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Really hard to not take you for a crackpot. You: * initially call everyone science-denying alarmists * ignore all the responses that point out that there is t

by ajkjk 11y ago

Really hard to not take you for a crackpot. You: * initially call everyone science-denying alarmists * ignore all the responses that point out that there is trend in the data you linked. * respond only to the reply that gives you the benefit of the doubt ('what smoothing do you recommend so we can see it's unchanged.') by switching datasets and trying to make the same point again (unable to defend it in with first source?) * make a claim of your own ('it's unchanged'), but switch to a different, easier-to-defend claim when contested ('it's not a foot, like the original article claims') So do you actually believe it's unchanged, or are you irrationally dead-set on disagreeing with the article? Can't take you seriously like this.

gd1 11y ago
'Crackpot' is a several thousand word article on how climate change is submerging the Marshall Islands when all the hard data shows that sea level has done fuck all except bounce around for 23 years. But sure, yeah, I'm a crackpot.
gd1 11y ago
By the way, you will note in my initial source that the final point in the dataset is level with the initial point (slightly below). So it is, in fact, unchanged. You can quibble about smoothing methods, how to fit a regression, etc., but that is the literal english definition of 'unchanged'. Is that defended enough for you? Right now the sea level in the Marshall Islands is roughly where it was 23 years ago. That would be UNCHANGED.
- ajkjk 11y ago
  You ignored my point entirely. I agree with you that the current sea level is about where it was 23 years ago. I don't agree with you that the graph you linked isn't trending upwards. Obviously if you have a sinusoid that slowly trends up (where the yearly delta is << the (max-min) periodic variation), it's going to oscillate in such a way that a point-in-time view of it might see lower values than the average. That's what sinusoids do. (If it's not obvious to you that the trend, rather than the current value, is the interesting data, then this whole discussion is a waste of time.) So now that we've gotten that out of the way: I'm arguing that you're doing a really bad job of convincing anyone because of your hostility to rational questions and discussion on the subject. I'm doing this a) to inform you, in case it wasn't obvious to you (and it seems like it wasn't) and b) because it's fun to point these things out; Hacker News seems to often enjoy meta-discussions about arguments.
  - gd1 11y ago
    >I agree with you that the current sea level is about where it was 23 years ago. So you'd agree that it is, um, how should I phrase this... unchanged?? Why then did you explicitly call me out, and call me a crackpot, for not defending that claim? If you agree with it?
    - ajkjk 11y ago
      As it turns out, a single sentence out of a comment is actually not the entire content of the comment. It's very disingenuous to cherry pick a sentence and pretend as though it's the entire point. If you want to be utterly pedantic: If I or anyone else claims the sea level is 'unchanged', what I and anyone else means is that 'the average sea level over a regular oscillation' is unchanged. This is clearly false; the average has increased. No one - not me, not you, not climate scientists, not hacker news posters - means that "The sea level as of December 02 2015 is the same as the sea level as of <date in 1993>". We're interested in averages of the sea level over a year/cycle/whatever unit you want. So you are still probably incorrect, unless you intentionally twist words against their intention. If you do that, there is no point in arguing with you; you are not interested in debate and are not genuinely trying to find truth. Though without agreeing on a method and timespan of averaging things, I wouldn't swear you're incorrect. My whole point is that your argument is failing because of your hostility to rationality and being challenged on it. Not that you're necessarily wrong. (though eyeballing it definitely suggests that you're wrong.)
      - underwires 11y ago
