4 ms·

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?” - George Orwell, 1984

nickthemagicman 6y ago
Most people who believe in climate change have never read a single scientific paper regarding it nor know the name of a single climate scientist. The names they know are Greta thernberg and Al Gore. How can you know what 2+2 equals if your source of reason is the media and not science.
- theplague42 6y ago
  Do you feel that the science itself says climate change is not real?
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    I'm not saying if it's real or not because I've never read a single paper on it. Neither have most people who are championing it though.
    - judge2020 6y ago
      Much like we hope businesses listen to their cybersecurity personnel since they've dedicated their career to securing information systems, we should listen to the scientists who have dedicated years, maybe even decades of their lives to researching climate change.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        I believe this site has around 10 billion pwned accounts that show that maybe these cybersecurity personell are wrong quite often. https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ Experts are quit often wrong. Outsourcing your thinking to them blindly seems intellecuallty lazy in my opinion.
    - DFHippie 6y ago
      I am sure you have firm beliefs about many things that you have not read papers about. You trust the field that studies these things is not full of charlatans. If the reason to believe proposition P is that the experts who study this thing say it, most people believe P. That people with obvious non-scientific motives to assert !P do assert !P is not considered evidence of scientific controversy but rather of the non-scientific motives that were obvious in the first place.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        I don't claim those beliefs are unquestionable though. I have no motives other than disliking this idea that experts are these angels of truth that should blindly be followed.
- highwind 6y ago
  > Most people who believe in climate change have never read a single scientific paper regarding it nor know the name of a single climate scientist. Source?
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Anyone non-climate scientist that you know.
- lhorie 6y ago
  To be fair, "most people" have never read a single scientific paper on any topic. Most scientists, however, have read papers in their respective fields. If one wants to apply the tin-foil hat theory that climate change is a product of the media industry, then one should also consider that claiming that science debunked climate change would also bring eyeballs. The fact that the mainstream media as well as independents universally report on climate change being true (vs say the effects of various foods on weight loss) should say something about the underlying scientific consensus.
- marmaduke 6y ago
  I think your provocative comment belies a challenging truth: federated trust. I can be a rational person and in my rationality delegate the conclusions on climate questions to those who are funded to spend their time, with my trust essentially delegating to the peer reviewed journals and journalists describing their work. We don’t however need science or such federated rationality to tell us what 2+2 is, rather why 1+3 in floating point is not 4, https://www.exploringbinary.com/floating-point-questions-are-endless-on-stackoverflow-com/ https://www.exploringbinary.com/floating-point-questions-are...
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    I've been rate limited for over 2 hours for my provacative comment. Just wanted to say thanks for putting a name to this concept I've been thinking about for a while. Federated Trust, that's great.
- billylindeman 6y ago
  I see you're getting downvoted heavily. I think you make a fair point. I've tried to find good sources on climate material to do my own research, because I'm a skeptic at heart. I'd love to see a climate wiki that compiled studies / charts / resources for people to actually read the literature - vs the hysterics of the media.
  - mturmon 6y ago
    Especially if you're based in the US, this is your best one-stop shop for an overall summary assessment of the science: https://science2017.globalchange.gov https://science2017.globalchange.gov
  - DFHippie 6y ago
