[CaptArmchair]

"we need..." is a persuasion technique. It tries to sell an idea by (a) trying to incorporate you into it the argument before you even agreed (the "we" part) and (b) pushing on through a sense of false urgency (the "need" part).

"We need" is never ever an argument on itself. And it can be easily countered with: Who is this "we" you're talking about because I surely haven't agreed yet if I go along in your story. And the "need" isn't a shared need unless I'm willing to agree that it is a shared need between you and me.

"We need" forces the other to think past the problem and move directly towards "solutions". As if the problem exists outside of our own experience and should be considered as a problem. "We need" never explains why a set of facts is considered a problem in the first place. It just puts the focus on solutions, maybe even solutions that detract from what truly ought to be done.

The same is true when posing "society" as this homogeneous group that declares in unisono "we need to start". This couldn't be farther from the truth. "Society" is just a complex network of individuals, tribes, factions, parties,... with ever evolving shared and conflicting interests. Anything a society seemingly "agreed" upon is more emergent behaviour then deliberate action.

"society" sure didn't consciously decide "we need to start using technology or believing experience x, y or z." On the contrary. There are plenty of examples of beliefs being disparaged, vilified, questioned,... to the point where their proponents were burned on the stake. Or technologies and their inventors being ridiculed or banned because nobody was interested, or it was unclear which problem they truly solved.

Humanity survived just fine without electricity, indoor plumbing, grocery stores, digital technology and so on for hundreds of thousands of years. Ask any elderly person if they felt unhappy 60 or 70 years ago because they weren't able to consult Wikipedia via digital devices. They will simply answer "Well, we just went to the library. And that worked out perfectly for us. There simply wasn't an alternative and we didn't lament the lack of an alternative."

Stating that society agreed to "we need to start" would putting the horse before the cart.

[bobbydroptables]

I typed out a much longer response but this will do:

I think you are not following my argument or the OP. Neither supposes that "we need" is a standalone argument. OP provides specific examples for why "we need" to do these things.

"We" doesn't mean literally every human. Do you think people are actually being misled by this? It just means something like "society at large".

"We" need plumbing. This doesn't mean you can't individually live alone in the woods without plumbing.

"Need" doesn't mean you "must" have something. You don't "need" water if you're suicidal.

"Need" is just shorthand for "sustains our current way of life". If you want to see the downfall of civilization, you don't "need" agriculture. If you don't care about people on dialysis or the millions/billions of others that would die without power, then you don't "need" electricity or internal combustion engines.

You're allowed to have these opposing views.

The "we need" arguments assume that most people want to maintain or improve standards of living.

If you want to decrease standards of living, that's a fine opinion to have (although weird). More importantly, if you don't care about society, why bother arguing this at all? Why post on HN? No one is stopping you from living a pre-plumbing, pre-agricultural life if that's what you want.

"Society" of course tries to sustain itself. If society wants to keep existing in its current form, it does need to do many things (indoor plumbing, running water, electricity, or as the OP talks about, preparing for certain dangerous situations).

[CaptArmchair]

"We need" is both a social construct and a rhetorical device. No more, no less. I'm all fine when "we need" is used as a conclusion to a careful and thoughtful debate in which we both, equally, established a common need and a common wish to address that need knowing we're both deeply invested. I'm wary of hearing "we need to..." at the opening of every argument over and over again without showing how invested the person making the argument is in solving the issue.

If everything is turned into a priority, then nothing becomes a priority. Both time and the willingness to pay attention are in short demand.

We need to invest in an equitable society, economies of scale, reduce greenhouse gasses, invest in green technology, prepare for the next pandemic, vote for sensible politics (whatever those may be), invest in education, in the military, in getting to the Moon and establishing viable economies there, getting someone on Mars, invest in global network of satellites across the world, invest in developing nations, overhaul global supply lines and create less dependencies, find a better cure for cancer, invest in cybersecurity, invest in solutions to safeguard rights such as free speech and privacy, reduce fossil fuel dependency, invest in new industries and markets, and so on and so on and so on.

Here's how the vast majority of people reason, then. There are only 24 hours in a day. And life is rather short with just a few precious decades. How can I spend those valuable hours and my own talents in a healthy balance between taking care of myself and my loved ones, and deriving a due sense of personal satisfaction, meaningfulness and purpose?

