There are a few areas where learning more about a topic has caused me to update my own beliefs into views nuanced and unfashionable enough that I prefer not to disclose them in any setting where others might feel that I was attempting to persuade them to change their own.
One of these areas is the food supply chain. It’s fashionable to point out that things would be better if everyone cut out fossil fuels, or ate organic and local, or whatever, and stop there instead of following the suggestion to its conclusions and side effects. Actually, the carrying capacity of the planet is contingent on modern agriculture, including a lot of genetically modified plants and synthetic fertilizers. “Better” methods, as we currently know them, would feed fewer people from the same amount of land. Nobody seems to like explaining what they think should happen to the couple billion extra people who exist in our current world and wouldn’t in their ideal one.
Another area is modern medicine. All I’ll say about this is that the implied isomorphism between what we “can” do and what we “should” do does not stand up to much scrutiny. Look up the percentage of medical professionals who have do-not-resuscitate orders, compared to the general population, and have a think about what that might imply.
There are a few areas where learning more about a topic has caused me to update my own beliefs into views nuanced and unfashionable enough that I prefer not to disclose them in any setting where others might feel that I was attempting to persuade them to change their own.
One of these areas is the food supply chain. It’s fashionable to point out that things would be better if everyone cut out fossil fuels, or ate organic and local, or whatever, and stop there instead of following the suggestion to its conclusions and side effects. Actually, the carrying capacity of the planet is contingent on modern agriculture, including a lot of genetically modified plants and synthetic fertilizers. “Better” methods, as we currently know them, would feed fewer people from the same amount of land. Nobody seems to like explaining what they think should happen to the couple billion extra people who exist in our current world and wouldn’t in their ideal one.
Another area is modern medicine. All I’ll say about this is that the implied isomorphism between what we “can” do and what we “should” do does not stand up to much scrutiny. Look up the percentage of medical professionals who have do-not-resuscitate orders, compared to the general population, and have a think about what that might imply.