16 ms·

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Some programmer assumes that he is right and others are wrong, so he writes a bot to chase down people he might disa

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Some programmer assumes that he is right and others are wrong, so he writes a bot to chase down people he might disagree with and bombard them with one-liners. And Technology Review thinks this is behavior worth promoting? I suspect the reason is that they agree with the programmer. Try it out for a bit with the roles reversed. Doesn't feel quite the same, huh? ADD: The assumption here is that there is no way you can believe in X. Therefore it is okay for me to write a bot that spams and pesters everybody who believes in X, since they are horribly misinformed. Works great -- as long as you're omniscient.

CapitalistCartr 16y ago
I am as skeptical of the details of man-made global warming as anyone, but people who argue on twitter, for God's sake, are at the level of a chat-bot and it's probably for the best.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  Yes, it's like arguing on a crowded bus. Everyone hears you, nobody cares and they either want you put in your place or told to STFU. I'm more dubious of the proposed solutions to global warming than anything as it looks highly like a band-aid infused with arsenic to me. Sure it'll kill the infection, but it could well kill you too. Go nuclear, it's the lesser of the evils. Existing infrastructure can be cannibalized for it (access to roadways, rail or river, cooling pools, cooling towers, etc.) even if the power plant itself cannot be. Furthermore, the totality of all nuclear accidents in the world has caused less deaths than coal soot alone. Disregard the fact that coal contains radioactive compounds that are being vaporised and inhaled. Interestingly, I know here in Canada at least, that many of the nuclear plants have become their own sort of nature preserve.
  - kiba 16y ago
    How about building partially underwater coastline? Though, it could be an issue if there is a crack in the window. Instead of trying to stop global warming, maybe we should try living with it.
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      I've been fascinated with the idea of an ocean arcology being built in shallow waters and instead of starting 'ground' up, but simply start construction of several concrete boat foundations. When positioned, simply continue constructing. As the boat gets taller, it will displace to a greater depth until it eventually hits the ocean floor. It would be a very modular way to construct an ocean city. Get them within 500m of each other and you'll be breaking no new ground to bridge the two modules. Get them within 200m and you've hit mundane in connecting them. What's more interesting is if you could use the span distances as agricultural land and keep the human sectors within the module footprint. Considering the Petronius platform reaches about 530m underwater to a stable foundation and Burj Khalifa reaches 828m above ground, and the longest bridge is 552m. We could make a monstrous city without breaking any new ground. Who cares if the ocean is rising if your city is built astride it?
      - nutjob123 16y ago
        I'm in. Can we call it Atlantis?
        jjs 16y ago
        How 'bout Rapture? (cf. Bioshock)
      - sammyo 16y ago
        I hang with old ship guys and all of the 'underwater archology' ideas seem to be presented by folks with little real life experience with oceans. Sea water is incredibly powerful and corrosive. Just watch the shoreline, if not maintained someplaces you'll see a huge bolder up out of place and you think "it took a huge crane to put that there" but no, just a storm.
        jonnathanson 16y ago
        Exactly. A coastline is probably the most volatile and inhospitable location for an underwater colony of any sort. Frankly, to get an even remotely stable underwater city in place, you'd need to do it fairly deep in the open ocean -- far beneath surface turmoil and major currents. Of course, this would pose its own nigh-insurmountable problems, such as ease of transportation into and out of the colony, pressurization, expense of maintenance, expense of supply routes, self-sustainability, and so forth. Underwater habitation is a lot further off than people seem to think it is.
  - ewjordan 16y ago
    Furthermore, the totality of all nuclear accidents in the world has caused less deaths than coal soot alone. This is where the current environmentalist movement has really failed: "Don't burn shit, it's bad for the environment and it's bad for us" was a compelling story, because it's pretty obviously true and hard to fight back against. When environmentalism was all about smog, coal burning, and all that nasty stuff, it was hard to find much fault with it. But now it's all about carbon. And global warming involves a lot more analysis to evaluate, to the point that even the most scientifically minded non-experts can't claim to fully understand the evidence for or against it (if they even have access to that raw evidence), not to mention all the possibilities of fudged data, which turn this more into a guessing game about who's telling the truth than a matter of science.
    - rue 16y ago
      The (mostly) factual world is a tough place to live in. No convenient simplistic arguments that everyone can understand, for starters.
qeorge 16y ago
Nit: he's not really "chasing them down", he's sending @replies to their public messages. I get the feeling those sending messages into the ether about global warming are looking for an argument. But your point is well taken. I would find this incredibly annoying if I didn't agree with his viewpoint.
anthonyb 16y ago
I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock. At least 95% of the argument with deniers is basically saying "No, you're wrong, that's been disproven by numerous studies - and here's the link". So yeah, arguing with them (or even just trying to put your point of view across) is annoying and tedious. Like any good programmer, Nigel's just automating away the drudgery.
- rick888 16y ago
  "I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock." All of the global warming data is based on information that has been falsified. It's just as bad (can you show me proof that's not based on this falsified data?). There is a lot of money in global warming. Al gore is not only invested in the carbon credit industry, but he is trying to get the US government to force businesses to purchase these carbon credits (the profits from these will go directly into his pocket). Nobody on the left seems to care about how unethical this is. "Nigel's just automating away the drudgery." No, Nigel doesn't actually want to defend his point. He would rather make fun of the "crackpots" because he arrogantly believes that he is right and everyone else is wrong.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    All of the global warming data is based on information that has been falsified. Excuse me?
