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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

This feels like a "terrorist/freedom-fighter" thing and so is effectively saying nothing.

Like, Bill Gates accepts climate change is happening, that we should do something to avert the problems, and thinks that we can do that as a species. He thinks that renewables and EVs etc. will all help, but aren't enough and we should look for newer solutions. He has invested in multiple different solutions, presumably because he thinks some will be needed but not all will work.

So he's a pessimist, pessimist, optimist, optimist, pessimist, optimist, optimist/pessimist. And that's one person on one idea.

I agree with some of his opinions and methods, but disagree with others. I don't mind him investing in nuclear things, I just wish he'd tone down his 'pessimism' about renewables when pitching them because overall I think that is unhelpful, untrue and unnecessary.

He gets many of his downer talking points from Vaclav Smil, who is a grumpy pessimist about both the science and politics of climate change and I think personifies the "Pessimism sounds smart. Optimism sounds dumb" idea.

But does that mean "pessimism" is bad in the abstract? I don't think so.

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Pessimism can be quite useful. In particular, it helps prune off unhelpful branches of search trees, so you can focus on more promising ones.

A very important part of solving problems is choosing the right problems. It doesn't help to be optimistic about something that's not going to work.

>It doesn't help to be optimistic about something that's not going to work.

Thinking a priori that it’s not going to work, here we have the true definition of a pessimist.

Or you could interpret it charitably, where the person states that when looking at actions after the fact, it can be said that being optimist about an action that turned out to not work caused you to waste time.

> after the fact

Past tense is hindsight. Optimism/pessimism is a future tense attitude.

Yes, I'm talking about after the fact analysis of whether optimism wasted time or not. I didn't say that optimism or pessimism is hindsight. So I'm not sure how your comment relates to anything I said, except you taking three random words out of my comment.

The optimist keeps trying to do something even as the evidence piles up against it. He calls someone pointing this out a pessimist.

In general, for any action, there is already some means of judging whether it's a good one. Not a perfect means, but you can get some idea. And after trying things a bit, the evidence gets better. It's utterly vital to use negative information obtained in this exploration. Otherwise, you can go off into an institutional failure mode where resources are poured down a black hole just because that's what's been done before.

> The optimist keeps trying to do something even as the evidence piles up against it. He calls someone pointing this out a pessimist.

If someone insists that something would work even when the evidence is clear that's borderline stupid. But let's look at pessimism and optimism in relation to something unknown. An optimist would continue trying even if they fail multiple times, they continue trying until they either succeed or find enough evidence that it won't work. While a pessimist won't even try once, or give up pretty early.

Or a realist

Believing climate change is happening isn’t pessimism though, neither are almost any of the other things you mentioned. Thinking a particular solution won’t work isn’t pessimism. Thinking all solutions won’t work or humans just aren’t capable of coming up with a solution therefore we shouldn’t bother trying is. What you seem to describing is what the author is railing against that is blind optimism.

> Bill Gates accepts climate change is happening, that we should do something to avert the problems, and thinks that we can do that as a species. He thinks that renewables and EVs etc. will all help, but aren't enough and we should look for newer solutions. He has invested in multiple different solutions, presumably because he thinks some will be needed but not all will work. > > So he's a pessimist, pessimist, optimist, optimist, pessimist, optimist, optimist/pessimist. And that's one person on one idea.

That's a really interesting way to slice and dice it. When I read your first few sentences that's not how I interpreted it at all.

I got fact, fact, optimist. Optimist, fact. Fact, optimist, optimist.

But I'm not convinced that's a better way to go about it. What is likely needed is each of those chunks to be taken into context and when I look it at that, it's really "here is a problem and a solution to move things forward." To me that's optimistic. If it were pessimistic, I'd expect it to be "here is a problem and there's nothing we can do about it."

I think that the difference in perspectives is seeing pessimism/optimism as just a mood valance. In a sense, it takes some pessimism to even perceive that problems exist. Purified optimism would see every kind of evidence as good and interesting and every possible outcome as rosy.

These are spectra, and neither extreme is "correct" and rooted in objective reality. Pessimism/optimism can be decoupled from other axes like ignorance/knowledge, acceptance/denial, awareness/delusion, etc. Assuming "climate change is happening" as fact, someone might exhibit climate change denial for any number of reasons. These are just illustrative sketches, not an effort to build some taxonomy of beliefs:

Ignorance: someone may be unable to comprehend the complicated climate system concepts, statistical concepts, nor noisy data.

