Up a Tree
The following story is about a man who’s been living in trees. But it’s really about something more psychological, that has a grave impact on philosophical and theological discussions. Can you figure out what it is, before the reveal?
Above is a video of environmental activist Josh Eng climbing into his home in the treetops. When I first heard this story last month, he’d been up in the trees with his friends for nearly 10 weeks.
He and his friends are living in these trees in order to stall or prevent logging projects on a small grove recently purchased by a private logging company.
But there’s a twist.
The manner in which this logging would take place is by a strategy called “variable retention.” Variable retention projects are designed by forestry ecologists to harvest selectively, in order to simulate natural events like wildfires — which we stop every year in Oregon, but which have the beneficial consequence of promoting diverse and vibrant forest ecosystems. This project in specific was designed by university professors with “long track record[s] in conservation.”
Variable retention is annoying for logging companies. It’s “more laborious, tedious, time-consuming, and expensive than clear-cutting.” But it’s a workable solution in places where harvesting and conservation often butt heads.
When asked about the fact that this environmentally-friendly strategy would be employed at the new purchase, Eng replied, “It would be a real heartbreaking thing to see it go the way of a variable retention harvest,” his words soaked with derision.
When I heard this story, I had a disheartening realization: This man and his friends have been living up in the treetops, cold and bored, for over 2 months. It doesn’t matter if variable retention is ecologically friendly, but let’s assume it is. How could they possibly admit that their cause was needless?
They can’t.
This story powerfully illustrates how loss-aversion — where “having been mistaken all along” is an extraordinarily potent sort of loss — can build not just a sandbag, but a bastion against competing argumentation.
The further up the tree you go, and the more effort you expend, the worse the “friction” becomes. By “friction” I mean “memetic friction” — the tendency to get rooted to local maxima (“decent-looking ideas that may not be the best ideas”) because you don’t have enough mutative power to leave.
You know the saying. “A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.” You also know the refrain that begins so many of our contemplations: “I’d sure be an idiot if…”
That psychological quirk of loss-aversion — life-and-death useful long ago when catching birds was a matter of survival — affects even the learned, intelligent, and confident in the worlds of philosophy and theology.
–
The original story from OPB Radio, by Amelia Templeton and Tony Schick. This post uses their images and video.
Wikipedia: “Variable Retention.“
Popular Posts
Latest: stan rock
A Stupid Electoral System for Goofs
(Or, “How to Keep a Republic.”)
Potentially Bad Philosophy
Quietude might be described as as figuring out under what odd conditions it might be good to question some of our most trustworthy guides in philosophy and theology. This is dangerous stuff, because we depend on those guides. We rely on their investment of (life)time, their investment of contentious discourse, and we take advantage of […]
All Metaethics in Brief
The time has now come to make a “clip show” post on metaethics. Brazenly I assert that all metaethics can be captured in brief.
The Ontological Argument’s Trojan Horse
The Ontological Argument for God has always been controversial. Some believers think it works. Other believers say it does not. I am in the latter group. It’s good to explore when and if arguments for God are dysfunctional. I am indeed asserting that the Ontological Argument does not work. It’s tricky, though, because OA’s power is in […]
Please Stop Saying Free Will Contradicts Universal Reconciliation
There’s a meme that universal reconciliation (wherein the Gehenna of Judgment doesn’t last forever) doesn’t work with free will (or agency, or dignity, or cooperation, or what have you). We’ve discussed this before on this blog, but that material had some distractions that I hope we can avoid this time around. The point this time […]
But He is Also Just: The Simplicity & Complexity of Biblical Justice
The Bible talks about justice a lot. In the abstract, Biblical justice is really straightforward. But the manner in which Biblical justice plays out is complicated. That’s because justice…
Determinism Doesn’t Mean a Micromanaging God
“Durdle Dwarves” is a simulation where little “Dwarf” pixels dig-through and build rock-like structures. They do this according to a set of 20 rules. A rule tests a Dwarf’s vicinity and provides a response. (For example, if a Dwarf notices a drop-off to his left, he’ll build a new piece of “bridge”; that’s 1 rule […]
A Musical Guide to How Morality Works
Until confronted with moral dilemmas, right decisionmaking — after we untangle our interests — seems pretty straightforward. Like this guy. One happy fellow, playing his guitar: And when we’re no longer “in dilemma,” we can forget about the complexity of morality, and revert to this “straightforward” / “common sense” / “plain to see” / “easy” falsity. But […]
Schrödinger’s Cup: A Closed Future of Possibilities
Adequate determinism (or determinism for short) is the idea that on the level of human decisionmaking, history flows into the future in a deterministic way — there aren’t really multiple futures, but we talk and imagine as if there are. Because we talk and imagine as if there are really multiple futures, confronting an assertion […]
What Did Jesus Do to the Law?
We are no longer under the guardianship of the Law, but rather are made-right with God by faith, through love, working (Galatians 3:24-25): “So the Law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.” Some people, however, […]
stan rock 
Recent Comments