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The tipping point was the tired dogma of the Fox-Limbaugh conspiracy. If they say something that's wrong, it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of who said

The tipping point was the tired dogma of the Fox-Limbaugh conspiracy. If they say something that's wrong, it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of who said it. The so-called "conspiracy" of "Saudi princes", "Russian oil interests" and other "petro-moguls" is just populist claptrap basically. In an ideal world, this is true. In reality, one must distinguish signal from noise and usually it's easier to just throw out most of the noise and lose a little signal too.

InclinedPlane 17y ago
"In an ideal world, this is true. In reality, one must distinguish signal from noise and usually it's easier to just throw out most of the noise and lose a little signal too." Yes, quite so, this is a key reason why the human brain works the way it does (relying heavily on archetypes and models, for example). This is called prejudice, it's a method of cognitive efficiency which we have discovered through harsh trials to be a human predilection worthy of significant scrutiny. In modern times we have recognized the risks and costs of unexamined prejudice and have come to the conclusion that in a great many cases it's best to re-evaluate prejudices with extreme criticality and rationality as often and as deeply as human cognitive limits allow. Precisely because, like any shortcut, they have many modes of failure, some of which have dramatically greater downsides than others (up to and including centuries of unimaginably widespread human tragedy). Given the risks in this realm (climate science, the theory of immediate catastrophic climate change due to human activities that generally form the very foundations of modern industrial economies, and nothing less than the very future of human civilization on Earth) a straining up to the limits of everyone's cognitive abilities rather than a casual reliance on prejudicial and tribal tendencies of the R-complex lizard brain is, was, and continues to be warranted. Or, to sum up: when the future of humanity is on the line you better get your goddamn science right, no matter how much work it takes.
- fleitz 17y ago
  The future of humanity is only on the line if the hypothesis of the pro-GW/CC/whatever it is called this week are right. To me Global Warming sounds a lot like Pascal's Wager, which isn't really a reason to do anything.

InclinedPlane 17y ago

"In an ideal world, this is true. In reality, one must distinguish signal from noise and usually it's easier to just throw out most of the noise and lose a little signal too." Yes, quite so, this is a key reason why the human brain works the way it does (relying heavily on archetypes and models, for example). This is called prejudice, it's a method of cognitive efficiency which we have discovered through harsh trials to be a human predilection worthy of significant scrutiny. In modern times we have recognized the risks and costs of unexamined prejudice and have come to the conclusion that in a great many cases it's best to re-evaluate prejudices with extreme criticality and rationality as often and as deeply as human cognitive limits allow. Precisely because, like any shortcut, they have many modes of failure, some of which have dramatically greater downsides than others (up to and including centuries of unimaginably widespread human tragedy). Given the risks in this realm (climate science, the theory of immediate catastrophic climate change due to human activities that generally form the very foundations of modern industrial economies, and nothing less than the very future of human civilization on Earth) a straining up to the limits of everyone's cognitive abilities rather than a casual reliance on prejudicial and tribal tendencies of the R-complex lizard brain is, was, and continues to be warranted. Or, to sum up: when the future of humanity is on the line you better get your goddamn science right, no matter how much work it takes.

fleitz 17y ago
The future of humanity is only on the line if the hypothesis of the pro-GW/CC/whatever it is called this week are right. To me Global Warming sounds a lot like Pascal's Wager, which isn't really a reason to do anything.