    - lzw 16y ago
      The brilliant thing about the global warming debate for proponents is that because they are not even aware of the science inovlved, but firmly convinced that they are on the side of "science" they can say whatever they want. You think some of it hasn't been falsified? Provide a citation please! See what I did there? Also brilliant about their position is that it is completely unfalsifiable (if I'm understanding it correctly, it is impossible to disprove, even though the planet is getting colder, because it is based on fantasy models-- you can't disprove a model because it is just a model. And these models having never worked with previous data sets is well known but advocates don't care.)
zeraholladay 16y ago
I might be more willing to argue with a bot than some people, since the bot ain't going to track me down an shoot me.
- hackoder 16y ago
  Who tracks down and shoots people for arguing with them? (very serious question, I really didn't get what you meant to say here)
  - zeraholladay 16y ago
    People with nothing to lose. A good friend, who was a psychiatric nurse, taught me never argue or fight with a person with nothing to lose. There are more than a few in the wold, unfortunately. More common is anonymous people on the net who threaten to do so. My point is a bot is predictable, but humans are emotional and irrational. Further, you can't always tell the difference between the snakes and the monsters in an anonymous environment (notice I'm not anonymous). Thus, I'd be more willing to argue with a bot.
FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
I imagine it has to do with political correctness, but it seems there is an undercurrent on HN of treating all opinions as equally valid? Even if both sides of the argument are incorrect, if the second opinion was formed through rigorous scientific investigation and represents and the best understanding that we currently have, why should we treat it equally with the opinion that was not developed through any sort of discourse and research?* * Assuming that methodology described in the article is sound, "...searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments ..."
- statictype 16y ago
  You're missing the point. It's not about whether or not the facts he's spamming people with are right or wrong, it's the fact that he's doing it in the first place.
  - FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
    I didn't mean to imply that I was condoning the author's actions. Perhaps I misinterpreted, but I was responding to the parent comment's decrying of the author's actions due to the perception that the author justified their actions through the belief that their opinion was superior (specifically parent's remark about requiring omniscience to justify the action)? It does raise the question of whether the means justify the end. As people in this thread have noted ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867043 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867043, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867162 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867162), that this technique may be more effective than a more neutral route. But again, I'm not condoning anything.
  - techbio 16y ago
    It is impolite, and therefore unbalanced, to never agree to disagree. Then again, if half of your conversation can be replaced by [fill in the blank] your questions may be imprecise.
  - cabalamat 16y ago
    > It's not about whether or not the facts he's spamming people with are right or wrong, it's the fact that he's doing it in the first place. I wouldn't characterise it as spamming. He's sending the messages on one of his own twitter accounts. If he was auto-replying on other people's blogs, he might more accurately be accused of spamming.
JabavuAdams 16y ago
Er, you didn't understand it correctly. The bot provides citations. Suppose that human-caused global warming is false. It would still be possible (and common) to make erroneous arguments about how humans aren't causing global warming. Skepticism is great, but most people's pro-X or anti-X nonsense isn't thoughtful skepticism. It's noise. This is a way of injecting signal back into the noise.
- lzw 16y ago
  You realize that you're defending a bot which provides random citations base on key phrases found in twitter posts on the claim that "most people's ... nonsense isn't ...skepticism, It's noise"? Here is someone providing no thought and adding nothing to the discussion, by definition, he is providing noise. Just because you disagree with someone, doesn't mean what they say is nonsense. The primary attribute of the global warming ideology is to reject, out of hand, the possibility that global warming is not human caused. It is not a scientific movement, it is an ideology that rejects science as its first basis. Not once have I seen a global warming proponent who was willing to debate it on a scientific basis, nor have I ever seen one who was willing to listen to scientific arguments. The global warming movement is an anti-science movement, and here he is providing random citations as if they were relevant to discussions he's not even seeing... this is the most profound example of the anti-science nature of the global warming movement combined with the deaf ear that it advocates towards people who disagree, or who "question the science" (which is known, in scientific circles as providing an alternative hyptohesis, and is intrinsic to the process of science.)
  - demallien 16y ago
    Not once have I seen a global warming proponent who was willing to debate it on a scientific basis, Science is not done by debate. The issues are too complex to be conveyable in the cut and thrust of a discussion. There is a reason that the gold standard of scientific research is the peer review journal and not debates. Until you understand this point, you aren't able to understand how wrong you are on this subject. The reason no one knowledgeable will engage in a debate is that they know how long it will take to explain to you all of the experiments that have been done that lead them to the conclusion that human-caused global warming is real. By explaining the experiments, I mean explaining in detail the methodology, the results, and the mathematical analysis. It is literally years of work. But here's the thing. Scientists themselves have done that work. Each experiments methodology and analysis is reviewed thoroughly by knowledgeable people before the result is accepted by the community. Once you have educated yourself on this huge body of work, you too will understand the futility of engaging in a "debate" with someone too ignorant to know what they don't know. You will also understand just how strong the evidence for GW is.
megablast 16y ago
I happen to believe the Global warming and pollution is such an important issue, it forgives the pollution of twitter feeds with unimportant messages, which lets be honest, is a drop in the ocean.
philwelch 16y ago
