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Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

newscientist.com

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Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#41

Post by rortian »

gyardley wrote: post #37
rortian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that this is being up-voted as it is incredibly misleading and a conspiracy theory to boot: >#1 mainly intended to achieve a long-standing but tactically-shifting goal of governments to control capital No, global warming is not a government plan. It is an area of scientific consensus that has emerged from the work of thousands of individuals in many countries. Most mainstream solutions to dealing with global…

It's probably getting up-voted because of the first line: "There's a pretty strong impulse to call somebody a "denier" in order to categorically denounce what he's saying, as well as everybody similarly skeptical." This statement I'm in complete agreement with.

Probably right. However, the post outed his as an ideological opponent of government action (with a little fatalism thrown in). This would place him firmly in the denier camp according to the original article.

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#42

Post by yummyfajitas »

goodside wrote: post #26
yummyfajitas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not claim that evidence should never change views. I gave an example illustrating that some views should not be changed by evidence. Evidence tells you how to maximize your objective function. It does not tell you what your objective function should be.

You didn't. Shermer did. That's what I was complaining about initially. If you meant your comment as an interesting side note rather than a rebuttal, that's fine and I misread you. Maybe I should be less defensive.

What he is discussing is just a less extreme version of what I discussed.

I picked a fairly strong and apolitical example [1] because I didn't want to devolve into a more political discussion. But maybe I have no choice, so here goes.

Many liberals favor increasing distributional equality. In math terms, they wish to maximize L = (min utility) / (max utility). This means they should be open to arguments which argue "policy X decreases L, and should be opposed". However, many conservatives don't care about distributional equality, only overall utility, i.e. conservatives may wish to maximize C = 0.75 x (max utility) + 1.0 x (min utility). Therefore, such people would be unconvinced by any evidence based argument that "policy X reduces L".

Shermer and I were both arguing that evidence can tell you have to maximize your objective function. Only ideology/morality/values can tell you what your objective function should be.

[1] There is no clear political divide on torture. To pick recent high profile politicians, both Bush and Hillary supported it while McCain and Obama opposed it.

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#43

Post by randallsquared »

rortian wrote: post #39
dmm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, global warming is not a government plan. It is an area of scientific consensus Science and govt are inseparable now. Federal grants fund huge amounts of research. This distorts science to a degree not widely recognized. A good example is nutrition. Start with the modern consensus of what constitutes a healthy diet and trace it back to the research that supports it. Gary Taubes did that in "Good Calories, Bad Ca…

LOL? Yes, virtually all basic research is federally funded. Does it distort science? Nutrition is not at all easy to do as science because doing research with humans is not considered ethical by society. I think it's something we need to address, and it seems short sighted to me. Your example is not at all convincing evidence for you rather sweeping thesis.

Yes, virtually all basic research is federally funded. Does it distort science?

It would be pretty extraordinary if it somehow didn't, wouldn't it?

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#44

Post by FlorinAndrei »

mynameishere wrote: post #20

There's a pretty strong impulse to call somebody a "denier" in order to categorically denounce what he's saying, as well as everybody similarly skeptical. It's important, when doing this, to paint the person in the simplest "nutshell" terms. Those awful climate "denialists" for instance: In a nutshell: Global warming either (1) isn't real (2) isn't caused by humans or (3) doesn't matter Well, #2 is certainly within t…

"In a nutshell: Global warming either (1) isn't real (2) isn't caused by humans or (3) doesn't matter"

I know people who might serve you either #1 or #2 or #3 depending on the situation, their momentary mood or the course of discussion. Sometimes they even provide you a potpourri of all of the above at the same time.

It's like arguing with flat earthers.

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#45

Post by Tamerlin »

mseebach wrote: post #32
rortian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that this is being up-voted as it is incredibly misleading and a conspiracy theory to boot: >#1 mainly intended to achieve a long-standing but tactically-shifting goal of governments to control capital No, global warming is not a government plan. It is an area of scientific consensus that has emerged from the work of thousands of individuals in many countries. Most mainstream solutions to dealing with global…

> No, global warming is not a government plan. The proposed solutions to GW are. Politicians will play a significant part in distributing carbon credits. And you said it yourself: > (even the alternative energy technologies that are being heavily subsidized in R&D and production). Subsidized by whom? Private companies that only exist because of government money really aren't private. I disagree with the OP that it's…

"hugely expensive government programs"

That phrase is redundant.

Edit: grammar

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#46

Post by rubidium »

What's with the photo and caption beside this article? [Photo of refinery/ childhood cloud machine :) Caption:"Would you object to this sight even if there was no evidence it was causing harm?"]

