> I see this defeatism all the time regarding climate change too.
And I see people suggest that we aren't completely screwed because we got 10,000 people to walk down a street one time. Its an insane position and we need dramatic measures that the human race in its current form are unable to enact.
* Climate change is going to happen because people like cars and supermarkets and nobody is asking anyone to _actually_ sacrifice anything. Much of the climate change movement is "someone else should do something about it" and those that cut themselves by going "off-grid" just make themselves quieter and are replaced by twenty more people with growing carbon footprints.
* Online security is fucked because the vast majority of people can't handle more than a modicum of detail. Its on the technical class (i.e. the 5%-15%) to protect it by hook or crook. It will lose in a democratic battle to preserve it because people aren't interested enough to care and its too complex.
My suggestion is that defeatism posits a better question to answer: "What do we do once we've lost?".
The answer to that question yields something useful instead of the suspension of disbelief that the human race will suddenly turn over a new leaf.
you're being facetious. We don't "have to first lose", its just the very likely outcome is that we will lose.
That's not to say its not worth trying but that we should assume failure, otherwise you end up like the UK's Brexit negotiators who were "all-in" on the "oh they'll buckle as the time runs out" strategy and have no plan if that doesn't pan out beyond "so what now?".
The basic strategy right now seems to run on the basic belief that human-kind will figure out its slowly destroying its habitat and change accordingly. I don't think we've even managed to all figure out the extent of the destruction let alone even start to change accordingly.
What habits have we changed since the 1990s within our population to cut global carbon emissions? I'm struggling to glue a couple of things together. If I'm not mistaken, global air travel has _soared_ within that time window and everyone is just sitting on their hands under the mistaken belief that renewables will bail us out while we all still drive in a car to go to the supermarket.
And I see people suggest that we aren't completely screwed because we got 10,000 people to walk down a street one time. Its an insane position and we need dramatic measures that the human race in its current form are unable to enact.
* Climate change is going to happen because people like cars and supermarkets and nobody is asking anyone to _actually_ sacrifice anything. Much of the climate change movement is "someone else should do something about it" and those that cut themselves by going "off-grid" just make themselves quieter and are replaced by twenty more people with growing carbon footprints.
* Online security is fucked because the vast majority of people can't handle more than a modicum of detail. Its on the technical class (i.e. the 5%-15%) to protect it by hook or crook. It will lose in a democratic battle to preserve it because people aren't interested enough to care and its too complex.
My suggestion is that defeatism posits a better question to answer: "What do we do once we've lost?".
The answer to that question yields something useful instead of the suspension of disbelief that the human race will suddenly turn over a new leaf.