Interesting argument about global warming

[Glirk Dient]

http://www.break.com/index/tough-to-argue.html

This guy makes a really good point that a lot of people need to realize. Essentially not acting on global warming carries a greater risk than acting and being wrong. Granted the topic is much more complex than what he lays out but his argument still holds true.

 

[No Limit]

This thing is going around the internet like a fire storm, I saw it on around 5 message boards already.

He uses that chart that was used for religion, I foget its name, I think it starts with a p. I remember way back in high school my english teacher used this. It is a good argument in this case but where religion applies it is totally flawed.

 

[HunterSeeker]

It is like the prisoners dilemma.

 

[Absinthe]

There are some woefully ignorant responses in the comments section.

 

[Nemesis6]

There are some woefully ignorant responses in the comments section.

It's Break! :cheese:

 

[Qonfused]

He's got a pretty good theory.

 

[Nemesis6]

So what I got out of it is that the consequences of doing something against global warming outweighs the ones associated with not doing it, so doing something about it would be best since he believes we're gonna face these issues soon anyway?

I don't know, man... it's kind of like saying that all people should believe in God because our world is coming to an end; In other words, the world is coming to an end, so you might as well become a Christian so you don't burn in hell when it happens.

 

[Qonfused]

I don't know, man... it's kind of like saying that all people should believe in God because our world is coming to an end; In other words, the world is coming to an end, so you might as well become a Christian so you don't burn in hell when it happens.

He uses that chart that was used for religion.

.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Notably, four political directions are also tied with those four boxes.

Technocracy
Communism
Fascism
Democracy

-Can you guess which boxes they fall under

 

[HunterSeeker]

So what I got out of it is that the consequences of doing something against global warming outweighs the ones associated with not doing it, so doing something about it would be best since he believes we're gonna face these issues soon anyway?

I don't know, man... it's kind of like saying that all people should believe in God because our world is coming to an end; In other words, the world is coming to an end, so you might as well become a Christian so you don't burn in hell when it happens.

You got it wrong, his argument is that its better to something about it and discover that it would never happen anyway then to not do something about it before its too late.

 

[Geogaddi]

This argument works better for global warming than it does for religion because the religion one doesn't take into account the thousands of possible gods/religions.

 

[OmegaX]

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1wogkDmLlQ[/YOUTUBE]

Sums it up pretty well.

 

[Nemesis6]

You got it wrong, his argument is that its better to something about it and discover that it would never happen anyway then to not do something about it before its too late.

Ahh, right. But from there he does imply that the world would face economic ruin soon(a decade I think he said), anyway, so doing something about global warming might as well kickstart that? Still tieing the pieces together as you might have imagined... :dork:

...maybe I shouldn't tie pieces together? I mean it probably would be better to just find out which piece it fits w---- STOP IT! YOU'RE RAMBLING!

 

[PvtRyan]

Spending money when it turns out global warming isn't real or is unaffected by humans isn't probably even as bad as he makes it out to be. Like all bad things (war, disease etc) it would trigger a massive increase in human knowledge and technical capabilities. All the knowledge that is produced by fighting a non-existent global warming would still help us in the greater sense.

 

[No Limit]

I don't know, man... it's kind of like saying that all people should believe in God because our world is coming to an end; In other words, the world is coming to an end, so you might as well become a Christian so you don't burn in hell when it happens.

Why do you refuse to read posts before you reply to something?

As I said using this for relgion as in Pascal's Wager (I finally found this chart, been driving me nuts) is totally flawed as it assumes there is only one belief of god out there when in fact there are thousands of variations to that so you can't possibly know which to chose. In the case of global warming there is only one global warming so this chart certainly applies here.

 

[tehsolace]

quite simply put: its better to be safe than sorry. nuff said.

 

[theotherguy]

So what I got out of it is that the consequences of doing something against global warming outweighs the ones associated with not doing it, so doing something about it would be best since he believes we're gonna face these issues soon anyway?

I don't know, man... it's kind of like saying that all people should believe in God because our world is coming to an end; In other words, the world is coming to an end, so you might as well become a Christian so you don't burn in hell when it happens.

Well, that's Pascal's wager, and it quite simply doesn't work for religion.

In global warming you have to choices: either global warming is real or its not.

In Pascals wager you have an infinite set of choices: There could be a christian god, or a muslim god, or a greek god, or a pink unicorn, a flying spaghetti monster..etc.

Pascals wager only works when you have two choices. Christians often misapply Pascal's wager to "christian/non-christian", which is a false presupposition. The choices aren't Jesus or nothing, they are an infinite number of possible gods, all of which could punish you for choosing Jesus.

 

[Solaris]

The chart only works becuase both options are plausible, and everyone agrees this.

 

[Glirk Dient]

The chart only works becuase both options are plausible, and everyone agrees this.

This is true.

This chart really simplifies things but the general idea is what makes sense.

The problem lies when you add in probability mixed with cause/effect because there are a lot of different theories around that.