I don’t think I read that part of Michael’s thesis before, but it does look interesting!
In general, I think it’s fairly arbitrary what a cause is—an intervention/solution can also be reframed as a problem (and hence a cause) through negation (e.g. physical activity is a preventative solution to various diseases like cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and in a real sense physical inactivity is a problem; having an ALLFED-style resilient food supply is a mitigatory solution to nuclear winter—even if we can’t prevent nuclear exchange, we can perhaps stop billions from dying from famine—and in that sense lack of foods capable of growing in abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios is a problem).
Hi Mo,
I don’t think I read that part of Michael’s thesis before, but it does look interesting!
In general, I think it’s fairly arbitrary what a cause is—an intervention/solution can also be reframed as a problem (and hence a cause) through negation (e.g. physical activity is a preventative solution to various diseases like cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and in a real sense physical inactivity is a problem; having an ALLFED-style resilient food supply is a mitigatory solution to nuclear winter—even if we can’t prevent nuclear exchange, we can perhaps stop billions from dying from famine—and in that sense lack of foods capable of growing in abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios is a problem).