[psiconaut]

Direct experience. I guess there always be deniers in the curve of beliefs (deniers of thermodynamics, for instance), but what worries me is the difference between knowing and knowing. Knowing enough to completely switch priorities.

[ragebol]

Even if you could personally witness trends over a longer amount of time, it is still easy to attribute that to something else. The process from eg. driving a car via a gas you cannot see to solar radiation being captured warming up the planet and all the effects from that is relatively abstract, I guess. It's still easy to not see the links between these things, if you do not want to see them.

But regardless, people who can see the curvature of the earth (and could perform other experiments) can still manage to be flat-earthers, so hard-core idiots cannot be convinced of whatever obvious things they choose to not believe in.

Governments will have to set the right incentives for these people to still do the right thing for society in general. Eg. a carbon tax. It's much easier to know which item is cheaper and then choose that.

[jstx1]

You can't personally experience large trends that happen over decades and centuries and all over the globe. And each individual data point can be dismissed as "this is just weather" or "extreme events like this have happened in the past".

[psiconaut]

Sure, I know that :)

Today, many people are experiencing very unlikely events, unknown to them and to previous generations. While you cannot experience a trend, you do modulate your perception about what an improbable likelihood feels like. That, I feel, is very powerful to nuance certain varieties of skepticism.

I think people don't vote (or buy, or move) based on documented trends, standard deviations or moving averages, but on subjective perception of what future will be like. That is, inter-subjective bets, updated from day to day.

I guess very few people in certain countries would have bet that they would lose their homes to a summer flood or fire.

[lawn]

There are several stories of parents refusing medical care for their children, ultimately leading to them dying, and they never waivered from their belief that a benevolent god would save them.

People can be extraordinary thick-headed, even in the face of direct experience (like people you know dying of covid).