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Why Our Brains Can't Process the Gravest Threats To Humanity
merbs writes: Our brains are unfathomably complex, powerful organs that grant us motor skills, logic, and abstract thought. Brains have bequeathed unto we humans just about every cognitive advantage, it seems, except for one little omission: the ability to adequately process the need for the whole species' long-term survival. They're miracle workers for the short-term survival of individuals, but the scientific evidence suggests that the human brain flails when it comes to navigating wide-lens, slowly-unfurling crises like climate change.
Highly evolved animals such as humans have a pretty impressive track record when it comes to seeing into the future. The problem does exist that some if not all of us have evolved enough to plan adequately into the long term. Like playing a game of chess, generally the player who can see his opponent's moves and strategies the furthest into the future is the victor. Yet, not everyone is a chess master and thinks that far ahead.
Place something witty here
Folks, I submit to you evidence #1
Somehow, I have a hard time putting "slowly unfurling" and "crisis" together in a meaningful way.
Crisis sort of suggests something that needs to be dealt with Right The Fuck Now, not in twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or one hundred years.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Well, the problem is that the premise of this article is that the author somehow is superhuman and sees threats to humanity that the common plebs can't observe because of their inferior mental capabilities.
The idea that brains might be better at detecting direct threats to the individual rather than the herd isn't that controversial and further studies on the subject could be interesting.
Claiming that one is exempt from the effect and that everyone else is wrong starts to sound a lot like claiming that the governments mind control ray doesn't affect me since I only drink recycled urine to avoid the chemicals added to the tap water.
Feel free to research how the brain works. Don't skew the results to push your agenda.
I think your view of the greatness of the human brain is overrated as long as half or more of the world population still believes in make-believe divine beings that make us do awful things to each other.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Jared Diamond openly wept seeing malaria patients struggling to survive in an African hospital. He has illustrated the intelligence of the so called primitive tribes people in so many anecdotes in his book. And the climate change denialists managed to mire him into a law suit. They have instigated some Papua New Guineans mentioned in his last book to sue him for slander and other stuff. That is the extent they are willing to go, and that is their favorite weapon, law suits and puppet legislators.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Oh no? I don't believe what you do? I must be stupid. And I don't like being stupid.... Maybe I should believe what you believe?? Then will you stop making fun of me?
Homo sapiens survived them, sure. Human civilization has yet to pass that test.
I think we'll do all right, personally - we've got the technology to deal with most of it. It's the change in the weather patterns and the economic effects from that (think farmland becoming unusable due to drought, industries having to relocate, sea levels rising above the level of coastal cities, etc.) that we'll have the hardest time with. I highly doubt we'll have a dark age, but a prolonged economic depression in parts of the developed world will change things quite a bit.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Hate to tell you, but you're stereotyping. There are plenty of skeptics who simply think the scientists involved have no good idea how to model the climate and that their attempts are crude at best, dismal at worst. The climate does seem to be getting warmer, but it doesn't take much to prove that. Everything else is half-baked, IMHO. Do we need to take drastic measures that will destroy the Western world's economy? Probably not.
Most people in support of drastic intervention fail to grasp that we have no real alternative to fossil fuels in the pipe. Furthermore, renewables research isn't moving fast enough for their sensibilities, and they tend to overestimate the possibility of an imminent solution. A very common aversion to nuclear power alongside global warming extremism just puts in the last nail. We should go nuclear. That would fix carbon emissions. Most warming interventionists don't want that either.
Still, I'm glad the renewables research is happening. Fossil fuels are decidedly finite. So is nuclear. We need a means to survive, I'm just doubtful that we need to flail about with solutions that may cause more harm than good.
Sincerely,
Not anti-science, not a creationist, never owned a gun, am very good with math, and independent as far as political leanings go. Don't stuff me into your box. Thanks.
You really should buy a gun. Other than that you sound like a sense-able sort.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Human brains are GREAT at finding answers to complex, long term problems. Very few people are "flailing about", confused by climate change - they have very clear and certain opinions, usually held for totally stupid reasons having more to do with whether the belief resonates with their other beliefs. The "flailing" over climate change is taking place at a societal level, not individual human brains that can't see long term threats.
The article in question is really just a sly way of arguing that climate change deniers' brains are deficient, compared to readers whose superior brains have recognized the evidence for climate change.
Oh, and if you just decided I'm a climate change denier based on that last sentence, you have just proven my point for me - poor evidence, jumped to a conclusion. Recognizing an invalid method of argument does not automatically mean one is opposed to the beliefs of the arguer, though admittedly that is exactly the sort of human behavior I am pointing to.
Are you suggesting that the only threats we should see as real are those that can be perceived by common plebs with inferior mental capabilities?
Anyone who has ever had to remove a virus from someone's computer after they clicked a link in an email from "support@microshaft.com" knows first-hand what it means to see threats to humanity that the common plebs can't observe because of their inferior mental capabilities.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Humans are a bad judge of risk period. We underestimate all risks, whether it be the wide far reaching kind like climate change, or the short term ones with associated with dollar signs like a train derailment, stock market crash, or the millions of people who load themselves up with unmanageable debt.
