I've received the link to this guy's video a few times where he presents a simple way to justify taking action against global warming as the more conservative option to avoid global catastrophe. I believe that we as a race need to take action to prevent global warming, but I believe his argument is exceedingly weak. The way his argument works is what I would consider "gullibility thinking."
Long ago, Pascal made roughly the same argument to justify the belief in God. He argued using a similar table of possibilities and actions.
| Believe | Don't Believe | ||
| God Exists | All good, go to Heaven. | Burn in Hell for eternity. | |
| God Doesn't Exist | Wasted time | Get to laugh at believers |
So you can see, since we can only choose which column we end up in, the more conservative bet is to avoid eternal damnation because the penalty for that is far worse than wasted time.
In fact, you can use this same argument to justify action in practically anything with a scary consequence of inaction. Check this one out....
| Look Over Your Shoulder | Don't Look | ||
| Axe murderer behind you | If you see him you can defend yourself! | Get hacked to pieces. | |
| I'm just kidding | Wasted time | Get to laugh at my feeble attempt to make a point. |
So you can see in this table, the safe action for you to take is to look over your shoulder right now because the penalty for being wrong is that you get hacked to pieces.
I mean, I give this guy a lot of credit for putting together an easy to understand and fairly convincing video for a good cause, but it's definitely not some unassailable argument.
No comments:
Post a Comment