> There's a possibility that the third sentence you wrote is tightly coupled with the second one. On a personal level I mainly agree with you (we're on track for much worse than the RCP2.5 that everyone is barely even attempting to make goals for), but the complexity of the system seems to bring people to vastly disagree about this somehow.

By my way of thinking about such things I think this is the best comment in the thread so far, in that:

- it recognizes that there are even more risks (disagreement over climate change --> political changes --> war) from climate change than the obvious first order ones

- it recognizes that the world is a system, and that it contains complexity

- it recognizes that complexity can cause vast disagreement

- it does not speculate about (and consider to be a fact) the causation of an observation ("to vastly disagree about this somehow") but rather, correctly notes that the causation is unknown

> I think what really has become a turning point of our civilization in the last few decades is that specialization and the complexity of the world are absolutely entirely outside of the reach of any single person.

I agree, and I estimate that most other people here would as well, but only when thinking about this concept abstractly. But if one is to closely(!) observe how people talk about our (infinitely complex) world, you may notice this phenomenon where it seems as if people are literally not aware of the complexity of the world. Now, if one is to respond to such a comment pointing such a shortcoming out, typically (in "smart" communities) the person can then(!) skilfully recognize whatever aspect of overlooked complexity you noted...but at the time they made the initial comment, was this complexity ~"included in the cognitive context of their mind" when pondering the problem, or was their mind working with a vastly simplified model of the world (because that is efficient, and the mind seems to often err on the side of efficiency rather than correctness)? If one is to ask that question, the person will typically assure you with supreme confidence that of course they were aware of it, but that they were "speaking loosely/generally" or something along these lines - which of course may be true, but is it actually true? I would say the fact of the matter is unknown, because we do not seem to have that level of insight into the workings of the mind. (And if you then respond with this theoretical question, extremely interesting things often transpire, but that's a whole other ball of wax that I'll skip for now.)

I believe if you treat this very general and speculative philosophical idea as a kind of lens through which to view the activities of human beings from an abstract, curious alien entity perspective (no prior or presumed knowledge of "how it is" with Earth and Humanity, but infinite curiosity about the highly paradoxical nature of our species), you may start to notice a set of repetitive patterns everywhere you look, in all sorts of different levels of dimensional abstraction and aggregation. And if you notice that and then speculate about what unseen/undetected Force in the Universe could be causing all this, maybe some interesting new theories might start to emerge about why things are the way they are.