Cynical pessimism: someone may believe it is happening and unavoidable, but they want to minimize their own inconvenience or discomfort prior to the end game.

Blind optimism: someone may just harbor a profound faith that things will work out in the end; to them, the people trying to address climate change seem like toxic pessimists who harbor delusions of grandeur!

> This feels like a "terrorist/freedom-fighter" thing

Exactly. The author is stapling all the good qualities onto optimism and all the bad ones onto pessimism so that he can declare one good and the other bad.

I'm optimistic we can have a more meaningful conversation about optimism and pessimism if we forget this article.

Optimism usually sounds dumb because most people don't justify it well. It winds up sounding like marketing. All promise, no substance. A pessimist will generally provide right/wrong but specific reasons why it won't work out.

Blind optimism sounds like marketing. Actual optimism grounded in some sort of reality just sounds like regular conversation.

Optimism is believing that good cars exist and can be a lot of fun. Pessimism is complaining that one person's Corvette is going to wreck the planet.

Optimism is believing that good electric cars exist and can be a lot of fun. Pessimism is saying that they'll never work and are terrible because our grid will collapse if too many people buy them.

Optimism is also believing that both problems are remarkably solvable.

https://twitter.com/GatesJets

Hard to take Gates seriously on climate change. Imagine everyone was living like this.

This is amazing and really goes to show the dude, no matter how good his intentions may be, is a hypocrite. One rule for him, different rules for everyone else.

I dislike Gates for the old reasons, and some of the new ones as well.

But this basic argument from hypocrisy is applied to a lot of people, and it's a weak case.

If someone is using an appreciable fraction of their fortune to decarbonize the grid, and otherwise make industrial civilization sustainable, they can fly private jets as much as they like. Ultimately, carbon in the atmosphere is a simple game of addition. If Gates Brand nuclear plants take 100GW of coal and natural gas offline, I don't care if the man lives on an airplane with a whole second fleet for in-flight refueling, because it doesn't matter.

The reason the hypocrisy argument sucks is that, by definition, you can only apply it to rich people who see a problem with climate change and are doing something about it.

The many wealthy private-jet owners who are invested in fuel extraction don't even get mentioned. They get wealthy when carbon emissions get worse, and then spend their wealth jetting around.

Can you link me to the page which tracks Mohamed bin Sultan's jet travel? No? I believe I've made my point.

> Mohamed bin Sultan's jet travel? No? I believe I've made my point.

Mohamed bin Sultan did not claim that polar bears might be dead by 2020 and that Florida will be under water by 2030, hence he can't be a hypocrite.

Yes, hypocrisy can only be be applied to someone who claims something, argues for a certain something. The fact that everyone does not beleive in apocalyptic global warming destroying mankind by 2020 still means that the people who do can be hypocrites.

Mohammed bin Salman’s public position is that global warming is real and dangerous and he has pledged that Saudi Arabia will be carbon neutral by 2060. I think if you wanted to make a case that he’s a hypocrite, there’s ample evidence out there.

But then the real question is why hypocrisy is so bad. All of us are hypocrites in different ways, on different things. Why is being a hypocrite on climate change worse than being wilfully ignorant?

We may not be interested in metaphysics, but metaphysics may be interested in us.

You are now comparing Gates to a dictator in a country that brutally murders reporters for publishing critical pieces. Amongst other atrocities. I wouldn't give Bill G the time of day if on the street, but this is a pointless comparison.

On the other hand he could try fly a bit less ?

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.

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?

Do you really believe that his home is imminently about to be swallowed by the ocean?

I definitely don't and neither does he.

Does that mean climate change isn't real and we shouldn't enact any policy to deal with it? Just trying to understand what your actual position is.

Perhaps Obama is optimistic that we'll pull our heads out of the sand and do what we need to do to prevent his home from being swallowed up by the ocean.

Climate catastrophe will not visit Martha's Vineyard within Barack Obama's lifetime. No one says it will.

Living on MV does not contribute to the climate problem, so his actions are not hypocritical.

If he was looking for a 100-year property investment, perhaps he should have chosen a different part of New England (elevation > X meters), the Pacific Northwest, or the Great Lakes region.

If he's looking for a nice, private, place to live for the next 30 years, MV has a lot going for it. He won't live there for 30 years of course, and maybe "leaving it to the kids" isn't high on his priority list, and maybe he even has a lingering hope that mitigation efforts will happen and succeed. He didn't get famous by being a pessimist (ObOnTopic).

