gilesgoat wrote:Is it the same "psychology" of "the frogs in the pot of hot water ?" ..
What is that story about frogs in a pot of water someone raising up the temp 1C at the time, the frogs thinking "it's only 1C is NOTHING" .. until it gets 100C more and all the frogs are boiled alive ?
Yes, it very much is boiling frogs.
And human psychology does seem to suffer from that "boiling frogs" problem.
"See climate change for more details", I guess.
If the weather and the environment turned to shit overnight, then people would freak out and immediately do something about it. But because it's a "death by a thousand cuts" kind of thing, where it gradually gets worse over time, and climate scientists are talking about long-term effects - by 2050, by 2100 and other distant dates (and I'll surely be dead by 2100) - then it never quite hits home to make people do much of anything.
And, as you say, gradual price rises - 1% here, 2% there - go unnoticed. But it soon adds up.
Like, if the annual growth rate is 7% - which doesn't sound like much, does it? - then the doubling time is 10 years. Or, scaling that down, 7% a month is only 10 months from doubling.
Humans, unfortunately, just don't naturally think in these non-linear terms. Our emotions and instincts don't react to things that take, like, years and years to happen.
I've not seen it yet, but there's a satirical comedy film "Don't Look Up" on NetFlix, which basically mocks the shit out of this sort of thing:
6 months until the frog boils. But no-one gives a shit.
And, fair play, they actually have the balls to do it: The comet hits Earth and everyone dies. Nothing comes to save us.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
