To act or not to act, risk or not risk (as if not acting is not risky). I was despairing of real conversation happening between equals on Substack as platform, but here it is. Yay. 😁
To the point, isn't there a difference between personal action and policy creation (business or government)? Governments in particular, when they act, are using public resources (coercively extracted) and committing them over whatever time frame (often way too long), subjecting them to political machinations and fallout, often with little to no adequate oversight and minimal democratic redress.
Time scales -- a critical factor in gauging uncertainty -- are tough to crack, on a par with spatial scales. Humans can only think so far ahead. Should we act beyond a reasonable time scale of thought? Humans can only think so far abroad. Should we act beyond a reasonable spatial scale of thought? It's not just a matter of uncertainty or risk in deciding whether and how to act (or refrain from).
By personality, I tend to be risk-taking in thought, risk-averse in action. There's a self-contradiction there. My action (lack thereof) fails the integrity test vis a vis thought. I wouldn't be a fan of doing without thinking, but doing -- with reflection -- offers the best food for improved thought after the fact (assuming we survive). Else, the thinking is all just speculation. All the more reason to "think what we are doing" -- implying we *are* doing!
My line of thinking runs similar. Our actions often provoke unexpected outcomes and the world ends up surprising us, which why letting our thoughts outrun our experience is so risky.
But you touch on another important consideration. Because all policy entails some amount of power and coercion, attending to these differences is all the more important. Even if we're totally
convinced of the (un)certainty of runaway climate change or whatever else, the policy will have to go through (or run over) someone.
Focusing on the scientific probabilities tends to obscure the political reality that not acting at reasonable scales and paces often creates a lot of enemies, and sometimes even alienates friends. Even if *we* trust the science, we have convince others to believe in our integrity and trust that the outcome will actually be beneficient, fair, etc.
You’ve addressed a real set of problems, especially regarding the relationship between beliefs and action. To act is to believe that some desired outcome can be gained. The probability of achieving the desired outcome may vary greatly, from virtual certainty to a snowball’s chance in hell. And in the realm of human affairs, predictability is most fraught. Nature has laws, humans have habits. Nature can vary from the essentially certain (the “law” of gravity) to the overwhelming complexity of predicting the weather very far out (or even this afternoon), down to the quantum level of uncertainty. And then we humans add to all this our strategic interactions (we’re constantly playing “games” with one another) and our hidden agendas. In view of all this, I suggest that the legal system (common law, anyway) with its varying standards of proof has a lot to offer, also our legal concept of torts, especially negligence. Probability standards abound! In negligence, we look at the probability of a given harm arising from a given course of conduct AND the magnitude of the anticipated (or possible) harm. We all have to act on suppositions and we all hold opinions, but how strongly and how wisely we choose to act (or not) on those suppositions varies greatly with each circumstance. What we need is wisdom to discern the dependable from the faulty. It’s an attainment that never allows rest.
I don't think that I agree with this statement: "To act is to believe that some desired outcome can be gained." Is there not a moral obligation to act in concordance with one's values even if there is nothing to be gained? Or if the probability of gain is so small that I do not believe it will actually happen?
In my opinion, especially about climate issues, people so often focus on the outcome instead of simply acting with integrity. I hear so many excuses of "o but it won't make a difference", and this is ultimately besides the point. If you value the planet and nature and the lives of our children, then you should act in accordance, even if it makes no difference whatsoever. As we struggle with choices in our own lives, our opinions may change and the data may change, and so we adjust again. There is no perfect narrative. There are only choices to be made.
But regarding there being plenty of models of probability for governments and decision makers to reference, I quite agree.
Thanks Stephen and Gabi for the insightful comments. Your back and forth is exactly the kind of conversation we could be more often having about climate change. Gabi makes a great point about integrity. There are even mundane decisions we make where the weighing of probability don't even occur to us. For instance, I teach my six year old to place scissors completely out of reach for his one year old brother, because it's simply the right thing to do, and no amount of complaint about the inconvenience is justifiable.
Yet, things do become trickier as we have to deal with the constraints of limited time, money, and resources. And we all vary in terms of our own willingness to tolerate risk, which is shaped by beliefs regarding the resilience or fragility of nature (or the future abilities of humans to weather climatic changes), beliefs that science isn't capable of authoritatively justifying, at least not yet.
What I struggle with is that the uncertainty or error bars around our estimates of probability and harm are so large that there are a lot of different but reasonable visions of what responsible action entails. What does integrity mean under this kind of uncertainty? The stakes and urgency of the problem will force us to pick and choose probability models that will be imperfect, that will be unavoidably arbitrary to some degree. This is what makes the issue so difficult.
"What I struggle with is that the uncertainty or error bars around our estimates of probability and harm are so large that there are a lot of different but reasonable visions of what responsible action entails."
