The computational error may lie in several places: thinking that an individual’s effort on that topic is the most effective means of action on it; mistaking the individual’s other actions as highly indicative of the correctness of the individual’s advice; erroneously believing that individual action is the best way of handling the problem, or that you would prefer this to deliberate consideration/consultation prior to action; thinking that an individual’s lack of action therefore indicates a lack of sincerity or that the individual internally has de-prioritized the issue.
It probably is a good idea to ask this person which of any of these they are getting at.
Usually associated with a situation where people are feeling sour or put upon, you will hear the snap, “If you think X is such a good idea, why don’t you do it?” where X is something like:
– Environmentally friendly actions
– Volunteering on a certain issue
– Placing importance on a subtle aspect of an activity
– A generally good activity to do, often related to maintenance or prudent action
The correct response is:
– Because every day, people starve to death, and that’s an important problem.
– The continued warring in the world, including that waged by governments against their own citizens, also is an important problem.
– We are human beings, with limited time and energy.
– All of these problems, and others, are worthy of being solved, but, as weak human beings trying to solve big problems, we are hard pressed even to solve one of them by ourselves.
— Optional depending on matter in question: In many cases (often the one you are talking about), you aren’t going to use violence, the only guarantee of success, to solve it. Hence you must rely on the weaker resort to influence, if the problem is beyond your own capability single-handedly to resolve.
– Consequently, we can’t solve every single problem with our own individual efforts, even though we know they are problems.
– Therefore, we have to allocate our efforts based on relative importance, and on what we think we are going to have the most success with our own individual skill sets and resources.
– Further, in order to be efficient in solving big problems, we can’t spread our individual efforts across everything: that’s the reverse of specialization of labor, which is known to increase work output.
– Specialization of labor means not working on the other problems.
– Consequently, even no one denies any of these big problems are problems, as individuals, we still contribute only a portion of the labor on a portion of the problems.
– Therefore, in order to solve all the problems, we need to work together.
– In order to work together, we have to communicate as to what all the problems are, and what needs to happen for each of them to be solved. This allows the appropriate individuals to find the tasks that they can help out on, and also allows us to allocate resources to fixing the problems.
– Consequently, by advising you about issue X, I am helping others, including you, to solve all the problems, by enabling us to work as a team. That’s the only way complicated modern society can work.
On a related note: this is also why “opt-out” concepts and “doing it unless someone objects” are functionally equivalent to coercive force in our present situation. Because people have extremely limited time relative to the demands on that time, it is correct to ignore less damaging problems. Hence, most people won’t opt-out or research and object to most things; this does not imply meaningful consent.
Opting people in may be correct in a given situation, but the opt-out is a tax.