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Generally, because "something some guy said" is not a fact, and the article makes the very same mistake three times. For example, "95% of climate scientists ag
by 08-15 8y ago
Generally, because "something some guy said" is not a fact, and the article makes the very same mistake three times. For example, "95% of climate scientists agree" is not a fact about global warming. It's a fact about climate scientists, and at best a rumor about climate change.
What would be a fact? The GISS raw data would come close. But James Hansen doesn't release it. No, the data has to first be "cleaned", lest people misinterpret it. That reduces a fact to "James Hansen said", and I might simply conclude that Hansen is a moron and discard the rumor.
In short, to convince someone, it isn't enough to tell them what you think, you also have to give them the means to verify those claims. You can verify that particular claim by reading E. T. Jaynes: "Probability Theory---The Logic Of Science".
- enraged_camel 8y ago>>For example, "95% of climate scientists agree" is not a fact about global warming. It's a fact about climate scientists, and at best a rumor about climate change. If 95% of climate scientists agree that something is a fact, that is not "at best a rumor" about climate change.
- mistermann 8y ago> If 95% of climate scientists agree that something is a fact, that is not "at best a rumor" about climate change. True, but if you're a big enough pedant and chase down what is actually behind the "95% of climate scientists agree" claim, you'll discover it's not actually what it's sold as, which is a shame because I believe there's probably more than enough genuine evidence that resorting to this sort of thing is unnecessary to change people's minds. To be fair, it's worked very well on most people, but there are still plenty of others on (or on the wrong side of) the fence that I suspect could have their minds changed if the ~facts were presented in the right way.
- skosch 8y agoWhat is the "right way" to convince these people? I'm genuinely curious about your research/experiential findings on this, because I'm at a loss.
- adrianN 8y agoI wouldn't know what to do with raw data about climate change and I'm unusually well educated. Just not in climate science. You can't expect a majority of people to educate themselves sufficiently in every relevant topic to make informed decisions. That's why we have scientists who study things for years and years and specialize in interpreting data. The rational thing to do for almost everything is to trust the majority of the specialists.
- 08-15 8y ago> The rational thing to do for almost everything is to trust the majority of the specialists. Brilliant way to miss the point, which is that rational reasoning also tells you whom to trust. If you have two groups pointing fingers at each other while yelling "Those are not specialists! We are!", you gain no information about who really is. You need something else, and untampered data is something else, even if you can't analyze it yourself.
- adrianN 8y agoWell, only one of those two groups actually studied climate science, so my money is on them being the actual specialists.
- midwest1 8y agoYou could just as well throw your money at any other group of advocacy scientists... say creation scientists. Of course, I am not an actual creationist, so dont throw any money at my belief that the world is billions of years old.