# Original programming and climate change
Date: 2023-08-05

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### Original programming and climate change

[Daniel Gilbert argues](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5530483) that human original programming, OP, prevents us from responding to certain kinds of disasters:

> A) the source of the threat should be human rather than inanimate;

> B) there should be a moral component;

> C) as we just talked about, it should be short-term rather than long-term; and

> D) if you want the human brain to respond, you really want to make sure that the threat is sudden rather than gradual.

Let’s rephrase and condense these points:

A) Humans have a greater response to threats from “other” IE a perceived different human or group of humans

B) The solution to the threat needs to show short term results

So for example humans can handle regulating nuclear weapons because

* The weapons are controlled by “other”
* A ban on increasing or testing nuclear weapons has an immediate result on stockpiles and nuclear pollution

Compare that to climate change

* The threat comes from our own society
* A ban on carbon emissions might take decades to show results

or gain of function research (see [here](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118818824.ch5?fbclid=IwAR39Ar6ydyS4aAvT33weTd2Kzol6CgYMTv9_zI9JZ-QqJVuOAOnkdW7JWpk), [here](https://www.marshall.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/MWG-FDR-Document-04-11-23-EMBARGOED.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1t0ecK9jiZJ6XXgn8rBYWHnddqDdzVrxytVDOmYRkOhu3RCmHSoe5jdjk), and [here](https://public.substack.com/p/first-people-sickened-by-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR1JBdnNCgFrJnC5sBJosJSWSYYZgVMFP9L9iY01BQbFYlWdG3ECqSu8HO4))

* The threat comes from the research of multiple nations
* A ban on gain of function research would be measurable only by the absence of new pandemics

This blog (see for example [here](https://medium.com/@disrael/why-sentience-matters-disputing-the-right-to-cruelty-d3eb4ea8c26a), [here](https://medium.com/@disrael/sentience-and-fairness-6e863995774d) and [here](https://medium.com/@disrael/search-for-sentience-on-earth-identity-79b3c8028b94)) is about the proposed ability of cultural programming, sentience, to overcome limitations of OP.

One way for culture to do that is to reframe the problem. So for alcohol and the temperance movement the problems above remain but if prohibition is instead about subjugating [black and Jewish men](https://macleans.ca/history/what-prohibition-teaches-us-about-race-relations/) then it’s OP compliant.

Reframing is an example of using cultural programming to reinforce OP instead of overriding it. Of course reframing is valid as sometimes you have to fight fire with fire; it’s just not reasonable for it to be our only tool.

![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/original-programming-and-climate-change-de056ccbab.jpeg)

What then does a sentient response look like? How do we change the human OP incremental gains mindset without appealing to othering like nationalism, racism, gender, age, class, etc.?

As this blog has [mentioned before](https://medium.com/@disrael/spider-verse-has-a-multiverse-beyond-capitalism-cce9701dd2e9), humans have, throughout history, solved the long term problem before. The Great Wall of China took over 2,000 years to build.

Of course you can argue that there were incremental results with the Great Wall but the Great Pyramid of Giza took around 25 years to build and it was sixty-five years just to build the *eastern part* of the Seville Cathedral

[**Seville Cathedral - Wikipedia**  
*The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See ( Spanish: Catedral de Santa María de la Sede), better known as Seville…*en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Cathedral#/media/File:Seville_panorama.jpg "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Cathedral#/media/File:Seville_panorama.jpg")

Culture can inspire humans to work on projects beyond the scope of our individual lives. Whether or not culture can inspire such projects in the complete absence of othering is more debatable.

Our town has a bigger cathedral then the other towns would certainly have played a role. So a global project like regulation of pollution or science is particularly difficult as our planet is much better run than your planet is unavailable for appealing to OP.

However my generation runs the planet better than your generation might be more viable than attempting global regulation while going cold turkey on othering.