    Start here and follow the links: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Thank you. And I'm not questioning the idea of climate change. I have no idea because I've never looked at the information. My point is that blindly trusting in the infallibility of experts without thinking for yourself is intellectually lazy. Whether one believes in climate change or not, they should look at the data for themselves and make up their own mind.
- nothis 6y ago
  To believe that to be a major concern, you'd have to seriously consider the possibility of science being a made up conspiracy theory. Which is a deep rabbit hole that ends up either in an existential crisis or a psych ward.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Science is a everchanging set of ideas, many of which are debated in the scientific community. It's not a simple set of facts that scientists discover and move on. There's ton's of questionable ideas even in the most accepted theories. For example: 1.Massive leaps in Evolution: "theres no use for half a wing" 2.no one understands how gravity works only how it behaves 3.the source of climate change is pretty speculative due to the fact that it's true that there are indeed massive natural historic temp shifts 5.Scientists don't even understand the folding process of how the DNA fits into a cell. So science is one large evolving conspiracy theory. If you think deeply about how little even the smartest monkeys on earth truly know about the universe it will definitly put you into a psych ward.
- mturmon 6y ago
  > "Most people who believe in climate change have never..." A few reactions. (1) How do you even know this? This is not even a verifiable claim, it's just a derisive comment. (2) Additionally, it is an elementary logical fallacy. "I claim the other side is not sufficiently educated about X, therefore X is not true." (3) In this case, many sources in "the media" (your term, and again, a derisive and non-specific term, like your earlier "most people") are broadly correct. That is: serious assessments like the National Climate Assessment [1], summarizing the current state of the science, substantiate that there will be many varied and serious impacts of climate change. [1] NCA: https://nca2018.globalchange.gov https://nca2018.globalchange.gov
- N_A_T_E 6y ago
  I tend to agree there are probably a bunch of armchair climate scientists due to the political environment although I don't know if I would generalize to "most people". I recall being required to read scientific papers on climate change in a few classes as part of my undergraduate studies. I wouldn't be surprised if many others did as well, possibly even during high school.
- munk-a 6y ago
  There is a lot of information out there. I, personally, work as a programmer while not having a doctorate of math (which would disappoint Turing) nor writing my code as formally proven statements (which would disappoint Djikstra). I do my work (along with the vast majority of Americans in the workforce) on a computer which, if breaks, I can only hold up towards the sky and hope some divine intervention fixes - I don't know the conductivity of copper nor the tensile strength of silicon. I also can only guess at what the majority of people actually do with their computers. All that said, I'm pro-computers because I've got enough familiarity to know it's not a terrible idea and I know that some smart people are intimately involved with computers and so I trust it to all work out. I am similarly unfamiliar with specific climate studies but trust that climate change is a real issue that needs to be addressed. I'm not going to start calling out a climate denier at a party with specific points of relevance because I don't have a solid grasp of things and, honestly, don't tend to do that at parties - but I'll still look on with judgement at climate deniers as I'm firmly of the opinion (based on popular science) that they're making baseless claims.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    So you pass judgment on people without actually having looked into any of the data yourself...that's incredible.
cs702 6y ago
Also from Orwell: "In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. [...] But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better."[a] [a] Source: "Politics and the English Language," by George Orwell, 1946: https://archive.org/details/PoliticsAndTheEnglishLanguage https://archive.org/details/PoliticsAndTheEnglishLanguage