And, sure is a good thing he didn't move to Florida or the desert West, where he'd be both more endangered and more contributive to the danger.

I really can't imagine any plausible explanation for how any person arrives at the "Obama says climate change is a problem, but buys house near beach, must be hypocrite and bad person" narrative, unless of course you started at the end and worked backwards.

(edit) ... which, I see from other comments, seems to be the case. You believe Obama is lying about climate change and that buying a house on MV is proof? OK. Amazing.

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

There will be considerable mental gymnastics and glib responses to any post that points out the obvious. That's just how it goes.

You're being downvoted severely for going against current leftist orthodoxy, but you should know that a lot of us out here agree with you.

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

You don't have to go on holiday across the world.

But for the record I don't give a shit just don't preach environmentalism. Hypocrisy is just one of those things that crawls up my butt.

>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.

It is not hypocritical, because I do not expect others to behave in a way I do not.

For example, I want fossil fuels to be drastically costlier to force everyone to use smaller vehicles and live in denser communities enabling public transit.

But I do not want other individuals to have to do that while I do not. I am willing to make the sacrifices if everyone will, but if everyone is not going to, then I have a hard time seeing why I should.

Does anyone know if he actually buys carbon offsets for his footprint? I mean that would be one way to negate the impact of flying around. I imagine he does.

The people complaining about this generally don't believe in carbon offsets either.

Good point. Not sure why I even comment in here.

He could buy carbon ofsets and still not fly around in a private jet and help the environment on two fronts.

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 :)

It can be freeing to lie to yourself, but it remains a lie. Of course limiting personal pollution has an effect.

Yes, we saw this over covid lockdowns where the massively reduced number of cars on the road resulted in a dramatic improvement in air quality around cities. If enough individuals start taking the bus or cycling in we can definitely improve our local environment, regardless of the minuscule effect on a global scale.

I think we can have disagreements without calling each other liars.

It's not a disagreement. You made a false statement, I called it out.

I disagree!

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.

You have a lot of confidence to begin that wall of text with “No” https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-... etc, get informed

you’re sorely missing what my point could be if you think it’s nihilism / hah fine to be wasteful, another spin on the individualist solution making I attacked in my comment

You're literally citing big oil executives:

> Despite this, three former top officials, who have never spoken publicly before, said the industry promoted recycling as a way to beat back a growing tide of antipathy toward plastic.

And in doing so they get to repeat their "plastic recycling doesn't work" rhetoric.

As soon as you force the producers to pay for disposal and let them figure out how best to do it, recycling suddenly, magically becomes the cheapest option.

https://www.wastedive.com/news/2021-state-extended-producer-...

You had a problem with me saying that big oil campaigned for recycling which is exactly what the article says

> Recycling, the former officials told NPR and Frontline, became a way to preempt the bans and sell more plastic

> "The feeling was the plastics industry was under fire, we got to do what it takes to take the heat off, because we want to continue to make plastic products," Thomas says.

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

self-removed for inaccuracy.

how rude, are you just uninformed right now? https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-...

I think you miss that one persons effort if collective done has an impact. So if everyone recycles or lowers their energy use it has impact. However if one person doesn't, that in and of itself won't change the trajectory, however if everyone did it would.

I'm sure there is some kind of name for this.

Yes - it’s called the tragedy of the commons.

Trying to shame people into using less never solves this problem. It just means there is more available for the shameless. The solution as are either to regulate the commons, or find a better way to meet our needs.

That's true. So take that thought a little further.

How does it happen that everyone, on average, recycles or uses less energy?

In general, by making non recycling or energy use more expensive. This can come from regulation, taxes, social pressure. Technical innovation can also sidestep whole issues by using less energy/materials and/or producing more. Maybe there are a few other paths.

Those things actually make a difference. Focus on them.

This is the dumbest take on Climate Change and I can't believe the HN crowd falls for it.

Thought Experiment:

Say, Bill Gates (and other VIPs) is respected enough that he can convert 5 Skeptics out a 100 Climate Deniers. So, In order for the successful climate actions Bill Gates has to change the minds of say 10,000 leaders in various positions across the world. That means he effectively has to meet 200,000 people across the globe.

If Climate Change is important, and you want quick action, do you want Bill Gates (and others) to

a) jet around the globe and try to convince 200,000 people in 5 years

b) Bicycle around the globe and try to convince 200,000 people in 50 years

Only a moron would suggest (b). I expect TikTokers and Redditors to pick option (b) as they are easily swayed by "Hurr Durr, Bill Gates Jets" arguments.

