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Here's the problem: while I would tend to agree with you if your claim was that global warming is not as clear cut an issue as the mainstream makes it out to be

Here's the problem: while I would tend to agree with you if your claim was that global warming is not as clear cut an issue as the mainstream makes it out to be, that's not how your post comes across. The real problem with the way you're arguing is that most of the meta-critiques that you've offered about the way mainstream climate change scientists act read almost exactly the same as the anti-evolution arguments that biologists have been assaulted with for decades. "Consensus is not how science is done?" Check. "The evidence goes against prevailing opinion?" Check. "Proponents won't argue the science and just parrot talking points?" Check. "They just shout people down as 'anti-science' when they disagree?" Check. And all these claims may be true, hell, they probably are. The problem is, that's how scientists act when they're right, just as much as when they're wrong. This doesn't bear on your claim at all, of course, and I have no intention of getting into a specific global warming dispute (I don't have the expertise or the interest, and frankly, I doubt there are many people here that do); but those arguments mean absolutely nothing, because they are always offered whenever people disagree with the prevailing consensus in a field, whether it's correct or not. I've only met a couple climate scientists, but my impression was most definitely not that they were ideologically driven morons that simply want to push their preconceived notions on the world. I've always gotten the sense that they really felt that the data supported their claims. Now, that doesn't make them right, but be careful about assuming that they're just perpetrating a fraud for some reason. One of the most common mistakes people make when arguing issues like this is to assume that the other side actually knows (or secretly suspects) that it's wrong, and it's playing dirty to trick everyone else. This is rarely the case, if someone is wrong it's typically more likely that the evidence they've seen strongly suggests their hypothesis, which ends up blinding them to later evidence that might weaken it.

loewenskind 16y ago
>The real problem with the way you're arguing is that most of the meta-critiques that you've offered about the way mainstream climate change scientists act read almost exactly the same as the anti-evolution arguments that biologists have been assaulted with for decades. So what? In both cases people are claiming some party should fundamentally alter how they live (perhaps implicitly in the case of evolution) and/or what the believe based on their findings. Of course this will be faced with scrutiny! If the scientist is correct he/she should be able to prove it. If he/she thinks the evidence just strongly suggests their theory then it should be presented that way leaving the other side to simply agree to withhold judgment for now [1]. >but those arguments mean absolutely nothing, because they are always offered whenever people disagree with the prevailing consensus in a field, whether it's correct or not. That makes no sense at all. Arguments are meaningless because they are used too much? Utterly illogical, have I misunderstood something here? >I've always gotten the sense that they really felt that the data supported their claims. Now, that doesn't make them right, but be careful about assuming that they're just perpetrating a fraud for some reason. I'm sure most of them do. But do you think people from the other side aren't just as convinced of their opinions? A big part of the problem is both sides assuming the other is disingenuous. [1] Not being convinced is always valid unless there is concrete irrefutable proof. Forming new "theories" based on being unconvinced and evangelizing based on them is not as it is "argument from ignorance" (i.e. "See, they don't know, no one does! Therefor the true answer is...").
- ewjordan 16y ago
  That makes no sense at all. Arguments are meaningless because they are used too much? Utterly illogical, have I misunderstood something here? Maybe I didn't make my point very clearly, and you're right, as stated that's not really what I mean. What I was trying to get at is that topical debates where one side disagrees with the scientific consensus typically degenerate rather quickly into complaints about the scientific establishment itself, and about how its barely-permeable idea membrane has a tendency to shut down a lot of criticism without fully addressing it. And this is a valid point; unfortunately, it doesn't tell us anything at all about whatever specific claim is at hand, it just tells us that science puts up some pretty strong barriers to new ideas. Which, I might add, is the main reason that science continues to work, because for every scientific theory out there, even the ones with the most solid evidence, there are dozens of vocal lunatics that have their own pet theories that "aren't being taken seriously" or "have been silenced". In most scientific fields, apart from a few edge cases where data is weak or theory is spotty, there usually is a very strong consensus on most issues, and they're settled well enough that criticisms will usually be dismissed out of hand unless there's a very strong reason to take them seriously. That doesn't mean that if someone is being "silenced" or shouted down they're necessarily wrong, but it does mean that they won't score any points by complaining about it. That treatment is leveled equally on all new ideas, and even in the best case scenario it usually takes new ideas (if correct) a generation or so to make their way through the barrier (mostly because the new generation thrives on tearing down as many ideas from the old generation as it can, whereas the old generation fights to preserve the status quo). A big part of the problem is both sides assuming the other is disingenuous. I absolutely 100% agree. Whenever someone shouts "Fraud!" in these arguments, I cringe, because it's rare that someone will spend a lot of time and effort pursuing scientific ideas that they actually think are wrong. FWIW, I'm not taking any stand on AGW here, I really don't know enough about it to comment intelligently on the science. But the argument surrounding it, politicized as it's become, has a very similar tone to the arguments about evolution, right down to many of the same meta-critiques about the scientific process. Those talking points were not helpful when applied to evolution, so I'd rather they fell out of the lexicon, their presence in an argument immediately rings several alarm bells due to the similarities. The similar argument style would typically make me assume that the deniers/skeptics are just wrong (if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...), though in this case I'm reserving judgment because a few of their other points seem like they might have some merit. Not being convinced is always valid unless there is concrete irrefutable proof. Hmm, I suspect a lot of Less Wrong-ers would disagree with you there, the entire philosophy of that site is based around the idea (one that I find very defensible) that we should usually be thinking statistically instead of right/wrong, and even if we can't know something for sure in the face of uncertainty, any pair of people that are thinking rationally and honestly should, in time, be able to at least agree on likelihood ratios between different possible outcomes by recursing through all the relevant priors and settling discrepancies that way. "Agree to disagree" is merely a way of cutting off that recursive settling of priors, and will sometimes have to happen in the interest of having finite length discussions, but the goal should always be to avoid that, or at the very least, pin down the lowest level disagreement about prior probabilities so that we at least know that both sides have updated their beliefs based on the same evidence. For instance, if someone was honestly arguing that special relativity was wrong with an X% probability, that's not valid at all unless and until they can go through the various evidences in favor of it (which scientists claim puts its likelihood of being right at, say, 99.9% (we really should be talking likelihood ratios, not percentages, but you get the point)) and justify a set of priors that would lead to that X% probability. Similarly, scientists should be able to go through the evidences against special relativity and and justify granting them less authority, by showing their priors. Then we can look into those lower level assumptions, and do the same thing. Obviously this process can balloon, which is why scientists hate to do this kind of thing when they could be doing real work instead. :)

