As you’ve described it, the fallacy is fairly harmless (it doesn’t materially speed up cooking pasta, but it also doesn’t slow it down). The only thing lost is a bit of time that could be more productively spent doing something else. I think there’s often a side effect which goes along with this fallacy that’s worth mentioning, and can turn it into something actively harmful.
With the example of trying to save energy by turning off the wifi router, a proportion of people will turn the wifi off but not turn the heating down because they think “I followed one of the recommendations, I’m making an effort and doing my part”. Adding in the recommendation to turn off the wifi can be actively harmful because people don’t even necessarily understand that some of the recommendations are more impactful than others, and they’re working off a model of social status signalling to determine what actions they should take, rather than actually understanding the problem and how the proposed solutions are intended to help.
Recycling is a similar situation. Most waste which goes into recycling is not actually recycled, but the act of recycling makes people believe that they are fulfilling their civic duty to reduce single use plastics and wasteful use of resources. As a result they may shirk other much more effective and important green initiatives.
(as a sidenote, energy which is used by the wifi router is going to be disappated as heat, so turning off the wifi will just mean that your heating system will just work a little harder to reach the temperature set by the thermostat, offsetting any savings made by turning the wifi off.)
As you’ve described it, the fallacy is fairly harmless (it doesn’t materially speed up cooking pasta, but it also doesn’t slow it down). The only thing lost is a bit of time that could be more productively spent doing something else. I think there’s often a side effect which goes along with this fallacy that’s worth mentioning, and can turn it into something actively harmful.
With the example of trying to save energy by turning off the wifi router, a proportion of people will turn the wifi off but not turn the heating down because they think “I followed one of the recommendations, I’m making an effort and doing my part”. Adding in the recommendation to turn off the wifi can be actively harmful because people don’t even necessarily understand that some of the recommendations are more impactful than others, and they’re working off a model of social status signalling to determine what actions they should take, rather than actually understanding the problem and how the proposed solutions are intended to help.
Recycling is a similar situation. Most waste which goes into recycling is not actually recycled, but the act of recycling makes people believe that they are fulfilling their civic duty to reduce single use plastics and wasteful use of resources. As a result they may shirk other much more effective and important green initiatives.
(as a sidenote, energy which is used by the wifi router is going to be disappated as heat, so turning off the wifi will just mean that your heating system will just work a little harder to reach the temperature set by the thermostat, offsetting any savings made by turning the wifi off.)