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The reason we know where Pluto will be in 9 years is that we've been watching the solar system for two thousand years. How long do you think people have been w

The reason we know where Pluto will be in 9 years is that we've been watching the solar system for two thousand years. How long do you think people have been watching the weather for?

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
Widespread watching and recording, like astrologers did with the planets? Maybe 150-300 years or so? And that's with varying degrees of precision. It's interesting to note that there was a huge gap in time between observing the weather and recording it. There was a further gap before we started predicting the weather. For most of that time, people substituted superstitions about the weather for science. The sky gods were happy, the sun came out. The sky gods were unhappy, it rained. If we would only do the right thing, the sky gods would remain happy. If we want the weather to be agreeable, we must change our behavior. With the worldwide climate, we are only about 20-50 years into simply observing and recording. It could be quite a long while indeed before global long-term climate predictions is anything at all like the 3-day local weather forecast. Remember, three stages: abduction, deduction, and induction. Abduction: gathering data and spotting patterns. Deduction: taking patterns and positing relationships. Induction: taking those relationships and extrapolating to future behavior of the system. Climate science is currently mostly abduction. But folks like to describe it in terms of induction because lots of pieces of the underlying physics are at that stage. But it doesn't work that way. I don't know if that strikes you as some kind of big hand-waving philosophy bullshit, but it's just the way things are, whether I point it out or not. I'm just the dumb schmuck stuck with trying to explain it.
- codahale 17y ago
  You have got to be kidding. 150-300 years? Agriculture dates back to at least ~10,000 BC (the "Neolithic revolution"). Effective farming (i.e., not dying of starvation) requires planning for changing weather conditions. If you think Neolithic farmers didn't have a vested interest in detecting patterns in weather cycles, you're sadly mistaken. Hell, the term "meteorology" was coined by Aristotle... in a book he wrote... called Meteorology... in 350 BC.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    Remember: abduction, gathering of data and spotting patterns. Got the daily weather report for Athens for the years 150-100 BC? Neolithic man had a deeply vested interest in the weather, but that doesn't change his advancement of weather science. The gods were useful for many thousands of years. Sure, the general idea of watching the weather -- long history there. But that just proves my point. There was a huge gap between seeing and naming it, recording it, spotting patterns, making falsifiable theories, and making predictions. We're just at the "seeing and naming it" stage with climate science. The use of computer models hide this fact, sadly.
    - codahale 17y ago
      Oh, ok. So it takes making predictions to quality as real science. Here's a real prediction, with actual confirming evidence: giving someone with a high MADRS score an SSRI will reduce their score. That's beyond seeing and naming depression, it's beyond recording patients' reactions to SSRIs, it's beyond spotting patterns in their reactions, it's even beyond making falsifiable theories about its mechanism of action. It's making predictions which are confirmed on a statistically significant basis. Does this mean you think psychiatry has the same epistemological standing as physics?

The reason we know where Pluto will be in 9 years is that we've been watching the solar system for two thousand years. How long do you think people have been watching the weather for?

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

Widespread watching and recording, like astrologers did with the planets? Maybe 150-300 years or so? And that's with varying degrees of precision. It's interesting to note that there was a huge gap in time between observing the weather and recording it. There was a further gap before we started predicting the weather. For most of that time, people substituted superstitions about the weather for science. The sky gods were happy, the sun came out. The sky gods were unhappy, it rained. If we would only do the right thing, the sky gods would remain happy. If we want the weather to be agreeable, we must change our behavior. With the worldwide climate, we are only about 20-50 years into simply observing and recording. It could be quite a long while indeed before global long-term climate predictions is anything at all like the 3-day local weather forecast. Remember, three stages: abduction, deduction, and induction. Abduction: gathering data and spotting patterns. Deduction: taking patterns and positing relationships. Induction: taking those relationships and extrapolating to future behavior of the system. Climate science is currently mostly abduction. But folks like to describe it in terms of induction because lots of pieces of the underlying physics are at that stage. But it doesn't work that way. I don't know if that strikes you as some kind of big hand-waving philosophy bullshit, but it's just the way things are, whether I point it out or not. I'm just the dumb schmuck stuck with trying to explain it.

codahale 17y ago
You have got to be kidding. 150-300 years? Agriculture dates back to at least ~10,000 BC (the "Neolithic revolution"). Effective farming (i.e., not dying of starvation) requires planning for changing weather conditions. If you think Neolithic farmers didn't have a vested interest in detecting patterns in weather cycles, you're sadly mistaken. Hell, the term "meteorology" was coined by Aristotle... in a book he wrote... called Meteorology... in 350 BC.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  Remember: abduction, gathering of data and spotting patterns. Got the daily weather report for Athens for the years 150-100 BC? Neolithic man had a deeply vested interest in the weather, but that doesn't change his advancement of weather science. The gods were useful for many thousands of years. Sure, the general idea of watching the weather -- long history there. But that just proves my point. There was a huge gap between seeing and naming it, recording it, spotting patterns, making falsifiable theories, and making predictions. We're just at the "seeing and naming it" stage with climate science. The use of computer models hide this fact, sadly.
  - codahale 17y ago
    Oh, ok. So it takes making predictions to quality as real science. Here's a real prediction, with actual confirming evidence: giving someone with a high MADRS score an SSRI will reduce their score. That's beyond seeing and naming depression, it's beyond recording patients' reactions to SSRIs, it's beyond spotting patterns in their reactions, it's even beyond making falsifiable theories about its mechanism of action. It's making predictions which are confirmed on a statistically significant basis. Does this mean you think psychiatry has the same epistemological standing as physics?