I guess it makes sense that people with an all or nothing viewpoint will see incremental change, no matter how significant, as no change at all.
Helping everyone 30% is pointless because 30 always rounds down to 0. Helping millions is pointless if tens of millions are affected.
The people who are hurt while we wait for the perfect solution, who wouldn't be hurt if we solved the problem incrementally? Irrelevant, they're not all the people, so they don't count.
It doesn't matter that we can save some lives and end some suffering, or that it's easier to fix 70% of the problem after we fix 30% of it. 0% or 100% are the only options and if you accept anything less than 100% you are approving of the remaining people not being helped. Anything less than everything rounds down to nothing and it's better to do nothing than to do less than everything.
I am reminded of the little girl throwing baby crabs into the sea before the birds could get to them. And adult comes up and tells her that there are too many crabs and too many birds, and she shouldn't bother, because she won't make a difference.
Little girl picks up a crab, throws it in the water.
"Made a difference to that one."
The thing with accepting incremental change is understanding that it doesn’t stop after one increment. After the first is done, you push for the next, and the next, and the next.
Sure, there are always a few people who pay lip service to it, they push a little bit and then wipe their hands, job well done, time to go home. Those are the ones everyone thinks of when they assume that incremental change is as useless as no change at all. But for every person who puts in the minimum of work once, there are hundreds who push for more every day.
