Quick Fixes and Fixations

“One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small,” sang Jefferson Airplane lead singer Grace Slick. Some might say that was just a version of the U.S. consumer’s penchant for quick fixes. 

On the other hand, "quick fixes" might not be our biggest intellectual mistake. That probably ought to be reserved for the idea that one particular problem is so pressing that solving it takes precedence over solving all the other problems we need to confront. 

"Climate change" is a good candidate for that sort of thinking. "Existential threat" is a  term we heard thrown about casually. But there is an argument to be made that the danger is, in fact, not existential. It's a big problem, but we have all sorts of other big problems. 

Poverty, hunger, shelter, sanitation, healthcare, safety, war, invasions, persecution, genocide and so forth. 

We might argue weight-loss drugs are simply the latest example of the search for a quick fix that produces an outcome which otherwise might involve some work: no lifestyle changes and no exercise, just pop the pill. 

That is not to argue against using the quick fix or shortcuts. Some health issues are more important than others. 

And all of life involves tradeoffs, choices and risk. One of my friends suffered permanent nerve damage from the Covid vaccine, causing neuropathy, which is rare, but not unknown. 

Beyond side effects, medical decisions about using weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, Mounjaro, Zepbound, Rybelsus, Trulicity, Wegovy or Saxenda are a tradeoff. Which issues are more critical, excessive weight or the possibility of side effects that could come from taking the drug?

As always, one has to balance risks. 

The percentage of U.S. adults on GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, for example, could reach nine percent to 16 percent by about 2030, according to some estimates. 

Some studies indicate that more than half of U.S. adults could be eligible, assuming they face risks from diabetes, obesity, or cardiovascular disease. Without question, consumer demand is fairly high. 

One study suggests 12 percent of U.S. adults have taken GLP-1 drugs. 

As with all “problems,” personal or public, there always are tradeoffs and opportunity costs (what else might you have done had you not invested this time, effort, money?). 

I find this is forgotten whenever advocates for solving any particular problem, no matter how big the problem might be, make a case for expending resources to solve that particular problem. 

And the issue is often not “is this a problem?” or “should we try to solve it?” or “is this the best way to solve the problem?” but rather, “how do we work on this problem at the same time we continue to work on all the other problems we identify?” 

In other words, we cannot devote “all” our resources to climate change mitigation without forfeiting work on hunger, homelessness, disease, war, loneliness, mental and physical health, social inclusion or poverty, for example. 

On the Use and Misuse of Principles, Theorems and Concepts

When financial commentators compile lists of "potential black swans," they misunderstand the concept. As explained by Taleb Nasim, a “black swan event” is an extremely rare, unpredictable occurrence that has a massive, widespread impact and is often rationalized as being preventable only in hindsight. 

The theory was popularized by author, statistician, and former Wall Street trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book, The Black Swan.

The key concept is “unpredictable.” But in cautioning about potential black swan events, commentators are essentially saying "here are the things we can't anticipate that we're now anticipating."

A true black swan isn't just unlikely. It is outside our prevailing model of reality. 

This suggests the concept has been domesticated into meaning merely "really bad thing we hope won't happen." 

And yet this “domestication” of ideas, theories or principles happens all the time. By definition, we can’t "warn" about black swans because they are, by definition, unforeseeable. 

But the watering down or domestication of any principle, theorem or idea seems to be irresistible. 

