Thanks. The French example sounds like a regulatory definitions problem? I do not know the motivation for the Geneva one. I do not see how this substantiates the cultural scepticism point, and there seem to be many explanations that are more likely than a “cult of pain”. Your point about Zurich demonstrates that innovations and changes in buildings are often complex due to institutions, laws and market environments.
If a “cult of pain” or a positive attitude towards suffering was the driver behind European policies, I would expect to see policy documents approving e.g. of death during heatwaves. Instead, EU documents usually emphasize this as a severe problem and a motivation to promote climate adaptation policy (see e.g. this one by the EEA).
I agree that thinking about positive-sum situations as zero-sum is bad, but one should be cautious about assuming other people’s motivations. You make the strong claim that the policies that you list as examples are motivated by a cult of pain that developed due to a moral heuristic that developed during Malthusian times. This seems strange because there are more recent developments that should have a stronger, or at least equal impression on moral intuitions, like the suffering during the industrial revolution, or carbon emissions and climate change. The “cult of pain” explanation does not seem like a straightforward explanation for what you see as irrational collective/societal behavior.
Your question about “Germans silently suffering in their overheated apartments with no air conditioning” seems to be why they have no AC units. Possible answers are: because of the typical problems in housing markets, because of imperfect regulation, because of high electricity prices, because heat waves were perceived as less of a problem a while ago. Who said he or she does not own an AC unit in order to do “repentance for the carbon footprint of their holiday in Turkey the other year”?
Of course there are people who “believe in degrowth”, but it is not a dominant attitude. The European Commission, for example, framed the European Green Deal as a “growth strategy that protects the climate”.
If you are not Scott, remember “the purpose of a system is what it does”. Someone may not say outright “I want you to feel pain”, yet may still treat people’s pain as very unimportant when implementing policy.
I won’t discuss tpoasiwid here, but I note that your claim is completely different from alleging that (1) there is a cult of pain that (2) is rooted in ethics that developed in malthusian times and (3) now drives policy choices. If everything that is relevant is tpoasiwid, then we do not need to claim anything about motivations driving policies.
“The purpose of a system is what it does” doesn’t mean that motivations don’t exist. It does mean that motivations are often illegible. If people behave as if they think suffering is important, and they say things that are roughly along those lines, looking for a smoking gun where someone actually goes on record as saying that in a precise way isn’t going to be very useful.
Thanks. The French example sounds like a regulatory definitions problem? I do not know the motivation for the Geneva one. I do not see how this substantiates the cultural scepticism point, and there seem to be many explanations that are more likely than a “cult of pain”. Your point about Zurich demonstrates that innovations and changes in buildings are often complex due to institutions, laws and market environments.
If a “cult of pain” or a positive attitude towards suffering was the driver behind European policies, I would expect to see policy documents approving e.g. of death during heatwaves. Instead, EU documents usually emphasize this as a severe problem and a motivation to promote climate adaptation policy (see e.g. this one by the EEA).
I agree that thinking about positive-sum situations as zero-sum is bad, but one should be cautious about assuming other people’s motivations. You make the strong claim that the policies that you list as examples are motivated by a cult of pain that developed due to a moral heuristic that developed during Malthusian times. This seems strange because there are more recent developments that should have a stronger, or at least equal impression on moral intuitions, like the suffering during the industrial revolution, or carbon emissions and climate change. The “cult of pain” explanation does not seem like a straightforward explanation for what you see as irrational collective/societal behavior.
Your question about “Germans silently suffering in their overheated apartments with no air conditioning” seems to be why they have no AC units. Possible answers are: because of the typical problems in housing markets, because of imperfect regulation, because of high electricity prices, because heat waves were perceived as less of a problem a while ago. Who said he or she does not own an AC unit in order to do “repentance for the carbon footprint of their holiday in Turkey the other year”?
Of course there are people who “believe in degrowth”, but it is not a dominant attitude. The European Commission, for example, framed the European Green Deal as a “growth strategy that protects the climate”.
If you are not Scott, remember “the purpose of a system is what it does”. Someone may not say outright “I want you to feel pain”, yet may still treat people’s pain as very unimportant when implementing policy.
I won’t discuss tpoasiwid here, but I note that your claim is completely different from alleging that (1) there is a cult of pain that (2) is rooted in ethics that developed in malthusian times and (3) now drives policy choices. If everything that is relevant is tpoasiwid, then we do not need to claim anything about motivations driving policies.
“The purpose of a system is what it does” doesn’t mean that motivations don’t exist. It does mean that motivations are often illegible. If people behave as if they think suffering is important, and they say things that are roughly along those lines, looking for a smoking gun where someone actually goes on record as saying that in a precise way isn’t going to be very useful.