
Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions - waqasaday
https://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion
======
Udik
I wonder if the study is able to make a distinction between solution aversion
and what could be called "proponent aversion". That is, it is normal to be
skeptical of a statement when it comes from somebody we don't trust. And our
level of trust can be dependent from another statement coming (or perceived to
be coming) from the same source. In this case, the proposed solution to the
problem.

I've concocted an example:

Statement: The rate of suicides among teenagers in the US has been growing
steadily in the last two decades, to the point of constituting now a real
public health emergency.

Solution 1: Naturopathic nutrition, holistic and homeopathic medicine are
fundamental to ensure the well being of the young generations - courses in
these subjects should be part of the standard curriculum starting from primary
schools.

Solution 2: Standard psychological welfare assessment tests that can help
detecting early signs of depression should be conducted at regular time
intervals in schools starting from sixth grade, and counselling should be
provided to those who display early symptoms of depression.

Now, I've no clue of whether the statement is true (I made it up). But I'll
dismiss it readily as BS if it's followed by proposed solution 1. I'll take
mental note if it's followed by proposed solution 2. I simply don't trust any
statement coming from proponents of snake oil.

~~~
pekk
I wonder if we can make that distinction either.

It would be solution aversion if you denied that the rate of suicides has been
growing because you perceive that the main use of citing an increasing suicide
rate is to push homeopathic education.

If your aversion to certain proponents relates back to what it is they are
proposing, it is not really an aversion to those proponents but to their
proposals.

Maybe proponent aversion would be if you denied that the rate of suicides has
been growing because Obama (or black people, "liberals" etc.) had made that
claim, independent of the qualities of proposed solutions.

If someone's statements can't be trusted to be true, that doesn't rationally
mean their statements are evidence of their contradictions. Even if you don't
trust anything Obama says, that shouldn't normally mean that "Obama says that
P" is evidence of not-P.

~~~
lotharbot
> _" Proponent aversion would be if you denied that the rate of suicides has
> been growing because Obama ... had made that claim"_

Another example might be gun/crime statistics from the NRA vs gun/crime
statistics from gun-control advocates.

There's the inherent suspicion that the statistics had been twisted to fit an
agenda, because you've caught that proponent or someone from the same
ideological group doing it before, and that therefore the statistics
themselves are untrustworthy.

I apply a mental correction factor when dealing with a group I think lies for
agenda purposes -- I figure they're spinning things maximally in their favor,
so what they claim forms one end of my error bars. Sometimes my expectations
regarding the size of the error bars in that field lead me to believe that
it's likely the data is actually centered all the way on the other side. In
that sense, their statements can imply their own contradiction in some
circumstances.

~~~
hga
Here, though, most of the raw data comes from the FBI/DOJ, so pretty much
everyone accepts it (even if some number of homicides are scored as
"accidents", as happened in my home town) and can easily go back to it; the
same is not true for many many other domains like the climate.

But the statistics are indeed critical, or must be viewed critically. E.g. the
Kellerman study that said "N times more likely to be killed with a gun in the
house!!! than use it to kill an intruder" is utterly bogus from the start,
because gun owners don't score kills as the only type of successful self-
defense uses.

That sort of critical thought, though, isn't particularly fashionable....

~~~
lotharbot
even the raw data is subject to questions, two of which you point out: (1) is
everything being categorized correctly, and (2) are we counting the right
thing?

------
_yosefk
It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more
than a single political party. I think we all do that.

