Instead, we should earmark all the money that would've gone into reducing carbon emissions (a carbon tax could be useful for this) into developing comprehensive evacuation plans for every major city, as well as a fund for rebuilding.

What does earmarking money into a rebuilding fund mean? Hoarding U.S. dollars in some account? There is no way to save in current U.S. dollars, ie green pieces of paper, in order to help deal with civilization level catastrophes in the future. You would have to save in terms of real goods. Saving in terms of dollars simply would result in deflation in the near term as you hoard, and inflation in the long-term when you dishoard in order to deal with the catastrophe. When the catastrophe comes, there is no difference between the government dishoarding dollars and the government printing dollars. The government has a printing press, there is no difference between taking the money (metaphorically) out of a hidden vault and between printing new dollars.

Now saving now in terms of hoarding real goods, or in building physical infrastructure, could work. But it's hard to imagine what kind of real goods would be useful in case of massive catastrophe. Most likely the wrong things would be built or hoarded. We're just too far away from the problem, and the government isn't good at making those kinds of calculations. Also, it may not be that necessary. People underestimate how much more valuable flows are than stocks. When cities have been destroyed by fire or bombing, they get rebuilt remarkably quickly, as long as the human capital is still there.

asgard102412• 11 years ago

I normally don't vote in threads I comment in, but in your case I just had to upvote. Too many people don't understand that you cannot really "save" money.

But let's deliver the GP's idea a final blow: The thing you could potentially save would be cheap energy, for example in the form of carbon-based fuels. Which is incidentally what proponents of carbon-neutral energy sources are advocating, by wanting to leave them in the ground.

refurb• 11 years ago

This works both ways. You may be more likely to believe something is a problem if you like the solution being offered.

Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

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