Browser-based climate change simulation

Pardon the delay in replying, I didn't see this until now.

> Your question was answered in the comment underneath it -- the answer is taken from the article in the discussion:

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21709446

Well, shit. This is kind one of those timing error, at the time I wrote that the thread was quite young, so I presumed my more substantive complaint (which is immediately under my comment) would have been seen. That'll teach me for being trite, hopefully.

Anyways, here is that comment (and I imagine you won't like my pedantry, but I did note it as such, and I'm not forcing anyone to answer - if they'd like to allow ambiguity/uncertainty to remain, be my guest):

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21708936

> As noted in TFA, they looked at 17 forecasts from 14 models

Pardon a little pedantry:

>> The researchers compared annual average surface temperatures across the globe to the surface temperatures predicted in 17 forecasts. Those predictions were drawn from 14 separate computer models released between 1970 and 2001. In some cases, the studies and their computer codes were so old that the team had to extract data published in papers, using special software to gauge the exact numbers represented by points on a printed graph.

They compared annual average surface temperatures across the globe to 17 forecasts, from 14 separate models.

But....how many models did they look at, before choosing those particular 14 models?

TFA doesn't say.

Articles written in this style provide rich fodder for conspiracy theorists, particularly because there is no shortage of examples in the past where authoritative, trustworthy organizations have gotten caught in lies. Rare is the climate change article I've read that can't easily have similar holes poked in it.

What's the real truth here? Based on the literal content of this article, no one knows. It is speculation vs speculation.

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> Then, incredibly, the paper author chimed in with this offer:

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21709010

> And you couldn't respond constructively. If he didn't include a model, point it out.

An obvious lack of thoroughness and reasonableness on my part - it would have been wiser to restate my above question in it's entirety rather than expecting him ti find it. So I'll take the reputation hit on that one.

But then on the other hand, I did email one of the authors directly (after looking through the github repo to see if my questions were answered there), with a much more detailed question, in polite terms, and with mention of the possibility that this sort of ambiguity is open to exploitation by propagandists, but didn't hear back, so far anyways.

UPDATE:

To the author's credit, they did address a question posed to them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21709249

Also, his reply to another comment is suggestive that all available models (that fit his criteria) were in fact used: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21708782

I get a fairly trustworthy feel from him after reading those, although I still prefer that these things were written using more defensive wording.

> I'm content with the ground we've covered, but I still wanted to address your specific request for a reply--I'll try to winnow a bit.

I'm extremely glad you did, for reasons revealed below.

> Regardless of what you thought, or suspected, or meant to say, you said you harbor the same suspicion as the poster's coworkers--and the poster said their coworkers think the scientists are making up the data because their jobs depend on it. Where do you see enough daylight--between the initial poster's assertion, your statement, and my "cooking the books" metaphor--to assert that my interpretation is inconsistent with what you said?

Ok, this is extremely interesting, to me.

--- My initial (incorrect) response to that question ---

Well that's easy.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suspicion

Definition of suspicion

1a : the act or an instance of suspecting something wrong without proof or on slight evidence : mistrust

b : a state of mental uneasiness and uncertainty : doubt

--- My updated (less incorrect) response to that question ---

I got to thinking....here I am talking to a person who is clearly (I suspect) intelligent, articulate, and intellectually honest - not unlike how I imagine myself to be. And yet, we've somehow come to completely opposite conclusions on a matter that is somewhat complicated, but not all that complicated. Being curious about how you came to this misunderstanding (or so I thought!), I reviewed the conversation and came across this previous exchange:

>> I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding.

> (ME): FWIW, I also happen to harbor this suspicion. How might one actually know whether there is an element of truth to it?

Here is where the "contamination of the conversation" (and subsequent misunderstanding, on matters specifically related to this point) occurred, and it is 100% my fault. Due due to lack of disciplined preciseness, my literal words unmistakably convey something I don't actually believe (well, to be completely honest, my mind is open to the possibility, but I internally assign this a very low certainty/likelihood/magnitude score): that scientists are making up this data and skewing results.

I literally said that I am suspicious (consider it possible) that scientists are making up this data and skewing results. So NO WONDER you've been replying to me as if I hold "high level" conspiratorial beliefs, because I said just that!

FWIW, to add some color, my actual beliefs were more accurately communicated in a subsequent comment:

>> Climate science is so unnecessarily controversial at this point, that if any evidence existed that scientists were lying to make more money, business leaders would be touting it at every turn.

> (ME):Sure, and nothing I said directly contradicts this, I am merely pointing out that we do not have evidence either way that it is "wise career advice" to pursue climate change only from a particular angle, or that there might be a kind of "overton window" in play, to some degree. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

> Again, I am not saying this is the case, I am simply saying:

> a) the conclusive, absolute truth on these matters is unknown

> b) a behavior can be observed where climate change advocates seem extremely unwilling to simply acknowledge that some things are unknown

[...that there might be a kind of "overton window" in play, to some degree...] is something that I assign a much higher certainty/likelihood/magnitude score, but (obviously) an espistemic status of [Unknown - Incomplete Data].