(Go programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by generics as
real, C++ programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by
garbage collection and boundary checking as real, Python programmers are less
likely to acknowledge problems solved by static typing as real, same for
Haskell programmers & lazy evaluation, etc. This is "political" in the sense,
for instance, that a more popular language is tremendously more useful, so you
want a language you've invested into to be popular even if it fails badly at
solving a real problem; there are real benefits to denying it being a real
problem if others believe it isn't real and that belief makes the language
more popular.)

~~~
asgard1024
> It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more
> than a single political party. I think we all do that.

I disagree, the two examples (climate change and gun control) aren't that
different. Both are issues of personal freedom.

I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal
anarchists (people like Chomsky), who I feel very close political sympathies
to. I am (obviously) not aware of these blind spots.

I am not sure I entirely buy the idea of "everybody has blindspots" (EHB). It
seems to me that liberal democracy, the idea that everybody is entitled to
their moral opinion and should have the same influence over what we consider
moral, is pretty much an attempt to get rid of any blindspots. The argument
EHB is akin to saying "atheists are also believers".

~~~
panic
Do you think something like the iPhone could have been produced under a
collectivist economic regime?

~~~
asgard1024
Generally, yes!

But it really depends on what you mean by "collectivist". Could iPhone be
produced by IBM, a huge corporation with top-down command and control? It's
about as likely, I would say.

I work at medium American corporation and it's not really that different from
what was called "socialist" enterprise here in Czech Republic. It is certainly
more efficient, but sometimes pathologically - good ideas get killed all the
time. And there is not really that much less stupidity to go around.

And socialism here (I take it from your question that's what you imagine as
"collectivist") certainly wasn't ideal system for liberal left, who would
probably prefer some form of worker cooperatives or something like that.

Perhaps I should emphasize what I mean by "collectivist" in my previous
comment. I actually refer to empathy (or less selfishness) rather than form of
ownership. What I mean is understanding that other side can have a different
opinion and willingness to compromise (e.g. your personal freedom) with the
needs/feelings of others. It doesn't mean you have to entirely ditch the free
market, for instance.

~~~
bobcostas55
I think the parent meant it in a more general sense. Apple doesn't single-
handedly produce the iPhone, it takes the coordination of millions of people,
most of whom have no contact with Apple whatsoever: those who design oil
drilling equipment, those who build it, those who use oil drilling equipment,
those who then extract the oil, transport it, refine it, transport it, turn it
into plastic bits for the iphone, transport them, put everything together,
transport it. And there's a chain like that for every thing in the phone (for
some items, such as CPUs the chain is far more complex). There is no top-down
command and control, and I doubt it's possible. The only reason coordination
on such a massive scale works is because of the price mechanism.

~~~
nn3
The Soviet Union built some fairly complex machines too, for example buran the
Russian space shuttle, nuclear power plants, large airplanes, submarines etc.
I don't think these are significantly less complex than an iPhone. Likely
more. Now you could argue they did it less frequently or less efficient and
not really benefitting the average consumer in many cases. And that would be
true. But there is no denying that a top down economy did those things.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Soviet Union routinely failed to sell its nuclear plants, airliners and less
complex stuff.

Soviet Union was able to produce something that worked, but it was all below
price-quality curve. I.e. you could buy same quality product from Western
corporations for less money; or you could buy better quality product for same
money. Western corporations also had better selection.

So only buyers were in communist bloc, and what USSR end up exporting is oil
and gas.

And that'll happen nine times out of ten, since socialist economies are not
optimal.

~~~
danharaj
I don't know why we're calling the USSR socialist; is it because they said
they were socialist? There are plenty of dictatorial regimes that call
themselves democratic republics, too. The USSR was structured like one massive
corporation: Everything was owned by the government and the government
bureaucracy functioned much like a corporate bureaucracy.

Libertarian socialists sometimes call states like the USSR state capitalist,
because economic activity is still dictated by a top-down hierarchy allocating
capital and exploiting workers.

Optimal is not the word you want to use, by the way. Not even free markets are
optimal, that's why economists talk about 'market failures'.

~~~
guard-of-terra
The USSR was not structured like one massive corporation. Corporation tends to
seek profit; while USSR sought survival. Was bad at it, too: built millions of
tanks and other military hardware that rusted without any battle, lost the
cold war and tanked.