I never had the patience to argue with climate skeptics because I figure once in a lifetime is enough and I wasted my youth arguing with creationists. It would be trivial, given a database of counterarguments to creationist talking points, to write a chatbot to argue with creationists. There are only so many times you can explain to people that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to the earth because the earth isn't a closed system before you realize your part in the argument could be just as productively filled by a chatbot. Once again, I'm not claiming to know anything about global warming, other than knowing well enough to steer clear of arguing about it. So I can't speak to this specific case. However, from past experience with other controversies I understand the mindset behind this type of thing.
- eitland 16y ago
  I too have spent a lot of time arguing with people who didn't understand the difference between beeing politically correct and being right. A lot of people will argue about any matter; climate change, religion, Middle East, economics or anything else, even if they now nothing about it and spend more time watching sitcoms than reading up on science or religion or anything.
- lotharbot 16y ago
  Pick any religious, political, or philosophical position. Chances are, most holders of that position make similar statements about it most of the time, and detractors give pretty similar critical responses. It would be trivial to write a chat bot, either pro or con, for a lot of topics. Replacing yourself with a chat bot is just like arguing in person, except that it doesn't try your patience or waste your time, only the other guy's, and it doesn't give you any opportunity to learn or be exposed to novel ideas.
  - khafra 16y ago
    There's nothing saying it can't flag responses from its interlocuter that don't match a response in its database, to give you the opportunity for learning. I think that feature would make this a complete system suitable for educating newbies, discouraging talking-point idealogues, and letting everyone spend more time in the debate areas of greatest marginal benefit.
tjmc 16y ago
I think he's just rallying against this postmodern delusion that all opinions are equally valid, when the weight of scientific evidence is clearly on his side. And he's not exactly chasing people down, he's just responding to people who are deliberately putting their opinions out there.
- lzw 16y ago
  Except that the weight of scientific evidence is not on his side. The science clearly points against the global warming hypothesis. It is merely that there is a political/religious/ideological movement to claim that "global warming is settled science" (with no citations, naturally, not that any legitimat scientist would make such a claim anyway.) The earth is getting colder. The termperature changes we've seen over short, medium and long periods of time are consistent with the ice age pattern or solar heating. CO2 has been much higher in the past than it is today without causing a runaway greenhouse effect. CO2 does not absorb sufficient IR to support the global warming hypothesis, etc. Global warming is a movement of people who do not care about these facts and just want to repeat, over and over, that "all scientists agree" (as if science was concensus based). I have yet to meet a global warming proponent who will actually argue on the science (or even is actually familiar with it) they all just repeat the same claims, or link to blogs of people who also don't understand the science, or link to papers who don't say what they want to claim they say. Global Warming is a movement that rejects science, and has the ideological defense mechanism of smugly claiming to have a monopoly on science and that anyone who is a skeptic is spewing "anti-science nonsense." Proof of the preceding claim is presented in the headline of the article in question (and virtually every other similar article out there.) Ok, now go vote me down-- for science.
  - nervechannel 16y ago
    Are you a counter-bot?
  - Robin_Message 16y ago
    I would downvote you, but I want people to see this response: http://royalsociety.org/The-Science-of-Climate-Change-report/ http://royalsociety.org/The-Science-of-Climate-Change-report... Yes, that's right, the Royal Society, which, for those of you who are unfamiliar with science, is the oldest scientific organisation in the world, agrees with the IPCC reports, which I would cite as the secondary scientific evidence. For the primary evidence, just read all the articles cited by the IPCC. What weighty scientific evidence points against global warming? Or is "real science" being suppressed?
narrator 16y ago
The climate change debate isn't a debate anymore. It's just a yelling match peppered with a lot of ad hominem attacks and the solution is always cap and trade. The solution goes nowhere though because China and India tell us we caused the problem and so we must unilaterally cut our consumption of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile Russia is building a big oil and gas network stretching into China totally outside the reach of the would be international climate regulators and cap and trade financial superstructure. Besides, cap and trade is just a way to pay corrupt politicians in developing countries to shut down industry and impoverish their citizens and better yet, starve their citizens by tearing up all their farm land and building inedible ethanol crops. The irony is that the left are the ones who are super-enthusiastic about enacting draconian climate change legislation which dramatically increases the cost of energy for those in the lower income bracket and seriously handicaps the development and improvement in living standards of any developing country foolish enough to go along with the already smugly developed world's agenda. BTW, Technology Review has really become quite ideological lately and is much less of a science magazine then it used to be.
- lzw 16y ago
  You're misunderstanding the purpose of the solution by taking it at face value. I think it is important to step back and think about why the global warming movement is being perpetrated. The real "problem" is the lack of a world government and the lack of power of governments over people's lives. Thus "Cap and trade" and all these other proposals that will not work on the face of them are actually solutions because they give governments dictatorial control over industry and people's lives....and they bring us closer to a global government. I believe the left does not really care about people, especially poor people, at all. These people are just stepping stones or excuses to increase their power -- much the way wars and fear of terrorism are useful to the right. I've learned enough economics and attempted to explain to people on the left in very straightforward economic terms how a given policy will actually hurt poor people, and never once have I managed to persuade a leftist to oppose that policy. They don't care, or they just decide that because I'm speaking economic science I must be a republican and therefore evil. I am coming to believe that ideology inhibits thought.
