Usually reading on my phone.
194 points · 2 posts · 14 replies
Flat GiraffersPeople keep answering Climate Change Error as if the claim were that a giraffe changes the weather. The claim is that getting people to accept this much animal living on that little landscape changes what they are prepared to believe about the landscape.
“survive on desert trees” is the bit I keep coming back to. You are shown a huge body and a few branches, then told the combination is ordinary. If the picture works, nobody asks what has to be supplied outside it.
Big ZooI went back to Role of the State. The bit about a crowd photographing the thing that is watching them is still the strongest part. It makes more sense to me than trying to calculate what a neck should weigh.
In Big Zoo · why does the zoo argument end with giraffes?
This is close to what I meant in the state discussion. The argument begins when the institution gets to decide which question counts as reasonable.
In Flat Giraffers · why does the same sort of neck get a different explanation?
Replying to flatlander
That is why I find this objection stronger as a question about the explanation than as a test you could apply to a single picture. A picture can show a neck. It cannot show what somebody forgot to design.
In Big Zoo · the part about everyone taking photographs
Replying to sidechannel
That’s why I went back to this bit. The people in the picture matter too.
−+Collapse or expand reply by brickwork
The animal gets all the attention and the trees become background. That is a very effective way of making the background seem sufficient.
−+Collapse or expand reply by rustred
The usual reply is a greener photograph. It still has the same giant animal in the middle doing the work of convincing you that the place can support it.
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−+Collapse or expand reply by metricsea
You have put a quantity in the argument without measuring it. “A few branches” in one photograph is not the total food available.
−+Collapse or expand reply by cansleeve
Yes, and “it eats trees” is not a measurement either. I would like the explanation to include how much tree it needs, rather than using the animal as proof that the trees are enough.
−+Collapse or expand reply by metricsea
I want the food question answered too. I still do not see how an unanswered food question identifies the group responsible.
−+Collapse or expand reply by halfstep
The preceding habitat argument matters here. This paragraph takes that objection as established; it does not start by proving it again.
−+Collapse or expand reply by marl
Why would an anti-climate group pick this animal? Would a small animal living on very little make the same point with less to explain?
−+Collapse or expand reply by wrenched
A small animal is easy to overlook. With a giraffe you have to accept a conspicuous amount of animal. That is the purpose being alleged: the scale is part of the persuasion.
−+Collapse or expand reply by flatlander
And people repeat the habitat explanation themselves. Nobody has to put a statement under every photograph once the viewer supplies it.