~~~
danharaj
You're talking about purpose, not structure. I'll agree, the USSR's purpose
was not profit, because profit does not make sense if you're trying to own
everything. The USSR's goals were growth and, as a logical consequence of
growth, not shrinking, i.e. survival. It failed, yes. The larger a hierarchy
and its concentration of resources, leadership, and power at the pinnacle, the
worse it performs. This occurs with corporations in a capitalist system as
well, but since it is not a defining feature of such corporations that they
must own everything, their existence is more flexible. They can merge, split,
be acquired, get sold off, get refinanced, etc. In this way, the capitalists
(viz. people who make their living off of property ownership) can preserve
their ownership even if their power structures fail.

So the key difference between the USSR and the Liberal states in opposition to
it is the notion of property. Under the USSR, all property is state property
and under the Liberal states, property is the bourgeois notion of property.

------
nostrademons
I've got somewhat unorthodox views on global warming that might make for a
good test of this:

I fully accept that global warming is real, human-caused, and a major problem
in the coming century. However, I don't believe we should limit carbon
emissions. Instead, we should earmark all the money that would've gone into
reducing carbon emissions (a carbon tax could be useful for this) into
developing comprehensive evacuation plans for every major city, as well as a
fund for rebuilding. As the effects of global warming hit (which will more
likely be in the form of severe weather events than a global rise in sea
levels), we migrate away from the hardest hit areas and rebuild in the areas
made more hospitable by climate change.

There are two advantages of this:

The first is that many climate scientists believe that it's already too late,
and a tipping point was reached around 2000 that's set in motion a
catastrophic climate shift that we can't reverse now. Cutting carbon emissions
now is a bit like closing the barn door after the horses have left. It won't
actually fix our predicament, though it may slow it.

The second advantage is that this covers a number of contingencies _other_
than climate change. A freak hurricane sweeps up the Gulf Coast, headed for
Houston or New Orleans? No problem, all of the evacuation routes have been
mapped out, we've built enough roads that the population can get out (as an
additional plus, this helps rush-hour traffic), and the insurance companies
are ready to pay out to help the victims. Drought in California? Move to
Seattle or Portland and stop buying beef and almonds. It'd help if we let the
price of affected commodities (water, and the things it helps grow) float to
reflect their true scarcity rather than subsidize them.

The idea is to fix the problem closer to the symptoms rather than trying to
get to the source. Accept that the planet's climate _will_ change, and then
work to adapt to that with minimal dislocation rather than prevent it from
changing.

Thoughts? It's certainly not the party line, but it makes sense to me. And if
you're currently a climate-change denier, would _this_ proposed solution make
you reconsider the facts?

~~~
devinhelton
> Instead, we should earmark all the money that would've gone into reducing
> carbon emissions (a carbon tax could be useful for this) into developing
> comprehensive evacuation plans for every major city, as well as a fund for
> rebuilding.

What does earmarking money into a rebuilding fund mean? Hoarding U.S. dollars
in some account? There is no way to save in current U.S. dollars, ie green
pieces of paper, in order to help deal with civilization level catastrophes in
the future. You would have to save in terms of real goods. Saving in terms of
dollars simply would result in deflation in the near term as you hoard, and
inflation in the long-term when you dishoard in order to deal with the
catastrophe. When the catastrophe comes, there is no difference between the
government dishoarding dollars and the government printing dollars. The
government has a printing press, there is no difference between taking the
money (metaphorically) out of a hidden vault and between printing new dollars.

Now saving now in terms of hoarding real goods, or in building physical
infrastructure, could work. But it's hard to imagine what kind of real goods
would be useful in case of massive catastrophe. Most likely the wrong things
would be built or hoarded. We're just too far away from the problem, and the
government isn't good at making those kinds of calculations. Also, it may not
be that necessary. People underestimate how much more valuable flows are than
stocks. When cities have been destroyed by fire or bombing, they get rebuilt
remarkably quickly, as long as the human capital is still there.