There are 7.8 billion different answers to that question reflecting different and often very conflicting beliefs, wants, needs, dreams, desires and hopes.

"We need" at the start of every argument dismisses the reality that humanity or society is made up of individual humans, each of which is a unique universe of thoughts and feelings in their own right.

"We need" is a wonky substitute for a far more honest "I - personally - feel strongly about this issue, this is how invested I am in the issue, and I'm curious as to how you're feeling about this."

Worst case, "we need" is simply you projecting a personal fleeting desire to the entirety of humanity. "We need to go to Mars". I'm sure some people feel strongly about that. Maybe you do in this very instance, but will you still actively be thinking about how humanity could get there in an hour or two? Or have you moved on by then, forgetting that you even posted a fleeting thought on social media in the first place? Moreover, you just placed this massive issue - the urgency to get boots on Mars, or the preparation for the next pandemic - at my doorstep, how am I as an individual supposed to even contribute towards solving that problem while including the entirety of humanity or society?

"we need preparing for a pandemic" or "we need to invest in dialysis for people who need it for their survival". Sure, but that's your personal sentiment. But it's not an argument. How are you, as an individual acting on that sentiment? Who are you voting on? Are you making donations? Are you a researcher? Are you running for office yourself? Or are you endorsing politicians who will be making decisions? Or have you invested millions in factories that might one day supply vaccines, hopefully? What are you doing to show the way forward beyond a moot online demonstration of a due sense of self awareness?

"We should have had a (non-false) sense of urgency about this last year?" Who is this we? Why are you involving me into this? I read the news and social media like the next person and I'm an individual with limited time and resources. I'm not an elected decision maker. I'm certainly not privy to intelligence reports. And when I voted for decision makers that ran for office, a pandemic sure wasn't on everyone's mind.

It's an argument that could easily be met with could have, would have, should have, but "we" - whoever that is - didn't. Hindsight 20/20.

Instead, a better argument is "I feel it's important to vote for politicians that are aware of the importance of public health and who are willing to endorse increased public spending on public health and social security. I feel it's important to hold politicians who don't do this publicly accountable. That's why I openly voice my concern because I care about the impact of their policies on my own community and other communities. I also call representatives, I vote, I support news organizations through donations, I attend rallies to show support and so on."

Showing how you're caring is far more important then just telling you're caring.

[bobbydroptables]

Preparing for expected catastrophes is not a fleeting desire. It's basically the opposite. There are entire industries built up around this (FEMA, insurance, flood control systems, the CDC, banking reserve ratios, backup servers, many safety rules and systems). Saying we need to adjust these efforts to reflect the real world cost-benefit trade offs is common sense. You can disagree with the particular calculus they're doing (e.g. by thinking a pandemic is so unlikely that we shouldn't prepare very much), but I don't see a sound argument to say "we don't need to prepare at all for these costly events".

>If everything is turned into a priority, then nothing becomes a priority. Both time and the willingness to pay attention are in short demand.

I don't think people are turning everything into a priority. But if some ill-defined group is trying to do this, it wouldn't change the fact that certain things are a priority if we want to maintain our way of life. Disaster management is one of them.

I'm sure a bunch of people think irrelevant things happening on Instagram are a priority. But that doesn't change the fact that preserving infrastructure is a priority for maintaining our way of life.

As I said, if you don't care about maintaining our way of life, then of course you won't care about what we need to do to preserve that way of life.

>Here's how the vast majority of people reason, then. There are only 24 hours in a day. And life is rather short with just a few precious decades. How can I spend those valuable hours and my own talents in a healthy balance between taking care of myself and my loved ones, and deriving a due sense of personal satisfaction, meaningfulness and purpose?

I think I see the disconnect. No one is saying that the fry cook at McDonalds needs to align global resources better to deal with potential catastrophe. You are reading "we" too literally. (Rather, you are just misunderstanding the word "we". "We" doesn't mean an has never meant every human. We really just means a group of which the speaker is part. It need not include you.)

"We need to better prepare for certain catastrophes" means that politicians and other key actors (say businesses, insurers, bureaucrats, researchers, engineers that have relevant assets, skills, experiences, etc.) need to think better about these and non-key actors (say voters, consumers) need to shift attention, money, votes, etc. to supporting those key actors in this goal. If you are okay with disruptions like pandemics, then you can disagree with this. I think most people would prefer to avoid these disruptions though, given the comparatively low cost for doing so.

