If the intended conclusion is "... so they're probably wrong", I just don't get it at all. I mean, I don't think anyone[1] ever claimed "we have to fix this now or we'll all be boiled alive in 15 years".
Actually the models in the 1990's have predicted rather dire consequences for 2015.
and the people with the power to take that action keep on not doing it, of course you're going to keep saying "look, we have to do this, it's urgent". No?
At some point it is too late to avoid the disaster and better start preparing for it. That would be my point. Anyone who predicts do X now or disaster will happen in 20 years and then X is not done loses a lot of cred when they still advocate X. They should be more like saying okay the disaster is now unavoidable and better start preparing for it.
Actually the models in the 1990s have predicted rather dire consequences for 2015.
Interesting. Examples?
At some point it is too late to avoid the disaster and better start preparing for it.
Probably true, though probably the sequence actually goes: disaster avoidable -> disaster unavoidable but severity can be mitigated -> disaster unavoidable and unmitigable, time to prepare -> too late for anything, we're screwed. And I'd have thought that second phase might be quite prolonged.
...Anyone who predicts do X now or disaster will happen in 20 ye
[CW: This post talks about personal experience of moral dilemmas. I can see how some people might be distressed by thinking about this.]
Have you ever had to decide between pushing a fat person onto some train tracks or letting five other people get hit by a train? Maybe you have a more exciting commute than I do, but for me it's just never come up.
In spite of this, I'm unusually prepared for a trolley problem, in a way I'm not prepared for, say, being offered a high-paying job at an unquantifiably-evil company. Similarly, if a friend asked me to lie to another friend about something important to them, I probably wouldn't carry out a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. It seems that I'm happy to adopt consequentialist policy, but when it comes to personal quandaries where I have to decide for myself, I start asking myself about what sort of person this decision makes me. What's more, I'm not sure this is necessarily a bad heuristic in a social context.
It's also noteworthy (to me, at least) that I rarely experience moral dilemmas. They just don't happen all that often. I like to think I have a reasonably coherent moral framework, but do I really need one? Do I just lead a very morally-inert life? Or have abstruse thought experiments in moral philosophy equipped me with broader principles under which would-be moral dilemmas are resolved before they reach my conscious deliberation?
To make sure I'm not giving too much weight to my own experiences, I thought I'd put a few questions to a wider audience:
- What kind of moral dilemmas do you actually encounter?
- Do you have any thoughts on how much moral judgement you have to exercise in your daily life? Do you think this is a typical amount?
- Do you have any examples of pedestrian moral dilemmas to which you've applied abstract moral reasoning? How did that work out?
- Do you have any examples of personal moral dilemmas on a Trolley Problem scale that nonetheless happened?
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