~~~
asgard1024
I normally don't vote in threads I comment in, but in your case I just had to
upvote. Too many people don't understand that you cannot really "save" money.

But let's deliver the GP's idea a final blow: The thing you could potentially
save would be cheap energy, for example in the form of carbon-based fuels.
Which is incidentally what proponents of carbon-neutral energy sources are
advocating, by wanting to leave them in the ground.

~~~
nostrademons
I'd upvoted devinhelton's post as well, because it had been at zero when I saw
it and makes an important point.

But I do understand the idea, and I'll go one further. The purpose of "money"
is a form of claim check on the labor of other people, one that can be spent
according to the preferences of each individual. When I say "save up to fund
the inevitable devastation", I mean "it is probably more efficient to redirect
the labor of people into fixing the problem after it happens than it is to
invest it in changing production processes to speculatively prevent it from
happening." I propose one possibility for this in a sibling thread: a carbon
tax used to fund an insurance subsidy and additional federal disaster planning
and possible infrastructure improvements. The financial & insurance industry
can handle the administration; this is after all what the financial industry
is for, arranging for a store of these "claim checks" so that you still have a
claim on them in the future and yet they can be used for productive work in
the meantime.

The government's only role here is to rectify an externality. Carbon emissions
are causing harm to people not party to their production, so redistribute this
back into the economy at the point that's being harmed, and let the market do
the rest.

------
tikhonj
In the past I've felt that arguing "X is not a problem" is sometimes a proxy
for "we should not solve X" because it's taken as axiomatic that if X _is_ a
problem it _should_ be solved. (And the solution, of course, usually involves
compulsory rules enforced by the government or some administrative body.)

I wonder if it goes in the other direction too: people _exaggerate_ problems
and evidence if they like the proposed solution. Not even for personal gain,
but for emotional reasons. (So not somebody exaggerating the threat of
terrorism to consciously expand their power or sell detectors but
_unconsciously_ because of patriotism or a desire to get the terrorists.)

------
afarrell
I am curious if this is hurt by people denying[1] the pain a solution would
cause. A massive shift away from petrocarbon exploration would cause a great
deal of unemployment (and consequently suicide, domestic violence, etc) in
areas like Houston.

[1] [http://m.imgur.com/r/energy/up6yu](http://m.imgur.com/r/energy/up6yu)

~~~
a3n
And probably a great deal of employment in [location where alternatives are
produced].

Nothing deserves forever, and survival of civilization in the modern world
depends on adaptation, not holding fast.

~~~
a3n
> And probably a great deal of employment in [location where alternatives are
> produced].

Apparently that location is ... Texas.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/tex...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/texas_electricity_goes_negative_wind_power_was_so_plentiful_one_night_that.html)

"Second, Texas has way more wind power than any other state. In 2014, wind
accounted for 4.4 percent of electricity produced in the United States. Texas,
which has more installed wind capacity (15,635 megawatts) than any other state
and is home to nearly 10,000 turbines, got 9 percent of its electricity from
wind in 2014."

~~~
hga
Well, Texas is _big_. Big enough to run their own stable independent grid,
avoiding a lot of Federal craziness. And big enough to have plenty of good
places for turbines, without hardly as much NIMBY/BANANA as California, the
next biggest state.

------
asgard1024
I was almost sure that is going to be about climate change. It reminds me of:
[http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-
climate/](http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/)

Even though the article proposes something (green energy as opportunity for
capitalism), I think there is a huge problem with climate change for free
market proponents, and deeply inside they know it. I don't see how the issue,
which is "the fossil fuels have to stay in the ground", can be dealt with free
market only.

