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Science and politics are different. Politics doesn't prove things. Politics is about making choices. Should abortion be legal, if so, when? That's a moral c

Science and politics are different. Politics doesn't prove things. Politics is about making choices. Should abortion be legal, if so, when? That's a moral choice. Or less elegantly it's an answer to the question - who's going to be punished and who's going to be rewarded. Science might be able to to inform that decision but it can't and shouldn't make it. Science is about discovering information. It could answer the question, "Is climate change happening?" It can't answer the question "What should we do about it?" It can inform people about the consequences of one response or another but at root the answer to that question is - "Who do I want to see hurt and who do I want to see helped?" Clearly there's a lot of overlap there - it's not hard to see how and why that's the case - but I still think when Science starts to lay claim to political decisions people become resentful and no one is fooled. The analogy I'd make is politicians invoking religion as a trump card in making policy. No one is fooled by it - and it makes everyone suspicious of religion.

whatshisface 7y ago
It's not that clear cut. I'll use the environment as an example. Nobody wants to drive mass extinctions or ruin America's agricultural climate. There is no party in favor of doing those things. The only way to have absolutely no push-back against industries that do that stuff is to deny that it's happening. You could accept that it's happening and then try to bargain based on future discounting and economic growth, but then the answer would be some kind of restraint greater in magnitude than zero. If you want to have absolutely no restraints you are forced to convince everybody that there is no problem. The moral obviousness of the choice turns a political issue into a scientific one, and brings the politicians along with it.
- paggle 7y ago
  There are a lot of people who don't care about mass extinctions. For example, you will not get a uniform question to "A 6-year-old kid has a rare cancer, never seen before, that is defying all medical knowledge, but seems to be controlled by an extract of the pituitary gland of a panda bear. Researchers in the field have determined that a one-shot dose from 1,000 pandas has a 90% of permanently curing her, but that's half of the pandas in the world today. Should 1,000 pandas be killed to try to save her?"
  - sudhirj 7y ago
    You forgot to mention the child's ethnicity - that would obviously make the answer really easy :-/
    - squirrelicus 7y ago
      I don't have any Republican friends that believe this, and almost all my friends are Republicans. I hate this toxic myth.
      - en-us 7y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bijsl9p55qo&t=38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bijsl9p55qo&t=38s
        squirrelicus 7y ago
        Yup. People from another country who aren't citizens get different treatment. Welcome to all countries on Earth.
        paggle 7y ago
        One comment from "toxic myth" to "welcome to all countries."
  - tomhoward 7y ago
    These emotive, unrealistic hypotheticals are pointless, and are conceived purely to stir up controversy and judgement.
- squirrelicus 7y ago
  Let me annotate this as somebody accused of climate denial. We who are not trolling do not deny the data. The data are clear, there is a general warming trend so far. And it's most likely primarily caused by human action. But there's a problem. You see, when we noticed Uranus had perturbations in its orbit, we looked at the theoretical model, did the math the theory demanded, predicted that a planet should be in a location, looked there, and saw Neptune. In that order. That's how rigorous scientific theory works. Climate theory is very far from that rigor. Each University has a different model. Most of them have many models. They're software, written by programmers that embed their assumptions into their code. They all disagree. And we never know which model is correct except in hindsight. Even more problematic, the model that best predicted climate change in 2015 is not the model that best predicted climate change in 2019. Of the thousand models, we see every year in the news "this one was right!". But we didnt know it was right before we looked in hindsight, and we don't know in the least which one will be right tomorrow. Climate theory is still in flux. Moreover, the supposed solutions do not address the fact that the biggest problem is not the West, which has been declining in emissions simce the 70s [0]. It's the exponentially growing developing world. None of the solutions I've heard except "global nuclear fission or war, now" have a chance at stopping climate change as generally predicted by the entertainment media like CNN et al. Solar and wind is a mere fairy tale unless we're talking about comoletely carpetting AZ, NV, and half of TX in solar paneling. And then braindead things like the Green New Deal pop up, that even my Democrat friends make fun of. I'm left with a sense that the evangelists of climate change either don't take what they believe seriously, or they're ignorant of the gravity of their predictions. So yeah. I'm withholding judgement because for the foreseeable future, the absolute worst case is my grandparents can outwallk climate change coastal changes and we get more net arable land in Canada and Siberia. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
  - yongjik 7y ago
    > ... because for the foreseeable future, the absolute worst case is my grandparents can outwallk climate change coastal changes ... For someone who starts their argument with "climate science is imperfect and we don't know which model will predict the future correctly," you seem to have a lot of confidence on your "absolute worst case" which looks like, honestly, pulled out of thin air.
Retric 7y ago
> “What should we do about it?” It can be used to model if doing X or Y is more efficient or effective. The issue is so many policy choices are good for society and bad for someone specific. Which means a huge number of people want to use some other means for deciding what to do. For example, farmers really don’t want people to eat less even if that would be good for society.
scarmig 7y ago
Science is more than just a tool or procedure for generating data and building models, though. It's a humanistic tradition that says that humans can look at and interpret the world to understand and manipulate it. If you have a government undermining the institutions that make that practice possible, it's certainly appropriate for scientists to speak out about it. If the US government cuts off funding of climate change research and bans scientists from releasing their findings, scientists can certainly speak, as scientists, and call out the administration doing so as anti-science.
turk73 7y ago
I'm just going to say it: I would have a lot more respect for scientists, and people in academia in general, if they weren't all Democrats. Waving the liberal flag is all people in higher ed do anymore and that have run off even moderate voices. A marketplace of ideas is impossible in such an echo chamber and we're seeing the consequences of that activity daily. The next phase appears to involve the jailing, if not outright killing, of all who dissent. A Maoist revolution. Before you get on me with the down votes, realize that I have a PhD, been worked in academia in the past, and have watched over about the last 20 years the intolerance in higher ed go from "mild distaste of differing opinions" to today's radicalized "we must murder all who disagree in order to save the planet because we know we are right and it is all settled, then."

