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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

#61

Post by nutjob123 »

electromagnetic wrote: post #42
kiba wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about building partially underwater coastline? Though, it could be an issue if there is a crack in the window. Instead of trying to stop global warming, maybe we should try living with it.

I've been fascinated with the idea of an ocean arcology being built in shallow waters and instead of starting 'ground' up, but simply start construction of several concrete boat foundations. When positioned, simply continue constructing. As the boat gets taller, it will displace to a greater depth until it eventually hits the ocean floor. It would be a very modular way to construct an ocean city. Get them within 500m…

I'm in. Can we call it Atlantis?

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#62

Post by olefoo »

mims wrote: post #53
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

Thanks. Although I was riffing off a long tradition of geeky humor ripping on clippy.

On a more serious note; a marketing service that put it's customers brands in front of people who didn't yet know that those products were what they were looking for would be an awesome startup from a business perspective and a somewhat creepy one from a human perspective.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#63

Post by duck »

mims wrote: post #53
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

Do you have scientific evidence in 140 or less characters to back that claim up? -Bot

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#64

Post by hackoder »

zeraholladay wrote: post #33
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 might be more willing to argue with a bot than some people, since the bot ain't going to track me down an shoot me.

Who tracks down and shoots people for arguing with them? (very serious question, I really didn't get what you meant to say here)

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#65

Post by anthonyb »

codefisher wrote: post #58
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…

"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…

Ok, so overlooking that SPPI are a notorious denier hack site, how do you explain the correlation between surface temperature records and satellite temperature records, both of which show an increase? Also, how do you explain the strong correlation between the temperature trends (ie. increase in temperature) between urban and rural areas? See http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurem... and http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect-int... for details/pretty graphs.

Btw, that argument is #6 in the list of common denier arguments http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

> In the field of science a healthy level of scepticism is required

Scepticism is fine, but the level of scepticism needs to be in proportion to the level of data available. The bulk of the data available strongly indicates that global warming is real, and is caused by humans. Which is why people who don't believe in global warming are now called 'deniers' - they're not really skeptics.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#66

Post by narrator »

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…

The climate change debate isn't a debate anymore. It's just a yelling match peppered with a lot of ad hominem attacks and the solution is always cap and trade.

The solution goes nowhere though because China and India tell us we caused the problem and so we must unilaterally cut our consumption of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile Russia is building a big oil and gas network stretching into China totally outside the reach of the would be international climate regulators and cap and trade financial superstructure. Besides, cap and trade is just a way to pay corrupt politicians in developing countries to shut down industry and impoverish their citizens and better yet, starve their citizens by tearing up all their farm land and building inedible ethanol crops.

The irony is that the left are the ones who are super-enthusiastic about enacting draconian climate change legislation which dramatically increases the cost of energy for those in the lower income bracket and seriously handicaps the development and improvement in living standards of any developing country foolish enough to go along with the already smugly developed world's agenda.

BTW, Technology Review has really become quite ideological lately and is much less of a science magazine then it used to be.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#67

Post by [deleted] »

codefisher wrote: post #58
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…

"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…

[deleted]

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#69

Post by nikster »

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…

While it's funny to write a bot, at the same time you're right. It's not worth arguing with those people who just want to be mislead, and probably not worth writing a bot for it either.

The problem is, arguments don't lead to insight. If those people could be swayed by rational arguments, they wouldn't be "climate skeptics" in the first place.

So I think the pragmatic approach would be to understand your enemy before you try to engage.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#70

Post by FlemishBeeCycle »

statictype wrote: post #49
FlemishBeeCycle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're missing the point. It's not about whether or not the facts he's spamming people with are right or wrong, it's the fact that he's doing it in the first place.

I didn't mean to imply that I was condoning the author's actions. Perhaps I misinterpreted, but I was responding to the parent comment's decrying of the author's actions due to the perception that the author justified their actions through the belief that their opinion was superior (specifically parent's remark about requiring omniscience to justify the action)?

It does raise the question of whether the means justify the end. As people in this thread have noted ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867043, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867162), that this technique may be more effective than a more neutral route. But again, I'm not condoning anything.

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