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> It somehow perpetuates an awareness that Global Warming is optional to believe in. The belief part is off the table. This is a pretty odd take. Believing any

by ebg13 8y ago

> It somehow perpetuates an awareness that Global Warming is optional to believe in. The belief part is off the table. This is a pretty odd take. Believing anything is optional. You may believe that the evidence is incontrovertible, but even that is an optional belief. The person you're responding to is just signaling that the questions are not based on climate change skepticism. In 100 years that signal may no longer be valuable, but today it probably is.

spectramax 8y ago
That’s my point. Believing in anything is optional - except for hard scientific facts that have been proven experimentally to a “believable” level relative to the other side which is presenting anecdotal evidence. Everything can be wrong. Even theory of gravitation. That’s besides the point.
- ebg13 8y ago
  > Believing in anything is optional - except... Except nothing. > hard scientific facts that have been proven experimentally Science isn't in the business of proving things. Science develops explanatory models that account for known evidence. Saying that science proves anything is super wrong and leads to all kinds of problems.
  - spectramax 8y ago
    Fair, you are absolutely correct. Science is in building models about how nature works. Mathematics is in the business of proving, I guess. I think we are engaging in unproductive pedantry while going away from my original point. I want to emphasize my point again - we have 2 arguments. Argument A and argument B. A is presenting scientific evidence, in your corrected terms - presenting a model of climate change. Argument B is anecdotal evidence. The fact that they are both argued on the same stage gives the audience (who may not know anything about A or B) a false assurance that both A and B are arguable and therefore, they are on the stage. It is fine for casual conversations, I am speaking about large debates that we still fucking have about whether Earth is flat. It is equivalent of "Trolling" and should not be entertained.
    - samiru 8y ago
      Many times the consensus has provided scientific evidence (e.g. geocentric model) and has still been wrong. For some reason, I feel that something similar is going on with the climate debate. Mix money, politics and some aspects of religion and one just might arrive to the place where we are in today.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
Buldak 8y ago
I've seen this trope around for a while now, that is, people who insist that it's somehow incorrect to say, "I don't believe in global warming" or "I don't believe in evolution." I used to find this bizarre, as it seems straightforward for a climate denier or creationist to say such things. I think what people who get rankled by this have in mind is a certain, pluralistic connotation of "believe." Often when someone says, "I believe in Christianity," it's implied that atheists or people of other faiths are not unreasonable to believe differently. (Something similar could be said about political or ethical beliefs. It's difficult to spell out the sense in which you can view someone who disagrees with you as reasonable, but I think you know what I mean.) So people who think "belief" is not applicable to global warming or evolution are trying to deny that we should be pluralistic about these matters. I still think this is a somewhat obtuse equivocation on the word "belief," but I think I understand the intuition beneath it.

by ebg13 8y ago

spectramax 8y ago

That’s my point. Believing in anything is optional - except for hard scientific facts that have been proven experimentally to a “believable” level relative to the other side which is presenting anecdotal evidence. Everything can be wrong. Even theory of gravitation. That’s besides the point.

ebg13 8y ago
> Believing in anything is optional - except... Except nothing. > hard scientific facts that have been proven experimentally Science isn't in the business of proving things. Science develops explanatory models that account for known evidence. Saying that science proves anything is super wrong and leads to all kinds of problems.
- spectramax 8y ago
  Fair, you are absolutely correct. Science is in building models about how nature works. Mathematics is in the business of proving, I guess. I think we are engaging in unproductive pedantry while going away from my original point. I want to emphasize my point again - we have 2 arguments. Argument A and argument B. A is presenting scientific evidence, in your corrected terms - presenting a model of climate change. Argument B is anecdotal evidence. The fact that they are both argued on the same stage gives the audience (who may not know anything about A or B) a false assurance that both A and B are arguable and therefore, they are on the stage. It is fine for casual conversations, I am speaking about large debates that we still fucking have about whether Earth is flat. It is equivalent of "Trolling" and should not be entertained.
  - samiru 8y ago
    Many times the consensus has provided scientific evidence (e.g. geocentric model) and has still been wrong. For some reason, I feel that something similar is going on with the climate debate. Mix money, politics and some aspects of religion and one just might arrive to the place where we are in today.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

Buldak 8y ago

I've seen this trope around for a while now, that is, people who insist that it's somehow incorrect to say, "I don't believe in global warming" or "I don't believe in evolution." I used to find this bizarre, as it seems straightforward for a climate denier or creationist to say such things. I think what people who get rankled by this have in mind is a certain, pluralistic connotation of "believe." Often when someone says, "I believe in Christianity," it's implied that atheists or people of other faiths are not unreasonable to believe differently. (Something similar could be said about political or ethical beliefs. It's difficult to spell out the sense in which you can view someone who disagrees with you as reasonable, but I think you know what I mean.) So people who think "belief" is not applicable to global warming or evolution are trying to deny that we should be pluralistic about these matters. I still think this is a somewhat obtuse equivocation on the word "belief," but I think I understand the intuition beneath it.