Can video games change people’s minds about the climate crisis?

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jan/26/can-video-games-change-peoples-minds-about-the-climate-crisis

by Brajeshwar • 3 years ago

11 38 3 years ago

dablweb• 3 years ago

It's interesting that we're not allowed to debate the existence of the crisis in the first place... it's just accepted as an a priori fact and anyone who provides even the slightest push-back is ridiculed and silenced.

johnteller• 3 years ago

Because the disaster we're heading into is backed by laws of physics that have been proven again and again over centuries. It's not possible to come up with arguments to "push back" against it. If you think it is, you simply lack the level of required scientific education to understand what is going on.

nathanaldensr2• 3 years ago

Your argument doesn't work, if it ever did. People have already decided where they fall. You'll never beat them into submission; you'll only make their positions more entrenched.

But please, keep trying.

pjkundert• 3 years ago

This is the same argument Galileo experienced.

joshgev2• 3 years ago

The problem with this is there do seem to be quite legitimate physicists who disagree with the "sky is falling" conclusion that all popular discussion is premised on. I recently heard an interview with Dr. Richard Lindzen that, for instance, provides what sounds like a very reasonable counter to the prevailing attitude.

Anyone who says "the science is settled, the laws of physics cannot be violated" fails to realize what physics is even about. The vast majority of victories that physics has had since Isaac Newton are based on incredibly simplified models that strip out all of the complexity from a system. Basically everything interesting is treated as linear (as in f(x) ~ x) and a lot of the other stuff is just thrown into constants. After a few decades of working with that, both in theory and with experiments, you might get comfortable enough to add some small corrections to your theories. In this way you step closer and closer to "truth" but we are still very far off, even with our best physics, from fully understanding anything of even moderate complexity. This is not to say that we don't get incredibly useful results from physics (just look at our technology!), but it does mean that we need to constrain statements about how much we really understand and where our "laws" really are applicable. Take for instance the equation for kinetic energy, k=.5 * mv^2. Hugely useful, but dead wrong if you try to apply it to things moving at relativistic speeds.

The problem of climate science, from my perspective, is that we can't strip it down like we do for simple systems like a ball moving in space. Climate is inherently very complex; if you try to ignore how oceans interact with vegetation, how vegetation interacts with clouds, how clouds and rain are connected, etc, then your models can be interesting and might reveal something, but they can't be used to predict what will happen with any degree of confidence because they are too far removed from the real thing. And if you don't strip something out of the system when doing your modeling, well then good luck: you'll never understand anything at all because the thing is too complex to be used to calculate anything of interest.

edit: added some words.

edit2: more words.

AbrahamParangi• 3 years ago

That the planet is warming is backed by very good science but the magnitude of the ecological impact to humans is unknowable and thus not science at all.

Aside from borderline impossible claims of a runaway greenhouse effect, there is absolutely no world where human extinction is on the table and frankly I would argue that mass death is unlikely as historical evidence is by far in the favor of human adaptability.

rtkwe• 3 years ago

I haven't seen any new credible evidence in years that doesn't hyperfocus on one data point or weather event or just try to generally throw up a "well we don't really know do we it could be this other thing" to try to prove their claim. It's tiring and the data is overwhelming that we're warming the Earth.

cassepipe5• 3 years ago

Maybe because there's a scientific consensus at least on the fact that there's a global warming at the source of a ever growing climate instability and that the only people pushing against it are crazy people who don't know what they are talking about and crazy politicians willing to say that out loud in order to get elected, and coal/oil/gas lobbies paying for sham science (and aforementioned politicians) to say the contrary. Funny by the way how the discourse about climate change has changed over the years from "It's not happening" to "It's not that bad". Altough in typical conspiracist style, some have always held both at the same time.

machina_ex_deus5• 3 years ago

Is Freeman Dyson also a crazy person who doesn't know what he's talking about?

The appearance of consensus is manufactured by the media. They label each dissenter as an individual crazy person and somehow the mainstream narrative is the consensus.

And again, this labelling is done by the media. There's no high authority of science.

UncleMeat• 3 years ago

You can publish in journals. You can attend conferences. You can bring data. That's where the debate happens.

imtringued2• 3 years ago

They get ridiculed because they argue in bad faith with bad or even made up references and data.

