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Some Reasons why People Suck

2024-06-14 · letter vlog · Hank · 9:04 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Science & nature, Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: civic or action cta, self promotion

Hank argues that cutting beef is harder than making clean energy cheap because changing behavior needs social or cultural technologies; culture is malleable but changes passively, and he embraces beef days as a cultural technology that adds ritual, while mentioning post-chemo brain fog and announcing John's Partners In Health livestream.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — EcoGeek since 2005: falling US CO2 emissions and cheap clean tech versus the no-tech option of not eating beef

  • ★ Hank says that when he started his EcoGeek blog in 2005 he would have guessed US CO2 emissions would never start falling. (playful) — 00:00:00 · EcoGeek, United States
  • ★★ Hank says US CO2 emissions started to go down in 2005, the very year he started his EcoGeek blog. — 00:00:00 · United States, EcoGeek
  • ★★ Hank says progress in environmental technologies has been remarkable: the graphs of the falling cost of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries are mind-blowing. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says the enormous engineering work behind it has been mind-blowing and very good news, and there is every signal that the costs of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries will keep going lower. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says not using cows for meat needs no new technology, just one different choice, and if everyone did it, future warming would fall by 10%. — 00:00:29 · climate change

00:01:09 — Why choices are hard: social technologies (church, marriage, Christmas, borders), cultural norms and malleable culture

  • ★★★ Hank says stopping beef seems obviously easier than making solar panels far cheaper, but that is wrong: if it were easier it would have happened; it is harder because we lack the technology. — 00:01:09
  • ★ Hank implies solar panels are now made for 400 times less money. — 00:01:09
  • ★★★ Hank says making different choices is really hard, especially with sacrifice, and when we do it we use social technologies, not technologies in the usual sense. — 00:01:38 · social construction
  • ★★★ Hank says social technologies hold society together: church, marriage, fashion, Christmas, soccer, the idea of a border and the word vegan are human-created things that change behavior. — 00:01:38 · social construction, Christmas
  • ★★ Hank says these don't feel like technologies because we don't feel we create them; often we don't, but somebody did. — 00:02:18 · social construction
  • ★ Hank says hockey seemed fixed to him, but as a fan he has watched changes in it change the game, and people were mad about every one. — 00:02:47
  • ★★ Hank says changing our behavior and social technologies is so hard: we think we are individuals, but we are possessed by our societies. — 00:02:47 · social construction
  • ★★★ Hank says he still eats meat less because he likes it than because he is too aligned to cultural norms: deviating from what his culture calls normal is too unpleasant. — 00:02:47
  • ★★ Hank has never heard anyone else say this, but thinks it would be most people's answer if they looked harder. (speculative) — 00:03:27
  • ★★ Hank thinks many vegans and vegetarians would say the hard part of their diet is not the diet but other people's responses to it. — 00:03:27
  • ★★ Hank says there are many reasons to align with our culture's norms: blowing it all up and starting from scratch would be unpleasant, many would fall through the cracks, and it would be net negative. — 00:03:27
  • ★★★ Hank says many people don't see culture as malleable and think the way they have known is the only right way, but culture does change, usually passively along paths of least resistance. — 00:03:57

00:04:26 — Livestock land, better choices over sacrifice, beef days and sacred days as a cultural technology, cringe and the attention economy

  • ★★ Hank says land devoted to livestock is about 40% of Earth's habitable land, most of it for cows: a real number. — 00:04:26 · Earth
  • ★★ Hank is torn: freeing livestock land for uses like biodiversity seems so beneficial we must do it, yet each acre belongs to someone whose way of life they love and live by. — 00:04:26
  • ★★★ Hank says culture mostly changes when people get a better choice rather than being asked to give up something they enjoy: getting people into an electric car is easier than onto a bus. — 00:04:55

  • ★★★ Hank defines a cultural technology as something that makes a harder choice easier, making uphill feel downhill. — 00:04:55 · social construction

    “A cultural technology exists to make a thing that is a harder choice easier.”

