HN user
Institutional science is politics. It’s no longer possible to systemically create the kind of feedback loop necessary to take any kind of intelligent action, nor is there political will. It’s far more politically expedient in the near term for the powers that be to say that whatever measures they’ve implemented do in fact work and then let the networked tribe punish anyone who dissents.
We’re only a few disasters away from the government deciding that the climate crisis requires drastic measures, including a severe rationing of meat and other products considered harmful to the environment. It’s clear from the rhetoric that this is the direction we are moving in, and it’s also clear that a great percentage of the population will comply and even celebrate such restrictions.
Just like in any complex game, there are certain rules of thumb you need to know in order to play well, but the moment you play against anyone good the meta game becomes far more complex than any collection of simple heuristics could convey. It’s still important to know those basic heuristics, though.
My point is that you’re correct, there are in fact things to be learned, but many of those lessons violate the basic principles of modern progressive liberal society, and the moment one might even begin to consider those possibilities out loud, he’ll be immediately shut down as racist, misogynist, Christian, right wing extremist, etc.
As long as what you learn complies with the regime idealogy. Europe is a nicer place to live for now, but that’s more in spite of Europeans’ politics than because of it. There’s no significant difference in thought between the typical American liberal progressive and his European counterpart. Now that Europeans have sufficiently Americanized they’ll soon discover that the problems america faces now are in fact universal to all diverse liberal democracies.