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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

#191

Post by khafra »

lotharbot wrote: post #114
philwelch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Pick any religious, political, or philosophical position. Chances are, most holders of that position make similar statements about it most of the time, and detractors give pretty similar critical responses. It would be trivial to write a chat bot, either pro or con, for a lot of topics. Replacing yourself with a chat bot is just like arguing in person, except that it doesn't try your patience or waste your time, only…

There's nothing saying it can't flag responses from its interlocuter that don't match a response in its database, to give you the opportunity for learning. I think that feature would make this a complete system suitable for educating newbies, discouraging talking-point idealogues, and letting everyone spend more time in the debate areas of greatest marginal benefit.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#192

Post by khafra »

lzw wrote: post #73
JabavuAdams wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, you didn't understand it correctly. The bot provides citations. Suppose that human-caused global warming is false. It would still be possible (and common) to make erroneous arguments about how humans aren't causing global warming. Skepticism is great, but most people's pro-X or anti-X nonsense isn't thoughtful skepticism. It's noise. This is a way of injecting signal back into the noise.

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…

> a bot which provides random citations base on key phrases... providing no thought and adding nothing to the discussion, by definition, he is providing noise.

The thought he's adding is pre-cached. He's making a time-memory tradeoff. A memoized factorial function is still a factorial function, and a well-referenced refutation is still a well-referenced refutation, whether it's typed live or recorded in a bot.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#193

Post by Gobiner »

lzw wrote: post #96
scrod wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am coming to believe that ideology inhibits thought. Your comments demonstrate that quite clearly.

Aw, gee, a snotty insult with no actual substantive response. Stay classy, hacker news! Sure, the snotty insult gets upvoted and the response pointing out that it is not useful or adding to the conversation gets downvoted. Votes are driven by ideology, not objectivity, eh?

You've made over a dozen posts in this discussion making factual claims without posting a single link to back up your assertions. Coupled with this ridiculousness: "I believe the left does not really care about people, especially poor people, at all" you can't seriously be miffed that people aren't putting in a lot of effort to refute your positions.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#194

Post by lutorm »

lzw wrote: post #111
lutorm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the arguments against AGW, the complaints by McIntyre against the Mann analysis are the only ones I've heard that seem to warrant being taken seriously. If you really can get rid of the entire 20th century warming by removing a small set of proxies, regardless of the statistical analysis, it's a serious problem. And the response on the "skeptical science" web site, that new data has confirmed the hockey st…

The projections are based completely on the temperature record, and changing the temperature record would produce different projections. The projections are essentially fudged to get the result that is desired for political reasons. I'm guessing you haven't been exposed to many arguments against AGW, or maybe not many good ones. But since you have an open mind, I'd suggest you look into the absorbtion of IR By CO2, t…

Radiation transfer is what I do my research on (though not in the atmosphere), and it's something we know how to do. I really doubt the scientific field has screwed that up. Certainly all arguments I've seen regarding that have had crackpot quality. (I have some hope of getting around to actually running that problem myself, but "real" work always seems to get in the way.)

The projections were not based entirely on the Mann temperature record. There are satellite data, other analyses, etc., and I haven't seen to what extent changing one of those data sets impacts the projections.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#195

Post by astrange »

alextgordon wrote: post #174
demallien wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, here's the thing. We know that CO2 absorbs light energy in the frequencies reflected by the Earth more than the frequencies that arrive from the sun. That is, any CO2 that you have in your atmosphere is going to lead to an increase in the rate of absorbtion of energy from the sun on a planetary scale. The spectrum of Earth's reflected light has been confirmed by satellites, the absorbtion spectrum of CO2 has be…

I just want to say: Thank you. This is the first time someone has actually explained the science without bullshit or a large number of holes ("oh look here's a graph with CO2, and here's a graph with temperature, they seem to be doing the same thing - that explains everything ").

Did you look, or are you just complaining that you haven't randomly absorbed the right kind of explanation?

http://climate.nasa.gov/

Although that site doesn't really work without Flash.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#196

Post by astrange »

rimantas wrote: post #184
Robin_Message wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are disagreeing with an incidental comment that is not even the thrust of my argument on a FUD basis, but anyway. That article in Nature interviewed some people associated with the process who expressed not one jot of disbelief in the report. They wished the mistake hadn't happened, and had been caught sooner, and suggested ways to reduce mistakes in the future, but no-one thinks that mistake invalidates the repo…

I am not talking about beliefs there. The main point why discussion about the need of change started is this: > "To me the fundamental problem was that when the error > was found it was handled in a totally and utterly > atrocious manner ". IPCC is a political organization, not scientific.

Why are you discussing the author of the report and not its contents?

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#197

Post by jff »

lmz wrote: post #37
gojomo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine spam bots filling the net with appealing nonsense -- forever.

Isn't this the case in Neal Stephenson's Anathem where truth on the net is hard to come by because programs keep pumping out plausible nonsense?

The same thing happens in Vernor Vinge's near-future novels; the "Friends of Privacy" put out fake personal information everywhere to obfuscate things.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#198

Post by jff »

kj12345 wrote: post #43

It's disturbing that (among other things) this programmer has so confidently separated humanity into "crowd"s, and feels free to deride and explain his superiority to at least two of these crowds in his quotes. I'm surprised that this degree of stereotyping and subsequent mockery was published by TR with no trace of criticism or meaningful commentary.

First they came for the climate skeptics, and I did not speak out because I was not a climate skeptic...

Godwin'd.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#199

Post by astrange »

rick888 wrote: post #189
anthonyb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

really? I really have to explain this? You don't remember the breach of data, the emails, and all of the universities that came out and admit that all of their claims were based on the same data? I figured everyone would know what I was talking about, but I guess some people don't pay attention to the news as closely as I do.

There are multiple sets of "data", in whatever sense you want to use it (prediction models and climate measurements), and I don't think you know which one you mean. They back each other up pretty well, anyway.

Re: Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense

#200

Post by narag »

jberryman wrote: post #185
alextgordon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to say: Thank you. This is the first time someone has actually explained the science without bullshit or a large number of holes ("oh look here's a graph with CO2, and here's a graph with temperature, they seem to be doing the same thing - that explains everything ").

It's odd to me that you wouldn't have browsed wikipedia or come across a better explanation of global warming than "here are some graphs"

I have read a lot about this question and never found such a short and to the point explanation as demallien's.
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