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The Swerve

locusmag.com

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Re: The Swerve

#121

Post by bsder »

danhak wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Something I read in another comment on HN: "Climate denialists have gone in one smooth move from 'we'll fix it' to 'it's too late to do anything about it anyway'". Which unfortunately rings very true. The really, really big problem is that people seem to think that they personally are going to be exempt from this, that it will happen to others, but not to them. Waking up from that will be pretty harsh. But if COVID d…

Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause. And now looking at outcomes across different states (e.g. Florida vs. California)--and considering ALL outcomes (public health, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, mental health, truancy, g…

> Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause.

Sorry, but that's historical revisionism, and I'm not going to let you get away with it.

"Covid is a liberal hoax" was the starting point in the US. That was neither nuanced nor deep. That was pure denialism.

> it's indeed unclear that draconian policies in the name of public health were a net positive.

I believe that the data we have from Sweden vs other Nordic countries (which did real lockdowns) contradicts that narrative. Both Norway and Denmark have around half the deaths normalized per capita of Sweden (Denmark a little above--Norway a little below half).

Re: The Swerve

#122

Post by mulmen »

yongjik wrote: post #64

> Incredibly, climate denial still festers. “There’s no cliff,” they insist. “This bus is on a smooth road that goes all the way to the promised land. Only a fool would swerve now.” I think I get the main theme, but I don't think "climate cliff" is a useful analogy. It makes one picture a scene of relative calm until suddenly (and abruptly) the shit hits the fan, when the reality is going to be far more messy. (Just…

It's more like we are stuck in a confined space and slowly gassing ourselves with CO2 and we are arguing over turning the engine off.

Oh, wait, no, it is literally that.

Re: The Swerve

#123

Post by andybak »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #112
andybak wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?

https://reason.com/2017/07/12/cory-doctorows-fully-automated...

It's got "Communist" in the title.

For all I know it might not even be about communism in anything other than a metaphorical sense. I'd certainly assume that from the context.

Yet someone it feels like you're insinuating that he writes books advocating a communist revolution.

That feels dishonest. Maybe it's not but with throwaway comments like this, my hackles rise.

Would I be correct in assuming you've not read the book, either?

Re: The Swerve

#124

Post by ncmncm »

8bitsrule wrote: post #76
dash2 wrote: post #57

Respectfully suggest this is nonsense. No serious climate scientist thinks we are going to fall off a cliff. There will be huge costs, yes. Civilization won't end, no. What people fail to grasp is that costs can be absolutely enormous but look like a blip compared to the effect of GDP growth in the long run. World War II is an example. The millions of deaths barely show up on a graph of world population. The huge los…

Respectfully suggest that this analysis is more whistling in the dark . The very idea that human leadership has things under control overlooks multiple events in history - e.g. the Bronze Age Collapse we're still trying to explain - and suggests both amnesia and completely undue hubris. The idea also overlooks the potential for other kinds of simultaneous disaster being heaped on. (CME's for one.) We can anticipate t…

The mass extinction has been definitively traced to coincidence with the comet strike of 10818 BCE.

Actual proof that each extinction was actually directly caused will be harder to come by. E.g. maybe dire wolves died because their prey went extinct. And, we still don't know why bison survived.

Re: The Swerve

#126

Post by mistermann »

majormajor wrote: post #111
mistermann wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead we ended up with a large fraction simply denying objective reality in the hope that it would go away. That's not how you deal with problems as an adult. In toddlers I find that acceptable, but not in grown ups. If you had fallen victim to this phenomenon yourself, would you necessarily know? Might there be some materially important imperfections in your model of reality that you're describing here?

So that's why you make sure your assumptions and claims match what happened. For instance, anyone who claims that the economic impact was solely the result of government action, and that no private individuals or organizations changed their behavior independently, is ignoring the timeline of events. Anyone who claims that the vaccines didn't change things so that post-vaccine policies could have been equally successf…

> So that's why you make sure your assumptions and claims match what happened.