Their predictions are basically useless. Decades ago these "debators" were arguing in favor of global cooling because solar activity is going down yet what we got is record temperatures after record temperatures practically every single year.

Even with correct data they intentionally misinterpret it or omit crucial factors. For example a graph where solar insolation, co2 levels and global temperatures are listed they remove the solar insolation data and then argue that there is no correlation between CO2 and global temperatures or state that past CO2 levels have been higher while ignoring that over the time of millions of years solar insolation has increased by a few percentage points and it takes less CO2 today to cause the same level of warming Vs millions of years ago.

Let's assume there was a "debate", why is one side acting in such a way? You would have to put on a tinfoil hat and explain this by saying something ridiculous like "the green lobby routinely funds junk science to discredit climate skeptics".

machina_ex_deus5• 3 years ago

There are two arguments, and they like to confuse people that they must be related.

There is all the data of what is actually going on in the world. Temperature readings, satellite images, etc. This can be called science and it is evidence, but it doesn't come with anything saying what is causing it. The equivalent of a primitive man meticulously measuring the rain.

Then there is the conjecture that this is all because of CO2 and its all our fault. This is purely religious argument, not at all different than the good old "Gods are punishing us" argument from a primitive man. The only evidence for this argument are some trash computer models which are running far beyond their predictive capability.

It's also inevitable that if we have "global warming god" and "global cooling god", one would emerge victorious.

It isn't science, it's just masquerading as science. The data analysis of real world data is science. The trash computer models attributing all of this to CO2 aren't science.

These are similar to the computer models in the COVID crisis which have overshoot reality by orders of magnitude.

mothsonasloth• 3 years ago

This is just the ol' media favourite of "violent video games alters human behaviour" but flipped 180 and refreshed with a trendy climate wrapper.

Games for years have had dystopian, catastrophic and other themes. Sure they have inspired some people but on the whole I don't see how this would be anymore effective than:

- A climate crisis flyer handed out by a hippie looking person at an organic food market

- A saturday morning talkshow piece presenting on how a farmers fields are suffering drought

- A 24 hours news story on wildfires

"In one ear, out the other".

dsfyu404ed• 3 years ago

This is just the ol' media favourite of "violent video games alters human behaviour" but flipped 180 and refreshed with a trendy climate wrapper.

And the response of the people who are usually saying things like "piss off, CoD doesn't make people shoot up schools" when the "violent video games cause..." trope is brought up will say a lot about them.

Regardless of whether video games do or don't alter behavior in a practical sense we'll at least get to see who's logically consistent and who flip flops.

crtasm• 3 years ago

What is logically inconsistent about the argument that games don't turn people into murderers, but can make them more aware of their connection to and effect on the world/their society/etc. and ways they could have a positive impact on them?

ethanbond• 3 years ago

Eh I think there are at least a few notable differences compared to those list items. Most powerful one is storytelling. I’ve recently been reading a few books by naturalists (e.g. A Sand County Almanac, which is incredible) and that has changed my views far, far more effectively than any of the things you listed.

Other benefits video games might have even over a great story seem like they’d be notable: highly visual, and more interactive than books.

pjc504• 3 years ago

An interesting idea, but not a new one - all resource management games represent interaction with the environment in some way, just as SimCity represented a particular set of beliefs about urban design and Call Of Duty represents a particular set of politics.

Civilization 1 had a "global warming" mechanic, which could be severely exacerbated by nuclear wars.

thriftwy3• 3 years ago

Alpha Centaury had a solar shade which you could deploy and cool the planet (to pre-warming levels or even further). I often ask how that solar shade is coming along in the climate discussions, and get downvoted usually.

You have to admit that resolve to pay for a solar shade (or other discrete solution) is something you can sell to gamers. Otherwise, the main commodity being sold in the discussions of climate crisis is panic - you can see how it is clearly inferior.

That, and half-assed not-productized solutions like carbon capture, which don't even have a single chart where the good guys win decisively, regardless of amount of money spent.

Gamers are used to solving problems. Nobody comes up with solution to climate crisis.

pjc504• 3 years ago

Alpha Centauri! Incredible game. Had an entire xeno-environmentalist faction.

Nobody comes up with solution to climate crisis.

