I like to draw distinctions between the different ways people discuss issues they do not have direct (or have only a minuscule amount of) control over. I have come up wandism, godism, and probablism.
Wandism is the way most people talk about issues. It is like they are saying "if I had a magic wand that could make this happen, here's what I'd like to see." Another expression is "if I were king for the day . . ."
I have a tentative, untested theory that people used to distance themselves more from wandism in the past, and that our current culture regime of anti-social media has conditioned more people to speak in the mode of wandism, and without any caveats. I wouldn't be surprised if that theory didn't turn out to be total bullshit, however.
Godism is what I call statements that would be called wandism except they would require drastic changes to the structure of reality, including human nature (think Communism or Theocracy). I content that wandism and godism exist on a scale, rather than as a binary distinction. On one end of the scale, full wandism would be a desired outcome which would stick once it had been enacted one time. The more times you'd have to intervene to keep your preferred state of affairs going, the closer it is to godism, which would be a constant alteration of reality.
Probablism is a discussion of how likely an event is to actually happen. It is not wishful thinking. In many ways probablism is the most interesting thing to think about, because it involves the most textures, things to examine, and surprises, but good luck finding people who are willing to have that type of discussion in real life. Sites like Long Bets, Prediction Book and Metaculus are places to look for the mindset, but even then the discussions themselves tend to be very thin.
Speaking of prediction, I predict that good faith discussions of the probability of events will never become particularly popular.
