Other people have addressed the truth/belief gap. I want to talk about existential risk.
We got EXTREMELY close to extinction with nukes, more than once. Launch orders in the Cold War were given and ignored or overridden three separate times that I’m aware of, and probably more. That risk has declined but is still present. The experts were 100% correct and their urgency and doomsday predictions were arguably one of the reasons we are not all dead.
The same is true of global warming, and again there is still some risk. We probably got extremely lucky in the last decade and happened upon the right tech and strategies and got decent funding to combat climate change such that it won’t reach 3+ degrees deviation, but that’s still not a guarantee and it also doesn’t mean the experts were wrong. It was an emergency, it still is, the fact that we got lucky doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have paid very close attention.
The fact that we might survive this potential apocalypse too is not a reason to act like it is not a potential apocalypse. I agree that empirically, humans have a decent record at avoiding extinction when a large number of scientific experts predict its likelihood. It’s not a great record, we’re like 4-0 depending on how you count, which is not many data points, but it’s something. What we have learned from those experiences is that the loud and extreme actions of a small group of people who are fully convinced of the risk is sometimes enough to sufficiently shift the inertia of a large society only vaguely aware of the risk to avoid catastrophe by a hairs breadth. We might need to be that group.
Other people have addressed the truth/belief gap. I want to talk about existential risk.
We got EXTREMELY close to extinction with nukes, more than once. Launch orders in the Cold War were given and ignored or overridden three separate times that I’m aware of, and probably more. That risk has declined but is still present. The experts were 100% correct and their urgency and doomsday predictions were arguably one of the reasons we are not all dead.
The same is true of global warming, and again there is still some risk. We probably got extremely lucky in the last decade and happened upon the right tech and strategies and got decent funding to combat climate change such that it won’t reach 3+ degrees deviation, but that’s still not a guarantee and it also doesn’t mean the experts were wrong. It was an emergency, it still is, the fact that we got lucky doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have paid very close attention.
The fact that we might survive this potential apocalypse too is not a reason to act like it is not a potential apocalypse. I agree that empirically, humans have a decent record at avoiding extinction when a large number of scientific experts predict its likelihood. It’s not a great record, we’re like 4-0 depending on how you count, which is not many data points, but it’s something. What we have learned from those experiences is that the loud and extreme actions of a small group of people who are fully convinced of the risk is sometimes enough to sufficiently shift the inertia of a large society only vaguely aware of the risk to avoid catastrophe by a hairs breadth. We might need to be that group.