I think in the near term (4-10 years), this is very true. It is what hamstrings our politicians and many well meaning organizations, because ultimately the tenures of politicians and CEOs and Executive Directors do not generally span beyond this time frame (certainly not without reevaluation). Thus, when faced with something more certain in the near term - like a depressed stock market or donors who are mad you expressed the wrong sentiment - and something somewhat less certain in the longer term, the tendency is to waffle, to hedge and to wait. Even if the long term outcome is no longer in much doubt; the effects of climate change are happening now.
In my opinion, we have done so much waffling, hedging and waiting, that at this point some action - however flawed - is probably better than no action and just maintaining the status quo.
Now, I acknowledge there are real risks to this approach. People love to cite the environmental emphasis in the 80s and the fact that scientists estimates were off by a few decades to justify why urgency is not needed now. Similarly, one could say that the Recovery Act during the Obama years soured a lot of industry (and Republicans) on clean energy and increased resistance to it now. "We spent so much money and look where it got us. Do we have clean energy now? No. It was wasted on cronyism and an inefficient private sector."
BUT I still think we need to act now, and in our uncertainty, we need to look to other nations' examples. On climate action, we are behind Europe, the Nordic countries and even China. We can learn from what is working well for them and where things have gone poorly. They are not perfect examples. Germany's capitulation on "natural" gas; China's simultaneous investment in solar and coal; the success (and failure, depending on your vantage point) of EVs in Europe, and France's longstanding protectionism of agriculture are all interesting case studies we can learn from. But almost across the Board (with the main exception being Russia), other countries are making moves. And in the US, we have states setting the example as well. California, Illinois, even Wyoming lately.
So I think you are right, that "reasonable visions of responsible action" differ greatly, but in my opinion, let's learn more through action and less through theorizing. We are pretty sure what doing nothing gets us (maybe not the exact timing, but the estimated range has shortened considerably), so at this point, any action is better.
Thanks for your point, which is well taken. I believe that my statement was not well refined, that is, I quite agree that the right--or just or virtuous--action should be taken in some cases regardless of the consequence. Or, I might say that every act has an intention, a purpose, a motive, even if only to have experienced doing the right thing, however we may define that. Thus, while success is a criterion by which we may weigh the appropriateness of an action, it alone isn't necessarily determinative. Sometimes doing the right thing is the right thing to do, regardless of the odds of realizing any tangible or immediate benefits. One's self-respect or desire to do the right thing--however defined--can be quite good enough. One man standing in front of a tank, we might say. Or Thoreau in jail (for protesting the Mexican War). So I believe I quite agree with you!
To act or not to act, risk or not risk (as if not acting is not risky). I was despairing of real conversation happening between equals on Substack as platform, but here it is. Yay. 😁
To the point, isn't there a difference between personal action and policy creation (business or government)? Governments in particular, when they act, are using public resources (coercively extracted) and committing them over whatever time frame (often way too long), subjecting them to political machinations and fallout, often with little to no adequate oversight and minimal democratic redress.
Time scales -- a critical factor in gauging uncertainty -- are tough to crack, on a par with spatial scales. Humans can only think so far ahead. Should we act beyond a reasonable time scale of thought? Humans can only think so far abroad. Should we act beyond a reasonable spatial scale of thought? It's not just a matter of uncertainty or risk in deciding whether and how to act (or refrain from).
By personality, I tend to be risk-taking in thought, risk-averse in action. There's a self-contradiction there. My action (lack thereof) fails the integrity test vis a vis thought. I wouldn't be a fan of doing without thinking, but doing -- with reflection -- offers the best food for improved thought after the fact (assuming we survive). Else, the thinking is all just speculation. All the more reason to "think what we are doing" -- implying we *are* doing!
Indeed!
My line of thinking runs similar. Our actions often provoke unexpected outcomes and the world ends up surprising us, which why letting our thoughts outrun our experience is so risky.
But you touch on another important consideration. Because all policy entails some amount of power and coercion, attending to these differences is all the more important. Even if we're totally
convinced of the (un)certainty of runaway climate change or whatever else, the policy will have to go through (or run over) someone.
Focusing on the scientific probabilities tends to obscure the political reality that not acting at reasonable scales and paces often creates a lot of enemies, and sometimes even alienates friends. Even if *we* trust the science, we have convince others to believe in our integrity and trust that the outcome will actually be beneficient, fair, etc.
You’ve addressed a real set of problems, especially regarding the relationship between beliefs and action. To act is to believe that some desired outcome can be gained. The probability of achieving the desired outcome may vary greatly, from virtual certainty to a snowball’s chance in hell. And in the realm of human affairs, predictability is most fraught. Nature has laws, humans have habits. Nature can vary from the essentially certain (the “law” of gravity) to the overwhelming complexity of predicting the weather very far out (or even this afternoon), down to the quantum level of uncertainty. And then we humans add to all this our strategic interactions (we’re constantly playing “games” with one another) and our hidden agendas. In view of all this, I suggest that the legal system (common law, anyway) with its varying standards of proof has a lot to offer, also our legal concept of torts, especially negligence. Probability standards abound! In negligence, we look at the probability of a given harm arising from a given course of conduct AND the magnitude of the anticipated (or possible) harm. We all have to act on suppositions and we all hold opinions, but how strongly and how wisely we choose to act (or not) on those suppositions varies greatly with each circumstance. What we need is wisdom to discern the dependable from the faulty. It’s an attainment that never allows rest.
