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Comment by tastysandwich | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately with social media we live in an age of unparalleled narcissism. Gluing yourself to a major motorway has become a quick way to gain attention and feel morally superior so you can keep feeling like the main character.

Now, I'd be happy to support your gluing yourself to footpaths and freeways, as long as I have the right to remove you for obstructing my way. The problem is my options are fairly limited if I'm stuck in traffic for three hours because you're "demonstrating".

A common argument in favour of these disruptive tactics is "yeah but the planet is DYING, this is an EMERGENCY!" OK, go do something about it - other than gluing yourself to the road. Go study science and engineering. Please. Because the more people working on the problem, the quicker we'll get solutions. Don't you CARE?

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The point of protesting is to spur the government to action and/or to draw attention to an issue when other options are exhausted.

The inconvenience of protests is a feature not a bug. They're supposed to inconvenience you. It's called civil disobedience.

I remember one day, back in my home country. Some teachers gathered in front of the local government building demanding better salaries and working conditions, and caused inconvenience by stopping traffic on the streets in front of the government building. I was stuck inside a fucking tunnel for three hours thanks to them.

I was actually sympathetic to their demands. But on that day I just really wanted the police to go there and disband their protest with use of violence.

It didn't spur me into civil disobedience. It spurred me to desire a more authoritarian state. I just wanted the freedom of not being stuck inside a tunnel for 3 hours on a particularly hot summer day.

And what of the ordinary folk whose lives you're seriously disrupting? The parolee for whom being late means going back to prison? The single mum who isn't a knowledge worker, and who Walmart will fire for being late? The people on their way to hospital?

Beware seeing yourself as so intellectually and morally superior that other people can be used as tools for your own ends. That does not end well for anyone.

What about them, indeed. What about the parolee's ability to protest unfair treatment or prison conditions? Or the single mum who isn't able to protest her unfair dismiss at the risk of a 50,000 dollar fine?

> What about the parolee's ability to protest unfair treatment or prison conditions? Or the single mum who isn't able to protest her unfair dismiss at the risk of a 50,000 dollar fine?

Who said that they can't protest? They can protest too, they just can't stop other people going to hospital or work.

I think people are interpreting my comment as being against protests.

Of course protests are an important part of a healthy democracy.

Rather I'm pointing that out in the age of social media, a lot of these disruptive climate protests are narcissistic attention grabs. There's a desperate need for validation from peers and a sense that one is the "main character" so to speak.

That's an issue, and it's a new issue. It didn't exist until social media came along, not to the extent it does now.

I'm more than happy for people to protest. But if I'm stuck on a bridge while some 22 year-old rich kid who lives in his parents' Sunshine Coast mansion blocks the road, I should be allowed to counter-protest by throwing him in the river and continuing on my day.

> They're supposed to inconvenience you. It's called civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience generally involves breaking laws, it's part of the package right? You, hopefully en-masse but it can be an individual, break the laws you want to see changed and you hope that society sees this and a movement ignites to get things fixed. As such, it is already illegal and that's more or less the point.

I don't agree with piling on more prohibitions, but the worrying parts of the new laws in various places are not the ones that might have consequences for people taking direct action like blocking roads, but the ones which target protestors who are using speech and not taking those actions. For instance the anti-monarchy protestors who were due to attend the king's coronation with a sign and maybe a megaphone a few weeks back.

The main point these people are making is that if we don't stop using fossil fuels pretty much _right now_, then it is too late. We already have the tech to do it, by and large. The questions are:

* Do we have the political will to make these changes?

* Will individuals be willing to change their lifestyles?

No amount of undergraduate degrees in materials science or ecology will change the answers to those questions. But protest might - I for one find it compelling.

> A common argument in favour of these disruptive tactics is "yeah but the planet is DYING, this is an EMERGENCY!" OK, go do something about it - other than gluing yourself to the road. Go study science and engineering. Please. Because the more people working on the problem, the quicker we'll get solutions. Don't you CARE?

If you're interested in finding out why more tech might not always be the solution. We're organizing a summer school in France on why this might be the case and what our role as people in ICT should be instead: https://www.sictdoctoralschool.com/

>Because the more people working on the problem, the quicker we'll get solutions.

This is just plain naive. It's not a matter of manpower.

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