Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

" "why don't we all stop wasting money on locks and just all of us agree to stop stealing?" Or "why do we need money? Can't we just all do our part and only take what we need?" Or "why can't we agree to end wars?"

We can and do so - in small societies, like inner family and close friends - where trust exists.

So in thery maybe this trust can grow to eventually connect all humanity, but I really would not count on it.

So wouldn't it be nice, if we are all nice to each other? Yes but we ain't. Not with these existing tensions.

Know what the poor world thinks?

"The west got rich by polluting and now we are supposed to stay poor, because polluting is not allowed anymore? Not fair."

And I think they have a point.

When you are starving, you cannot afford to care if the gasoline and coal you are using is causing more long term problems. You are happy, that you have the coal in the first place, if you are cold or need power.

So yes, idealism likely will not solve anything. But it can help make the transition to a sustainable economy.

And I rather would distribute low tech solar cookers and high tech solar panels on scale, than mess with the atmosphere.

Sure that's kind of my point. The larger the scale, the harder it is to solve such problems. People tend to care first about themselves and their kids, then other family, then about people they interact with regularly. The less they are related or interact with you on a regular basis, the less you prioritize their well being. This is human nature, and easily explained by Darwinian evolution.

Climate change is inherently large scale. There's nothing that will change that.

We can change the equation only by large scale "contracts" and the like. That generally means governments. For instance, we can vote for representatives that make laws that limit emissions from factories and vehicles, and make treaties with other countries. Those things are not subject to tragedy of the commons.

I am not advocating for "messing with the atmosphere" in this sense, but I'm also not rejecting it outright. We are already messing with the atmosphere on a large scale, due to billions of individual decisions driven each one of those individuals' self-interest. If you are going to mess with it, I'd rather it done based on a controlled methodology based on science.

> And I think they have a point.

They may have a point, that won't change the reality of the situation: letting them do exactly what the developed countries did, will kill them. That's not fair, that's life.

> So yes, idealism likely will not solve anything. But it can help make the transition to a sustainable economy.

No, idealism by definition will produce idealistic solutions that won't amount to anything. You are advocating for controlling a system by considering that with enough ingenuity, trust or whatever, we can do it. No, controlling a complex system is done by understanding its baseline or attractors and tweaking its inputs carefully to bring it and maintaining it there.

It means indeed that injecting aerosols in the atmosphere to control the climate is a foolish errand, and the practical approach is energy sobriety. But don't go advocating this position by talking of ideals and fairness, you won't convince anyone.

"No, controlling a complex system is done by understanding its baseline or attractors and tweaking its inputs carefully to bring it and maintaining it there."

Idealism is trying to do this, targeting the human motivation attractors.

Doing (subjectivly) good things gives a good feeling.

And if it would not work, there would not be so many vegans for example.

Intrinsic motivation is a strong attractor, you can reach with idealism. But we agree, that in this case on a global scale - it will never be enough. But each person convinced that things must be done, is (ideally) one more person working on the problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com