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What a terrible top comment. Classic middle brow dismissal, no reading the article or responding to any substantive point required. > The result is that, overa

What a terrible top comment. Classic middle brow dismissal, no reading the article or responding to any substantive point required. > The result is that, overall, modern corrections adjust past temperatures downward -- what we'd expect if these biases exist. Yes, yes, just like "I didn't kill that person" is exactly what we'd expect a murderer to say. Also all the non-murderers, sure, but we're looking for a murderer and here's this person saying just what they'd say! You've prevented zero evidence. Your argument is entirely postulation. We're in FSM/Russell's teapot territory here; with no evidence your made-up theory is as likely as any other postulate. Maybe it was twice as cold but researchers have rounded up as the numbers seemed too preposterous! Maybe the numbers went complex in the 1800s but none of our proxies are set up to measure imaginary temperatures!

mturmon 10y ago
Thanks for this. I've grown tired of discussions with these HN armchair skeptics, who typically have no publications in the area and a shallow science background relative to the complexity of the issues they raise. As you say, there is no way to refute the claims advanced by the comment. It's just an abstract argument about forces and tendencies. The scientific motivations leading to this calibration to eliminate systematic effects have a lot more internal checks than the comment acknowledges.
- madaxe_again 10y ago
  This is sadly the general vein of HN, and of all online communities - no matter what you try, September comes. I used to come to HN to learn things. Now I come here to try to defend any worldview other than "TV said so". The only thing I'm really learning is that the technocratic class cannot be trusted with questions of nuance, politics, or morality. There's an example from history in the early Soviet Union, and the effects of technocratic management on their economy - and in a later regime I won't name how my great uncle found himself shipped to Stalingrad. "Siegfried, we are not here to discuss whether we should be using forced labour, we are here to discuss how to use it." He was a hydrological engineer, they had him designing power plants that could be installed by unskilled forced labour. He objected, got sent to Stalingrad, and escaped with his life because he got hepatitis and was airlifted out under a dead man's name. The vast majority just complied because it was an interesting problem and "not their place" to pass judgment, or think. I digress, but I do worry about where this "discourse" is headed, and i had honestly deluded myself into thinking we could be better.
adwhit 10y ago
It really is a terrible indictment of HN that it could be the top comment. We should be 15 years beyond these kind of smears.

mturmon 10y ago

Thanks for this. I've grown tired of discussions with these HN armchair skeptics, who typically have no publications in the area and a shallow science background relative to the complexity of the issues they raise. As you say, there is no way to refute the claims advanced by the comment. It's just an abstract argument about forces and tendencies. The scientific motivations leading to this calibration to eliminate systematic effects have a lot more internal checks than the comment acknowledges.

madaxe_again 10y ago
This is sadly the general vein of HN, and of all online communities - no matter what you try, September comes. I used to come to HN to learn things. Now I come here to try to defend any worldview other than "TV said so". The only thing I'm really learning is that the technocratic class cannot be trusted with questions of nuance, politics, or morality. There's an example from history in the early Soviet Union, and the effects of technocratic management on their economy - and in a later regime I won't name how my great uncle found himself shipped to Stalingrad. "Siegfried, we are not here to discuss whether we should be using forced labour, we are here to discuss how to use it." He was a hydrological engineer, they had him designing power plants that could be installed by unskilled forced labour. He objected, got sent to Stalingrad, and escaped with his life because he got hepatitis and was airlifted out under a dead man's name. The vast majority just complied because it was an interesting problem and "not their place" to pass judgment, or think. I digress, but I do worry about where this "discourse" is headed, and i had honestly deluded myself into thinking we could be better.

adwhit 10y ago

It really is a terrible indictment of HN that it could be the top comment. We should be 15 years beyond these kind of smears.