Ah yes, of course. Like everyone in this thread, and every other culture war based thread on HN eh? Everyone is super seriously making sure that their statements are free of error, and signs of uncertainty are far more plentiful than high confidence.

> For instance, anyone who claims that the economic impact was solely the result of government action, and that no private individuals or organizations changed their behavior independently, is ignoring the timeline of events.

> Anyone who claims that the vaccines didn't change things so that post-vaccine policies could have been equally successful pre-vaccines, is ignoring the stats.

The mind tends to be drawn to easy, clear cut scenarios, but tends to be highly averse to wading into scenarios where certainty is not so obvious.

> All this stuff is pretty easily googleable in the current and past-two-years news records, and yet you still get lots of people here making arguments based on completely different claimed facts.

Agreed....and this is an intelligent forum, on a relative basis anyways - which is another thing one can notice: people have a tendency to think only in relative terms. "I am clearly much more intelligent than those Trump supporters, therefore I must be intelligent [on an absolute scale]". How many flaws like this are hardwired into human consciousness, running completely sub-perceptually, turning our perception of what is all around us into a gross misrepresentation completely without our knowledge?

What if this actually is a big deal, but we can't be bothered to even consider the possibility?

Re: The Swerve

#127

Post by actionfromafar »

sbierwagen wrote: post #107
jacquesm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I read 'first class passengers' as 'those in the rich and developed countries who are for the most part responsible for climate change due to their excessive carbon footprint'.

If you define "rich and developed" as NATO+Japan then that's more than a billion people. Forcing that many people to reduce CO2 emissions to third world standards wouldn't require a "yank of the steering wheel", it would need nuclear war.

So, you are saying there is still hope?

Re: The Swerve

#128

Post by ElectricalUnion »

wrnr wrote: post #50
hgomersall wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know what to do about climate change - stop emitting greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide and methane. Any strategy that doesn't address that on the scale that is required can be immediately dismissed as noise. That leaves relatively few options, and those are well enumerated. Probably we need to do all of them.

Yea but HOW? Do you think there is some cheap pareto improvement to be had here. For god sake, the article is advocating for hurting and killing people and then complaining about a lack of political consensus.

> the article is advocating for hurting and killing people

The alternative of not hurting and killing people is everyone suffers and dies, not a significant improvement.

Re: The Swerve

#129

Post by analog31 »

danhak wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Something I read in another comment on HN: "Climate denialists have gone in one smooth move from 'we'll fix it' to 'it's too late to do anything about it anyway'". Which unfortunately rings very true. The really, really big problem is that people seem to think that they personally are going to be exempt from this, that it will happen to others, but not to them. Waking up from that will be pretty harsh. But if COVID d…

Here in the U.S., at least, what has widely been maligned as "COVID denialism" was actually a deeper and more nuanced conversation about whether sudden, sweeping changes to society would prevent more harm than they cause. And now looking at outcomes across different states (e.g. Florida vs. California)--and considering ALL outcomes (public health, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, mental health, truancy, g…

>>>> But there seems to be little introspection from those who propose sweeping policy change about the need to consider second-order effects on those whose lives and livelihoods will be upturned.

That seems like basic conservatism, which has been systematically forced to the sidelines over the past 50 years.

I love the people of West Virginia, but it keeps getting harder and harder to pretend that they don't vote their beliefs.

Re: The Swerve

#130

Post by dwiel »

andybak wrote: post #123
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://reason.com/2017/07/12/cory-doctorows-fully-automated...

It's got "Communist" in the title. For all I know it might not even be about communism in anything other than a metaphorical sense. I'd certainly assume that from the context. Yet someone it feels like you're insinuating that he writes books advocating a communist revolution. That feels dishonest. Maybe it's not but with throwaway comments like this, my hackles rise. Would I be correct in assuming you've not read the…

It's not even a book by that title, it's an interview of him where the interviewer included the word communism in the title of the interview. I've read the books referred to in the interview and they definitely aren't about communism.
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