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Consensus is the currency of politics, not science. Before Einstein there was > 99% consensus that Newtonian gravity was ultimate description of gravitational f

by j0ba 5y ago

Consensus is the currency of politics, not science. Before Einstein there was > 99% consensus that Newtonian gravity was ultimate description of gravitational force.

jacquesm 5y ago
The scientific method does not deal in 'ultimate descriptions', it only deals in 'to the best of our knowledge' and the whole point of the scientific method is to be able to replace today's best version of the explanation with a better one tomorrow.
dumbfoundded 5y ago
Not really. Consensus is used all the time when a definitive answer isn't possible or attained. Most people assume the Riemann hypothesis is true and then build from there. Sometimes a definitive answer isn't possible yet.
anonporridge 5y ago
Except that the consensus on the science has been growing, in defiance of the consensus of politics and the public, which has been slow to get on board. Your analogy doesn't work.
- Leparamour 5y ago
  >Except that the consensus on the science has been growing, in defiance of the consensus of politics and the public, which has been slow to get on board. The consensus on man-made climate change has grown following the rise of aggressive identity politics and "social justice warrior" cancel culture on social media.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    Alternatively, aggressive identity politics and "social justice warrior" cancel culture regarding climate change has grown following the rising scientific consensus that we have a disastrous future ahead of us. Looking at another political/scientific issue, abortion, that is also steeped in aggressive identity politics and "social justice warrior" cancel culture which instead of growing in consensus that it is bad seems to be declining, I would argue that politics and social power follow rational thinking, not the other way around. At least on long enough time scales.
WalterGR 5y ago
“Consensus” in this context does not mean that all the authors of those 3,000 papers got together in a room, debated it out, and released a statement. Re. Newtonian physics, the scientific method demonstrated otherwise. That’s how it works. Your point simply means that anthropogenic climate change may be incorrect. However, currently, it’s far and away the most likely explanation.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  I find it baffling how the "bayesian reasoning is best reasoning" style of thinking promoted by lesswrong and others has fully spread into online tech communities for every topic except science. As soon as you say "it is thoroughly reasonable to go with the conclusions of the bulk of professionals who competitively analyze a particular field" then people leap out of the woodwork with maximally rigid views of the function of science and largely argue that we cannot hold any view with sufficient confidence to ever act.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
adrianN 5y ago
And if you made your politics based on the Newtonian consensus you'd make exactly the right politics in all fields concerning mechanics that don't involve extreme proximity to very heavy objects, speeds not attainable by objects we care about in our corner of the galaxy, or extremely precise clocks. Heck, the same is true to a somewhat lesser degree if you based your celestial politics on the consensus before Kepler, the epicycle models weren't half bad either at predicting celestial movement.
- headsoup 5y ago
  Alright, make it simpler then. There was once broad consensus the earth was flat. I believe the OP's point was around consensus as truth, rather than which example is used to demonstrate...
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Asimov wrote a nice essay about this topic: https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht... The point is that unless you're omniscient, using the best knowledge available at your time to choose which policies to apply is the best course of action. Of course it might later turn out to be wrong, but you don't know in which way it might turn out to be wrong.
    - headsoup 5y ago
      Of course, my thoughts are that's fine so long as those proposing or supporting alternatives may still do so, rather than be silenced entirely. This based on where political interference abuses the scientific consensus or manipulates it. As the OP said, there's a difference between science and consensus (not saying I disagree with the climate change consensus, I think it's absolutely an anthropogenic issue)
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        > This based on where political interference abuses the scientific consensus or manipulates it. Funny how this standard is never applied to oil companies. You know, the ones that figured out half a century ago that climate change was a problem, and have been running an interference campaign since then? Given the state of energy consumption today, the idea that it’s the green side that’s abusing the political process to get what it wants is downright laughable. Meanwhile congress is openly bought by fossil fuel interests, and we can’t even stop burning coal. > not saying I disagree with the climate change consensus, I think it's absolutely an anthropogenic issue Ahh, the anti-anti position, how annoying. You’re convinced that climate change is real, but you’re going to waste a lot of time making bad arguments about consensus and scientific change because…? For someone who thinks it’s “absolutely” an anthropogenic issue, you sure are trying to muddy the water a lot.