Oh, there are plenty of solutions, but none of them are free or easy, so nobody likes them.

thriftwy3• 3 years ago

I don't think there are any players who have not heard about the climate crisis, unless they were living in a box.

However:

* If they agree with the general agenda regarding climate crisis, they still don't have any action points as they did not have them before playing the game. "Buy an electro car" and "pay all kinds of extra charges" just don't engage that much.

* If they already disagree with the general agenda regarding climate crisis, they would probably just roll their eyes if you try to change their mind. Especially as you may only reiterate the common, orthdox arguments which they have surely already heard multiple times.

machina_ex_deus5• 3 years ago

The entire narrative is that a gas which is just 400 parts per million - 4 10^4, or 0.04% - causes heating of 1 degree Celsius around ~300 degrees over absolute zero (so 0.3% increase in temperature) over a time frame of decades - so 0.03% increase per year - and the only evidence we have tying the conjectured cause of warming (CO2) to the actual climate are computer models, whose accuracy is extremely bad in the span of few months.

We're talking about predicting an effect which is 10^-5 orders of magnitude different from current configuration, with tools that were tested and failed within much shorter timeframes (~ months instead of years) and all of this is the only "evidence". The prediction abilities of these tools are only around the general trend, they failed predicting the magnitude correctly. So around 10^1 orders of magnitudes of accuracy.

All of this by computer models which have horrible code, all copying from each other, and are extended way beyond their empirical testing - while being fixed with fudge factors called "flux adjustments".

All of this in an extremely chaotic system. The kind of chaos which has no hope for even short duration prediction.

It's not science. It's a religion. There are no confidence intervals on this because if they had done a systematic analysis of the entire thing, they would have to admit that the chaotic behavior dominates their analysis by several orders of magnitude.

They do have plenty of data for what is actually going on - but the conjecture that it is CO2 causing it (as opposed to being just chaotic behavior, other factors, anything else really) has very little evidence. They abuse conjunction fallacy to convince everyone.

imtringued2• 3 years ago

Somehow the Exxon researchers made predictions four decades ago that are still accurate today.

machina_ex_deus5• 3 years ago

I wonder how did they do that without predicting anything about CO2 usage in those 4 decades?

You need to realize there are two questions:

1. What will be the climate decades into the future? T(CO2, t)=?

2. What is the effect of CO2 on all of this? T(CO2+ΔCO2, t)=?

Getting zeroth order of T is one thing. They did it pretty badly anyway. Getting the first order of T with respect to CO2 is another thing entirely.

Getting the answer to 2 correctly is much, much harder. You want to do the the derivative by CO2 ppm, and as you do that, you have 10^-5 factors on most things, because that's how much CO2 ppm there is.

I don't buy the narrative that they did this difficult thing correctly. Supposedly the leading order is something like how much CO2 increases absorption. It's going to have this 10^-5 factor of CO2 ppm there, and it's going to be what's causing this whole thing to happen. But if there are greater than 10^-5 errors in this calculation, the whole thing is useless. And they don't actually do this analytically, they just run it many times in a simulation.

I just don't buy the narrative that they manage to get meaningful signal out of that, not with how their code looks like, how chaotic the real system is, and their uncertainties about other parameters, there's just no way in hell they know this correctly.

Their evidence is that they have some pretty rough estimates for the zeroth order. The evidence for their confidence of the first order is extremely weak. And the narrative that CO2 matters is only meaningful if they have a good estimate of the first order.

beej71• 3 years ago

What you really have to come up with is what's causing it. That's how to destroy the CO2 narrative. Otherwise, CO2 it is.

gsatic• 3 years ago

Raph Koster's Theory of Fun talks about this really well. There are things you learn while having fun. But real learning requires lot of repetitive boring stuff, sort of like practicing piano everyday for a long period, before something clicks. Getting players to do that is always the challenge.

But that book was written long ago, so fingers crossed game designers are making breakthroughs.

drdunce• 3 years ago

Pleasantly surprised. When I saw the headline I thought it was going to be a game about gluing yourself to things.

AnCapAndrew• 3 years ago

Better headline "Can we convince people to give us more power by scaring them about climate change with video games?"

nurgasemetey• 3 years ago

I don't care about climit crisis while people use private jets. It is annoying to be taught while there is no burden on rich people.

Can video games change people’s minds about the climate crisis?

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