I don't think that I agree with this statement: "To act is to believe that some desired outcome can be gained." Is there not a moral obligation to act in concordance with one's values even if there is nothing to be gained? Or if the probability of gain is so small that I do not believe it will actually happen?
In my opinion, especially about climate issues, people so often focus on the outcome instead of simply acting with integrity. I hear so many excuses of "o but it won't make a difference", and this is ultimately besides the point. If you value the planet and nature and the lives of our children, then you should act in accordance, even if it makes no difference whatsoever. As we struggle with choices in our own lives, our opinions may change and the data may change, and so we adjust again. There is no perfect narrative. There are only choices to be made.
But regarding there being plenty of models of probability for governments and decision makers to reference, I quite agree.
Thanks Stephen and Gabi for the insightful comments. Your back and forth is exactly the kind of conversation we could be more often having about climate change. Gabi makes a great point about integrity. There are even mundane decisions we make where the weighing of probability don't even occur to us. For instance, I teach my six year old to place scissors completely out of reach for his one year old brother, because it's simply the right thing to do, and no amount of complaint about the inconvenience is justifiable.
Yet, things do become trickier as we have to deal with the constraints of limited time, money, and resources. And we all vary in terms of our own willingness to tolerate risk, which is shaped by beliefs regarding the resilience or fragility of nature (or the future abilities of humans to weather climatic changes), beliefs that science isn't capable of authoritatively justifying, at least not yet.
What I struggle with is that the uncertainty or error bars around our estimates of probability and harm are so large that there are a lot of different but reasonable visions of what responsible action entails. What does integrity mean under this kind of uncertainty? The stakes and urgency of the problem will force us to pick and choose probability models that will be imperfect, that will be unavoidably arbitrary to some degree. This is what makes the issue so difficult.
"What I struggle with is that the uncertainty or error bars around our estimates of probability and harm are so large that there are a lot of different but reasonable visions of what responsible action entails."
I think in the near term (4-10 years), this is very true. It is what hamstrings our politicians and many well meaning organizations, because ultimately the tenures of politicians and CEOs and Executive Directors do not generally span beyond this time frame (certainly not without reevaluation). Thus, when faced with something more certain in the near term - like a depressed stock market or donors who are mad you expressed the wrong sentiment - and something somewhat less certain in the longer term, the tendency is to waffle, to hedge and to wait. Even if the long term outcome is no longer in much doubt; the effects of climate change are happening now.
In my opinion, we have done so much waffling, hedging and waiting, that at this point some action - however flawed - is probably better than no action and just maintaining the status quo.
Now, I acknowledge there are real risks to this approach. People love to cite the environmental emphasis in the 80s and the fact that scientists estimates were off by a few decades to justify why urgency is not needed now. Similarly, one could say that the Recovery Act during the Obama years soured a lot of industry (and Republicans) on clean energy and increased resistance to it now. "We spent so much money and look where it got us. Do we have clean energy now? No. It was wasted on cronyism and an inefficient private sector."
BUT I still think we need to act now, and in our uncertainty, we need to look to other nations' examples. On climate action, we are behind Europe, the Nordic countries and even China. We can learn from what is working well for them and where things have gone poorly. They are not perfect examples. Germany's capitulation on "natural" gas; China's simultaneous investment in solar and coal; the success (and failure, depending on your vantage point) of EVs in Europe, and France's longstanding protectionism of agriculture are all interesting case studies we can learn from. But almost across the Board (with the main exception being Russia), other countries are making moves. And in the US, we have states setting the example as well. California, Illinois, even Wyoming lately.
So I think you are right, that "reasonable visions of responsible action" differ greatly, but in my opinion, let's learn more through action and less through theorizing. We are pretty sure what doing nothing gets us (maybe not the exact timing, but the estimated range has shortened considerably), so at this point, any action is better.
Gabi,
Thanks for your point, which is well taken. I believe that my statement was not well refined, that is, I quite agree that the right--or just or virtuous--action should be taken in some cases regardless of the consequence. Or, I might say that every act has an intention, a purpose, a motive, even if only to have experienced doing the right thing, however we may define that. Thus, while success is a criterion by which we may weigh the appropriateness of an action, it alone isn't necessarily determinative. Sometimes doing the right thing is the right thing to do, regardless of the odds of realizing any tangible or immediate benefits. One's self-respect or desire to do the right thing--however defined--can be quite good enough. One man standing in front of a tank, we might say. Or Thoreau in jail (for protesting the Mexican War). So I believe I quite agree with you!