The newscientist.com editors injecting some of their own belief into an otherwise reasonable article?

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#47

Post by guelo »

arethuza wrote: post #4

This comment is pretty interesting: "here are supporters on both sides of the climate debate ('warmists' and 'deniers') for whom the science is secondary. One feature of them both is that recognise no shade of gray." This kind of polarization happens a lot in the technology field (e.g. SQL vs NoSQL, Flash vs HTML 5) - usually not by the leaders in these areas but often by people who feel they have the need to strongl…

At least most of the debaters in those tech arguments have written a line of SQL or a HTML page. The climate debate is filled with people who don't know the difference between weather and climate and have never even heard of terms like radiative forcing.

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#48

Post by ubernostrum »

rortian wrote: post #39
dmm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, global warming is not a government plan. It is an area of scientific consensus Science and govt are inseparable now. Federal grants fund huge amounts of research. This distorts science to a degree not widely recognized. A good example is nutrition. Start with the modern consensus of what constitutes a healthy diet and trace it back to the research that supports it. Gary Taubes did that in "Good Calories, Bad Ca…

LOL? Yes, virtually all basic research is federally funded. Does it distort science? Nutrition is not at all easy to do as science because doing research with humans is not considered ethical by society. I think it's something we need to address, and it seems short sighted to me. Your example is not at all convincing evidence for you rather sweeping thesis.

I think you're missing the fact that this is a new libertarian talking point.

Laissez-faire approaches tend to result in the tragedy of the commons, where the commons is some environmental factor -- fish stocks, etc. -- and science has been consistently pointing out the problems caused as a result. Therefore, to defend itself, libertarianism must discredit science.

The solution is to associate science with government; since, by libertarian definition, anything a government does is wrong, it follows that science is wrong and, by the fallacy of begging the question, libertarianism is right.

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#49

Post by dpatru »

rortian wrote: post #39
dmm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, global warming is not a government plan. It is an area of scientific consensus Science and govt are inseparable now. Federal grants fund huge amounts of research. This distorts science to a degree not widely recognized. A good example is nutrition. Start with the modern consensus of what constitutes a healthy diet and trace it back to the research that supports it. Gary Taubes did that in "Good Calories, Bad Ca…

LOL? Yes, virtually all basic research is federally funded. Does it distort science? Nutrition is not at all easy to do as science because doing research with humans is not considered ethical by society. I think it's something we need to address, and it seems short sighted to me. Your example is not at all convincing evidence for you rather sweeping thesis.

Of course federal funding distorts science. How could it not? It's naive to think otherwise. Politics pervades all the other areas of government spending. Are you saying that scientists and their funders are somehow superior to everyone else? That they have a special gene that makes them bias-free?

I see the bias most clearly in the science and studies that are not being funded and the changes that are not being promoted. Why, for example, does Al Gore focus on climate change, which is based on contested predictions of how the climate will be in 50 years, and not on eliminating the farm subsidies which make food so artificially cheap that about a third of Americans, many of them "in poverty," are obese? Could it be that addressing climate change involves increasing government power while eliminating subsidies would reduce government power?

When was the last time government paid for a study that recommended that some department or agency of the government be eliminated?

Sal Khan has videos covering all the math taught in K-12. Why don't government-funded scientists study whether thousands of math teachers can be taken off government payrolls and replaced with Khan's videos?

Re: Living in denial: When a sceptic isn't a sceptic

#50

Post by Tichy »

msg wrote: post #28
Tichy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that hard to believe. Surely there is some limit that would change your mind? Maybe if it would save 1000 lives per month? Or one million lives per month? I suspect you don't have any hard data on the impact of torture. Not saying that torture is good, just saying that even in your example, science might change your mind.

This is a bullshit argument. Torture does not save shit and it is good for nothing. What if destroying the earth would save the universe? What if Batman wanted you to torture someone? What if cutting off the eyelids of a brown person meant that unicorns would walk the earth? What if I snuck into suburban households and cut up humans for body parts so my nanobots could learn regeneration techniques? What if the nanobo…

Learn to read. I didn't say that torture is good. In fact, I don't have any data on it at all. Just saying that data might still affect one's opinion.

What if you family was abducted and locked into an air sealed room, and the culprit was caught by the police. Your family has 1 hour left before air supply runs out. Would you still be against torture.

Again, I can't stress this enough: please read carefully. I am not advocating torture. This discussion is not about torture at all.

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