[Eji1700]

Which the average person doesn’t know because this is the 50th headline they’ve read on how we’re screwed today that hasn’t happened.

They’ve blown their attention budget for the layman and aren’t getting it back unless someone serious guides their attention.

[postflopclarity]

> the 50th headline they’ve read on how we’re screwed today that hasn’t happened

the things are happening though.

e.g. if you read a headline in the 70s that said something like "ski seasons will shorten by an average of 1 day per year, leading to only 5 inches of snow water equivalent in Colorado resorts by 2026, and eliminating the economic viability of skiing in the northeast by 2060" that would have been completely correct.

[graemep]

The problem is that those were not the headlines. There were headlines in the 80s saying AMOC would collapse by now.

[idiotsecant]

"I read a headline that turned out to be wrong, all headlines adjacent to that original one are now wrong"

You are constantly seeing all manner of predictions. When someone makes a wrong prediction that is not a indicator that the thing will never happen. Otherwise I would bet that I will suffer no problematic effects if I stop paying a mortgage.

[Eji1700]

You are giving way too much credit to the average headline. Most headlines are wrong/misleading, full stop. They have incentive to be, this isn't a secret.

The "quality" headlines aren't the one the average person is reading. It's even worse in climate discussions. Fuck "An Inconvenient Truth" was probably the largest exposure to climate issues for my generation and is STILL a problem because a some claims were made that, oops, even then were called vast exaggerations by the IPCCS. No snow on Fuji within a decade comes to mind, which basically nothing but the most extreme models predicted. Well it's a decade later and to the layman, there's still snow on the mountain. It's at some of it's worst levels EVER, but when you make bold and verifiable claims and then go "oh well you see actually..." you lose people.

Even worse are the "THIS TERRIBLE THING WILL HAPPEN!...in 100 years". That's still fucking awful, but when the layman has been reading the first part for over a decade now, or ever hears the second part, it often just loses their attention entirely. Climate science trying to get real change needs to manage expectations, but media is mostly about grabbing attention. It's obvious how at odds those goals are.

[joquarky]

You're assuming most people think critically.

[esseph]

It's a frog/boiling water problem with the timescale.

[mlhpdx]

Maybe, but that’s a far stride or two from the “doomsday” pitched at laypeople.

[anadem]

The issue is not that that itself is the doomsday, but that when the current collapses the climate trajectory changes and aims at catastrophe, and changing that will be beyond our ability

[mlhpdx]

I’m not saying it isn’t bad. I clearly understand it’s bad.

My point is that this kind of headline doesn’t help the cause. It’s hyperbolic nonsense to laypeople, though they may use the more colloquial term “bullshit”. Getting people to pay attention is really, really hard given the tremendous volume of hyperbole they see every day.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I know this kind of headline works against it.

[bastawhiz]

> the things are happening though.

That's what the headlines said the last 49 times. Why should the average person care now? What are they supposed to do?

Al Gore got on a scissor lift and showed the hockey stick graph. Millions of people saw it. Then the data was bad. Then the average person didn't see anything happen that they could point to and be like "That's what Al Gore warned us about". What you're asking for already happened, over and over. It's useless now.

[pjmlp]

Use paper straws, because that is how we save the world. /s

[Izkata]

It's like the climate people never heard the fable of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". It's exactly that.

[idiotsecant]

Who are 'The climate people' you seem to think are doing this? Do you think there is a club where the climate people president takes a vote from the climate people council on how many news stories hacknews user Izkata should read?

If you lived under a big precarious rock and people always talked about the big rock falling on you would you ignore the big rock because the big rock people keep crying wolf?

This is honestly the most baffling worldview.

[senordevnyc]

If you lived under a big precarious rock and people always talked about the big rock falling on you would you ignore the big rock because the big rock people keep crying wolf?

Yeah, that’s exactly what we do, all the time. From nuclear weapons to pandemics to climate change, people become accustomed to the background risks they live under, and go about their lives. Especially when there’s almost nothing they can do about it anyway.

And well-meaning people constantly predicting calamities that don’t materialize only hasten that process.

[joquarky]

Yes, this is what most people do. If you don't know people like this, then try visiting a large church.

[postflopclarity]

except that every time the boy cried wolf, there actually was a wolf and it ate some people, but then the people it didn't eat were like "idk what you're talking about, I'm doing just fine" and then plugged their ears.

[cagey]

Well that's not how I heard the fable, and not how the authoritative reference recalls it either[0]. If "every time the boy cried wolf, there actually was a wolf and it ate some people", then it would hardly be a fable about giving a false alarm, would it?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf

[postflopclarity]

... yes. that's my point. the fable is not a good analogy in this context.

[joquarky]

Anyone who doesn't get this must have lived under a rock during COVID-19.

[ohnei]

This isn't some accident, the public could understand many complex situations that just don't have billions of dollars in FUD propaganda networks that takeover the Whitehouse whenever the public is starting to get what it wants.

[2ndorderthought]

Steve bannon figured this out a while back. I was reading about it in the Epstein files in a discussion between the two of them. If they can keep the average person dizzy with bad news they can do more bad things easily. Cute trick