  • ★★★ Hank says four beef days a year appeal to him not because they take something away but because they give him something new he feels he is missing. — 00:04:55 · Beef day

  • ★★ Hank says he wants a time to put on a nice shirt and sit down with his family, craves ritual, and wants to tell his son it is a day to think how well we are provided for. — 00:05:24 · Beef day
  • ★★★ Hank says sacred days are an important cultural technology that we have not found ways to rebuild in secular traditions. — 00:05:24 · social construction
  • ★★ Hank says a cultural technology won't work if it seems super cringe, everything sounds cringe now, so cringe must be overcome: loving Taylor Swift is a bit cringe, yet people still do it. (playful) — 00:05:53
  • ★★★ Hank says without cultural technologies we just fall down paths of least resistance, letting whatever app best retains our attention control our hours, days and minds. — 00:05:53 · attention economy
  • ★★ Hank first meant the video to lament that improving solar is easier than getting one simple decision, but now sees that as the most human thing, like making a vaccine versus getting everyone to take it. — 00:06:23 · vaccine

00:06:52 — The most human thing; Hank's post-chemo brain fog; why he wants beef days

  • ★★ Hank says we are a particular mess now because a revolution in how we communicate and create the world together has flipped the whole table. — 00:06:52
  • ★★★ Hank says he is coming out of a few weeks of brain fog, fatigue and discomfort, maybe post-chemo, maybe normal depression; in survivorship you don't know what your body is telling you. (hedged) — 00:07:24 · chemotherapy
  • ★★★ Feeling more capable now, Hank says beef days are exactly what he wants: to eat something he can't always eat and wear an outfit he might not otherwise wear. — 00:07:46 · Beef day
  • ★★★ Hank wants to think about the billions before him who built an imperfect but better world, all of whom made mistakes, laughed and grieved, and that things only got better when people believed they could. — 00:07:46

00:08:15 — Thanks for beef day suggestions; John's Partners In Health livestream tomorrow

  • ★★ Hank thanks viewers thinking through beef days, including those calculating their potential impact on the subreddit and those suggesting days and people and things to honor. — 00:08:15 · Beef day, Reddit
  • ★★ Hank is keeping a spreadsheet of beef day suggestions and may make a proposal next week (week of 17 June 2024), perhaps in the We're Here newsletter, a podcast or a video. (hedged) — 00:08:15 · Beef day
  • ★★★ Hank announces John's two-hour livestream on the channel on Saturday, June 15, at noon Eastern: a look at how Partners In Health works and honoring and matching a longtime nerdfighter's bequest. — 00:08:45 · John Green, Partners In Health, Nerdfighteria, YouTube

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Hank is frustrated that we are good at forgiving friends, bad at forgiving strangers and worst at forgiving humanity, partly because modern society points a firehose of despair at our faces. — video description
  • ★★ The description asks viewers to subscribe to the newsletter, where Hank wrote this week (week of 10 June 2024) about the problems of having too much information. — video description
  • ★ The description says the video was cut down significantly from its original length; in a comment Hank adds that the unedited version had a screamed, cruder version of the firehose-of-despair line. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Beef · Beef day · culture · social construction · social norm

Also: People: Taylor Swift

Projects: EcoGeek · We're Here newsletter

Organizations: Partners In Health · Reddit · YouTube

Concepts: association football · attention economy · Biodiversity · border · carbon dioxide · Cattle · chemotherapy · climate change · depression · Electric car · Environmental impact of meat production · greenhouse gas · ice hockey · Marriage · religion · solar power · tradition · vaccine · Veganism · Vegetarianism · wind power

Places: Earth · United States

Events: Christmas

Also centred on Beef: BEEF DAYS

Also centred on Beef day: BEEF DAYS

Also centred on culture: Happy Graduation, Future Dead People · On Hating Christmas

Also centred on social norm: Dec. 6th: Peer Pressure and the Green Green Manifesto · How to Tip Properly · Why Are Vegetarians Annoying? (An Exploration of a Cultural Rift) · The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Thoughts from Amsterdam · BEEF DAYS

← Previous: BEEF DAYS · Next → The Tea