Proselytise

If you were to be magically transported back in time, how easy would you find it to convince people that what they're doing is dumb? 

This problem is fairly scalable. If you were to go back 50 years, could you convince the public that CFCs and asbestos are harmful? 100 years back, could you persuade a government against leaded petrol? How about 200 years ago, that surgeons should wash their hands before treating patients? Or even 400 years ago, how to combat scurvy or the bubonic plague? 

Imagine trying to convince a doctor, in the court of some medieval ruler, that there are little malicious guys on his hands. Ones he cannot see. Colourless, odourless, tasteless - although colour, odour and taste of hands could be an indicator. That the miniscule warriors on his hands are bad, but its cousins in our entrails are good, but sometimes bad. That the bad guys on his hands will multiply; spoiling food, necrotising flesh, or causing pneumonia. That he could remove a lot of the risk by pasteurising foods, sterilising instruments, and washing hands. Oh, washing hands? How much do you know about saponification? Could you convince this doctor to abandon his beliefs in the humours or the fates, and ascribe to your proselytism? 

There are three broad areas I believe would hinder your chances: 

1. Convincing someone that there is a problem, and that that problem is worth an amount of inconvenience to remedy. 
2. Convincing them that your knowledge of the issue outstrips their knowledge of the issue. 
3. Overriding extant beliefs, and quashing misinformation from those that have a vested interest in the status quo.

I believe that each of these is linked to the other two, so treatment of them will be slightly non-linear. 

The main barrier to convincing someone that there is a problem, in my mind, would be that these problems are gradual. Asbestos fibres did not immediately cause breathing troubles in those that were exposed to them. Ditto for the ozone layer and CFCs, or our brains and aerosolised lead. In this last example, we can see higher lead in dental records, and we can now safely tie this to worse cognitive function, but that is with the gift of hindsight, with years of data, and the wonders of mass-spectrometry. Scurvy and washing hands before touching wounds are not gradual, in the sense that symptoms or treatment have a delayed response; rather, they are gradual in the sense of forming patterns (true of the other examples cited, as well). 

It might be easy to convince someone that scurvy is an issue, or mortality of wounds, or the bubonic plague. But, could you convince someone that they're enough of an issue to drastically change a lifestyle, or sink time/effort/money into rectifying it? Even more so, if the remedy runs antithetical to extant beliefs. If you say to someone ‘actually, a pocketful of posies would make it harder to tell if someone has the plague, and certainly won't ward it off’, or ‘black cats will probably help keep the mice who (carry the lice that) carry the plague, away’, you are likely to be met with a negative response. 

It’s hard to convince someone of an issue that is yet to come, but convincing someone of an issue, while the issue is current, is often too late. Couching things in terms of ‘more likely’ or ‘increased risk’ or ‘probably’, while true, also does not sound too urgent. Conversely, you would need to use this vague language, as some people did just survive the plague without outside interference. You’re either unreliable, by using definitive statements, or you’re vague and non-urgent. 

All to say, it would be tough to explain to someone, in a way that they can understand, how the plague is actually transmitted, or showcase the dangers of continued bad behaviour. The key phrase here is: ‘in a way that they can understand’. It is extremely difficult to pin down ‘knowledge’ of something. Our current method of honing information is to remove what something isn't, as opposed to solidify what something is. 

We will pick up the story of scurvy after the cure has been discovered. Or, more aptly, has almost been discovered. But, first, a quick detour into the scientific method. This is as intrinsic as ‘knowledge’ gets. I’m sure we’re all familiar, but I will give you a précis. Just remember the four ‘O’s:

Observation - notice something.

‘Oh, why’s that?’ - form a hypothesis.

‘OK, let me test that idea’ - run experiments that will tell you whether your thinking is wrong.

‘Once is fine, but can anyone else replicate my results?’ - let other people have a go. If they cannot get the same results, it’s back to the drawing board.

It was observed that citrus staves off scurvy (and undoes some of its symptoms). But, unadulterated citrus has a shelf-life which renders this miracle obsolete. The oranges, or limes as it more commonly was, would not last long enough to help sailors when most needed. To try and combat this, the lime juice was mixed with vinegar, as it was known that putting things in vinegar prolonged their life. 

This worked for a very long time. The lime juice kept scurvy at bay, and the vinegar did preserve the lime juice. Whether it was also believed that it was the acidity of the lime juice that kept scurvy at bay, or just that lime juice is more expensive than vinegar, over time solutions would contain more and more vinegar and less and less lime juice. Then, people started getting scurvy again. 

New hypothesis, it is something that is in the lime juice part of this solution, exclusively, that helps. So, preserve the lime juice in a new way - in copper tubing. Except, people still got scurvy after consuming the lime juice from the copper receptacles. The juice was not spoiling, it was safe to drink, so why was the lime juice magic waning? We now know it is the vitamin C in the lime juice that protects against scurvy and that it is rendered inert by the copper tubing used. But faster travel times on steam engines, and thus less time for the juice to be in contact with the copper, meant the pattern took longer to notice. Glass jars were also tried, but light similarly breaks the vitamin C down, over time.

