About Pessimism v. Optimism. I disagree with Jason's self-criticism that he is too often guilty of resorting to a declensionist narrative.
I would add something to Rescher's taxonomy: personality pessimism. Often times we might have a personality trait that filters out the incoming data, selectively glomming on to that which validates our viewpoint. We might call that a predisposition in search of a justification. Does Jason have it? Imagine I knee nothing of him or that he was even involved in the Field Guide: just reading the corpus of the articles and cross-checking the accuracy against the data I had available I would conclude the writer(s) was entirely accurate and had no attitudinal predisposition.
Given the data we have about the Anthropocene, it is very realistic to be pessimistic. Seeing a house on fire makes one a believer in owning a fire extinguisher. No pessimism involved.
Thank you for all the hours you spent researching this article Jason! Tipping points is a huge topic with huge consequences and calls for universal human attention in my belief.
The world is a tremendous arena of interacting dynamic processes. The mathematical functioning of such interactions is complex needless to say, but we can generalize to predict that the mathematical inflections we call tipping points- the ones we notice, that is -are just the tip of the iceberg. There are most certainly thousands we haven't noticed and many are irreversible- damage is occurring daily at the cellular level of the global dynamic system despite the braking effects of homeostatic mechanisms and the pace of damage is accelerating
We're not even yet aware of all this but we will be. It is difficult to hold a meliorist outlook in the face of the wrenching/torquing dynamics of the Anthropocene..
“ High levels of PFAS in your drinking water is an emergency, but learning that rainfall everywhere on Earth contains an unhealthy level of PFAS leaves us stunned until we can quietly contemplate our responsibility and plan our response.” That was definitely my response when I got both of those pieces of news.
Well dang it. I know we're crossing liminal space, and I don't mind being reminded. Truly I don't get why everyone isn't frantic about this all the time.
Another note. I find Nicholas Rescher's taxonomy of optimism very fruitful and it can be fruitfully applied to pessimistic viewpoints (such as mine.). Rescher talks of actuality, tendency, and prospect optimisms. Applying this analysis to pessimism, we can define:
1. Actuality Pessimism is the assessment that generally things are not currently in good shape.
2. Tendency Pessimism is the assessment that whether presently things are entirely bad, entirely good, or a mix of the two, that conditions are generally getting worse as we move into the future.
3. Pessimism is the assessment that as things presently stand, and factoring in our foreseeable abilities to arrest, retard, or reverse changes we dislike, that things will at least in the medium term probably get worse still.
I count myself in all three camps. But not a fatalist. That is to say I don't think "doomers" have the luxury of just passively watching what we consider the inevitable collapse of systems we hold dear. We must take the offensive and fight to protect the glaciers, the ice shelves, the cryosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, the plant and animal species, even the microbiome.
About Pessimism v. Optimism. I disagree with Jason's self-criticism that he is too often guilty of resorting to a declensionist narrative.
I would add something to Rescher's taxonomy: personality pessimism. Often times we might have a personality trait that filters out the incoming data, selectively glomming on to that which validates our viewpoint. We might call that a predisposition in search of a justification. Does Jason have it? Imagine I knee nothing of him or that he was even involved in the Field Guide: just reading the corpus of the articles and cross-checking the accuracy against the data I had available I would conclude the writer(s) was entirely accurate and had no attitudinal predisposition.
Given the data we have about the Anthropocene, it is very realistic to be pessimistic. Seeing a house on fire makes one a believer in owning a fire extinguisher. No pessimism involved.
Thank you for all the hours you spent researching this article Jason! Tipping points is a huge topic with huge consequences and calls for universal human attention in my belief.
The world is a tremendous arena of interacting dynamic processes. The mathematical functioning of such interactions is complex needless to say, but we can generalize to predict that the mathematical inflections we call tipping points- the ones we notice, that is -are just the tip of the iceberg. There are most certainly thousands we haven't noticed and many are irreversible- damage is occurring daily at the cellular level of the global dynamic system despite the braking effects of homeostatic mechanisms and the pace of damage is accelerating
We're not even yet aware of all this but we will be. It is difficult to hold a meliorist outlook in the face of the wrenching/torquing dynamics of the Anthropocene..
“ High levels of PFAS in your drinking water is an emergency, but learning that rainfall everywhere on Earth contains an unhealthy level of PFAS leaves us stunned until we can quietly contemplate our responsibility and plan our response.” That was definitely my response when I got both of those pieces of news.
Well dang it. I know we're crossing liminal space, and I don't mind being reminded. Truly I don't get why everyone isn't frantic about this all the time.
Another note. I find Nicholas Rescher's taxonomy of optimism very fruitful and it can be fruitfully applied to pessimistic viewpoints (such as mine.). Rescher talks of actuality, tendency, and prospect optimisms. Applying this analysis to pessimism, we can define:
1. Actuality Pessimism is the assessment that generally things are not currently in good shape.
2. Tendency Pessimism is the assessment that whether presently things are entirely bad, entirely good, or a mix of the two, that conditions are generally getting worse as we move into the future.
3. Pessimism is the assessment that as things presently stand, and factoring in our foreseeable abilities to arrest, retard, or reverse changes we dislike, that things will at least in the medium term probably get worse still.
I count myself in all three camps. But not a fatalist. That is to say I don't think "doomers" have the luxury of just passively watching what we consider the inevitable collapse of systems we hold dear. We must take the offensive and fight to protect the glaciers, the ice shelves, the cryosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, the plant and animal species, even the microbiome.
Well thought out and worth a read. Thank you.