And I wish it had a solution, so we could get these people to cooperate and
acknowledge that there is a climate change problem (for which there is a lot
of scientific evidence).

~~~
Asbostos
I notice in a lot of writing about climate change that people tend to try to
convince the reader that it exists, both you and the article's authors
mentioned the lot of scientific evidence. It makes it sound like permanent
argument mode.

It also helps us forget that there's no reliable scientific evidence and
certainly no consensus about what, if any, harm climate change will do to us
and if it does, whether we'll have time to adapt. Somehow the debate seems to
be between "it's true and there's lots of evidence" and "it's not true and I
don't believe it" but in reality we really have no idea what it will do. Maybe
we don't actually have to leave all the oil in the ground afterall and a few
extra degrees turns out to be not much of a problem.

~~~
asgard1024
> whether we'll have time to adapt

I wish you were right. Unfortunately, the very same vocal people (for example
former Czech president Vaclav Klaus) who proclaimed that "adaptation is not a
problem" now cry a river when there is a couple thousands refugees at the
border from regions that are in war, probably due to drought, probably due to
global warming.

> Maybe we don't actually have to leave all the oil in the ground afterall and
> a few extra degrees turns out to be not much of a problem.

We can always burn it. I don't see how we lose anything by leaving it there.

------
JesperRavn
Another related fallacy I see all the time is dismissing a problem by
inventing a terrible solution.

E.g.

Climate change is real -> "So you are saying we should just shut down all
industry and go back to the dark ages"

The establishment of Israel was unethical -> "So you are saying we should just
push all the Jews currently living in Israel into the sea."

Even asking a question shows a fallacy, since it implies that the existence of
an adequate solution is related to the truth of the existence of the problem.
A very common example is

There might be innate differences in ability/interests between men and women
-> "If this was true, what would that imply? What is your end goal here"

------
refurb
This works both ways. You may be more likely to believe something is a problem
if you like the solution being offered.

------
atemerev
If "we don't like the solutions", this means that proposed measures are not
"solutions", as they do not solve the problem properly. It's better to keep
looking.

~~~
Nemcue
Sometimes a solution — or a variety of different solutions — still have a
significant pain point attached to them.

Just because of that, you can't derive with absolute certainty that there's "a
better solution". It might just be the nature of the problem has no solutions
that everyone "likes".

~~~
jedrek
With something like climate change, issue is that the pain point for the
problem is time deferred. An obvious comparison would be to lead in gasoline,
cookware and paint: The problems that it caused took many years to surface.
Getting rid of it was both expensive and required new solutions. Thankfully,
we got out ahead of that problem... I'm curious if in the current political
climate that would be possible.

------
known
This results in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_withdrawal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_withdrawal)

~~~
icebraining
I'm not seeing the connection...?

~~~
venning
My guess: As a problem that I feel threatened by becomes a greater target for
action by society, the solutions enacted by society feel like an unnecessary
imposition on me--since I don't believe the problem to be real--and the
(potentially) building consensus around that problem makes me feel as more of
an outsider. Not feeling like a part of a society's approach to that issue may
lead me to _withdraw_ from that society in a continued effort to deny the
existence of that problem, which is to say not being confronted with society's
narrative.

As my opinion on a problem diverges from society's, I fit less and less with
that society, prompting me to withdraw from it.

~~~
ionised
> As my opinion on a problem diverges from society's, I fit less and less with
> that society, prompting me to withdraw from it.

Huh. I'm finding myself experiencing this in a range of issues in recent
years.

------
ilaksh
I think its simpler than that. No one looks at scientific evidence or anything
else objectively. Everyone has pre-existing beliefs. And the nature of a
belief is that you don't change it easily and it overrides everything else.

So its not that people don't like science or don't know how to think
rationally. Everyone is just really good at rationalizing their pre-existing
worldview.

------
pernaflert
Problem denial can take the form of claiming there's nothing wrong at all. But
more common seems to be the attempt to jump straight to a 'solution', without
any trial and error thinking in between. Which is OFC impossible. Either way I
guess it takes a certain amount of imagination to perceive problems in the
first place.

------
ThomPete
Not sure the climate debate is a good example, given both sides mean there are
solutions they are just very different.

------
erikb
While it sounds very reasonable as far as I can read it's one study, three
experiments, less than a thousand data points total. Let's not jump to
conclusions here. Usually you need quite a few studies and a paper that
repeats and summarizes them before you can say you have a conclusion, right?

------
guard-of-terra
See famous "The Black Knight" scene from Monthy Python.

Question remains, what can we do about people in denial? Because many problems
won't solve themself.