whatshisface 7y ago

It's not that clear cut. I'll use the environment as an example. Nobody wants to drive mass extinctions or ruin America's agricultural climate. There is no party in favor of doing those things. The only way to have absolutely no push-back against industries that do that stuff is to deny that it's happening. You could accept that it's happening and then try to bargain based on future discounting and economic growth, but then the answer would be some kind of restraint greater in magnitude than zero. If you want to have absolutely no restraints you are forced to convince everybody that there is no problem. The moral obviousness of the choice turns a political issue into a scientific one, and brings the politicians along with it.

paggle 7y ago
There are a lot of people who don't care about mass extinctions. For example, you will not get a uniform question to "A 6-year-old kid has a rare cancer, never seen before, that is defying all medical knowledge, but seems to be controlled by an extract of the pituitary gland of a panda bear. Researchers in the field have determined that a one-shot dose from 1,000 pandas has a 90% of permanently curing her, but that's half of the pandas in the world today. Should 1,000 pandas be killed to try to save her?"
- sudhirj 7y ago
  You forgot to mention the child's ethnicity - that would obviously make the answer really easy :-/
  - squirrelicus 7y ago
    I don't have any Republican friends that believe this, and almost all my friends are Republicans. I hate this toxic myth.
    - en-us 7y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bijsl9p55qo&t=38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bijsl9p55qo&t=38s
      - squirrelicus 7y ago
        Yup. People from another country who aren't citizens get different treatment. Welcome to all countries on Earth.
        paggle 7y ago
        One comment from "toxic myth" to "welcome to all countries."
- tomhoward 7y ago
  These emotive, unrealistic hypotheticals are pointless, and are conceived purely to stir up controversy and judgement.
squirrelicus 7y ago
Let me annotate this as somebody accused of climate denial. We who are not trolling do not deny the data. The data are clear, there is a general warming trend so far. And it's most likely primarily caused by human action. But there's a problem. You see, when we noticed Uranus had perturbations in its orbit, we looked at the theoretical model, did the math the theory demanded, predicted that a planet should be in a location, looked there, and saw Neptune. In that order. That's how rigorous scientific theory works. Climate theory is very far from that rigor. Each University has a different model. Most of them have many models. They're software, written by programmers that embed their assumptions into their code. They all disagree. And we never know which model is correct except in hindsight. Even more problematic, the model that best predicted climate change in 2015 is not the model that best predicted climate change in 2019. Of the thousand models, we see every year in the news "this one was right!". But we didnt know it was right before we looked in hindsight, and we don't know in the least which one will be right tomorrow. Climate theory is still in flux. Moreover, the supposed solutions do not address the fact that the biggest problem is not the West, which has been declining in emissions simce the 70s [0]. It's the exponentially growing developing world. None of the solutions I've heard except "global nuclear fission or war, now" have a chance at stopping climate change as generally predicted by the entertainment media like CNN et al. Solar and wind is a mere fairy tale unless we're talking about comoletely carpetting AZ, NV, and half of TX in solar paneling. And then braindead things like the Green New Deal pop up, that even my Democrat friends make fun of. I'm left with a sense that the evangelists of climate change either don't take what they believe seriously, or they're ignorant of the gravity of their predictions. So yeah. I'm withholding judgement because for the foreseeable future, the absolute worst case is my grandparents can outwallk climate change coastal changes and we get more net arable land in Canada and Siberia. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
- yongjik 7y ago
  > ... because for the foreseeable future, the absolute worst case is my grandparents can outwallk climate change coastal changes ... For someone who starts their argument with "climate science is imperfect and we don't know which model will predict the future correctly," you seem to have a lot of confidence on your "absolute worst case" which looks like, honestly, pulled out of thin air.

Retric 7y ago

> “What should we do about it?” It can be used to model if doing X or Y is more efficient or effective. The issue is so many policy choices are good for society and bad for someone specific. Which means a huge number of people want to use some other means for deciding what to do. For example, farmers really don’t want people to eat less even if that would be good for society.

scarmig 7y ago

Science is more than just a tool or procedure for generating data and building models, though. It's a humanistic tradition that says that humans can look at and interpret the world to understand and manipulate it. If you have a government undermining the institutions that make that practice possible, it's certainly appropriate for scientists to speak out about it. If the US government cuts off funding of climate change research and bans scientists from releasing their findings, scientists can certainly speak, as scientists, and call out the administration doing so as anti-science.

turk73 7y ago

I'm just going to say it: I would have a lot more respect for scientists, and people in academia in general, if they weren't all Democrats. Waving the liberal flag is all people in higher ed do anymore and that have run off even moderate voices. A marketplace of ideas is impossible in such an echo chamber and we're seeing the consequences of that activity daily. The next phase appears to involve the jailing, if not outright killing, of all who dissent. A Maoist revolution. Before you get on me with the down votes, realize that I have a PhD, been worked in academia in the past, and have watched over about the last 20 years the intolerance in higher ed go from "mild distaste of differing opinions" to today's radicalized "we must murder all who disagree in order to save the planet because we know we are right and it is all settled, then."