If I had an infinite amount of time, I'd go back through the entire conversation thread and try to determine how much of that which I found completely baffling might be explained away by this one mistake - it would be funny if the whole thing might have been one giant misunderstanding due to an unintentional, seemingly minor error on the part of one well-intentioned person - a core idea in my overall theory-in-progress on the underlying causes of societal disharmony and polarization, by the way.

I wonder....is this the first time such a thing has occurred within [HN] > [The Internet] > [Planet Earth] > [The History of Mankind]?

I suspect not. And if not, I then wonder....how often might this sort of thing occur, and with what consequences (if one takes into the consideration the nature of human beings, including current knowledge on how they perceive reality based on (~recursive) interpretation of new input, that is modified based on infinitely complicated mental models of reality built from previously consumed (and interpreted) input)?

But I digress. I think this likely takes care of most of the rest of your comment, except for:

>>...I don't understand what you mean by this...

> You expressed skepticism (to be clear, as I said previously, I have no intrinsic objection to skepticism) of the scientists and their data, but also separately expressed interest in how we move forward from the misunderstanding. If your skepticism of the scientists and the data is serious, it's not clear to me why you're motivated to figure out how we move forward from the misunderstanding.

Ok, this is mostly covered by the above, but not completely: I think this in particular was mostly just plain old no-fault communication error/confusion. I was (imprecisely) referring to one kind of of misunderstanding (that of people interacting on HN, this conversation being one such example, except here we're both acting in good faith), and you took it as another (people "not understanding" (or so it seems), science).

This exchange will easily make the top 5 of my "Most Enlightening Internet Arguments of 2019", so thanks for your persistence.

Two final questions, just for fun:

1. Within this overall ridiculous conversation, do you get any sense of a kind of a ~"general theme, loosely related set of ideas" that drives my curiosity?

2. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being highest confidence), how crazy do you think I am?

EDIT: I also just realized I owe at least two people some sort of an apology.

> It starts off with a question that seems (to me) to have an obvious answer. I can't figure out, in context, whether to read them as purely rhetorical but tend to give the benefit of the doubt. Then I have trouble charting a course to an answer that feels charitable. The tack-on questions tend to balloon to something quite relevant, but seemingly unanswerable without hubris or a mountain of research that I suspect doesn't exist.

Could you possibly give an example? Or perhaps you're simply noticing exactly what I'm doing, which is asking obviously rhetorical questions, in order to get someone to think.

Or, if you're referring to "I wonder ... how often might this sort of thing occurs"...

The whole quote:

> I suspect not. And if not, I then wonder....how often might this sort of thing occur, and with what consequences (if one takes into the consideration the nature of human beings, including current knowledge on how they perceive reality based on (~recursive) interpretation of new input, that is modified based on infinitely complicated mental models of reality built from previously consumed (and interpreted) input)?

...where "this sort of thing" = ~"unintentional misspeaking, differences in interpretation of words, unrealized differences in axioms (or unawareness of the existence of axioms, or the human ego), pure erroneous thinking, lying, silly (epistemically unsound) ideas, simple misunderstanding, etc".

What I was getting at is.....of all the things people fight about, how much of it might be a misunderstanding (throughout whatever means), which then sets off a self-reinforcing negative feedback loop of retaliation and revenge. This sort of thing happens between couples all the time, could something similar not also be happening at the societal and global level?

> It seems like you're trying to make sense of the absurdist conflict rituals you see playing out. I think you're trying to call attention to the ritual (and its absurdity) as a means of making sense of it (finding other people who agree, prompting new people trying to do the same, testing ideas, getting opinions). I think you see the ritual turning more on psychology than logic, and want to understand the psychology (and promote understanding of the psychology) to light a path forward.

> If this isn't too far off base

Pretty much bang on.

> But you'll mostly find people who are trained to shoot at anything on the wrong horizon.

Yes, this is basically my overwhelming (95%++) experience. Granted, maybe I'm not going about this perfectly, but on a website with an average IQ as high as HN, surely you'd think you could find someone who's willing and able to defend the things they believe, or someone that might realize they aren't able to?

> b) it's humbling to assume you might decide/behave the same way with the same inputs;

Oh yes, I'm very well aware that I have many similar imperfections.

> c) if they are a willing, self-reflective participant, the processes of mutually teasing out and challenging inputs and weightings is less inherently fraught/adversarial/condescending than the process of figuring out why they are irrational/illogical.

Oh, I don't disagree, but I think there's another way of thinking about it. My goal isn't really achieving rational conversation on the object level, I'm more interested in the general behavior from an abstract perspective, and finding out if a way can (or can not) be found to make people realize it, in realtime. It sounds like a weird idea, and maybe it actually is, but I'm fairly obsessed with it for now.

> I haven't thought of you as crazy.

Well thank you. I'm not so sure I agree, but you seem very reasonable so I'll take your word for it! :)

Thanks for the chat.