This is a perfect application of the scientific method, trying different ways to eliminate scurvy. We now know what they got wrong, but it’s harder to form a complete picture in real time, given the noise of the pattern. Imagine that you’re trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle, but you have the pieces to several other jigsaw puzzles mixed in (in addition to the pieces you want). Some of these extra puzzle pieces fit together, and can be placed in the puzzle you’re trying to solve. But, only a few, and the puzzle becomes stagnant until those pieces are removed. How do you know which pieces to remove? Only by testing how each piece interacts with the others, and removing as many variables as you can.  

When an issue is gradual and the information is nebulous, it's much harder to put your finger on the cause. This wealth of information might be called the variables of the situation. Our knowledge of how things work is only as good as our knowledge of how variables interact. It is tricky convincing someone that they have misunderstood the variables, but have temporarily landed on a workable conclusion. 

Sometimes, more variables lead to easier conclusions. The German police were once looking for one of their worst criminals. The same DNA had shown up in the investigation of roughly 40 crimes. These cases were all over the country, too. The DNA was not in any database. Given that the type and location of the crimes was staggeringly broad, it encouraged the police to look inward, instead. The police found the owner of the DNA - a non-compliant worker for the company that makes the DNA swabs. Often, though, more variables make situations less clear. Like a Poirot plot. The more variables, the less sure you can be of the reason for an outcome.

We all know of the persecution of Galileo, of an authority condemning his heliocentric model of the solar system. It was in the self-interest of those in powerful positions for their ideology not to be shaken. We see this behaviour again and again. I won’t get into the egregious shit that those in positions of power have inflicted on others, in order to hold onto those positions. Pause a second here to go back over the plots of such blockbusters as ‘Spotlight’ (2015), Erin Brockovich (2000), North Country (2005), or A Knight’s Tale (2001) - to name but a few shared cultural references. You may be morally just, or scientifically sound, or community-minded, but if changing the status quo upsets those with a vested interest, you’re likely pushing shit uphill.

It should be enough, in a battle against those with a vested interest, to simply expose their interest. This is such a basic tool in keeping decisions ‘valid’ that judges are expected to recuse themselves, should they have a conflict of interest (as are lawyers and jury members). This is also commonplace for politicians, councillors, and office-holders in companies. But, in all these examples, disclosure is left up to the interested party to declare. How many internal police conduct reviews do we hear about, completely exonerating the police of any wrongdoing? Or, the fudging of the disclosed data in companies like Enron or Theranos, or even the impressively virile stock portfolio of Nancy Pelosi. 

It is easy to see that the physicians of yore had a vested interest in being seen as an authority. No one would approach them for their services, if they were seen as a quack. A cynic might say that a physician might wilfully give the wrong remedies, to keep customers returning; but I wouldn’t say that, because I believe in an unregulated free market (imagine the sunglasses emoji here, I'm not good at HTML). The same could be said for leaded petrol, CFCs, and asbestos. Those that manufacture these goods have a financial interest in their continued manufacture. To combat this, there should be some authoritative, independent party, who can regulate such things.

In a perfect world, this role of independent officer is fulfilled or regulated by the government. Worksafe, the High Court, or Customs are perfect examples of this, within our Constitutional Monarchy. It is through an international-level agreement, called the Montreal Protocol, that we were able to get rid of CFCs. The world came together, looked at the science, and took decisive action to mitigate a world-wide risk - and it’s working. The hole in the ozone layer is shrinking.

We have now, finally, stumbled onto why I posed this question. I have always thought that,  if I were plunged back in time, I could make real change. Given my knowledge of how things would fall, and years of scientific advancement, I could enact real change. We often think of the Butterfly Effect, the idea that the tiniest change in the past would trigger a vast change in the present. But we hardly believe that a tiny change now will have a vast change in the future. 

The reality is that we are facing a global crisis, in the form of climate change. We have the scientific consensus. We have had the international-level agreement, the Kyoto Protocol. We have the Conference of Parties (COP) each year. 

So, if there's such a consensus? Why are countries removing themselves from adhering to their emission targets, and why are all data pointing to a worsening of this crisis? Where is the meaningful action to stop this? 

The issues are the same. The pattern is slow in forming, and the effects gradual. Scientists have been couching the issue of climate change, as it is an unfolding situation that has never been faced before, and therefore comes with an element of unpredictability. Science is continually honing in on the issue and, as it does, information is refined and changed. The variables are hard to untangle, and the picture is unclear from the inside. 

I think the battleground to combat this has shifted, slightly. There is not so much a lack of understanding on the issue, rather a wilful misinformation campaign against addressing it. The three areas that hinder our chances in addressing climate change, by my reckoning are: 

1. Removing the rich, who are disproportionately contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, from shaping global policy in any way.
2. Convincing everyone that that addressing climate change is worth an amount of inconvenience to remedy. 
3. Overriding extant beliefs, and quashing misinformation from those that have a vested interest in the status quo.

But, the ultimate lesson might be: learn from the past.