  - 16y ago
nikster 16y ago
While it's funny to write a bot, at the same time you're right. It's not worth arguing with those people who just want to be mislead, and probably not worth writing a bot for it either. The problem is, arguments don't lead to insight. If those people could be swayed by rational arguments, they wouldn't be "climate skeptics" in the first place. So I think the pragmatic approach would be to understand your enemy before you try to engage.
babeKnuth 16y ago
spam against spam
nervechannel 16y ago
If rabid frothing twitterers want to get into arguments with someone over topics they know little about... ... and they are happy to continue arguing even if the interlocutor isn't even human... ... then who are we to stop them?
ewjordan 16y ago
Works great -- as long as you're omniscient. Not at all - to set people straight on common talking points doesn't require omniscience, it merely requires that those specific talking points have been satisfactorily refuted before, clearly enough so that almost anyone would agree that they're squashed. If someone on Twitter said "evolution is just a theory", I'd be perfectly happy to see someone respond-spam them with the Merriam-Webster definition of "theory" as it relates to science - that's an unambiguous refutation of the argument, verifiable by pretty much any onlooker as valid (in my experience, when confronted with that response, creationists usually don't acknowledge that they're wrong, but they quickly leave the topic, realizing that they won't score any points there). Similarly, if someone said "Darwin recanted on his deathbed", a simple link to http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/03/31/darwins-deathbed-conversion-legend http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/03/31/darwins-... (the first Google result for that phrase) would be fully justifiable, regardless of the qualifications of the responder. As a rule, I think if someone utters/posts/writes something that can be 100% debunked, beyond any reasonable doubt, by typing the phrase into Google and reading the first three results, it's fair to call them out on it, even in an automated way. Omniscience not required. Then again, I'm more used to arguing evolution than global warming, and evolution is a much more solid theory. I don't know how soundly most of the anti-global warming claims have been refuted, it may very well be the case that this guy is just parroting back talking points rather than properly shooting wrong ideas down. In which case that's Bad(tm). But as an abstract idea? Go ahead, shoot down the idiot masses, as long as you're damn sure that you're right about what you're putting them down over. A lot of stuff that people say really does deserve a rude smackdown, it's so offensively wrong - this is Twitter we're talking about, after all!
buster 16y ago
Being told by companies/lobbies, media and social networks that global warming doesn't exist although there is clear scientific evidence that it is, that's what is wrong here. How would you educate people that are driven to false conclusions by greedy companies? First of all this topic is important to address, because it effects us and, above all, our children. Second, this is no topic of "believe" or "taste", it's a topic of marketing campaigns and manipulated statistics versus clear scientific data and common sense. You just need to look at chinas and the U.S. pollution of the environment[1]. Do you really think this has no impact whatsoever? Every twitter post into the direction of anti-global-warming is just another little push in the wrong direction. Also: Being tolerant is great! Ignoring the wrong in the name of tolerance is wrong. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2-by-country--1990-2025.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2-by-country--1990-2025....
- loewenskind 16y ago
  You can attach urgency to any claim as a reason we don't have time to be sure and can't waste time with contrarian voices. In fact, it has been said that doing what some MMGW proponents suggest would keep e.g. India in poverty 100 years longer. People suffering and dying right now! We have to act fast to stop the MMGW movement and save them! See? Stop using this tactic to shut down discussion.
  - buster 16y ago
    I don't know what MMGW is, and i don't know why people like to distract from the subject of matter here. It's not about indians or religion or whatever. It's about a problem that should be taken seriously, because it is _global_ and it will affect future generations! Shutting down discussion is equal to what the parent suggests (that is to shut up and not to react to those false claims). So, when you say "you can attach urgency to every claim", you are suggesting that we shuld just wait the next decades and see what happens, or what is your point?
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      MMGW: Man made Global Warming. >It's about a problem that should be taken seriously, because it is _global_ and it will affect future generations! And you do it again. Look, when you run out here screaming "We have to do something now! No time to discuss it and the other side are spewing nonsense anyway" you have the opposite effect. If time really is of the essence then all efforts should be in (a) proving that we fully understand the nature/cause of the problem, (b) coming up with real solutions/timelines/etc. and (c) addressing all skeptics concerns (over and over, as much as is required). It's not an easy battle but what MMGW proponents [1] are asking for isn't a simple flip of a switch. [1] Just for completeness: I'm not purposely taking sides. I've seen both good arguments and scandalous rubbish from both sides. I personally believe that something is happening to the environment and am open to be convinced that we are the culprit. But for me personally, I don't need to be convinced of either of these things. I think green technology is a good thing and should be perused regardless. Even if we aren't causing a green house effect that will melt the world and kill everyone we are poisoning our oceans (and the yummy creatures that live in them), destroying our forests, ecosystems and wild life (some of which I want to be saved for the selfish reason that I want to continue eating them and can't if they don't exist anymore). I also think we're moving in the right direction and have optimism that humanity will find a way like it always has so far.
MaysonL 16y ago
The endpoint of this line of development is exemplified in Bruce Sterling's novel Distraction. A politician, annoyed by criticism, commissions a spider which crawls the net, and when it finds a sufficiently annoying and influtential critic of the pol, posts their name and details to a hitlist on teh website of a nutjob organization. Their name gets removed after they've been asassinated.

