How it Felt for Boyan Slat to See People Cheer His Failure

Have you faced any opposition to this? Is there anybody that thinks this is a fruitless idea? Because I know there were people that were actually, I was very shocked. I read people that were actually happy that your project didn't work the first time. I'm like, what the fuck man? There's people that, I think it's a young thing. Like because you're this really hopeful, young, intelligent guy who comes up with a solution. I think it probably, wow, is he thinking he's so fucking smart? Oh, fuck him. I hope it fails. And when it failed, people actually enjoyed it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Was that, did that hurt? No. Um, so for me, uh, so yes, of course, since the, uh, really since the beginning of 2013, there have been people, um, yeah, like relatively small group of people that have been people that have been opposing it. And, uh, most of them, ironically enough are people that care about the ocean because they don't feel it's the right way to, um, to, to tackle the issue. And, um, but the way I deal with it is, and at least what I used to do in the beginning, now they're fortunate. There aren't many new arguments anymore, but, um, just better give, write them out. Every single argument, rationally analyze them, no emotions, emotions only model your, your thinking in that way and make a distinction. Okay. Is this something where this person has a point? If so, great, because, you know, rather have somebody else pointing it out to me, then us having to learn it in the field and, you know, having a, having a unnecessary failure, um, and if the person doesn't have a point and if it's just, uh, you know, assumption or unfounded or whatever, um, you know, then it's very easy for me to just ignore it and so, and then the question is, well, what motivates people to be negative? And I think there's probably four reasons. First of all, it's, it's, um, you know, genuine skepticism, whether it can be done. And I think that's how that's healthy. And I think we've proved most of those arguments wrong now. Uh, but of course there's still the whole scale up thing, which we still have to do. So still a bit of that, but it's kind of morphing now to a few other things. Um, I think one thing is, um, human, uh, risk perception, which sometimes I think is a, it's a cause of, um, of, of some, uh, opposition where, um, it's very easy for people to ignore the baseline when they look at risks. So, um, you know, you can, for example, say, okay, nuclear power, super risky. We shouldn't do that. But then if you compare it to the baseline of other sources of energy, that's actually probably the least risky, um, source of energy there is. Even solar energy is causes more deaths per megawatt hour than, um, than, than nuclear power because people fall off roofs. So, so it's, it's really, so if you ignore the baseline and if you say, okay, um, doing this cleanup, we shouldn't do it because there's all these potential risks, right, of, um, you know, potentially there is some sea life that may be caught. Potentially there are, uh, these moral hazards. There's all these risks and, you know, basically best thing to do is not do it. What people then are ignoring is sort of the, the certain hazard of this hundreds of millions of kilos that, that of plastic that's already in the ocean. And if you were to kind of pose the opposite question and say, okay, um, so if we were to go to the ocean right now and just dump the equivalent amount of plastic that we were to take out, we'd dump it into the ocean. Uh, would you, would you think that's a good plan? And then, well, probably the answer is, is no. So, so I think there's, there's a bit of this, um, you know, of course, of course, what we're doing, it's new, there are risks involved, but as long as we, um, you know, map them well, we take things step by step, I think they're manageable and they're definitely not risks or reasons to, to not do it because of course the baseline is that there is already doing a lot of harm being done by the status quo. So I think that's one argument behind people's opposition. Um, there's also a bit of, um, zero, what it calls zero sum game bias where people are saying, well, you shouldn't do this because the resources will be better spent elsewhere. So I, um, and an op-ed in, uh, wired a few weeks ago where people were saying, well, or just one person actually was, was writing where this person said, you shouldn't, um, worry about the plastic pollution issue. You shouldn't do anything about it because climate change is the biggest issue and all our attention should go there. Plastic pollution is just a distraction. And that's foolish. Well, yeah, I think, you know, there's seven and a half billion peoples in the world and, um, we can do more than one thing at the same time. Yeah. That means should you not wash your dishes because your carpet is dirty? I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Both of them are a problem. Clean both of them. This, this idea that you should only think about climate change. So, oh, don't think about the giant Pacific garbage patch is twice as big as Texas. Are you fucking serious? It's a dumb argument. Both of them are important to think about both of them report. But a part of writing an article today is writing something that people will get upset about. That's part of it is like generating outreach, clickbait stuff, having controversial opinions, being a contrarian. All those things are profitable today. I mean, there's a giant part of why people write articles. They don't write articles. They don't write articles to state an objective, well thought out perspective. Always. Sometimes people do, but a lot of times people make some clickbaity bullshit and they kind of twist a story and twist an idea of who you are, twist it to sort of make their narrative make more compelling, be more compelling and sell more or click more and get more ad sales. Yeah. I wonder whether that's in part behind the growing tribalism and polarization that you see everywhere. Social media. I mean the fact that Facebook's algorithms in a sense support outrage, right? Like these, these things are designed to support, my friend Ari Shafir tested this and it's really interesting because he tested it to find out what it, what does it actually support? What it actually supports is what you're interested in. And if you're interested in being outraged, it'll show you things that outrage you. So he decided to just only YouTube puppies. And that's all YouTube would show him is puppies. He's like, no, you assholes. This is what you're into. If you're into fucking getting mad about the border and getting mad about the climate and getting mad about abortion and getting mad about whatever the fuck it is, that's what it'll show you because that's what you're interested in. You know, my YouTube feed is mostly muscle cars and fights. Why? Cause that's what I'm interested in. You know, I mean, that's, you know, and occasionally science things, but that's just because that's what you search for. That's it. It'll show you what you search for. I'm sure you're somewhat happy that it shows you those things. Yes. Sure. I don't think, I don't think it's as sinister as people want to say it is. I think the issue is human nature. We are compelled to get upset about things. And I think a lot of it is people that feel disempowered in their own existence. The people that you were talking about that are stuck in cubicles and that are staring at that clock, waiting for the buzz of the ring so they can go home. Those people are online. They're tweeting. They're taking a shit and doing fuck this guy's little kid thinks you're going to fix this fucking, fixing shit. There's a lot of what's going on. There's a lot of people that are upset because they're just, it's fun to be upset when your life sucks. It's fun to shit on somebody. It's fun to get mad about the border when you don't live in fucking South Dakota, you're nowhere near the border. What are you worried about? You what you're worried about? You're just angry. People are just angry. You know, it's like, these aren't logical discussions that people are having. They're shout offs and it's, it's a natural part of human nature to get upset about stuff and you know, even someone who's doing something as beautiful as your perspective or your, your idea, instead of just saying, like this, this guy is doing something amazing. We need someone like this who's just as innovative and just as inspired to try to tackle this climate issue. And we need more people like him. This is amazing. Instead of that, like you're spending your resources incorrectly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. You got you though. You're talking about it. Yeah. And yeah, I suppose it's, um, you know, from the perspective of the person who writes that it's, He thinks he's got a point. Yeah. And, um, so, and then, and indeed if, if you're just, uh, saying what everyone else says, nobody would see your opinion. Exactly. That's a big part of it.