        > As it turns out, a single sentence out of a comment is actually not the entire content of the comment the key to gd1's entire world view
        kevinskii 11y ago
        Congratulations on scoring points with the choir. Now would you care to say something substantive?
      - 11y ago
droithomme 11y ago
gd1 posted the actual empirical sea level data which shows clearly that sea level is not rising as significantly in this region as is claimed. You then called him a crackpot, an ad hominem response. Your denialism in the face of actual scientific factual data is more likely to be the crackpot science-denialist position.
- ajkjk 11y ago
  a) you don't win points for using the buzzphrase "ad hominem". fyi, the capital-L-capital-F as-taught-in-high-school Logical Fallacy 'ad hominem' refers to insulting a person in lieu of an actual argument. Hopefully we can agree that I've in fact argued my point in detail. b) I argued that: 1. he is behaving like a crackpot, for a commonly-accepted understanding of the word 'crackpot' 2. that he has not adequately defended his position against challenges 3. that the data does not show what he claims ('refuting' and 'denying' are very different things) Now, I agree that the data he posted " shows clearly that sea level is not rising as significantly in this region as is claimed". You'll hear no objection from me. Fortunately, that is not the claim gd1 made, nor the claim I attempted to refute. And I stand by my (admittedly easier-to-defend) position that: my post was pointing out that he's getting harangued for defending his point abysmally. I don't really want to take a side in the actual debate, except to say that the position that the sea level HAS changed is very clearly legitimate, and if we're going to quibble over changed vs unchanged we have to agree on definitions and methodology.
  - droithomme 11y ago
    Calling someone a crackpot is clearly an ad hominem argument. Claiming it is not in a followup, and then furiously downvoting is neither a valid nor legitimate response.
    - ajkjk 11y ago
      Hm. I think you're confused about what 'ad hominem' means. That or you're struggling to read more than one sentence at a time as a coherent thought. Do you realize that every sentence past the one with the word 'crackpot' in it was a justification of that statement? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem says "... is an attack on an argument made by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, rather than attacking the argument directly". So can we agree, at least, that I have attacked the argument directly, at length, and therefore the "rather than..." clause is not satisfied? Moreover, even if you don't agree with that: I have no obligation not to attack a person directly if it gets the point across faster. I am, after all, writing to the readers as much as gd1 - and if gd1 is truly irrational then I'm not particularly interested in trying to convince them of anything, nor avoiding offending them. And my attack (if you can call it that - I did say "Really hard to not take you for a crackpot", which intentionally gives him a wide benefit of the doubt) was, I think, well-justified: The definition of the word "crackpot" that I am reaching for is that of "a person who believes absurd notions". That would be as opposed to "a person who believes rationally justifiable notions". I called gd1 a crackpot because as a way of capturing the notion that they were not defending their argument via rationality, but by insistence that it was correct, and were (as I pointed out in my original post) intentionally evading challenges to the argument - but responding to things to that did not challenge it. These to me suggest that they had no ability to defend the argument (and I invited a proper defense), and therefore that they would be a person who believes an argument without rational defense, aka a crackpot. So I posted the argument that "gd1 is behaving like a crackpot for reasons A, B, C, D", and I listed the reasons. We can substitute the phrase "one who believes absurd notions" for "crackpot". Both the word and its substitution are derogatory terms - we can't get around that. It's a negative quality to believe absurd things.