CapitalistCartr 16y ago

I am as skeptical of the details of man-made global warming as anyone, but people who argue on twitter, for God's sake, are at the level of a chat-bot and it's probably for the best.

electromagnetic 16y ago
Yes, it's like arguing on a crowded bus. Everyone hears you, nobody cares and they either want you put in your place or told to STFU. I'm more dubious of the proposed solutions to global warming than anything as it looks highly like a band-aid infused with arsenic to me. Sure it'll kill the infection, but it could well kill you too. Go nuclear, it's the lesser of the evils. Existing infrastructure can be cannibalized for it (access to roadways, rail or river, cooling pools, cooling towers, etc.) even if the power plant itself cannot be. Furthermore, the totality of all nuclear accidents in the world has caused less deaths than coal soot alone. Disregard the fact that coal contains radioactive compounds that are being vaporised and inhaled. Interestingly, I know here in Canada at least, that many of the nuclear plants have become their own sort of nature preserve.
- kiba 16y ago
  How about building partially underwater coastline? Though, it could be an issue if there is a crack in the window. Instead of trying to stop global warming, maybe we should try living with it.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    I've been fascinated with the idea of an ocean arcology being built in shallow waters and instead of starting 'ground' up, but simply start construction of several concrete boat foundations. When positioned, simply continue constructing. As the boat gets taller, it will displace to a greater depth until it eventually hits the ocean floor. It would be a very modular way to construct an ocean city. Get them within 500m of each other and you'll be breaking no new ground to bridge the two modules. Get them within 200m and you've hit mundane in connecting them. What's more interesting is if you could use the span distances as agricultural land and keep the human sectors within the module footprint. Considering the Petronius platform reaches about 530m underwater to a stable foundation and Burj Khalifa reaches 828m above ground, and the longest bridge is 552m. We could make a monstrous city without breaking any new ground. Who cares if the ocean is rising if your city is built astride it?
    - nutjob123 16y ago
      I'm in. Can we call it Atlantis?
      - jjs 16y ago
        How 'bout Rapture? (cf. Bioshock)
    - sammyo 16y ago
      I hang with old ship guys and all of the 'underwater archology' ideas seem to be presented by folks with little real life experience with oceans. Sea water is incredibly powerful and corrosive. Just watch the shoreline, if not maintained someplaces you'll see a huge bolder up out of place and you think "it took a huge crane to put that there" but no, just a storm.
      - jonnathanson 16y ago
        Exactly. A coastline is probably the most volatile and inhospitable location for an underwater colony of any sort. Frankly, to get an even remotely stable underwater city in place, you'd need to do it fairly deep in the open ocean -- far beneath surface turmoil and major currents. Of course, this would pose its own nigh-insurmountable problems, such as ease of transportation into and out of the colony, pressurization, expense of maintenance, expense of supply routes, self-sustainability, and so forth. Underwater habitation is a lot further off than people seem to think it is.
- ewjordan 16y ago
  Furthermore, the totality of all nuclear accidents in the world has caused less deaths than coal soot alone. This is where the current environmentalist movement has really failed: "Don't burn shit, it's bad for the environment and it's bad for us" was a compelling story, because it's pretty obviously true and hard to fight back against. When environmentalism was all about smog, coal burning, and all that nasty stuff, it was hard to find much fault with it. But now it's all about carbon. And global warming involves a lot more analysis to evaluate, to the point that even the most scientifically minded non-experts can't claim to fully understand the evidence for or against it (if they even have access to that raw evidence), not to mention all the possibilities of fudged data, which turn this more into a guessing game about who's telling the truth than a matter of science.
  - rue 16y ago
    The (mostly) factual world is a tough place to live in. No convenient simplistic arguments that everyone can understand, for starters.

qeorge 16y ago

Nit: he's not really "chasing them down", he's sending @replies to their public messages. I get the feeling those sending messages into the ether about global warming are looking for an argument. But your point is well taken. I would find this incredibly annoying if I didn't agree with his viewpoint.

anthonyb 16y ago

I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock. At least 95% of the argument with deniers is basically saying "No, you're wrong, that's been disproven by numerous studies - and here's the link". So yeah, arguing with them (or even just trying to put your point of view across) is annoying and tedious. Like any good programmer, Nigel's just automating away the drudgery.

rick888 16y ago
"I suspect that part of the problem is that, at least with climate deniers, is that there's no real meat to their arguments. I know a few, and most of their arguments boil down to hearsay or "denier blog X says so, and who trusts Obama/the UN world government anyway". If they provided a link to something supporting their position I'd probably pass out from shock." All of the global warming data is based on information that has been falsified. It's just as bad (can you show me proof that's not based on this falsified data?). There is a lot of money in global warming. Al gore is not only invested in the carbon credit industry, but he is trying to get the US government to force businesses to purchase these carbon credits (the profits from these will go directly into his pocket). Nobody on the left seems to care about how unethical this is. "Nigel's just automating away the drudgery." No, Nigel doesn't actually want to defend his point. He would rather make fun of the "crackpots" because he arrogantly believes that he is right and everyone else is wrong.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  All of the global warming data is based on information that has been falsified. Excuse me?
  - lzw 16y ago
    The brilliant thing about the global warming debate for proponents is that because they are not even aware of the science inovlved, but firmly convinced that they are on the side of "science" they can say whatever they want. You think some of it hasn't been falsified? Provide a citation please! See what I did there? Also brilliant about their position is that it is completely unfalsifiable (if I'm understanding it correctly, it is impossible to disprove, even though the planet is getting colder, because it is based on fantasy models-- you can't disprove a model because it is just a model. And these models having never worked with previous data sets is well known but advocates don't care.)