Thought experiments are supposed to involve a little bit of thinking.

He can jet around the world in economy class without much difference, just a bit of sacrifice.

I'll start believing Bill Gates believes in climate change when he starts behaving as if he does.

How is he going to "convince 200,000 people in 5 years" if he isn't even willing to fly first class instead of private? He obviously doesn't care, so he's not going to convince anyone.

Private saves times instead of First Class.

Have you considered that his power of persuasion is very dependent upon what he himself practices? Leading by example.

I don’t get your hero worship mentality. Talk about pessimism.

That and he only tried to join in on climate change way after it was politically convenient and he was trying to build his image. As well he has said some poor ideas about climate change solutions when he was first stepping his toes in the water. Which is fine if people don't hold onto your words - as someone with a fair bit of power its detrimental to other initiatives.

Since then I still don't know which of his initiatives have shown a high probability of success.

> he only tried to join in on climate change way after it was politically convenient and he was trying to build his image

Who can you say this is not true about?

Most people who were in the industry long before it was politically convenient.

That doesn’t prove they weren’t just image building. It proves they chose it as a topic to build an image around earlier than Gates.

So, I still don't like Gates for various historical reasons.

Even some of his climate stuff annoys me.

But, it's highly likely that if you ranked the whole human race on how much they'd done to reduce climate change, he may well be at the top.

So if it's about "doing his share" then he's probably doing okay.

But regardless, I don't want people to stop flying, I want them to stop releasing fossil C02 in the air because it's inefficient. Inefficiencies on an individual scale don't matter, inefficiencies on a civilization wide scale add up quickly.

I don't see how flying, or doing any other rich person thing, reduces his credibility. Unless you believe dealing with climate change is going to make us all poorer, which it isn't.

If you're really all about hating rich people, then there's lots of "climate justice" projects aiming to help poor people and carbon taxes that replace regressive taxes would be a good thing to champion.

I don't hate him for being rich, I simply want him to stop polluting excessively. It would help the climate and his message alike.

And I don't buy that you can do your share by talking one way and doing the exact opposite privately. It's like being an animal rights advocate who (openly) tortures animals in their free time. Simply doesn't work that way, even if you save more animals than you torture.

It is not like animal torture at all because there is a clear line of the right amount of animal torture (for the sake of torturing) that is acceptable (which is obviously none).

Where is the line on how much pollution one is allowed to expel? 500sq ft per person apartment? 100sq ft? Prius or RAV4? Commercial flight to visit family, once per year or twice? How many kids?

There's probably many animal rights advocates that aren't hardcore vegan.

There are dozens of us!

I don’t have a problem with the dairy and egg products I use because I personally know the people that I get them from. I won’t purchase anything containing dairy and eggs. If someone prepares food for me containing them I may eat it to be polite but I wouldn’t eat meat. I also don’t have an issue with the honey I get from my friends hives. However, many of my activist friends and other people see all of these things as hypocrisy that perpetuate animal abuse. I still protest and we get along fine. Because to your point, there’s room for nuance.

If he releases 100 tons, then prevents the release of 10000000000 tons, I'd say he'll have done pretty well, even if he could have release only 50 tons.

He's not just talking about doing things, he's putting people to work doing things. To focus on his individual emissions is a premature optimization

Well, do you expect him to fly coach? With security and the rest of his entourage? And a layover in Atlanta?

I agree that it seems empty, since it's more about a person than the methods.

I think that pessimism and optimism are human traits, and have more to do with our own fallible irrational view of the world, which can easily be changed depending on the current cultural perception of our future. It's so easy to bias.

When it comes to predictions, it should revolve around the scientific method. Statistics derived from data, and that probability which itself does not know the concept of optimism or pessimism, is what should be a guide for further research or decisions.

The problem is that we ourselves also decide what to investigate to begin with. Thus our tools will only ever be as good as we are ourselves. Willingness to learn, change opinions, let go of ego and prejudice, the path forward really starts with giving everyone, children and adults, time to learn. But we are in such a society where our values are often placed differently and we are in such a rush.

So I think it really starts with, how do we cultivate a good environment now? And not whether the future is pessimistic or optimistic.

Pessimistic - tending to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen.

I don't see any of your example indicating a pessimism.

Pessimism != < the most optimistic

For someone whose user name is “zero gravitas”, you sure seem wise :-)

GP close to gods, and on the far side, confirmed.

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