nickthemagicman 6y ago

Most people who believe in climate change have never read a single scientific paper regarding it nor know the name of a single climate scientist. The names they know are Greta thernberg and Al Gore. How can you know what 2+2 equals if your source of reason is the media and not science.

theplague42 6y ago
Do you feel that the science itself says climate change is not real?
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  I'm not saying if it's real or not because I've never read a single paper on it. Neither have most people who are championing it though.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    Much like we hope businesses listen to their cybersecurity personnel since they've dedicated their career to securing information systems, we should listen to the scientists who have dedicated years, maybe even decades of their lives to researching climate change.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      I believe this site has around 10 billion pwned accounts that show that maybe these cybersecurity personell are wrong quite often. https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ Experts are quit often wrong. Outsourcing your thinking to them blindly seems intellecuallty lazy in my opinion.
  - DFHippie 6y ago
    I am sure you have firm beliefs about many things that you have not read papers about. You trust the field that studies these things is not full of charlatans. If the reason to believe proposition P is that the experts who study this thing say it, most people believe P. That people with obvious non-scientific motives to assert !P do assert !P is not considered evidence of scientific controversy but rather of the non-scientific motives that were obvious in the first place.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      I don't claim those beliefs are unquestionable though. I have no motives other than disliking this idea that experts are these angels of truth that should blindly be followed.
highwind 6y ago
> Most people who believe in climate change have never read a single scientific paper regarding it nor know the name of a single climate scientist. Source?
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Anyone non-climate scientist that you know.
lhorie 6y ago
To be fair, "most people" have never read a single scientific paper on any topic. Most scientists, however, have read papers in their respective fields. If one wants to apply the tin-foil hat theory that climate change is a product of the media industry, then one should also consider that claiming that science debunked climate change would also bring eyeballs. The fact that the mainstream media as well as independents universally report on climate change being true (vs say the effects of various foods on weight loss) should say something about the underlying scientific consensus.
marmaduke 6y ago
I think your provocative comment belies a challenging truth: federated trust. I can be a rational person and in my rationality delegate the conclusions on climate questions to those who are funded to spend their time, with my trust essentially delegating to the peer reviewed journals and journalists describing their work. We don’t however need science or such federated rationality to tell us what 2+2 is, rather why 1+3 in floating point is not 4, https://www.exploringbinary.com/floating-point-questions-are-endless-on-stackoverflow-com/ https://www.exploringbinary.com/floating-point-questions-are...
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  I've been rate limited for over 2 hours for my provacative comment. Just wanted to say thanks for putting a name to this concept I've been thinking about for a while. Federated Trust, that's great.
billylindeman 6y ago
I see you're getting downvoted heavily. I think you make a fair point. I've tried to find good sources on climate material to do my own research, because I'm a skeptic at heart. I'd love to see a climate wiki that compiled studies / charts / resources for people to actually read the literature - vs the hysterics of the media.
- mturmon 6y ago
  Especially if you're based in the US, this is your best one-stop shop for an overall summary assessment of the science: https://science2017.globalchange.gov https://science2017.globalchange.gov
- DFHippie 6y ago
  Start here and follow the links: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Thank you. And I'm not questioning the idea of climate change. I have no idea because I've never looked at the information. My point is that blindly trusting in the infallibility of experts without thinking for yourself is intellectually lazy. Whether one believes in climate change or not, they should look at the data for themselves and make up their own mind.
nothis 6y ago
To believe that to be a major concern, you'd have to seriously consider the possibility of science being a made up conspiracy theory. Which is a deep rabbit hole that ends up either in an existential crisis or a psych ward.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Science is a everchanging set of ideas, many of which are debated in the scientific community. It's not a simple set of facts that scientists discover and move on. There's ton's of questionable ideas even in the most accepted theories. For example: 1.Massive leaps in Evolution: "theres no use for half a wing" 2.no one understands how gravity works only how it behaves 3.the source of climate change is pretty speculative due to the fact that it's true that there are indeed massive natural historic temp shifts 5.Scientists don't even understand the folding process of how the DNA fits into a cell. So science is one large evolving conspiracy theory. If you think deeply about how little even the smartest monkeys on earth truly know about the universe it will definitly put you into a psych ward.
mturmon 6y ago
> "Most people who believe in climate change have never..." A few reactions. (1) How do you even know this? This is not even a verifiable claim, it's just a derisive comment. (2) Additionally, it is an elementary logical fallacy. "I claim the other side is not sufficiently educated about X, therefore X is not true." (3) In this case, many sources in "the media" (your term, and again, a derisive and non-specific term, like your earlier "most people") are broadly correct. That is: serious assessments like the National Climate Assessment [1], summarizing the current state of the science, substantiate that there will be many varied and serious impacts of climate change. [1] NCA: https://nca2018.globalchange.gov https://nca2018.globalchange.gov
N_A_T_E 6y ago
I tend to agree there are probably a bunch of armchair climate scientists due to the political environment although I don't know if I would generalize to "most people". I recall being required to read scientific papers on climate change in a few classes as part of my undergraduate studies. I wouldn't be surprised if many others did as well, possibly even during high school.
munk-a 6y ago
There is a lot of information out there. I, personally, work as a programmer while not having a doctorate of math (which would disappoint Turing) nor writing my code as formally proven statements (which would disappoint Djikstra). I do my work (along with the vast majority of Americans in the workforce) on a computer which, if breaks, I can only hold up towards the sky and hope some divine intervention fixes - I don't know the conductivity of copper nor the tensile strength of silicon. I also can only guess at what the majority of people actually do with their computers. All that said, I'm pro-computers because I've got enough familiarity to know it's not a terrible idea and I know that some smart people are intimately involved with computers and so I trust it to all work out. I am similarly unfamiliar with specific climate studies but trust that climate change is a real issue that needs to be addressed. I'm not going to start calling out a climate denier at a party with specific points of relevance because I don't have a solid grasp of things and, honestly, don't tend to do that at parties - but I'll still look on with judgement at climate deniers as I'm firmly of the opinion (based on popular science) that they're making baseless claims.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  So you pass judgment on people without actually having looked into any of the data yourself...that's incredible.

cs702 6y ago

Also from Orwell: "In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. [...] But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better."[a] [a] Source: "Politics and the English Language," by George Orwell, 1946: https://archive.org/details/PoliticsAndTheEnglishLanguage https://archive.org/details/PoliticsAndTheEnglishLanguage