zeraholladay 16y ago

I might be more willing to argue with a bot than some people, since the bot ain't going to track me down an shoot me.

hackoder 16y ago
Who tracks down and shoots people for arguing with them? (very serious question, I really didn't get what you meant to say here)
- zeraholladay 16y ago
  People with nothing to lose. A good friend, who was a psychiatric nurse, taught me never argue or fight with a person with nothing to lose. There are more than a few in the wold, unfortunately. More common is anonymous people on the net who threaten to do so. My point is a bot is predictable, but humans are emotional and irrational. Further, you can't always tell the difference between the snakes and the monsters in an anonymous environment (notice I'm not anonymous). Thus, I'd be more willing to argue with a bot.

FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago

I imagine it has to do with political correctness, but it seems there is an undercurrent on HN of treating all opinions as equally valid? Even if both sides of the argument are incorrect, if the second opinion was formed through rigorous scientific investigation and represents and the best understanding that we currently have, why should we treat it equally with the opinion that was not developed through any sort of discourse and research?* * Assuming that methodology described in the article is sound, "...searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments ..."

statictype 16y ago
You're missing the point. It's not about whether or not the facts he's spamming people with are right or wrong, it's the fact that he's doing it in the first place.
- FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that I was condoning the author's actions. Perhaps I misinterpreted, but I was responding to the parent comment's decrying of the author's actions due to the perception that the author justified their actions through the belief that their opinion was superior (specifically parent's remark about requiring omniscience to justify the action)? It does raise the question of whether the means justify the end. As people in this thread have noted ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867043 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867043, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867162 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867162), that this technique may be more effective than a more neutral route. But again, I'm not condoning anything.
- techbio 16y ago
  It is impolite, and therefore unbalanced, to never agree to disagree. Then again, if half of your conversation can be replaced by [fill in the blank] your questions may be imprecise.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  > It's not about whether or not the facts he's spamming people with are right or wrong, it's the fact that he's doing it in the first place. I wouldn't characterise it as spamming. He's sending the messages on one of his own twitter accounts. If he was auto-replying on other people's blogs, he might more accurately be accused of spamming.

JabavuAdams 16y ago

Er, you didn't understand it correctly. The bot provides citations. Suppose that human-caused global warming is false. It would still be possible (and common) to make erroneous arguments about how humans aren't causing global warming. Skepticism is great, but most people's pro-X or anti-X nonsense isn't thoughtful skepticism. It's noise. This is a way of injecting signal back into the noise.

lzw 16y ago
You realize that you're defending a bot which provides random citations base on key phrases found in twitter posts on the claim that "most people's ... nonsense isn't ...skepticism, It's noise"? Here is someone providing no thought and adding nothing to the discussion, by definition, he is providing noise. Just because you disagree with someone, doesn't mean what they say is nonsense. The primary attribute of the global warming ideology is to reject, out of hand, the possibility that global warming is not human caused. It is not a scientific movement, it is an ideology that rejects science as its first basis. Not once have I seen a global warming proponent who was willing to debate it on a scientific basis, nor have I ever seen one who was willing to listen to scientific arguments. The global warming movement is an anti-science movement, and here he is providing random citations as if they were relevant to discussions he's not even seeing... this is the most profound example of the anti-science nature of the global warming movement combined with the deaf ear that it advocates towards people who disagree, or who "question the science" (which is known, in scientific circles as providing an alternative hyptohesis, and is intrinsic to the process of science.)
- demallien 16y ago
  Not once have I seen a global warming proponent who was willing to debate it on a scientific basis, Science is not done by debate. The issues are too complex to be conveyable in the cut and thrust of a discussion. There is a reason that the gold standard of scientific research is the peer review journal and not debates. Until you understand this point, you aren't able to understand how wrong you are on this subject. The reason no one knowledgeable will engage in a debate is that they know how long it will take to explain to you all of the experiments that have been done that lead them to the conclusion that human-caused global warming is real. By explaining the experiments, I mean explaining in detail the methodology, the results, and the mathematical analysis. It is literally years of work. But here's the thing. Scientists themselves have done that work. Each experiments methodology and analysis is reviewed thoroughly by knowledgeable people before the result is accepted by the community. Once you have educated yourself on this huge body of work, you too will understand the futility of engaging in a "debate" with someone too ignorant to know what they don't know. You will also understand just how strong the evidence for GW is.

megablast 16y ago

I happen to believe the Global warming and pollution is such an important issue, it forgives the pollution of twitter feeds with unimportant messages, which lets be honest, is a drop in the ocean.

