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Comment by deevolution | Hacker News Reader

Surely there must be other less annoying ways to get people excited about helping the environment...

You'll gain a lot of perspective if you listen to this interview: https://teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-127-extinction-rebellion/

Some tidbits: your comment is like saying "there surely must be less painful ways for your body to tell you to be more careful with a hammer"

In a trivial sense, it's true. But real pain and annoyance is exactly what it takes for people to prioritize dealing with a problem. These sorts of things are a healthy immune-system flare-up showing that we're not totally doomed.

The way to avoid such annoyance is to not have let the problem get as bad as it is in the first place.

I'd be curious if there is any correlation to people's daily routines being disrupted and then having any sympathy for the protester's cause.

I mean, who is going to get stuck in the air for an extra hour, land, and say "man, those guys are right".

At worst, it would just make me feel contempt for them. At best it just invigorates the people who already were on their side.

The very podcast I linked describes a pattern common in previous protests like blocking a bridge: people say "this is annoying, but actually thank you, this is important". Lots of people ARE thankful for those doing something more aggressive than they are willing to do themselves. Others complain a lot but this makes the topic of the protest become a topic of discussion, much as you think and talk a lot about the issue around the pain you have when your immune system flares up.

Really, listen to the podcast.

There are indeed lots of questions about the right way to do this.

When your body flares up like crazy over an allergy, many people indeed get contemptuous about their own immune system rather than just hate pollen. So, it's not like just any and all mayhem in the name of a cause is helpful…

Sure, but the less painful way of dealing with this problem is to charge them with terrorism and lock them away on life sentences. Sure others may try, but after a couple rounds of this, volunteers will stop. You can get young men to take great risks for great rewards, but not to rot in a prison cell somewhere with no hope of anything.

A society that veers too far in squashing it's metaphorical immune system will collapse, in the same way that a person who feels no pain is likely to die young.

If you abuse terrorism charges and make it so no protests of anything are ever really disruptive, things that threaten the long-term stability and health of society will go unaddressed until they actually cause far more catastrophic problems.

If you have better ideas I am all ears. I'm afraid we have already exhausted all other options in the last few decades.

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