Fool’s Errand Attachment as policy
Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 20, 2022 After posting on the Fool’s Errand Attachment, it occurred to me that the Fool’s Errand Attachment might not be a cognitive bias after all, but is a policy failure, or is not just a cognitive bias but also a policy failure. Executive office holders no doubt feel compelled to show their constituencies that they are solving social problems. A virus emerges, the elected officer can’t just sit by and watch the dead pile up. Something must be done! So mask, get a vaccine, stay home, effectively end education for children, effectively ruin the economy. CO2 levels have gone through the roof, so let’s undermine global improvements of quality of life by curtailing the energy that drives that progress, disregarding entirely that the current atmospheric CO2 is not reduced thereby (CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, as most of us by now know, unless it is removed) so if CO2 will warm the planet, even zero emissions