>at my doorstep, how am I as an individual supposed to even contribute towards solving that problem while including the entirety of humanity or society?

Support politicians that endorse science and logic, for example. Wear a mask as another example.

I don't think anyone is asking you to do anything that "includes the entirety of humanity or society". We are saying make the choices you can make and support the politicians and businesses that deal with these problems proactively.

>But it's not an argument.

No one is saying "we need to prepare for a pandemic" as a standalone argument. But the argument is not complicated. A pandemic could disrupt our way of life greatly by "harm X" (lets say decrease in quality adjusted life years or GDP). It has a chance of occur of "probability Y". Y here is close to 100% as we know. The cost of preparing systems to mitigate the risks to "harm level Z" is "cost Q". As long as harm X times probability Y is really big (which as we see, it is) and cost Q is less than harm level Z, then it is rational to invest Q resources into mitigation.

You can disagree with whatever numbers we might pick for X Y Z Q, but to say we shouldn't perform the calculus is just to say you don't think society is worth preserving. Again, you can have that viewpoint if you want.

The conversation that I think people are trying to have is "How should we preserve, improve and maintain society" and you're basically saying "don't bother". It's fine to say that, but the people having the discussion obviously aren't going to listen to you.

If we're discussing whether Liverpool should trade Coutinho then no one will be interested in your view that "football is stupid".

>How are you, as an individual acting on that sentiment? Who are you voting on? Are you making donations? Are you a researcher? Are you running for office yourself? Or are you endorsing politicians who will be making decisions? Or have you invested millions in factories that might one day supply vaccines, hopefully? What are you doing to show the way forward beyond a moot online demonstration of a due sense of self awareness?

I am doing things to my ability but this is irrelevant to our argument. I can make a powerful and logically airtight argument supporting thing X while selling a product that kills thing X. I can even make that same argument while personally killing thing X at that very moment.

I'm not holding this discussion to trumpet (or even to discuss) my own virtues or actions. I'm having this argument to disagree with a poorly reasoned argument made by the person I first responded to. I could be a computer simulation and it wouldn't take anything at all away from the logic of the points I make.

>"We should have had a (non-false) sense of urgency about this last year?" Who is this we? Why are you involving me into this?

I'm not involving you. You misunderstand the definition of the word "we"

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/we

"People in general" does not mean every single person and certainly doesn't have to mean you.

>I read the news and social media like the next person and I'm an individual with limited time and resources. I'm not an elected decision maker. I'm certainly not privy to intelligence reports. And when I voted for decision makers that ran for office, a pandemic sure wasn't on everyone's mind.

You shouldn't elect someone that campaigns on a single pet risk, so much as you should elect someone that takes a rational, cost-benefit approach to risks in general.

>It's an argument that could easily be met with could have, would have, should have, but "we" - whoever that is - didn't. Hindsight 20/20.

Well, that's not exactly right is it? "We" certainly did meet the risk where I am. Americans (or more specifically, some Americans in some places) are having issues understanding science. There's not much hindsight involved. Were there epidemiologists that said we didn't need to worry about or prepare for the risk of a pandemic? Pandemics have happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future.

More importantly, everyone saw what happened in China. America saw this and part of it decided not to take steps to mitigate the risks. I can tell you steps to take to mitigate your risk starting tomorrow and many Americans will still ignore it. This is not hindsight bias.

You could argue China's failures shouldn't be criticized by hindsight bias. But why are many Americans continuing not to fix the problem happening today and tomorrow? Hindsight is not the issue. I can give you steps right now to fix this. But many Americans don't want to listen. As a result they are going to fail. When I point this failure out in the future, it won't be hindsight bias.

>Instead, a better argument is "I feel it's important to vote for politicians that are aware of the importance of public health and who are willing to endorse increased public spending on public health and social security. I feel it's important to hold politicians who don't do this publicly accountable. That's why I openly voice my concern because I care about the impact of their policies on my own community and other communities. I also call representatives, I vote, I support news organizations through donations, I attend rallies to show support and so on."

Ok, that's what this article is doing. I'm not sure who you're arguing against here.

>Showing how you're caring is far more important then just telling you're caring.

I don't care about showing or telling about my caring. I'm just trying to correct the person I originally responded to. What I do or don't do is irrelevant to correcting OP's point.