philwelch 16y ago

I never had the patience to argue with climate skeptics because I figure once in a lifetime is enough and I wasted my youth arguing with creationists. It would be trivial, given a database of counterarguments to creationist talking points, to write a chatbot to argue with creationists. There are only so many times you can explain to people that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't apply to the earth because the earth isn't a closed system before you realize your part in the argument could be just as productively filled by a chatbot. Once again, I'm not claiming to know anything about global warming, other than knowing well enough to steer clear of arguing about it. So I can't speak to this specific case. However, from past experience with other controversies I understand the mindset behind this type of thing.

eitland 16y ago
I too have spent a lot of time arguing with people who didn't understand the difference between beeing politically correct and being right. A lot of people will argue about any matter; climate change, religion, Middle East, economics or anything else, even if they now nothing about it and spend more time watching sitcoms than reading up on science or religion or anything.
lotharbot 16y ago
Pick any religious, political, or philosophical position. Chances are, most holders of that position make similar statements about it most of the time, and detractors give pretty similar critical responses. It would be trivial to write a chat bot, either pro or con, for a lot of topics. Replacing yourself with a chat bot is just like arguing in person, except that it doesn't try your patience or waste your time, only the other guy's, and it doesn't give you any opportunity to learn or be exposed to novel ideas.
- khafra 16y ago
  There's nothing saying it can't flag responses from its interlocuter that don't match a response in its database, to give you the opportunity for learning. I think that feature would make this a complete system suitable for educating newbies, discouraging talking-point idealogues, and letting everyone spend more time in the debate areas of greatest marginal benefit.

tjmc 16y ago

I think he's just rallying against this postmodern delusion that all opinions are equally valid, when the weight of scientific evidence is clearly on his side. And he's not exactly chasing people down, he's just responding to people who are deliberately putting their opinions out there.

lzw 16y ago
Except that the weight of scientific evidence is not on his side. The science clearly points against the global warming hypothesis. It is merely that there is a political/religious/ideological movement to claim that "global warming is settled science" (with no citations, naturally, not that any legitimat scientist would make such a claim anyway.) The earth is getting colder. The termperature changes we've seen over short, medium and long periods of time are consistent with the ice age pattern or solar heating. CO2 has been much higher in the past than it is today without causing a runaway greenhouse effect. CO2 does not absorb sufficient IR to support the global warming hypothesis, etc. Global warming is a movement of people who do not care about these facts and just want to repeat, over and over, that "all scientists agree" (as if science was concensus based). I have yet to meet a global warming proponent who will actually argue on the science (or even is actually familiar with it) they all just repeat the same claims, or link to blogs of people who also don't understand the science, or link to papers who don't say what they want to claim they say. Global Warming is a movement that rejects science, and has the ideological defense mechanism of smugly claiming to have a monopoly on science and that anyone who is a skeptic is spewing "anti-science nonsense." Proof of the preceding claim is presented in the headline of the article in question (and virtually every other similar article out there.) Ok, now go vote me down-- for science.
- nervechannel 16y ago
  Are you a counter-bot?
- Robin_Message 16y ago
  I would downvote you, but I want people to see this response: http://royalsociety.org/The-Science-of-Climate-Change-report/ http://royalsociety.org/The-Science-of-Climate-Change-report... Yes, that's right, the Royal Society, which, for those of you who are unfamiliar with science, is the oldest scientific organisation in the world, agrees with the IPCC reports, which I would cite as the secondary scientific evidence. For the primary evidence, just read all the articles cited by the IPCC. What weighty scientific evidence points against global warming? Or is "real science" being suppressed?

narrator 16y ago

The climate change debate isn't a debate anymore. It's just a yelling match peppered with a lot of ad hominem attacks and the solution is always cap and trade. The solution goes nowhere though because China and India tell us we caused the problem and so we must unilaterally cut our consumption of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile Russia is building a big oil and gas network stretching into China totally outside the reach of the would be international climate regulators and cap and trade financial superstructure. Besides, cap and trade is just a way to pay corrupt politicians in developing countries to shut down industry and impoverish their citizens and better yet, starve their citizens by tearing up all their farm land and building inedible ethanol crops. The irony is that the left are the ones who are super-enthusiastic about enacting draconian climate change legislation which dramatically increases the cost of energy for those in the lower income bracket and seriously handicaps the development and improvement in living standards of any developing country foolish enough to go along with the already smugly developed world's agenda. BTW, Technology Review has really become quite ideological lately and is much less of a science magazine then it used to be.

lzw 16y ago
You're misunderstanding the purpose of the solution by taking it at face value. I think it is important to step back and think about why the global warming movement is being perpetrated. The real "problem" is the lack of a world government and the lack of power of governments over people's lives. Thus "Cap and trade" and all these other proposals that will not work on the face of them are actually solutions because they give governments dictatorial control over industry and people's lives....and they bring us closer to a global government. I believe the left does not really care about people, especially poor people, at all. These people are just stepping stones or excuses to increase their power -- much the way wars and fear of terrorism are useful to the right. I've learned enough economics and attempted to explain to people on the left in very straightforward economic terms how a given policy will actually hurt poor people, and never once have I managed to persuade a leftist to oppose that policy. They don't care, or they just decide that because I'm speaking economic science I must be a republican and therefore evil. I am coming to believe that ideology inhibits thought.
- 16y ago

nikster 16y ago

While it's funny to write a bot, at the same time you're right. It's not worth arguing with those people who just want to be mislead, and probably not worth writing a bot for it either. The problem is, arguments don't lead to insight. If those people could be swayed by rational arguments, they wouldn't be "climate skeptics" in the first place. So I think the pragmatic approach would be to understand your enemy before you try to engage.

