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Houshalter comments on Open thread, Aug. 03 - Aug. 09, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Yes, this is a frequent mistake of rationality, sometimes so difficult to explain to people outside of LW.
Essentially, the world is a system of gears. To understand some activity that happens in world, look at the gears, what they do, and how they interact. Don't search for a mysterious spirit responsible for the activity, if the activity can be fully explained by the gears.
This is a simple application of naturalism into economics (and therefore to politics, because often politics = economics + value judgements). Yeah, but many people fail hard at naturalism, even those who call themselves atheists.
Unfortunately, seeing the world as a system of gears is often considered a "right-wing" position; and the "left-wing" position is calling out the various evil spirits. (I am not saying that this is inherently a left-wing approach; possibly just a recent fashion.) As if people fail to coordinate to solve hard problems merely because evil corporate wizards make them do so using magical brainwashing powers, instead of simply everyone optimizing locally for themselves.
Yep; when the topic of your study is yourself, then suddenly every criticism of your "science" becomes invalidation of your experience, which is a bad thing to do. Just take your diary and put "doctoral thesis" on it and you are done. The only condition is that you can't disagree with the political opinion of your advisor, of course; such diary would not be accepted as "scientific".
And in the spirit of "the world is connected; if you lie once, the truth becomes forever your enemy" we learn that science itself is merely an oppresive tool of the evil spirit of white patriarchy.
Yeah, I know, local taboo on politics, et cetera. But it is so painful to watch how some anti-epistemologies become standard parts of mainstream political opinions, and then when you comment on some elementary rationality topic, you are already walking on the political territory. It is no longer only priests and homeopaths who get offended by definitions of science and evidence. :(
EDIT: To express the core of my frustration I would say that the people who complain loudest about humanity not solving various prisoners' dilemmas are among those who defect in the prisoners' dilemmas of rationality and civilization. Yes, the problem you complain about is real, but if you want to solve it, start by the fucking look in the mirror, because there it is.
I don't really agree with that link. Like the picture from a random real estate listing he likely cherry picked. And just assumed was an environmentalist because of where they live. And assume they use a lot of gas because they have ATVs. Which makes no sense at all. The mileage on those is actually not terrible, and they are typically not driven very long distances. Those motorcycles are even better than cars on fuel consumption.
But even the idea that people can't be for the environment if they don't own an electric car and live in a tiny house, or whatever. I view environmentalist lifestyles as extremely pointless. Your individual sacrifice won't contribute even the tiniest drop in the bucket.
Even if everyone did it, the price of gas and coal would just go down, and other countries would buy it - the total consumption would remain the same. They will keep mining and pumping it out of the ground until it's no longer possible to do so. The only way to solve the problem is to force them to keep it in the ground, or at least heavily tax it as it is taken out.
And that's a much more reasonable stance. You might not want to sacrifice individually and pointlessly. But you would be willing to do so if everyone else has to.
Your central point, that it's a collective action problem, is Heath's main point, as I read his article. He points out that people do not live environmentalist lifestyles as evidence that they will not vote for making non-environmentalist lifestyles expensive, and thus Klein's claim that democracy and local politics will help solve this issue is fundamentally mistaken.
While I agree that he doesn't have sufficient information to conclude the amount of gas they use, it's certainly fair to claim that their lifestyle is fossil fuel intensive, which was his claim. I have friends with guns; the amount of gunpowder consumption they require is better measured by how frequently they go to the range, not the number of guns they own. But it still seems fair to argue that using guns is a gunpowder-intensive hobby.
...other countries don't count as everyone?
This is possibly true, but not necessarily so. We know nothing about these people's political beliefs or what issues they care about. He's making massive judgements about them from a single picture in a real estate listing.
Even if we are accepting the premise that people only vote in their self interest (they don't), these people are clearly very wealthy. Increases in energy prices will have a lower impact on them.
"intensive" is a pretty strong word. Clearly they use gas, but everyone uses gas. Just because they have ATVs and motorcycles doesn't mean much. As I said, they get good mileage, sometimes better than cars, and they aren't going to be driving them long distances. A single person with a long commute is likely going to use far more gas than them.
Would you describe this as "necessarily so"?
Which is why it might be relevant that this is in a suburb of Toronto--i.e. someone who lives here and works in the city probably has an hour-long commute.
Because they own a giant, expensive home, with a garage filled with expensive toys.
Perhaps, but that is not what the article said at all. He was judging them entirely based on a picture of their garage, and the fact that they owned motorcycles and ATVs. He didn't try to estimate how much gas they use per day. He looked at a photo and noticed it didn't have the aesthetic of environmentalism.
Wealth typically refers to one's assets minus one's liabilities; evidence of assets does not suffice to demonstrate wealth. My point was that you are putting forward a reasonable general claim that is not necessarily true--even if this particular home seller is underwater on their mortgage, similar people exist that are not and one would expect the latter group to be more likely--at the same time that you are criticizing Heath for putting forward a reasonable general claim that is not necessarily true--people who own multiple ATVs and motorcycles and live an hour from the city probably consume more gasoline than the average Canadian and are unlikely to be a strong supporter of the environmentalist political coalition.
It seems Heath is talking about what Scott Alexander calls Moloch.