Yesterday, while playing poker with some friends, I remembered J\u00f6rn Behrens’ video about\u00a0epistemic and aleatory uncertainties<\/b>.\u00a0<\/b>If I translate it into poker-slang:\u00a0epistemic uncertainty\u00a0<\/b>is created by the cards of your opponents that are hidden to you, creating a missing knowledge. The random deal of the cards is just luck; it gives the\u00a0aleatory uncertainty.<\/b><\/p>\n
In a poker game, there are various situations where players have to evaluate small probabilities based on uncertainties to win. Every new round, I make my decisions based on these probabilities, on these uncertainties, but also on how much do I have to loose?<\/p>\n
With my friends, each bets 5 Euros, so if you lose, you just lose 5 euros, that’s not too bad. It is probably still cheaper than a long evening in a bar, but still enough to be competitive and have the will to win. I mean, for 5 euros times the number of opponents, I can buy myself a decent lunch from the good Italian restaurant around the corner the following day. Therefore, I know, my decisions now will have a direct impact on my lunch the next day – my decisions in an amateur poker game. But, me and my friends are all young and semi-broke. I mean\u2026 How much are 5 Euros to a millionaire? They would probably only play for fun, take every risk, make irrational decisions not based on probabilities since 5 euros are worth nothing to them anyway. If I were playing in a poker game with a bet of 50.000 euro, I would play really carefully and very deliberately (as my amateur poker skills allow). I would think about every uncertainty two or three times until I make a decision. Therefore, the bet and how much it is worth to you determines your decision-making, your willingness to take risks and your commitment, too.<\/p>\n
So applying this analogy (finally) to climate policy: Decisions in climate policy are mostly based on climate research, climate models, climate researchers that can interpret climate models. But, as we know, the models come with uncertainties. Just as in poker, each decision-maker in policy must work with the uncertainties of climate models and base their decisions on them. But what consequences follow from these decisions? What bets do decision-makers give and what could they lose, and most importantly, who decides that? The problem here is that decision-makers don’t just have to decide for themselves. In poker, only I lose 5 euros. But decision-makers usually make decisions for an entire region or country. If they lose, everyone loses. But what do you\/they\/we\/does everyone lose? Do these political decision-makers lose anything at all, no matter what they decide, and it’s always everyone else who loses?<\/p>\n
Therefore, we need to have a look at the bet. In the climate crisis, the bet is our future. Or is it? If I were playing poker over my future, I wouldn’t take any risks and would always play it safe. I would base every decision on saving my future. But what future? The one in 2 weeks, 2 years, 20 years? The further into the future I go, the more uncertain my life becomes. So if I have the opportunity to play safely now, so that I will have a promising future, I would not take any risk.\u00a0But also poker is a long-lasting game. Round after round you get new information, new probabilities, new uncertainties. This can get exhausting. So any round counts, any little step I take making a risk assessment, calculating probabilities, helps me saving my future.<\/p>\n
So why do politicians take risks then? Why do they gamble with our future, with the future of the planet, of people, of animals, of nature? Are there just some rounds plaid now where they\u00a0 <\/span>became negligent, or are they exhausted? So many uncertain questions \u2026 But in the rounds we play right now against the climate crisis, we can already win. Every round, every little step we take to fight climate change counts. However, whether we will win the whole game still depends on the decision makers. Let\u2019s just hope, they don’t all just ignore uncertainties and accept great risks because they have a certain gambling problem.<\/p>\n Anyway I know now for certain I am gonna get a good pizza for lunch now from the good Italian restaurant around the corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, while playing poker with some friends, I remembered J\u00f6rn Behrens’ video about\u00a0epistemic and aleatory uncertainties.\u00a0If I translate it into poker-slang:\u00a0epistemic uncertainty\u00a0is created by the cards of your opponents that are hidden to you, creating a missing knowledge. The random deal of the cards is just luck; it gives the\u00a0aleatory uncertainty. In a poker game,Continue reading “Gambling with the future”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students-blogs-2021"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2143,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2142\/revisions\/2143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}