babeKnuth 16y ago

spam against spam

nervechannel 16y ago

If rabid frothing twitterers want to get into arguments with someone over topics they know little about... ... and they are happy to continue arguing even if the interlocutor isn't even human... ... then who are we to stop them?

ewjordan 16y ago

Works great -- as long as you're omniscient. Not at all - to set people straight on common talking points doesn't require omniscience, it merely requires that those specific talking points have been satisfactorily refuted before, clearly enough so that almost anyone would agree that they're squashed. If someone on Twitter said "evolution is just a theory", I'd be perfectly happy to see someone respond-spam them with the Merriam-Webster definition of "theory" as it relates to science - that's an unambiguous refutation of the argument, verifiable by pretty much any onlooker as valid (in my experience, when confronted with that response, creationists usually don't acknowledge that they're wrong, but they quickly leave the topic, realizing that they won't score any points there). Similarly, if someone said "Darwin recanted on his deathbed", a simple link to http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/03/31/darwins-deathbed-conversion-legend http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/03/31/darwins-... (the first Google result for that phrase) would be fully justifiable, regardless of the qualifications of the responder. As a rule, I think if someone utters/posts/writes something that can be 100% debunked, beyond any reasonable doubt, by typing the phrase into Google and reading the first three results, it's fair to call them out on it, even in an automated way. Omniscience not required. Then again, I'm more used to arguing evolution than global warming, and evolution is a much more solid theory. I don't know how soundly most of the anti-global warming claims have been refuted, it may very well be the case that this guy is just parroting back talking points rather than properly shooting wrong ideas down. In which case that's Bad(tm). But as an abstract idea? Go ahead, shoot down the idiot masses, as long as you're damn sure that you're right about what you're putting them down over. A lot of stuff that people say really does deserve a rude smackdown, it's so offensively wrong - this is Twitter we're talking about, after all!

buster 16y ago

Being told by companies/lobbies, media and social networks that global warming doesn't exist although there is clear scientific evidence that it is, that's what is wrong here. How would you educate people that are driven to false conclusions by greedy companies? First of all this topic is important to address, because it effects us and, above all, our children. Second, this is no topic of "believe" or "taste", it's a topic of marketing campaigns and manipulated statistics versus clear scientific data and common sense. You just need to look at chinas and the U.S. pollution of the environment[1]. Do you really think this has no impact whatsoever? Every twitter post into the direction of anti-global-warming is just another little push in the wrong direction. Also: Being tolerant is great! Ignoring the wrong in the name of tolerance is wrong. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2-by-country--1990-2025.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CO2-by-country--1990-2025....

loewenskind 16y ago
You can attach urgency to any claim as a reason we don't have time to be sure and can't waste time with contrarian voices. In fact, it has been said that doing what some MMGW proponents suggest would keep e.g. India in poverty 100 years longer. People suffering and dying right now! We have to act fast to stop the MMGW movement and save them! See? Stop using this tactic to shut down discussion.
- buster 16y ago
  I don't know what MMGW is, and i don't know why people like to distract from the subject of matter here. It's not about indians or religion or whatever. It's about a problem that should be taken seriously, because it is _global_ and it will affect future generations! Shutting down discussion is equal to what the parent suggests (that is to shut up and not to react to those false claims). So, when you say "you can attach urgency to every claim", you are suggesting that we shuld just wait the next decades and see what happens, or what is your point?
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    MMGW: Man made Global Warming. >It's about a problem that should be taken seriously, because it is _global_ and it will affect future generations! And you do it again. Look, when you run out here screaming "We have to do something now! No time to discuss it and the other side are spewing nonsense anyway" you have the opposite effect. If time really is of the essence then all efforts should be in (a) proving that we fully understand the nature/cause of the problem, (b) coming up with real solutions/timelines/etc. and (c) addressing all skeptics concerns (over and over, as much as is required). It's not an easy battle but what MMGW proponents [1] are asking for isn't a simple flip of a switch. [1] Just for completeness: I'm not purposely taking sides. I've seen both good arguments and scandalous rubbish from both sides. I personally believe that something is happening to the environment and am open to be convinced that we are the culprit. But for me personally, I don't need to be convinced of either of these things. I think green technology is a good thing and should be perused regardless. Even if we aren't causing a green house effect that will melt the world and kill everyone we are poisoning our oceans (and the yummy creatures that live in them), destroying our forests, ecosystems and wild life (some of which I want to be saved for the selfish reason that I want to continue eating them and can't if they don't exist anymore). I also think we're moving in the right direction and have optimism that humanity will find a way like it always has so far.

MaysonL 16y ago

The endpoint of this line of development is exemplified in Bruce Sterling's novel Distraction. A politician, annoyed by criticism, commissions a spider which crawls the net, and when it finds a sufficiently annoying and influtential critic of the pol, posts their name and details to a hitlist on teh website of a nutjob organization. Their name gets removed after they've been asassinated.