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399 points gmays | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.414s | source
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astahlx ◴[] No.42166980[source]
Since this is the most important and urgent topic humanity should be working on: why isn’t this the case? Idiocracy is here. Don’t look up.

We have to throw everything into the race. But how to do this with the current inner workings of our societies? How to overcome greed? What about the power of (social) media? Why do we have Netflix and so on? How can we make people spend their time solving climate crisis, saving our planet earth?

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scoofy ◴[] No.42167339[source]
It's classic game theory. The benefits are public and delayed, and the losses are private and immediate. This dramatically incentivizes defection.

Few people are going to give up their modern convinces so their great grandchildren will have better lives. This behavior is everywhere. Few people give up, say, their excess capital to reduce suffering in developing countries, or eating meat for the benefits of the animals that suffer to produce it.

I've gone to enough city council meetings in the last two decades advocating for exactly the things that would incentivize GHG reductions while increasing some quality of life (everything from urbanism, to walkability, to dutch-style cycle infrastructure, to expanded train systems, to general electrification). The number of people who won't even try an induction range because they view a gas range as important to their identity is astounding. Most people are against repurposing any public streets for transportation alternatives, even in the most left-wing cities, much less the absurdity of actually proposing anyone should actually give up their car.

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1. alwayslikethis ◴[] No.42167491[source]
It's also a coordination problem. You won't help your children (the timeline is not that long) by personally giving up your "modern [conveniences]". You need a substantial portion of the population to do that to have any hope of moving the needle. So the choice is between getting the benefits or not, your children will suffer anyway.
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2. scoofy ◴[] No.42168262[source]
Coordination problems aren’t typically too difficult. The USB C switch, or the python 3 switch all had serious frictional costs, but are generally doable in aggregate.

I think asserting it is a coordination problem is just a self-serving excuse for defection. It’s not as if we can’t switch if not everyone switches all at once. We just don’t want to go through the frictional costs of switching if others defect.