loewenskind 16y ago

>The real problem with the way you're arguing is that most of the meta-critiques that you've offered about the way mainstream climate change scientists act read almost exactly the same as the anti-evolution arguments that biologists have been assaulted with for decades. So what? In both cases people are claiming some party should fundamentally alter how they live (perhaps implicitly in the case of evolution) and/or what the believe based on their findings. Of course this will be faced with scrutiny! If the scientist is correct he/she should be able to prove it. If he/she thinks the evidence just strongly suggests their theory then it should be presented that way leaving the other side to simply agree to withhold judgment for now [1]. >but those arguments mean absolutely nothing, because they are always offered whenever people disagree with the prevailing consensus in a field, whether it's correct or not. That makes no sense at all. Arguments are meaningless because they are used too much? Utterly illogical, have I misunderstood something here? >I've always gotten the sense that they really felt that the data supported their claims. Now, that doesn't make them right, but be careful about assuming that they're just perpetrating a fraud for some reason. I'm sure most of them do. But do you think people from the other side aren't just as convinced of their opinions? A big part of the problem is both sides assuming the other is disingenuous. [1] Not being convinced is always valid unless there is concrete irrefutable proof. Forming new "theories" based on being unconvinced and evangelizing based on them is not as it is "argument from ignorance" (i.e. "See, they don't know, no one does! Therefor the true answer is...").

ewjordan 16y ago
That makes no sense at all. Arguments are meaningless because they are used too much? Utterly illogical, have I misunderstood something here? Maybe I didn't make my point very clearly, and you're right, as stated that's not really what I mean. What I was trying to get at is that topical debates where one side disagrees with the scientific consensus typically degenerate rather quickly into complaints about the scientific establishment itself, and about how its barely-permeable idea membrane has a tendency to shut down a lot of criticism without fully addressing it. And this is a valid point; unfortunately, it doesn't tell us anything at all about whatever specific claim is at hand, it just tells us that science puts up some pretty strong barriers to new ideas. Which, I might add, is the main reason that science continues to work, because for every scientific theory out there, even the ones with the most solid evidence, there are dozens of vocal lunatics that have their own pet theories that "aren't being taken seriously" or "have been silenced". In most scientific fields, apart from a few edge cases where data is weak or theory is spotty, there usually is a very strong consensus on most issues, and they're settled well enough that criticisms will usually be dismissed out of hand unless there's a very strong reason to take them seriously. That doesn't mean that if someone is being "silenced" or shouted down they're necessarily wrong, but it does mean that they won't score any points by complaining about it. That treatment is leveled equally on all new ideas, and even in the best case scenario it usually takes new ideas (if correct) a generation or so to make their way through the barrier (mostly because the new generation thrives on tearing down as many ideas from the old generation as it can, whereas the old generation fights to preserve the status quo). A big part of the problem is both sides assuming the other is disingenuous. I absolutely 100% agree. Whenever someone shouts "Fraud!" in these arguments, I cringe, because it's rare that someone will spend a lot of time and effort pursuing scientific ideas that they actually think are wrong. FWIW, I'm not taking any stand on AGW here, I really don't know enough about it to comment intelligently on the science. But the argument surrounding it, politicized as it's become, has a very similar tone to the arguments about evolution, right down to many of the same meta-critiques about the scientific process. Those talking points were not helpful when applied to evolution, so I'd rather they fell out of the lexicon, their presence in an argument immediately rings several alarm bells due to the similarities. The similar argument style would typically make me assume that the deniers/skeptics are just wrong (if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...), though in this case I'm reserving judgment because a few of their other points seem like they might have some merit. Not being convinced is always valid unless there is concrete irrefutable proof. Hmm, I suspect a lot of Less Wrong-ers would disagree with you there, the entire philosophy of that site is based around the idea (one that I find very defensible) that we should usually be thinking statistically instead of right/wrong, and even if we can't know something for sure in the face of uncertainty, any pair of people that are thinking rationally and honestly should, in time, be able to at least agree on likelihood ratios between different possible outcomes by recursing through all the relevant priors and settling discrepancies that way. "Agree to disagree" is merely a way of cutting off that recursive settling of priors, and will sometimes have to happen in the interest of having finite length discussions, but the goal should always be to avoid that, or at the very least, pin down the lowest level disagreement about prior probabilities so that we at least know that both sides have updated their beliefs based on the same evidence. For instance, if someone was honestly arguing that special relativity was wrong with an X% probability, that's not valid at all unless and until they can go through the various evidences in favor of it (which scientists claim puts its likelihood of being right at, say, 99.9% (we really should be talking likelihood ratios, not percentages, but you get the point)) and justify a set of priors that would lead to that X% probability. Similarly, scientists should be able to go through the evidences against special relativity and and justify granting them less authority, by showing their priors. Then we can look into those lower level assumptions, and do the same thing. Obviously this process can balloon, which is why scientists hate to do this kind of thing when they could be doing real work instead. :)