Crazy Coding Conundrums

Every so often a well meaning famous person re-invents the notion of the environmentalist Pascal’s Wager. The case being made works like this:

	We drastically reduce pollution	We don’t change much
Earth is doomed if we don’t drastically reduce our damage to the environment.	Damage: 0	Damage: Infinite
Earth will be allright no matter what we do.	Damage: couple billion dollars	Damage: 0

The theory then goes: Even if the odds that the earth is actually doomed unless we make some drastic changes is very low – then the above table should make it obvious that anything above 0% is more than enough reason to get drastic and do get started right now. After all, multiplying the odds will always get you to -infinity if the world decides to keep going as we are.

This argument is often touted by crackpots. See Exhibit A. That’s okay – it takes all sorts to make a world. However, I get personally miffed when otherwise very smart people fall for this logical fallacy. I get even more miffed when they somehow proudly proclaim how they repurposed Pascal’s Wager. Pascal’s Wager is itself a fairly obvious fallacy. Normally, smart people are supposed to be able to add two and two together. Maybe that M. Night Shyamalan movie was on the something and tree hugging makes your brains fall out of your ears. I don’t know what it is.

Thus, a public service for all those who experience temporary bouts of idiocy when it comes to the environment. It happens to all of us, don’t feel bad.

I’ll fix that table for you, should make it obvious why you should stop talking about Pascal already:

	We drastically reduce pollution	We instead focus on space flight (a big source of pollution if you do a lot of it)
Earth is doomed if we don’t drastically reduce our damage to the environment.	Damage: 0	Damage: Infinite
Earth will be allright environment-wise, but in 20 years a comet will obliterate this planet.	Damage: Infinite	Damage: 0

If you think that particular doom scenario is preposterous, I will posit that earth being utterly doomed when we don’t fix up the environment is similarly preposterous. There are also lots and lots of other doom scenarios: A killer virus, aliens, global thermonuclear war, a world-wide revolt due to male overpopulation and religious fanaticism due to continued poverty, corruption, and civil war in the third world – pick your poison. You’ll find plenty of theories about how the earth could end if we aren’t careful.

So, we should fix all of that right?

Right. Except earth is a place of finite resource. Human creativity is still a finite resource. We can’t focus on all of that equally. We have to make choices.

And this is where I, and other sane and right thinking individuals like Bjorn Lomborg – who is one of the few true environmentalists I know of, stand: The only way to get out of this dilemma is to create win-win scenarios. Running around like a headless chicken screaming bloody murder about the environment, using cockamamie theories like the Environmentalist’s Pascal’s Wager, the more we’re going to really risk ending up doomed. There are so many things we could do that would actually save the environment, and be a net positive effect on mankind economically and scientifically, but virtually none of it gets done. Instead we spend all our time lobbying for people to become just as treehugger crazy and for utterly ineffective corn ethanol. D’oh.

There’s also a long-standing tradition in certain more fanatical environmentalist groups to be completely unreasonable, and make downright retarded decisions. Every hip american buying a Prius is one fine example: Considering the trade-in value is so worthless that most of them hit the scrapyards inside of 15 years (those batteries just don’t last all that long), you should probably just buy a Hummer. Mother Earth would be more grateful. Inane FUD spreading of nuclear power plants is another one: It’s a very tough choice, but France has been doing just fine with it so far. If the french can make nuclear safe enough, then what the heck is everybody whining about? We should at least take it a bit more seriously.

Apple is being torched almost daily for not being green enough. This is the company that make the notebook computer as the only computer you own popular. The amount of power and material saved is enormous. Green peace and company should grovel at Steve Jobs’ knees and thank him for the good he’s done. Of every soul I meet that proclaims they are an environmentalist, 99% of them are short sighted bags of hot air. It annoys me so.

The latest fine example of environmentalists being absolute idiots is 2 google searches generate 7 grams of co2.

Riiiight – and driving to the library and spending 5 hours looking it up there is much better for the environment. How short-sighted can you get? Google, and the internet in general, is the best most scalable thing that has ever happened to the environment.

I’m not a global warming denialist. I strongly feel that we, as mankind, ought to be doing more. I just get annoyed when otherwise smart people turn into blithering idiots, is all. Please, for the sake of this planet – use some common sense. I thank you.