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The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

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Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#21

Post by robotrout »

ruby_roo wrote: post #12

I personally feel that it is better to err on the side of caution in regards to global warming. I say "feel" because I'm just not smart enough to navigate fact from fiction on this issue anymore. There's going to be extremes on both sides, but I don't see what we have to gain by not taking better care of our planet. Even if global warming is only partially manmade, shouldn't we do what we can to minimize the effect?…

"I don't see how society is harmed by erring on the side of caution"

Let me try to help you see then.

Even though it's extremely important that you prevent tooth decay, and even if you have a huge chunk of "Jolly Rancher" stuck between your teeth, it would be a non-optimal use of resources to use your last match as you were shivering on the side of a mountain with a broken leg, to dislodge the offending piece of candy.

I'm sure you'll agree with this, in this extreme case. But what you are missing, is that humans have a limited supply of productivity that we use to feed and house the populations of our respective countries, and hopefully, to build infrastructure for the next generation to feed and house their populations. When you siphon off that productivity to dislodge a piece of candy, you better be damn sure the candy is going to harm you. In the case of the warmists, since you are literally stealing food and medicine from people's mouths with your demands of what is necessary, you better be damn certain you're right.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#22

Post by byrneseyeview »

hhm wrote: post #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 th…

Some people investigate stuff like that, and hold on to the answer for a long time.

For this one, I guess you'd start by narrowing it down. The number must have the start-end pair of 1,2; 2,4; 3,6; or 4,8. That narrows it down to 4E16. Then you can narrow it down further by looking at what other digit-pairs are possible. You might assume it has a palindrome in the middle, but that digits near the end are not palindroms (e.g. it could have ...1001..., but couldn't be 101....102).

At some point, you might have enough simple rules like that to just use a computer.

Edit: I'm also interested in exactly how he figured it out, though.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#23

Post by axod »

ruby_roo wrote: post #12

I personally feel that it is better to err on the side of caution in regards to global warming. I say "feel" because I'm just not smart enough to navigate fact from fiction on this issue anymore. There's going to be extremes on both sides, but I don't see what we have to gain by not taking better care of our planet. Even if global warming is only partially manmade, shouldn't we do what we can to minimize the effect?…

There's a number. For example, trying to prevent developing countries from using coal/oil etc That's harming to those countries.

Also it's an absolute ton of money to spend on something that hasn't been proven.

I'm of the opinion that it's unlikely we are to blame, we should obviously as always try to use less energy, and we should spend money on more important causes.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#24

Post by Tichy »

eugenejen wrote: post #13
logjam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You jump to conclusion too fast before reading the article. If you read it, you will know Dyson doesn't deny that human being's activities create the current global warming. But he doubts the consequences are as dire as what activists describe in their propaganda.

So even Dyson says there is man-made warming, but still people who believe in man-made warming are ignorant, stubborn nutcases who have no understanding of science? This is getting a bit confusing...

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#25

Post by radu_floricica »

Rod wrote: post #15
logjam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"People who know NOTHING about Science fall squarely in the "warmists" camp. The "nutcases", "tribal", or "primitives", eh?" No. You didn't get the point. Sorry for not making it explicit. The point is: people who are not trained in Science (Climate Modeling in particular, Physics in general) are not qualified to speak on the topic. Their opinions count for nothing because those are based on emotion, misinformation,…

At times like this I really wish there was no downvote button on HN. I might try to guess what the guy who downmodded you thought (that even non-specialists have the right to express their opinions? that lobbying is a legitimate activity?) but after all I'm left to guessing. Because in a vast majority of cases, people who downmod don't explain why. It's like throwing a rock through the window and running.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#26

Post by Tichy »

Rod wrote: post #15
logjam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"People who know NOTHING about Science fall squarely in the "warmists" camp. The "nutcases", "tribal", or "primitives", eh?" No. You didn't get the point. Sorry for not making it explicit. The point is: people who are not trained in Science (Climate Modeling in particular, Physics in general) are not qualified to speak on the topic. Their opinions count for nothing because those are based on emotion, misinformation,…

Experts can go wrong, too - and who defines who is an expert and who isn't? Some amateurs might have read more about the issue than the self-proclaimed experts.

And if non-experts are not qualified to speak, how do you justify letting them vote? Not saying democracy is perfect, but apparently there was a thought that even if people are not experts, they might be able to inform themselves sufficiently to be able to decide which experts to trust.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#27

Post by shrughes »

hhm wrote: post #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 th…

Because the decimal expansion of 19 repeats after 18 digits.

That means all the fractions 1/19 .. 18/19 are just rotations of each other. And 20/19 = 1 + 1/19, which means that 2/19 is a single rotation away.

If you've ever noticed that 142857 * [1..6] produces different rotations of the same number and wondered why, you might have thought about this. Dyson had probably already done all the hard work on the problem and knew immediately that the answers were rotations of some repeating fraction, and one where multiplying by 2 gives rotations by 1 digit.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#28

Post by byrneseyeview »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #22
hhm wrote: post #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 th…

Some people investigate stuff like that, and hold on to the answer for a long time. For this one, I guess you'd start by narrowing it down. The number must have the start-end pair of 1,2; 2,4; 3,6; or 4,8. That narrows it down to 4E16. Then you can narrow it down further by looking at what other digit-pairs are possible. You might assume it has a palindrome in the middle, but that digits near the end are not palindro…

Maybe you'd lop off the last few digits to make it easier: Let A be the highest digit, B be the lowest, and X be the ones in the middle. Find X, A, and B, where 2(X-A*E16+A+BE16-B)=X

That way, you can at least get each digit on one side, which might make it a more tractable problem. This is very frustrating! It's easy to narrow it down a whole lot, but it's still going to be intractable.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#30

Post by ryanwaggoner »

Rod wrote: post #15
logjam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"People who know NOTHING about Science fall squarely in the "warmists" camp. The "nutcases", "tribal", or "primitives", eh?" No. You didn't get the point. Sorry for not making it explicit. The point is: people who are not trained in Science (Climate Modeling in particular, Physics in general) are not qualified to speak on the topic. Their opinions count for nothing because those are based on emotion, misinformation,…

people who are not trained in Science (Climate Modeling in particular, Physics in general) are not qualified to speak on the topic. Their opinions count for nothing because those are based on emotion, misinformation, ideology, or plain dogma.

How do we define "trained"? Since the subject in question is the consequences of global warming (not whether warming is occurring), why does training in Physics qualify one to pontificate on what is largely a biology question?

Also, you seem to define scientists in a way that suggests that they're not subject to emotion, misinformation, ideology, or plain dogma. Sadly, this is not the case.

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