Can’t persuade people? Drug ‘em.
Tony Thomas finds an academic (Matthew Liao) who suggests that given the climate change risk it might be more ethical to shrink our kids by 6 inches, or drug people with oxytoxin to make them more compliant. Jo Nova thinks it might be more ethical to fund skeptical scientists instead of unskeptical ones and figure out whether a man-made disaster is actually coming before we start shrinking kids.
The idea is that people would accept bizarre climate-saving imposts willingly if only we could give them the “love drug” oxytocin. He calls it “Pharmacologically induced altruism”. Oxytocin increases altruism and empathy, but I would guess that only altruistic or empathetic people would willingly take it “for the sake of the planet”. The rest of the population might be a little suspect that they might be more prone to being duped and conned while “under the influence”.
The initial paper Human Engineering and Climate Change, came out five years ago. But in academic circles, Liao wasn’t laughed out of town, and hasn’t apparently issued a more comprehensive update.
