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Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

technologyreview.com

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Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#51

Post by anthonyb »

rick888 wrote: post #45
anthonyb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock. At least 95% of the argument with deniers is basically…

"I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock." All of the global warming data is based on informatio…

>> If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock."

> All of the global warming data is based on information that has been falsified....

Thank you for proving my point so concisely.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#53

Post by mims »

olefoo wrote: post #32

> In a way, what Leck has created is a pro-active search engine: it answers twitter users who aren't even aware of their own ignorance. On the one hand the idea of a reverse search engine is somewhat appealing, on the other hand; it's Clippy for the internet. """ I see you're trying to deny global warming. Would you like to: 1. research the available facts and science? 2. Have an authority figure you trust tell you,…

This is the funniest thing I've ever read on HN. - Signed, the guy who wrote the original piece for TR

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#54

Post by techiferous »

FlemishBeeCycle wrote: post #35
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Some programmer assumes that he is right and others are wrong, so he writes a bot to chase down people he might disagree with and bombard them with one-liners. And Technology Review thinks this is behavior worth promoting? I suspect the reason is that they agree with the programmer. Try it out for a bit with the roles reversed. Doesn't feel quite the same, huh? ADD: The assu…

I imagine it has to do with political correctness, but it seems there is an undercurrent on HN of treating all opinions as equally valid? Even if both sides of the argument are incorrect, if the second opinion was formed through rigorous scientific investigation and represents and the best understanding that we currently have, why should we treat it equally with the opinion that was not developed through any sort of…

"there is an undercurrent on HN of treating all opinions as equally valid?"

I think people on HN are used to thinking critically, so responses that disagree with or point out something incorrect about an article tend to get upvoted.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#55

Post by philwelch »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Some programmer assumes that he is right and others are wrong, so he writes a bot to chase down people he might disagree with and bombard them with one-liners. And Technology Review thinks this is behavior worth promoting? I suspect the reason is that they agree with the programmer. Try it out for a bit with the roles reversed. Doesn't feel quite the same, huh? ADD: The assu…

I never had the patience to argue with climate skeptics because I figure once in a lifetime is enough and I wasted my youth arguing with creationists. It would be trivial, given a database of counterarguments to creationist talking points, to write a chatbot to argue with creationists. There are only so many times you can explain to people that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to the earth because the earth isn't a closed system before you realize your part in the argument could be just as productively filled by a chatbot.

Once again, I'm not claiming to know anything about global warming, other than knowing well enough to steer clear of arguing about it. So I can't speak to this specific case. However, from past experience with other controversies I understand the mindset behind this type of thing.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#57

Post by tjmc »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Some programmer assumes that he is right and others are wrong, so he writes a bot to chase down people he might disagree with and bombard them with one-liners. And Technology Review thinks this is behavior worth promoting? I suspect the reason is that they agree with the programmer. Try it out for a bit with the roles reversed. Doesn't feel quite the same, huh? ADD: The assu…

I think he's just rallying against this postmodern delusion that all opinions are equally valid, when the weight of scientific evidence is clearly on his side.

And he's not exactly chasing people down, he's just responding to people who are deliberately putting their opinions out there.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#58

Post by codefisher »

anthonyb wrote: post #26
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Some programmer assumes that he is right and others are wrong, so he writes a bot to chase down people he might disagree with and bombard them with one-liners. And Technology Review thinks this is behavior worth promoting? I suspect the reason is that they agree with the programmer. Try it out for a bit with the roles reversed. Doesn't feel quite the same, huh? ADD: The assu…

I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock. At least 95% of the argument with deniers is basically…

"If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock."

Ok I will take that as a challenge to produce a link, so how is this.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_de...

Did you pass out?

My stance is that all the name calling (ie. deniers) does not help. In the field of science a healthy level of scepticism is required, and it helps further study. It is only when an issue becomes political (Global Warning) or religious (Evolution/Creationism) and leave their scientific basis that people get pilloried for saying they are not convinced and such n' such an issue is not up to scratch and needs more research to confirm or disprove it.

As the the 95% of people. Yes that stat would be right. 95% of people are always out of their depth in any argument of any complexity. But it says nothing about their position. I have lots of friends that believe things, but if faced with a skilled debtor can't hold their own position. Nor should they have to. Life is too busy to be on top of every issue.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

rick888 wrote: post #45
anthonyb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock. At least 95% of the argument with deniers is basically…

"I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock." All of the global warming data is based on informatio…

> There is a lot of money in global warming.

Those poor, unprofitable energy companies must have trouble fighting all those overly-funded climatologists!

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