Original Concept	Original Meaning	How It Gets Misapplied
Occam's Razor	Among competing hypotheses with equal explanatory power, prefer the one with fewer assumptions	Used to dismiss complex explanations simply because they're complex, or to justify intellectual laziness ("the simplest answer is usually right")
Gaslighting	A systematic psychological manipulation tactic to make someone doubt their own sanity and perception of reality	Now applied to any disagreement, misremembering, or different perspective ("You're gaslighting me by saying that didn't happen!")
Kafka-esque	The nightmarish absurdity of faceless bureaucracy stripping individuals of agency and meaning	Used to describe any mildly frustrating paperwork or administrative delay
Orwellian	Totalitarian manipulation of language and reality to control thought itself	Applied to any government action someone dislikes, any surveillance, or even just opposing political views
Strawman Fallacy	Misrepresenting someone's actual argument to make it easier to attack	Now weaponized to shut down any paraphrasing or summary ("That's a strawman!") even when it accurately captures the position
Cognitive Dissonance	The psychological discomfort of holding contradictory beliefs simultaneously, which motivates attitude change	Used as a gotcha accusation meaning "you're being hypocritical" without the internal discomfort component
Dunning-Kruger Effect	The least competent people lack the metacognitive ability to recognize their incompetence	Simplified to "stupid people think they're smart" and used as a general- purpose insult, often by people demonstrating the effect themselves
Narcissism/Narcissistic Personality Disorder	A specific clinical personality disorder involving grandiosity, lack of empathy, and fragile self- esteem	Applied casually to anyone who seems selfish, takes selfies, or displays confidence
Correlation vs. Causation	Statistical correlation between variables doesn't prove one causes the other	Used reflexively to dismiss any suggested causal relationship, even well-supported ones, as if correlation can never suggest causation
Schrödinger's Cat	A thought experiment about quantum superposition and measurement problems in quantum mechanics	Misused to mean "we don't know the answer until we check" about any unknown situation
The Butterfly Effect	Sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaotic systems	Watered down to "everything affects everything" or used to justify magical thinking about tiny actions having massive predetermined effects
Stockholm Syndrome	Psychological response where hostages develop positive feelings toward captors as a survival mechanism	Applied to any situation where someone defends an institution or person that others think is harming them
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle	Fundamental quantum limitation on simultaneously measuring position and momentum	Misapplied to mean "observing something changes it" in any context, or that all knowledge is inherently uncertain
Gaslighting (worth repeating)	Deliberate, systematic psychological abuse to make victims question reality	Reduced to mean "lying," "disagreeing," or "remembering differently"
Devil's Advocate	Formally arguing against a position to test its strength, even if you agree with it	Now means "let me say something offensive without consequences" or "I'm about to be contrarian for attention"
Virtue Signaling	Publicly expressing opinions to demonstrate moral superiority without genuine commitment	Extended to dismiss any public expression of values, making authentic moral discourse impossible
Paradigm Shift (Kuhn)	Fundamental transformation in scientific worldview that makes old and new frameworks incommensurable	Applied to any minor change in approach or trending topic ("a paradigm shift in coffee brewing")
Thought Experiment	Rigorous hypothetical scenarios designed to isolate variables and test philosophical principles	Used for any random "what if" speculation without intellectual rigor
Echo Chamber	Self-reinforcing information environments that completely exclude contrary views	Applied to any community of people who largely agree, even ones that regularly engage with outside perspectives
Moving the Goalposts	Changing standards of evidence after they've been met to avoid conceding a point	Invoked whenever someone refines or adds nuance to an argument during discussion

Yes, Follow the Data. Even if it Does Not Fit Your Agenda

When people argue we need to “follow the science” that should be true in all cases, not only in cases where the data fits one’s political preferences. 

So we have heard that the Great Barrier Reef has suffered from bleaching and other issues attributed to global warming. 

But In 2022, the Australian Institute of Marine Science reported the highest levels of coral cover across two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef in over 36 years. If you don’t hear much about that, the issue is “why?” 

We also hear that rising sea levels will drown Pacific nations which are on islands. But an analysis of shoreline change in all 101 islands in the Pacific atoll nation of Tuvalu show a increase in land area in Tuvalu of 2.9 percent, despite sea-level rise, and land area increase in eight of nine atolls.

Rising sea levels remain an issue, but the point is that adaptation is happening. As with the Netherlands historically, seawalls and reclamation have a definite effect. Islands are not static landforms, in other words. 

The larger point is that we have to follow the real data. And sometimes the models are exaggerated. That is not to deny there are issues, simply to note that exaggeration does not help. 

The leading science journal Nature, for example, just retracted a paper that claimed “climate change”  will reduce global economic output by 62 percent by the end of the century. 

But when skeptical  researchers checked the math, they found the underlying data indicated a 23 percent loss, not 62 percent. And a six percent loss by 2050, not 19 percent. There is still an issue, but it might not be “existential,” the term people loosely throw around. 

Many people use the term “climate change,” but it is a term I tend not to use, as it is meaningless. Earth’s climate has always changed. 

The more-precise concepts would be the direction of change and the degree of human-caused change, taking into account mitigation steps that might actually help in some meaningful way without also harming our efforts to keep humans out of poverty, hunger and threat of disease, for example. 

In other words, if you argue we must reach “net zero” emissions, for example, many of us have to weigh that against the other human costs, which might well include lower living standards, poverty, hunger or lack of economic development, everywhere, but especially across the Global South.

None of this is to deny a problem exists. But anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a much smaller factor at the local and regional scale than natural climate variability, says Ted Nordhaus, director of research at The Breakthrough Institute. 

“Even in the case where climate sensitivity proves to be relatively high, additional anthropogenic warming is an order of magnitude less than the oscillations of natural variability,” he says. 

So follow the data. Always. Consistently. Even if it does not fit one’s agenda.