Sadly the way it works is that Bill Nye goes on TV to explain why a snowstorm in Boston isn't evidence against global warming, but then tweets a mountain in the Rockies that doesn't have snow on it as evidence FOR global warming. You can't have it both ways. Science doesn't accept anecdotes as data regardless of it supports or refutes your hypothesis. If you want to say "weather is not climate" than you shouldn't be using weather as a rallying point for your climate cause.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Highly evolved animals such as humans have a pretty impressive track record when it comes to seeing into the future. The problem does exist that some if not all of us have evolved enough to plan adequately into the long term.
Highly evolved animals such as humans ALSO have a pretty impressive track record when it comes to constructing money- and power-grabbing scams, and detecting such scams when they're being perpetrated upon them.
Unfortunately, the Global Warming Solution Advocates, regardless of the merits of their concerns, used something that has the form of a gigantic scam when promoting their proposals, and promoted proposals that involve massive transfers of wealth, increases in government intervention in private lives and businesses, and reductions in standards of living. This has created substantial skepticism (which moneyed interests that would be harmed by the proposed actions have, of course, gleefully promoted). The failure of the climate to follow their predictions and discoveries of their fudging of the data doesn't help their cause, either.
There are a number of steps between "I think the weather is getting warmer, and people are causing it." to "We must drive the developed world's population down to third world standards RIGHT NOW, to prevent a couple degrees increase in world average temperature, or we're ALL going to DIE!"
Because it looks like a scam, about all they've gotten any substantial traction on is that the temperature is changing a bit (as it has for all of geological time - we ARE coming out of an ice age, after all - and whether the change is actually human-caused is immaterial beyond indicating that we could change it the other way if we tried). But they haven't convinced the population that they have a correct model.
And they haven't even STARTED on the NEXT of several steps: Is global warming, bad, indifferent, or even good? (The geological and historical record seems to indicate that substantially warmer than what we have now - by more than the amount they're concerned about - is actually better for both civilization and life in general.)
With the population unconvinced that there IS a "Grave Threat To Humanity", it's premature to assume that "Our Brains Can't Process" it.
But speaking as if the thing to be proven is already proven IS another technique of scammers. And making such a claim is an obvious prelude to a move by governmental people, who believe "their brains ARE capable of processing it", to go ahead and impose wealth-transferring, power-grabbing, population-impoverishing solutions, "for their own good", whether the populations want to be reduced to serfdom (rather than be killed by what they perceive as the allegedly falling sky) or not.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yes, but those transitions usually take place within thousands or tens of thousands of years.
Not so. http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports...
The central Greenland ice core record (GRIP and GISP2) has a near annual resolution across the entire glacial to Holocene transition, and reveals episodes of very rapid change. The return to the cold conditions of the Younger Dryas from the incipient inter-glacial warming 13,000 years ago took place within a few decades or less (Alley et al., 1993). The warming phase, that took place about 11,500 years ago, at the end of the Younger Dryas was also very abrupt and central Greenland temperatures increased by 7C or more in a few decades (Johnsen et al., 1992; Grootes et al., 1993; Severinghaus et al., 1998). Most of the changes in wind-blown materials and some other climate indicators were accomplished in a few years (Alley et al., 1993; Taylor et al., 1993; Hammer et al., 1997). Broad regions of the Earth experienced almost synchronous changes over periods of 0 to 30 years (Severinghaus et al., 1998), and changes were very abrupt in at least some regions (Bard et al., 1987), e.g. requiring as little as 10 years off Venezuela (Hughen et al., 1996). Fluctuations in ice conductivity indicate that atmospheric circulation was reorganised extremely rapidly (Taylor et al., 1993). A similar, correlated sequence of abrupt deglacial events also occurred in the tropical and temperate North Atlantic (Bard et al., 1987; Hughen et al., 1996) and in Western Europe (von Grafenstein et al., 1999).
The inception of deglacial warming about 14.5 ky BP was also very rapid, leading to the Bölling-Alleröd warm period in less than twenty years (Severinghaus and Brook, 1999). Almost synchronously, major vegetation changes occurred in Europe and North America with a rise in African lake levels (Gasse and van Campo, 1994). There was also a pronounced warming of the North Atlantic and North Pacific (Koç and Janssen, 1994; Sarnthein et al., 1994; Kotilainen and Shackleton, 1995; Thunnell and Mortyn, 1995; Wansaard, 1996; Watts et al., 1996; Webb et al., 1998).
Article's author covers politics for treehugger.com. Yeah, no agenda there.
[Insert pithy quote here]
That would make sense, except that subsidies aren't there to benefit the oil companies, they're there to keep production up so that prices stay nice and low.
Providing money for renewables is good and all, but bear in mind, no one is paying oil companies as a solution, they're paying oil companies to keep the population happy.
