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Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

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Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#131

Post by rimantas »

Robin_Message wrote: post #126
lzw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the weight of scientific evidence is not on his side. The science clearly points against the global warming hypothesis. It is merely that there is a political/religious/ideological movement to claim that "global warming is settled science" (with no citations, naturally, not that any legitimat scientist would make such a claim anyway.) The earth is getting colder. The termperature changes we've seen over s…

I would downvote you, but I want people to see this response: http://royalsociety.org/The-Science-of-Climate-Change-report... Yes, that's right, the Royal Society , which, for those of you who are unfamiliar with science, is the oldest scientific organisation in the world, agrees with the IPCC reports, which I would cite as the secondary scientific evidence. For the primary evidence, just read all the articles cited…

So Royal Society agrees that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035?

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#132

Post by rimantas »

rtp wrote: post #124
lzw wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, when you model the past, that makes sense. What AGW proponents use are models to project the future. But they are inconsistent with the data of the past. They don't fit it. They are simply fantasies to try and lend "scientific" justification to a political movement.

Are you saying that the projections for the future should fit the past? I'm sorry.

Are you saying, that a model which does not fit past data will somehow correctly predict the future?

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#133

Post by ewjordan »

electromagnetic wrote: post #21
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am as skeptical of the details of man-made global warming as anyone, but people who argue on twitter, for God's sake, are at the level of a chat-bot and it's probably for the best.

Yes, it's like arguing on a crowded bus. Everyone hears you, nobody cares and they either want you put in your place or told to STFU. I'm more dubious of the proposed solutions to global warming than anything as it looks highly like a band-aid infused with arsenic to me. Sure it'll kill the infection, but it could well kill you too. Go nuclear, it's the lesser of the evils. Existing infrastructure can be cannibalized…

Furthermore, the totality of all nuclear accidents in the world has caused less deaths than coal soot alone.

This is where the current environmentalist movement has really failed: "Don't burn shit, it's bad for the environment and it's bad for us" was a compelling story, because it's pretty obviously true and hard to fight back against. When environmentalism was all about smog, coal burning, and all that nasty stuff, it was hard to find much fault with it.

But now it's all about carbon. And global warming involves a lot more analysis to evaluate, to the point that even the most scientifically minded non-experts can't claim to fully understand the evidence for or against it (if they even have access to that raw evidence), not to mention all the possibilities of fudged data, which turn this more into a guessing game about who's telling the truth than a matter of science.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#134

Post by ewjordan »

lzw wrote: post #71
tjmc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that the weight of scientific evidence is not on his side. The science clearly points against the global warming hypothesis. It is merely that there is a political/religious/ideological movement to claim that "global warming is settled science" (with no citations, naturally, not that any legitimat scientist would make such a claim anyway.) The earth is getting colder. The termperature changes we've seen over s…

Here's the problem: while I would tend to agree with you if your claim was that global warming is not as clear cut an issue as the mainstream makes it out to be, that's not how your post comes across.

The real problem with the way you're arguing is that most of the meta-critiques that you've offered about the way mainstream climate change scientists act read almost exactly the same as the anti-evolution arguments that biologists have been assaulted with for decades. "Consensus is not how science is done?" Check. "The evidence goes against prevailing opinion?" Check. "Proponents won't argue the science and just parrot talking points?" Check. "They just shout people down as 'anti-science' when they disagree?" Check.

And all these claims may be true, hell, they probably are. The problem is, that's how scientists act when they're right, just as much as when they're wrong.

This doesn't bear on your claim at all, of course, and I have no intention of getting into a specific global warming dispute (I don't have the expertise or the interest, and frankly, I doubt there are many people here that do); but those arguments mean absolutely nothing, because they are always offered whenever people disagree with the prevailing consensus in a field, whether it's correct or not.

I've only met a couple climate scientists, but my impression was most definitely not that they were ideologically driven morons that simply want to push their preconceived notions on the world. I've always gotten the sense that they really felt that the data supported their claims. Now, that doesn't make them right, but be careful about assuming that they're just perpetrating a fraud for some reason. One of the most common mistakes people make when arguing issues like this is to assume that the other side actually knows (or secretly suspects) that it's wrong, and it's playing dirty to trick everyone else. This is rarely the case, if someone is wrong it's typically more likely that the evidence they've seen strongly suggests their hypothesis, which ends up blinding them to later evidence that might weaken it.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#135

Post by _b8r0 »

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…

That you refer to people who disagree with you as 'deniers' shows that you are not open to debate on the matter, nor being proved wrong.

