> Bergstrom likens scientists to soothsayers, carrying the burden of
being able to see the future, "It plays a heavy toll on your psyche.
It's hard to take because we know what's coming down the track."
Cassandra complex is a real and horrible state of mind. It affects
anyone who has to compartmentalise, or chooses to for whatever reason.
I've seen it eat up more than a few people, and it definitely affects
me too.
My father was in the airforce and went to the South Pacific on nuke
tests. He often had the thousand yard stare and "didn't want to talk"
about there "being no future". Another member of our family is a
climate scientist who did some particularly disturbing research. He
has the same look sometimes. He says there's no point telling people -
"just live your lives".
For me being in cybersecurity is watching a "slow motion suicide by
apathy". The unfolding, preventable catastrophe haunts me.
But deep down we do want to tell people because even if you can't
"change the world" it's hard to live and interact with people you love
every day, knowing what you know.
Most of the time the Casandra problem is that either nobody believes
you, or nobody cares. Bergstrom's problem is that others want to
actively prevent her from speaking, which I imagine is worse.
Those with power really worry that we "scare the children". I even
find myself saying it to fellow hackers when we are giving talks,
because the effect of telling the plain truth is not action, but
hopelessness, and I don't want to put that on people.
> For me being in cybersecurity is watching a "slow motion suicide by apathy". The unfolding, preventable catastrophe haunts me.
Wait, "catastrophe" singular? That sounds way worse than what I’m envisioning (increasing rates of hacks, data breaches, and perhaps a couple catastrophic events that contributes to, but not single handedly causes, an economic crisis). Your wording suggest something like our computers or network becoming so untrustworthy we can’t even use them.
Do you have an executive summary of what you’re hinting at?
For one, state sponsored cyber warfare could end up causing lots of preventable damage. Think infrastructure, like the electric grid, being brought down: that would have real consequences, including deaths.
But was the world burned by nuclear holocaust, or did the Y2K melt down the nuclear powerplants causing a global Chernobyl disaster? Did the ozone layer disappear and did the acid rains kill all forests? Extrapolating from a short period to a distant catastrophe can poison your life, while usually when a problem gets bad enough, then widespread consensus forms against it and appropriate resources are allocated. *
Regarding IT security: I surely wouldn't be sleepless over IT security, given my money is reasonably safe and insured. Hackers won't destroy the water supply or nuclear reactors, even if they might be able to, or at most cause some incidents before steps are taken. Terrorists have vast possibilities already, we shouldn't be so arrogant to think that IT is so special that it is especially susceptible to causing some global catastrophe. One can already buy a hacksaw and tear down power lines, no need to hack a powerplant. One can poison water reservoirs, etc. No need for Hollywood drama, where special single points of failure are protected by (lone) heroes, protecting us from the lone maniacs. Our society is vulnerable and fragile, since at least 50 years ago, and it is not being attacked because nobody really wants to attack it.
I'm more concerned about the gradual decline of privacy caused by the fear-mongering situations like outlined above. (If you meant this than I misunderstood you, sry.)
> I'm more concerned about the gradual decline of privacy caused by
the fear-mongering situations like outlined above. (If you meant
this than I misunderstood you, sry.)
Yeah I kinda did actually. :) Though I wouldn't use the term "fear
mongering" about anyone's legitimate concern from their perspective.
The anxiety comes from seeing that poor digital security is just
(perhaps a deliberate) part of a complex situation forming. It's one
that threatens to usher in precisely the fascism we fought world wars
to eliminate - but via the back door "for the children".
BTW I agree with your pragmatic, "well let's see about that" attitude.
It's what gets me through the day too.
I was into prepping for a while, but let go of the stuff, seeing the "Cassandras" being disappointed for the catastrophe taking the lives of millions does not happen. I see pessimist/alarmist people a bit more skeptically now, the more grandiose the threat they envision the more skeptical I am, as now I'm always assuming a bit of narcissism in the background.
Problems exist, and we need to talk about them, to realize and eventually solve them, or be able to informedly ignore them. But the constant impending doom as portrayed by the media since ever (probably Goebbels is at fault, and his counterparts in rival empires) makes me apathetic, as a form of self-defence.
fear mongering: I did not mean to tell you were fear mongering, rather I thought you might be a victim of it with your perception magnified by subjective experience. I just outlined some fear-mongering scenarios about which we are always told to be afraid of the ITSec threats. (and which are overblown in my opinion, not because of the lack of feasibility, but the lack of utility carrying them out, as the possibilities were mostly there already without IT.)
Anyone know how to disable this 'Odyssey' format on abc.net.au, without a userscript or similar? Prior to loading finishing, the article appears to be there on the page in the standard format.
I wonder why the leaders of our country that profits primarily from large-scale export of coal, natural gas, petroleum, beef and cotton don't want the population worrying that maybe these exports aren't sustainable in the long- (or maybe even mid-) term?
is it really so hard to imagine that perhaps the climate issues that have been "constantly talked about for 20+ years" have been heavily moderated/filtered/co-opted by financial/political interests?