It is nice to state that all of that money could help make renewables work better, but that's not the point. The point is crowd control, not energy advances. That's why no one is seriously considering changing the subsidies for oil to another energy source. The population won't tolerate the high gas prices while you figure out how to get them all electric cars running on solar power.
The solution is to get the electric cars rolled out and the panels and alternatives up so that solar and renewables can handle the load that oil is carrying right now. When that happens, then you can shut off the subsidies.
Just because this big rock we're on can survive doesn't mean we will. Climate Change will happen. We'll adapt or die. The rock will keep spinning. So... the "its happened before" argument is irrelevant... we know we've caused the recent one by increasing CO2 by 40% and measured its affects.
What's hard to predict - and trust - are other people's future projections. We don't trust politicians. Too many scientists have too many private grants (indirect bribes). TV doesn't have anything factual on it any more. The only thing we can really trust - and affect - is what's right in front of us.
On the case of the article most humans have difficulty planning to the next pay cheque let alone their retirement and they don't give a crap what happens to the future after they die they are only self interested. So its not that they don't see threats they are either desensitised or simply don't care due to self interest and trying to survive to the next day
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
All plants and animals except humans form a natural balance and live in harmony
They all try to kill or outbreed each other and steal each others food or habitat as much as possible. We're just better at it. The only thing that limits the population of an apex predator is food supply.
Some disasters came true. (e.g., the collapse of the atlantic fisheries). Some were averted. (e.g., the ozone hole, or, acid rain.) Some were bogus. (e.g., religious based end-times.)
There is such a thing as nuance, and understanding. Just because some people like beating the drums of doom doesn't mean that there is no problem that needs to be fixed.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
we are profoundly foolish to think that our impact has been significant - it has not.
Worldwide fossil fuel usage, which is has grown approximately 44% in the last decade, is more than 41 million tons per day. Human dry biomass is only about 100 billion tons. In other words, if all humans were dried out to be burned as fuel, we would supply our own energy needs for about 2.5 days (if we paradoxically had energy needs after being dried out to use as fuel). Total annual production of plant and animal biomass is estimated at about 275 million tons per day. At the rate fossil fuel use is increasing we could be at that point of burning more fossil fuel than that in just over 50 years. That seems like naive curve fitting, except that it seems to work perfectly well historically and we have no reason to believe that increasing population and industrialization won't lead us to that point. Any events that would prevent that from happening other than a wholesale switch to alternative sources would pretty much have to be horrible tragedies.
The amount of oxygen required for burning fossil fuels varies from as little as twice the mass in oxygen required for methane to as much as 14 times the mass. Let's just settle on 4 times the mass. So, we can say that the fossil fuel burned in a day at present uses about 164 Million tons of oxygen per day. There are about 1 quadrillion tons of oxygen in the atmosphere. So at just the present rate, that's 0.0000164% of the oxygen in the atmosphere a day, or .00596% a year, or .0596 a decade or .1197% over twenty years, or .2993% over fifty years. Except that, if usage does continue to grow at current rates, in fifty years, the usage rate will be high enough that it would be 2% of the atmosphere over the next fifty years after that if usage levels remain steady.
Of course, the oxygen in the atmosphere isn't static. It's constantly being replenished. About 1.37 billion tons of it is made every day on Earth. So, using 164 million tons of it a day for combusting fossil fuels, we're only using 11.9% of daily production. Not a problem! And if we actually reach that 50 year projection, we'll only be using 80% of the oxygen produced in a day (at least at current levels, the vastly increased C02 would increase oxygen production from plants a little, but wouldn't affect the total that much). Surely Not a problem. It's not over 100% after all. Even then, we wouldn't actually start dying en masse of asphyxiation for a good 1000 years or more, so who really cares, right?!
Ok. After that little exercise, I feel a lot better and I have to concede to you that someone would have to be a truly profound fool... in fact, a total moron, to think that we couldn't, uh, I mean could, have any impact on the atmosphere.
You are right about one thing. Humans are ill equipped to care about the welfare of those beyond their small tribe. But that's why we form governments and appoint leaders. They are supposed to look out for the greater whole.
As for your Climate Change alarmists, I take great exception to that and consider it a great fallacy. It is easier to sow doubt than to convince someone of a fact and that is what deniers have preyed upon. If you don't think we are all going to be fucked as a species in the next 100 years then you sir or madam are part of the problem.
And there is no overstating. The facts are the facts regardless if those facts take 25 years, 100 years, or 200 years to catch up to us. It's going to happen. We are putting BILLIONS of metric tons of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every year for damn near a century now. The ONLY way you don't draw the same conclusions that 99% of scientists do is because a) Your basic knowledge of how greenhouse gases work is deficient or b) you clearly have an agenda and purposely adopt an ignorant position.
The reason alarms are raised is because there is a huge lag when it comes to the effects on the atmosphere and the climate. So if we wait until shit is so obviously wrong that even the Koch's admit it then nothing we do will ever reverse the damage.