The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
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Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#2Subject matter - interesting.
Purple prose by author earnestly trying to convince you of his erudition, and constant asides that do nothing but distract - not interesting.
Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#3Quoting the great Bertrand Russell:
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
Interesting how so many people who know NOTHING about Science are SO sure that global warming is caused by man. Such dogma reminds me of the times of the 16th century Inquisition: no amount of evidence will ever convince the nutcase warmists that there MIGHT be a possibility that global warming is not caused by humans.
Dyson is a top physicist. Just because he dared to go against the mainstream dogma, people seem to want to lynch him. I thought that we, humans, had evolved from our tribal and primitive ways. But we still get carried away by mass hysteria and delusion.
There's no place for politics or ideology in Science. Only observation and experiment matter. Dyson is not alone. Many other physicists have been cautious and warned that we should not jump to conclusions based on noisy, ambiguous and incomplete data. They, too, were ostracized. So much for tolerance...
Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#4I just posted an essay where Freeman Dyson explains his own views about the topic (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=532426 or, more directly, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html )
Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#5Subject matter - interesting. Purple prose by author earnestly trying to convince you of his erudition, and constant asides that do nothing but distract - not interesting.
No, general public needs to learn about his integrity, erudition and impeccable scientific standing.
This is important because Dyson's opponents as a rule try some sort of character assassination instead of sticking to the subject matter.
Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#6"A group of scientists will be sitting around the cafeteria, and one will idly wonder if there is an integer where, if you take its last digit and move it to the front, turning, say, 112 to 211, it’s possible to exactly double the value. Dyson will immediately say, “Oh, that’s not difficult,” allow two short beats to pass and then add, “but of course the smallest such number is 18 digits long.”"
So how did he know that?
Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#7Quoting the great Bertrand Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." Interesting how so many people who know NOTHING about Science are SO sure that global warming is caused by man. Such dogma reminds me of the times of the 16th century Inquisition: no amount of evidence will ever convince the nutcase warmists that th…
Quoting the great Bertrand Russell
No need to do that. Socrates was saying the same thing two thousand years ago.
I've come to the conclusion from watching other people that some people just have to know. I guess I can understand. It has to be hard to spend your life studying in a certain field and end up with "Well gee. It sorta looks this way guys, but we don't really know."
When people slam the church for all the bad things they did in the past, they miss an important point -- the common denominator isn't religion, it's people. Certain people want to believe their stuff fervently. They want to believe that their belief system holds critical truths, and they want to persecute and ostracize those who fail to fall in line. It's not a problem with religion. It's humans that are the cause of this behavior.
So it's not surprising to see church attendance down and scientific religious-thinking up. All those folks had to go somewhere, right?
Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#8Subject matter - interesting. Purple prose by author earnestly trying to convince you of his erudition, and constant asides that do nothing but distract - not interesting.
No, general public needs to learn about his integrity, erudition and impeccable scientific standing. This is important because Dyson's opponents as a rule try some sort of character assassination instead of sticking to the subject matter.
Still, the writing is horrible.
Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#9Quoting the great Bertrand Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." Interesting how so many people who know NOTHING about Science are SO sure that global warming is caused by man. Such dogma reminds me of the times of the 16th century Inquisition: no amount of evidence will ever convince the nutcase warmists that th…
Oh.
People who know NOTHING about Science fall squarely in the "warmists" camp. The "nutcases", "tribal", or "primitives", eh?
Certainly your own biases, politics, and ideology aren't apparent from your prose, right?
Plenty of good scientists besides Freeman Dyson (one of my own personal heroes) have looked at the good science on the issue, and have concluded man's activities are causing harm.
Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson
#10Quoting the great Bertrand Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." Interesting how so many people who know NOTHING about Science are SO sure that global warming is caused by man. Such dogma reminds me of the times of the 16th century Inquisition: no amount of evidence will ever convince the nutcase warmists that th…
Quoting the great Bertrand Russell No need to do that. Socrates was saying the same thing two thousand years ago. I've come to the conclusion from watching other people that some people just have to know . I guess I can understand. It has to be hard to spend your life studying in a certain field and end up with "Well gee. It sorta looks this way guys, but we don't really know." When people slam the church for all the…
OK, I attributed the quote to the wrong philosopher ;-)
Science is not perfect. After all, Science is a human activity and humans are not perfect. Ideally, there should be no place for dogma in Science. In practise, there is some. Still, let us put things in perspective: Science is inherently non-dogmatic, while Religion is inherently dogmatic. I am not diminishing one nor the other. I am observing that they have entirely different essences and domains.
The goal of Science is not to attain an "absolute truth". Indeed, one may study Quantum Mechanics for a lifetime and still feel uneasy about it. But the truth is that just as long as we can explain experimental results and observations with our scientific theories, we are making progress. No scientist will ever know everything about his field, but that does not mean he can't contribute to it.
For centuries Newtonian Mechanics dominated. Then Einstein came up with his Theory of Relativity that could explain, for instance, the anomalous orbit of Mercury. In a few years, his theory was accepted. There was dogma, but it was not a big obstacle. By contrast, many religious fanatics in the U.S. in the 1960s still believed the Earth was flat, and when confronted with photos taken from Space they replied "OK, it looks a bit roundish at the edges." That is dogma. That is close-mindedness. It's not Religion's fault, it's a problem with us, humans (like you mentioned).
In Science one should always keep a fresh mind and be willing to accept what goes against the dogma. Otherwise, we will end up in a new dark age where we have advanced technology but no true knowledge.