Archive for the ‘plugs’ Category

Randy Olson on lemmings and leaders

August 20, 2010

Great article by Randy Olson at the Benshi, contemplating two polarized options of dealing with the climate crisis: like lemmings or like leaders.

Lemmings would tend to wait for the problem to become so massive that there’s just no other option than to deal with it, as in ‘we need a catastrophy before we start taking this problem seriously’.


leadership is what ought to be expected of a species of primates whose birth canals have had to widen over the ages to make space for enlarged crania.

He also discusses the following important point, based on the following suggestion he received from a friend:

“Accept arguments on the basis of evidence alone (not on the basis of who presents them).”

to which he counters:

That sounds great and admirable, at least in principle. But it’s not realistic in the complicated world of science-based issues. (…)

This is why we have leaders. It’s called civilization. At some point we put our trust in those with that stuff called “knowledge.” Like the IPCC. It’s not perfect, but it’s our best shot at avoiding the lemmings scenario.

For the complicated world of science-based issues, the lay person needs shortcuts to evaluate the trustworthiness of the information. One of my older posts that I like most deals with exactly that question. For health issues, it’s not much different.

And to plug another, unrelated but also very good article, Stephan Lewandowsky wrote a guest post over at Skeptical Science on short term uncertainty in the weather versus long term certainty in the climate, with the price winning quote:

There is uncertainty [about climate change], but only in the way that there is uncertainty about what happens when you drive into a brick wall at 80 km/h. You might just get away with a few bruises and a concussion, but it is far more likely that you would break a leg or worse.


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