~~~
tdyen
World Population comes to mind. Will it solve itself? It might but in
countries where it doesnt the consequences will be devestating and flow over
to other parts of the world for sure.

------
guscost
Time to spend some karma.

Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the
alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-
water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and
can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury"
paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty
much the same tactic.

The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as
p̶r̶o̶o̶f̶ evidence of any long-term trend we can expect to continue in a non-
linear system as complex as the global climate.

I guess these folks think I must be unhappy about the "necessary solution" (oh
hey, it turns out to be reorganizing society according to their political
beliefs!) but that amounts to an elaborate and silly ad hominem, nothing more.
I think I'll write more about the "psychology journal ad-hominem" because it
has become annoyingly common in recent years.

The science of climate is not settled, and will not be settled in your
lifetime. Get used to it.

[0][http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073/full)

~~~
brrt
No, you are wrong. You are clearly posting out of ignorance.

The earth climate system is not impossibly complex. The global temperature is
at it's core determined by an energy balance. Visible light from the sun
enters, infrared radiation leaves. Some of that infrared radiation is blocked,
then temperature has to rise before the balance is restored. Simple as that,
and completely uncontroversial, because proven by spectrum analysis of our
neighboring planets (and the moon).

Now I know that doesn't give you hard answers to questions policymakers want,
like 'will New Orleans flood from increased tropical storms? Will the Middle
East and India dry out?' We don't know _that_ , and yes, that sucks.

But we _do_ know the effect of increased amounts of greenhouse gases. (And,
for what it's worth, we do also know that carbon dioxide taxes work much
better than an emission trading system does, as proven by e.g. Norway vs.
European Union, and as proven by the fact that industry and fossil fuel
companies actually prefer it).

And the fact that the top comment on HN is about climate change denial rather
than the actual article is excellent proof of the study's truth.

~~~
emp_zealoth
Norway is hardly comparable to EU energy wise, mainly because they biggest
energy production is hydro, which in turn comes from unique geography.

Germany little experiment with solar is already causing massive issues,
ecology wise too. Factories are already saying fuck it, building their own
local generators, with worse exhaust and lower efficiency.

Keep adding more nonsense costs to industry in EU. And you know what? China
would pick up the slack, and they hardly give a shit about anything. Right
now,overdoing this locally actually increases net pollution. I guess we get to
feel good.

~~~
brrt
Norway is not comparable to mainland EU, I'm not claiming that. But Norway
does have an intensive oil and gas industry which emits copious amount of CO2.
Because of the CO2 tax, they have implemented the worlds first (and only)
commercial carbon-capture and storage (CCS) project
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleipner_gas_field#Carbon_capt...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleipner_gas_field#Carbon_capture_and_storage_project)).

As for China stealing European industry, that's happening already, and it's
really nothing a little protectionism can't help. Protectionism is bad, but so
is losing jobs, and worse is acting like you are powerless when really you
aren't.

~~~
emp_zealoth
We are not talking about protectionism, but not driving clean industry away
with nonsensical excesses in pseudoecology (closing down the nukes is one
example)

Also, Norway is just bad example, since they were literally rolling in cash.
And, if most of your energy comes from hydro, a little feelgood CCS wont drive
the price through the roof. Now, if you look at EU, it's mostly fossil fired
or nukes. Close the nukes and force CCS on the rest - insane power costs

And don't give me solar, Germany is finding how it is failing. (Because every
other day the energy prices go negative and wind/solar has right of way actual
power plants go bankrupt. This in no way means they are unneeded,just that the
law is broken)