by ajkjk 11y ago

gd1 11y ago

'Crackpot' is a several thousand word article on how climate change is submerging the Marshall Islands when all the hard data shows that sea level has done fuck all except bounce around for 23 years. But sure, yeah, I'm a crackpot.

gd1 11y ago

By the way, you will note in my initial source that the final point in the dataset is level with the initial point (slightly below). So it is, in fact, unchanged. You can quibble about smoothing methods, how to fit a regression, etc., but that is the literal english definition of 'unchanged'. Is that defended enough for you? Right now the sea level in the Marshall Islands is roughly where it was 23 years ago. That would be UNCHANGED.

ajkjk 11y ago
You ignored my point entirely. I agree with you that the current sea level is about where it was 23 years ago. I don't agree with you that the graph you linked isn't trending upwards. Obviously if you have a sinusoid that slowly trends up (where the yearly delta is << the (max-min) periodic variation), it's going to oscillate in such a way that a point-in-time view of it might see lower values than the average. That's what sinusoids do. (If it's not obvious to you that the trend, rather than the current value, is the interesting data, then this whole discussion is a waste of time.) So now that we've gotten that out of the way: I'm arguing that you're doing a really bad job of convincing anyone because of your hostility to rational questions and discussion on the subject. I'm doing this a) to inform you, in case it wasn't obvious to you (and it seems like it wasn't) and b) because it's fun to point these things out; Hacker News seems to often enjoy meta-discussions about arguments.
- gd1 11y ago
  >I agree with you that the current sea level is about where it was 23 years ago. So you'd agree that it is, um, how should I phrase this... unchanged?? Why then did you explicitly call me out, and call me a crackpot, for not defending that claim? If you agree with it?
  - ajkjk 11y ago
    As it turns out, a single sentence out of a comment is actually not the entire content of the comment. It's very disingenuous to cherry pick a sentence and pretend as though it's the entire point. If you want to be utterly pedantic: If I or anyone else claims the sea level is 'unchanged', what I and anyone else means is that 'the average sea level over a regular oscillation' is unchanged. This is clearly false; the average has increased. No one - not me, not you, not climate scientists, not hacker news posters - means that "The sea level as of December 02 2015 is the same as the sea level as of <date in 1993>". We're interested in averages of the sea level over a year/cycle/whatever unit you want. So you are still probably incorrect, unless you intentionally twist words against their intention. If you do that, there is no point in arguing with you; you are not interested in debate and are not genuinely trying to find truth. Though without agreeing on a method and timespan of averaging things, I wouldn't swear you're incorrect. My whole point is that your argument is failing because of your hostility to rationality and being challenged on it. Not that you're necessarily wrong. (though eyeballing it definitely suggests that you're wrong.)
    - underwires 11y ago
      > As it turns out, a single sentence out of a comment is actually not the entire content of the comment the key to gd1's entire world view
      - kevinskii 11y ago
        Congratulations on scoring points with the choir. Now would you care to say something substantive?
    - 11y ago

droithomme 11y ago

gd1 posted the actual empirical sea level data which shows clearly that sea level is not rising as significantly in this region as is claimed. You then called him a crackpot, an ad hominem response. Your denialism in the face of actual scientific factual data is more likely to be the crackpot science-denialist position.

ajkjk 11y ago
a) you don't win points for using the buzzphrase "ad hominem". fyi, the capital-L-capital-F as-taught-in-high-school Logical Fallacy 'ad hominem' refers to insulting a person in lieu of an actual argument. Hopefully we can agree that I've in fact argued my point in detail. b) I argued that: 1. he is behaving like a crackpot, for a commonly-accepted understanding of the word 'crackpot' 2. that he has not adequately defended his position against challenges 3. that the data does not show what he claims ('refuting' and 'denying' are very different things) Now, I agree that the data he posted " shows clearly that sea level is not rising as significantly in this region as is claimed". You'll hear no objection from me. Fortunately, that is not the claim gd1 made, nor the claim I attempted to refute. And I stand by my (admittedly easier-to-defend) position that: my post was pointing out that he's getting harangued for defending his point abysmally. I don't really want to take a side in the actual debate, except to say that the position that the sea level HAS changed is very clearly legitimate, and if we're going to quibble over changed vs unchanged we have to agree on definitions and methodology.
- droithomme 11y ago
  Calling someone a crackpot is clearly an ad hominem argument. Claiming it is not in a followup, and then furiously downvoting is neither a valid nor legitimate response.
  - ajkjk 11y ago
    Hm. I think you're confused about what 'ad hominem' means. That or you're struggling to read more than one sentence at a time as a coherent thought. Do you realize that every sentence past the one with the word 'crackpot' in it was a justification of that statement? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem says "... is an attack on an argument made by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, rather than attacking the argument directly". So can we agree, at least, that I have attacked the argument directly, at length, and therefore the "rather than..." clause is not satisfied? Moreover, even if you don't agree with that: I have no obligation not to attack a person directly if it gets the point across faster. I am, after all, writing to the readers as much as gd1 - and if gd1 is truly irrational then I'm not particularly interested in trying to convince them of anything, nor avoiding offending them. And my attack (if you can call it that - I did say "Really hard to not take you for a crackpot", which intentionally gives him a wide benefit of the doubt) was, I think, well-justified: The definition of the word "crackpot" that I am reaching for is that of "a person who believes absurd notions". That would be as opposed to "a person who believes rationally justifiable notions". I called gd1 a crackpot because as a way of capturing the notion that they were not defending their argument via rationality, but by insistence that it was correct, and were (as I pointed out in my original post) intentionally evading challenges to the argument - but responding to things to that did not challenge it. These to me suggest that they had no ability to defend the argument (and I invited a proper defense), and therefore that they would be a person who believes an argument without rational defense, aka a crackpot. So I posted the argument that "gd1 is behaving like a crackpot for reasons A, B, C, D", and I listed the reasons. We can substitute the phrase "one who believes absurd notions" for "crackpot". Both the word and its substitution are derogatory terms - we can't get around that. It's a negative quality to believe absurd things.