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I guess you don't know "Pascal's Wager" argument for climate change. Because this is equivalent of hearing "But Bible is real, God himself wrote that in the bi

I guess you don't know "Pascal's Wager" argument for climate change. Because this is equivalent of hearing "But Bible is real, God himself wrote that in the bible, how dare you suggest that there might be 1% chance of God not being real?" in an actual 'Pascal's wager' argument.

canhascodez 8y ago
Do you know what empiricism is?
- splintercell 8y ago
  Do you know what a thought experiment is?
  - canhascodez 8y ago
    Are thought experiments empirical?
    - splintercell 8y ago
      Nope
      - canhascodez 8y ago
        So then, thought experiments can be valuable aids to scientific understanding, but they can't establish the truth or falsehood of any empirical claim. The two statements, "I have faith that God exists," and "carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas" are not only not equivalent, they are not comparable. But, even setting aside issues of validity, your premise is that there is a not-inconsiderable chance that global warming is not caused by humans, and this premise may be rejected. Error is inherent to measurement, but that does not mean that all statements are equally likely. You don't get to just say, "Assume that the error bars are convenient for my argument"; that's not how empiricism works. AGW is predicated on optics and thermodynamics, and saying that AGW is not true is equivalent to saying that there is a problem with our understanding of those topics. That's the sort of claim where you should really be very specific and have strong evidence, but really, if you're arguing with thermodynamics, you're going to have a bad time. If you really want to offer a skeptical argument, it must be an empirical argument. In order to make a plausible empirical argument, you need to take into account all observations relating to that phenomenon. This can't be done without learning the science. There are empirical avenues which could lead to the invalidation of AGW (it was considered disproved for decades, after all), but thought experiments are not empirical.

canhascodez 8y ago

Do you know what empiricism is?

splintercell 8y ago
Do you know what a thought experiment is?
- canhascodez 8y ago
  Are thought experiments empirical?
  - splintercell 8y ago
    Nope
    - canhascodez 8y ago
      So then, thought experiments can be valuable aids to scientific understanding, but they can't establish the truth or falsehood of any empirical claim. The two statements, "I have faith that God exists," and "carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas" are not only not equivalent, they are not comparable. But, even setting aside issues of validity, your premise is that there is a not-inconsiderable chance that global warming is not caused by humans, and this premise may be rejected. Error is inherent to measurement, but that does not mean that all statements are equally likely. You don't get to just say, "Assume that the error bars are convenient for my argument"; that's not how empiricism works. AGW is predicated on optics and thermodynamics, and saying that AGW is not true is equivalent to saying that there is a problem with our understanding of those topics. That's the sort of claim where you should really be very specific and have strong evidence, but really, if you're arguing with thermodynamics, you're going to have a bad time. If you really want to offer a skeptical argument, it must be an empirical argument. In order to make a plausible empirical argument, you need to take into account all observations relating to that phenomenon. This can't be done without learning the science. There are empirical avenues which could lead to the invalidation of AGW (it was considered disproved for decades, after all), but thought experiments are not empirical.