WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS FROM COVID, THE INTERNET, AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.   1-25

Human beings have been dealing with several major challenges over the last fifteen years, and our reactions to these, are shaping our society and our future.  The COVID epidemic showed us that illnesses can be worldwide, that dealing with pandemics takes worldwide planning and cooperation, and that the efforts by governments to minimize resulting deaths challenged the patience of many, some of whom think they would have preferred to have more freedom to get sick.  The internet has become indispensable to many societies, changing our relationships with others as well as making the most developed nations more vulnerable to chaos caused not by bombs or viruses but simply by hackers and electricity interruptions.  Loneliness has become a major social problem with the rise of screens for entertainment and not-in-person contacts.  Climate change has come to be widely accepted, and human contributions have been acknowledged (though the proportion of human contributions is still questioned).  Experiential evidence of climate change has begun to be noticed in more erratic, extreme, and less predictable weather.  What have we learned about ourselves through these experiences?

Many of us are quite willing to take chances with our own lives and the lives of loved ones in an epidemic, in preference to being quarantined and idled.

Most governments have sought to minimize deaths from illnesses even at considerable costs to citizens (confinement, lost wages), rather than “allow nature to take its course,” even though total deaths from both approaches seemed to end up being a very small percentage of population (roughly half a percent in the U.S.) which was virtually the same in some countries that required much less isolation of citizens.  Public health authorities may not have much authority the next time around.

Public health authorities are willing to present data to the public without explaining its incompleteness, and without qualifying their recommendations on the basis of scientific uncertainty, which has led to considerable mistrust on the part of the public.

Humans are loathe to spend money on disaster preparedness (like having enough hospital beds, etc. to take care of the highest caseload numbers in an epidemic (so that quarantining everyone would not be necessary in order for hospitals not to be overwhelmed); build all houses to withstand hurricane force winds; burn enough brush to greatly reduce forest fires; fine homeowners who do not have sufficient cleared areas around their houses; have enough firemen available to respond adequately to once-a-century fires).  We will be insufficiently prepared for the next disasters, just as we were for the 2024-2025 Los Angeles fires.

Humans are loathe to give up current economic status and comfort in order to minimize the impact of predictable future crises on their descendants (recycling; reducing greenhouse gases, etc.).  We seem, on the whole, to prefer to respond when a crisis occurs even if we could have prevented it by our preceding actions, and we expect future generations to cope with their own problems. 

We seem fine with using up more and more of the world’s resources for ourselves which will eventually leave future humans with severe power (and possibly food as well) shortages.

Many human beings do not see themselves as having value to others, so they are quite willing to pretend to be other than they really are if others cannot readily find out the truth about them (viz., presenting ourselves and our lives as being better than they really are, on the internet, in job applications, and on first dates,).

For most people, human empathy is quite limited to those with whom the person has daily interaction.  We seem unable to care very much about the travails of those outside our small circle.  Evolutionists think that we are only adapted to include in our in-group more than two hundred or three hundred people, without some cognitive adjustments that enable us to imagine those outside our group to be just like those inside our group.

Most humans put their own feelings above actual harm to others, as when, to avoid shame and guilt, we lie and disadvantage others rather than admitting the truth about our actions.

Humans are loathe to admit responsibility for their actions.  This probably originates in our terrified efforts to avoid punishments as children for our “bad” behavior, but it extends into adulthood (viz., our strong inclination to blame others, to lie to avoid being “caught,” and our routine expectation in court to plead not guilty even when we know that we are guilty).

The actual commitment of many citizens to democracy is shaky, as illustrated by their wish to have a strongman as President and their support for rough justice (no due process) and for not letting others have the free speech to publicly differ from their own beliefs.

Things that we could support to counter some of the maladaptations above include—

• bring citizenship classes back to high schools, explaining how our democracy works and the history of authoritarian vs. democratic governments, and telling students how to cope with the system before they have to do so
• give all citizens a better sense of history (including the expectable results for citizens of different types of government) so that as voters they will be able to choose wisely
• figure out a way to clarify and promote basic human values, instead of expecting children to absorb these by osmosis (do not steal, do not kill, tell the truth) since churches are the only institutions that we have relied on to do this work, and they are declining in influence
• conduct education (public service announcements, free classes) regarding how science works and how actions follow from scientific findings and from theories of probability; what FEMA actually offers and what it doesn’t; when we are likely to use up all the oil that we have on the planet; the pollution that specific companies are putting in our air and water (which can be done by satellite now)
• point out to the public the state of our emergency preparedness and the costs of greater preparedness
• prepare citizens to make better risk decisions by exposing them to simple descriptions of base rates (require doctors and others to present actual (base rate) risks to patients and to others when risk is part of professional and governmental recommendations, like how many children out of 100,000 seem to get autism after being vaccinated, the percentage of people who survive this or that operation, etc., instead of giving only the recommendation without current data)
• hold public discussions about what we know about climate change (and what we infer from the current state of knowledge) and what position we want to take as a country in balancing actions to reduce and prepare for the effects of climate change (like changing over to electric cars) versus not disturbing the comfort and welfare of those alive now (not reducing the use of oil and gas for power even though this aggravates climate change)
• require registration (using in-person eye recognition) of everyone using the internet, so as to reduce lying and crime  (The Constitution guarantees free speech, not anonymous speech.)
• join together to support the self-value of everyone around us; pledge together to take some sort of action whenever we notice individuals who are becoming alienated and prone to violence; give basic training in how to approach others in a helpful way
• inform children about the lives of people in other countries around the globe (videos, classroom-to-classroom What’sApp calls, etc.) so that they will be more likely to include them in their in-groups
• inform children about the lives of people in various socioeconomic classes in the U.S. so that they will be more likely to include everyone in their in-groups
• help children understand the importance of taking responsibility for their actions (even if there will be punishments) by appealing to fairness and order

Essays\learnedabouthumans