Pessimism is a barrier to progress • Hacker News Board

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#121

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

decremental wrote: post #93

jackmott42 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which advocates in particular? Why do you think buying a beach homes implies they don't believe what they are saying? Are you arriving at the most convenient conclusion for yourself, rather than the most likely one?

Former president Obama stands out. Why would you spend a considerable amount of your wealth on a home that is about to be swallowed up by the ocean on account of us barreling headlong into imminent climate catastrophe? You wouldn't.

What is the definition of imminent? Maybe Obama thinks that he and his family will still get sufficient utility out of before the home is swallowed up by the ocean? Perhaps he feels he has enough set aside for his descendants and is comfortable blowing the rest on personal comforts for their remainder years?

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#122

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #62

id wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/GatesJets Hard to take Gates seriously on climate change. Imagine everyone was living like this.

Yup... Do as you preach, and others will follow. Flying your private jet to a conference, and tell Johnny Average that he shouldn't use his car to drive to his workplace is a shitty thing to do. And he's far from being the only one doing that.

>Do as you preach, and others will follow.

It is still logically consistent to play the game as everyone else, but still advocate for changes to rules that affect everyone. For example, flying in private jets while also supporting laws/regulations/taxes that would make that amount of pollution per person per unit time unaffordable.

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#123

Post by sebastianconcpt » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

That's not the best level of analysis. Everybody is pessimistic and optimistic at the same time in different perspectives that can be dialectically changed in regard to what you define as "progress".

Progress in terms of what agenda?

You have a lot of them, and many are conflicting ones with varying degrees of potential conciliation (dialogue is possible) and some fundamentally irreconciliable (dialogue broken in a culture war, cold civil war, cultic war, hyperwar [1]).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofYWf2SKd_c

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#124

Post by ZeroGravitas » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #103

BurningFrog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you or I, or even Gates do in our personal lives has absolutely no effect on climate change. Solutions or failures happen in other contexts. Gates does some real work in those. The whole "I must recycle all my plastic bags or the planet will die" mentality is, to me, a weird form of delusion of grandeur. Seeing past that can be both freeing and depressing :)

Why do you think plastics recycling was originally campaigned for by big oil? It’s a pacifying non-solution that gets people to focus on their neighbors behaviors instead of anyone with power

No, big oil has always opposed plastic recycling, because it reduces their sales of gas feedstock.

They have always pushed "blaming the consumer for trash", and disparaged "producer responsibility" and "plastic recycling" (except in blaming the consumer for not recycling, but that's just a variant of blaming them for trash).

It's weird to now see people pointing to the same organisations that opposed these things, and claiming they campaigned for them.

In countries/states with functional governments that aren't owned by fossil fuels, plastic recycling has happened as just one of a suite of measures and has always been successful. Every academic study of it has agreed it's the best thing for the economy and planet.

In others states, the ones that are in thrall to big oil, it didn't really happen, and then the people who don't want it to happen appear to have recently started claiming "hah, we (i.e. the big evil oil corps) wanted you to recycle, so now you shouldn't do it, that'll teach us".

This is the kind of reverse psychology that works really well on toddlers.

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#125

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

decremental wrote: post #93

jackmott42 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which advocates in particular? Why do you think buying a beach homes implies they don't believe what they are saying? Are you arriving at the most convenient conclusion for yourself, rather than the most likely one?

Former president Obama stands out. Why would you spend a considerable amount of your wealth on a home that is about to be swallowed up by the ocean on account of us barreling headlong into imminent climate catastrophe? You wouldn't.

[deleted]

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#126

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #103

BurningFrog wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you or I, or even Gates do in our personal lives has absolutely no effect on climate change. Solutions or failures happen in other contexts. Gates does some real work in those. The whole "I must recycle all my plastic bags or the planet will die" mentality is, to me, a weird form of delusion of grandeur. Seeing past that can be both freeing and depressing :)

Why do you think plastics recycling was originally campaigned for by big oil? It’s a pacifying non-solution that gets people to focus on their neighbors behaviors instead of anyone with power

It is a pacifying non solution that lets people continue consuming themselves, while letting them feel like they are not harming the environment.

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#127

Post by voldacar » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #107

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal carbon budget. But then the upper middle class twats couldn't go on vacation to Bali and we can't have that no sirree!

Are they twats because they're upper middle class, or because they want to go on vacation to Bali? Or maybe both? Edit: the point that I'm driving at (if it wasn't clear) is that we seem to all want upward mobility to be a thing, but boy do we hate those that actually experience it. That seems almost like it's own kind of pessimism to me.

Yes, the crab bucket mentality

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#128

Post by nathanaldensr » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #122

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup... Do as you preach, and others will follow. Flying your private jet to a conference, and tell Johnny Average that he shouldn't use his car to drive to his workplace is a shitty thing to do. And he's far from being the only one doing that.

>Do as you preach, and others will follow. It is still logically consistent to play the game as everyone else, but still advocate for changes to rules that affect everyone. For example, flying in private jets while also supporting laws/regulations/taxes that would make that amount of pollution per person per unit time unaffordable.

No, it's not. You're just excusing hypocritical behavior because of your own bias.

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#129

Post by nathanaldensr » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

decremental wrote: post #81

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup... Do as you preach, and others will follow. Flying your private jet to a conference, and tell Johnny Average that he shouldn't use his car to drive to his workplace is a shitty thing to do. And he's far from being the only one doing that.

Similarly the vocal and rich advocates for climate change policy buying beachfront property on Martha's Vinyard. To say that these people are merely hypocrites is being too generous. They don't believe what they're saying at all.

Don't allow anyone to gaslight you about such an obvious observation, too.

Re: Pessimism is a barrier to progress

#130

Post by snapplebobapple » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

This seems like a lot of words and a lot of word games to say something that could have been said in a much simplified form by recognizing that optimism directs effort and pessimism quashes effort and you need a healthy dose of both to be effective because pessimism used correctly (what the other labelled criticism in this piece) cuts off effort on what the person thinks are the worst solutions and focuses it on the best possible solutions.

Instead this gets into a lot of words about kinds of optimism and redefining pessimism as criticism if it is used effectly