The current party line is "holy shit we gotta do something soon or 2100 is gonna be bad, ya'll!". Thing is, essentially nobody today will be alive by 2100. Humans are not very good at thinking in these kinds of timescales. Corporations are hilariously bad at thinking beyond the next quarterly financial report.
So if it turns out that we're witnessing irreversible and catastophic changes to important natural systems that many of us will witness first-hand in our own lives, don't you think it's entirely plausible that the people in charge don't want us to learn the full scope of how bad things got under their watch? That the people profiting from this carnage don't want the majority to act in a way that impacts their profits?
The examples given appear to all prior to the change of government in Australia last year.
The former Prime Minister, Scotty from Marketing, was famously heavy handed and self serving with respect to his image (and by extension what he thought the image of Australia should be). As a prominent member of a particular big tent evangelical church he never did abide with the notion that man might impact the world.
This is about the suppression of direct personal testimony on the effects of climate from senior scientists that were part of the government research teams generally under a CSIRO umbrella.
Papers were published, reporters were advised, articles were printed, but certain types of strong language was edited out and direct interviews with particular people were denied in various ways - the article alleges.
I was thinking the same thing. I started thinking the article was satire towards the end. I was expecting that it would be about climate scientists being gagged for not being alarmist enough or for presenting some evidence that went against the climate change narrative.
I know of such incident from a town near were I lived where a marine biologist with a PhD was fired for publishing a paper which claimed that coral bleaching had improved. You never hear about such cases on mainstream news.
> where a marine biologist with a PhD was fired for publishing a paper which claimed that coral bleaching had improved.
That's the Sky News framing of his dismissal.
He was dismissed for misconduct towards other peer researchers, he beat that up on Sky News, initially won an unfair dismissal case and then lost on appeal.
He did claim that coral recovery after a mass bleaching had come back better than ever, the reality was that recovery was good but at the tally up things were still worse than before.
> I was thinking the same thing. I started thinking the article was satire towards the end. I was expecting that it would be about climate scientists being gagged for not being alarmist enough or for presenting some evidence that went against the climate change narrative.
This comment is a good example of being primed to accept a particular narrative, assuming that the OP would confirm that bias, and then on discovering that it does not confirm that bias, reacting to reject the offending data point as a "psyop". A neat encapsulation of the challenge we have in communicating honestly with each other.
I think of myself as agnostic on climate change.... Maybe it's happening, maybe it's primarily man-made. Still, I just can't imagine in the current environment where the media blames literally everything on climate change that scientists would be reprimanded by politicians (who are themselves clearly in favor of climate alarmism) for being too alarmist. That does not add up for me.
I've worked in the tech sector so I think I know what censorship and self-censorship feels like. I'm not sure these scientists do. It just doesn't add up.
Very emotional language. Picturesque victims. A gagged femalescientist, who wouldn't dislike that. Who dares to impose hierarchies on femalescientists.
This take made me cringe. The only one putting emphasis on the fact that this scientist who has visited Antarctica 20 times in their life happens to be female, is you.
Probably because many of those increasingly read like "if we don’t stop this soon we’re all gonna die". The direr the reported consequences of human activities get, the more we think "this scientist is telling me how to live my life".
It’s like playing Russian roulette, and having all the fun ruined by some eagle eyed gun expert pointing out that actually, there’s a bullet in that gun. The risk comes from the bullet, but we’re still tempted to be annoyed at the expert instead.
Because it’s going to quickly go from we observed this which is a finding to
we project that the world is going to end unless we do X which is not a scientific finding but rather one of a multitude of opinions on the future which is why climate models are averaged because there is no consensus and even if there was science doesn’t work on consensus.
You can tell by the dramatic article that this is why the government doesn’t let people like her give its opinions because her opinion diverges from that of the government.
Besides, Humans != TheWorld. This planet is going to spin even if we--arguably the biggest issue this planet ever had--are gone. There is this old joke. Two planets meet and have a chat. "So, how are you?" "Well, not good." "Why?" "I have homosapien!" "Don't worry, this will pass."
So, no worries, the world is not going to end.
And if humans manage to ruin their living conditions so badly that we end up dying out, evolution has just made another important step. After all, it is not like we deserve to survive.
Cassandra complex is a real and horrible state of mind. It affects anyone who has to compartmentalise, or chooses to for whatever reason. I've seen it eat up more than a few people, and it definitely affects me too.
My father was in the airforce and went to the South Pacific on nuke tests. He often had the thousand yard stare and "didn't want to talk" about there "being no future". Another member of our family is a climate scientist who did some particularly disturbing research. He has the same look sometimes. He says there's no point telling people - "just live your lives".
For me being in cybersecurity is watching a "slow motion suicide by apathy". The unfolding, preventable catastrophe haunts me.
But deep down we do want to tell people because even if you can't "change the world" it's hard to live and interact with people you love every day, knowing what you know.
Most of the time the Casandra problem is that either nobody believes you, or nobody cares. Bergstrom's problem is that others want to actively prevent her from speaking, which I imagine is worse.
Those with power really worry that we "scare the children". I even find myself saying it to fellow hackers when we are giving talks, because the effect of telling the plain truth is not action, but hopelessness, and I don't want to put that on people.