A lot of people used to think the world was flat and that the Sun went around the Earth. The atom used to be described as a pudding. The idea that illnesses were caused by creatures that you cannot see was considered ludicrous.

I would be happy to accept any of the above ideas if supported by fact. However I don't feel a need to refer to people who believe such things in a negative manner. The climate deniers you refer to are people too, probably a fair amount of them are intelligent and rational people, just with a different view to you. Name calling doesn't solve anything.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#136

Post by loewenskind »

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…

>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 discourse and research?

No, but I don't think that's what the parent was saying. I think you might be making the same mistake he was calling out: assuming the other side hasn't put any thought into their argument. Sometimes they haven't but sometimes, despite how radical the position may sound, they have put work into it.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#137

Post by chrischen »

loewenskind wrote: post #136
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…

>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 discourse and research? No, but I don't think that's what the parent was saying. I think you might be making the same mistake he was call…

It doesn't matter how much effort you put into it. It only matters how rational and factual it ends up being.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#138

Post by cromulent »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #130
cromulent wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Galileo's life was in danger is itself dogma. He put himself into trouble by using the Pope's views in the form of his bot Simplicio, embarrassing the Pope. He was in trouble, but not in physical danger. The irony is that the Church was open to heliocentrism, but demanded more scientific proof before teaching it.

Galileo was convicted of heresy, placed under house arrest for 9 years (until his death), and his books were banned. He could easily have been placed in prison rather than house arrest, at the whim of the Inquisition, the same Inquisition that executed Bruno 30 years prior and tortured and then imprisoned Campanella for 27 years. The idea that Galileo was never in any danger (assuming that one can write off house arr…

The point is that he wasn't in danger from challenging the dogma, as you asserted above. That is dogma itself. If he was in danger, it was from embarrassing the pope. He advanced helicentrism long before his heresy trial. The Pope met with him and said that he could write about Copernican theory.

He was under house arrest for those years at the house of the Archbishop of Siena. It was a fairly nice life in those times. Galileo and the church got along very well, but they had to do something to save face for the Pope. I don't think it's ridiculous.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#139

Post by ewjordan »

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…

Works great -- as long as you're omniscient.

Not at all - to set people straight on common talking points doesn't require omniscience, it merely requires that those specific talking points have been satisfactorily refuted before, clearly enough so that almost anyone would agree that they're squashed.

If someone on Twitter said "evolution is just a theory", I'd be perfectly happy to see someone respond-spam them with the Merriam-Webster definition of "theory" as it relates to science - that's an unambiguous refutation of the argument, verifiable by pretty much any onlooker as valid (in my experience, when confronted with that response, creationists usually don't acknowledge that they're wrong, but they quickly leave the topic, realizing that they won't score any points there). Similarly, if someone said "Darwin recanted on his deathbed", a simple link to http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/03/31/darwins-... (the first Google result for that phrase) would be fully justifiable, regardless of the qualifications of the responder.

As a rule, I think if someone utters/posts/writes something that can be 100% debunked, beyond any reasonable doubt, by typing the phrase into Google and reading the first three results, it's fair to call them out on it, even in an automated way. Omniscience not required.

Then again, I'm more used to arguing evolution than global warming, and evolution is a much more solid theory. I don't know how soundly most of the anti-global warming claims have been refuted, it may very well be the case that this guy is just parroting back talking points rather than properly shooting wrong ideas down. In which case that's Bad(tm).

But as an abstract idea? Go ahead, shoot down the idiot masses, as long as you're damn sure that you're right about what you're putting them down over. A lot of stuff that people say really does deserve a rude smackdown, it's so offensively wrong - this is Twitter we're talking about, after all!

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#140

Post by loewenskind »

demallien wrote: post #115
lzw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that you're defending a bot which provides random citations base on key phrases found in twitter posts on the claim that "most people's ... nonsense isn't ...skepticism, It's noise"? Here is someone providing no thought and adding nothing to the discussion, by definition, he is providing noise. Just because you disagree with someone, doesn't mean what they say is nonsense. The primary attribute of the glo…

Not once have I seen a global warming proponent who was willing to debate it on a scientific basis, Science is not done by debate. The issues are too complex to be conveyable in the cut and thrust of a discussion. There is a reason that the gold standard of scientific research is the peer review journal and not debates. Until you understand this point, you aren't able to understand how wrong you are on this subject.…

>You will also understand just how strong the evidence for GW is.

Here by GW I presume you mean Man made GW. In that case, many of the proponents are also ignorant of how strong (or not) the evidence is. They simply assume that the people paid to know, do. That's not a valid assumption.

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