The fact is that humans are just not well equipt to deal with problems beyond human scales.
We’re not good at accurately assessing risks beyond human time scales and we’re not good correctly prioritizing action when the benefit is beyond human time scales.
Global warming is a great example of how terrible we are at dialing in the correct priority for issues beyond human scales.
When some humans worked out it was coming, nothing happened - the opposite of nothing. As more humans became aware, more effort was put into styming efforts than actually doing anything.
Even now, as the effects are near-universally understood, present, and killing people - still we fail to act on the threat with anything like an appropriate level of seriousness.
The fact is that humans are just not well equipt to deal with problems beyond human scales.
We’re not good at accurately assessing risks beyond human time scales and we’re not good correctly prioritizing action when the benefit is beyond human time scales.
Big Oil predicted global warming pretty spot on, they just fought it and hid the findings instead.
To some extent I think we’ve gotten pretty good at long term predictions on things like this, but no one wants to hear it.
Global warming is a great example of how terrible we are at dialing in the correct priority for issues beyond human scales.
When some humans worked out it was coming, nothing happened - the opposite of nothing. As more humans became aware, more effort was put into styming efforts than actually doing anything.
Even now, as the effects are near-universally understood, present, and killing people - still we fail to act on the threat with anything like an appropriate level of seriousness.