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I am a human with limited time and resources. If you want me to name right now one human being that I trust to guide me in the right direction on Climate Chang
by VikingCoder 8y ago
I am a human with limited time and resources. If you want me to name right now one human being that I trust to guide me in the right direction on Climate Change, it's Al Gore.
Al Gore would then, as I have seen him do, put actual scientists up on a pedestal. His most important role would be to help me find the REAL, underlying authorities.
I would as likely be to say, "I would likely trust any of the authors of the IPCC."
And again, yes, I would trust Neil deGrasse Tyson to help me find authorities. I would have trusted Carl Sagan to help me find authorities. I would trust Bill Nye to help me find authorities.
If you picture the world in some kind of N-Dimensional space of authority and ignorance, I think Al Gore, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, and Bill Nye are pointed in the right direction. And I think they're aware (or were aware) that they were not themselves the sources of that authority, but merely spokespeople for it. I'd start with them. Because I don't honestly know who to REALLY listen to.
After I've started on my path, I'd hope to find out the differences within the schools of thought on any given subject. And I'd hope I'd be open to having my mind changed, on anything.
I am completely aware of the problem of the bubble. Another thing I want to do is to specifically find people who share ALMOST ALL of my views, but differ with me on some important subject. Because I think a discussion between me and them would be based on shared views, and would be very fruitful.
I'd also like people to volunteer information about themselves (aggregated and anonymized), so that I can find out, "Out of US Citizen, Christian, college-educated people earning more than $100k per year, how many of them believe in anthropogenic climate change?" And other questions like that. Yes, huge bias, because of self-reported people, etc. But still. Being able to even sample HN or Reddit on those kinds of questions would be super interesting.
And I'd desperately want to keep bots out of this, and I'd often want to filter out people who aren't KNOWN to be from the US or living in the US. Often I'd care what people in other countries think, but often I just don't.