headsoup 5y ago
Indeed. And while we can confidently agree with an outcome and believe evidence as we please, it is dangerous when we decide that consensus means we should no longer consider other opinions and then worse, actively shut them down to prevent speaking. For instance we can disagree with and admonish others' views without silencing and removal through the 'disinformation' label. worrying times seeing this grow.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brink 5y ago
Right, Galileo was sentenced to prison because the consensus about the solar system in the 1600's was geocentric. Just because the mob is with you doesn't make you right.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Galileo was sentenced to prison because the consensus about the solar system in the 1600's was geocentric Except that he wasn't sentenced to prison, and what he was sentenced to was not for that reason, either in the superficial sense (that wasn't the nominal offense) or the substantive one (that wasn't the thing that changed between the time when the same people wanted him punished where he wasn't and when he was.)
- SquareWheel 5y ago
  That was a view from the church which wasn't arrived at scientifically. Using it as a criticism of science thus seems unfounded. Besides, modern climate scientists are hardly a mob. They collate data and come to their own conclusions. Those conclusions happen to agree, indicating a very strong position.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Galileo was sentenced to prison because the consensus about the solar system in the 1600's was geocentric That was not the scientific consensus. > Just because the mob is with you doesn't make you right. Science is not a mob. What basis do you have, other than the mob with you?
- malloryerik 5y ago
  If I understand correctly he was given life imprisonment by the Church, not by other scientists vying for turf in the department.
- tzs 5y ago
  Galileo got in trouble for a combination of reasons. 1. His heliocentric theory wasn't noticeably better at explaining or predicting the motion of heavenly bodies than the geocentric theories such as the Ptolemaic system. Galileo, like the Church, believed in a universe that was intelligently designed by an all-powerful God, and he believed that the laws of physics that such a God would choose would be mathematically beautiful and elegant. If observation did not match beautiful and elegant rules, then he would dismiss the observation as error or optical illusion. The Church's position was that God made the universe, and if empirical evidence from observing the universe showed it clearly working in ways that didn't fit what the Church believed the Bible said the mistake must be in the Church's interpretation of the Bible. 2. He had a big ego. His genius brought him fame. He became a celebrity who was regularly invited to hang out with the rich and famous and powerful. His big ego really loved that. 3. He was an asshole. He was rude and intolerant to those he saw as rivals or that he saw as his inferiors (which due to his big ego included pretty much everyone). 4. He had a poor sense of politics. He failed to realize that some of those rivals or inferiors that he was a major asshole towards either had way more political power than he did or they had good connections to such people, and that they could wield that power to make his life miserable if he kept being a major asshole to them.
godelski 5y ago
Einstein writes hypothesis. Hypothesis gets submitted to peer review. Peer review passes and grows in acceptance. Peers challenge the idea and try to poke holes, better proving the hypothesis stands. Peers test implications of hypothesis. Eventually this becomes a theory and consensus is born. That's science working in action. Science depends on consensus. Consensus doesn't mean you're right, but it does mean that no one can find a serious flaw.
- b215826 5y ago
  > Consensus doesn't mean you're right, but it does mean that no one can find a serious flaw. This assumes a very naive view that the average university researcher is trying to challenge prevailing theories on a daily basis. The reality is that challenging prevailing theories of science is near impossible in today's grant-chasing arena called academia. Do you really think a grant proposal that questions some of the prevailing views in climate science is going to get funded? And even if does get funded, good luck getting it published in any mainstream journal.
  - addicted 5y ago
    This is hilarious considering there’s trillions of dollars invested in assuming climate change doesn’t exist.
    - slt2021 5y ago
      If you think that the market is wrong, you are free to bet your money in an opposite side and get rich from being right about climate change. Put your money where your beliefs are, so to speak
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Do you have solid evidence of these claims?
    - tasogare 5y ago
      Anybody who had a feet for more than 5 minutes in a lab know he's right. Heck I can't even challenge my own supervisors when they make swallow statements that are in fact contradicted by a bunch of papers, how could I get funding from external entities by submitting socially unpopular ideas? Impossible, especially in highly politicized fields.
hotpockets 5y ago
It is the oil companies who are speaking truth. Yes, that is it.
wolverine876 5y ago
> Consensus is the currency of politics, not science. What is that based on? Scientists use the concept, including in this scientific paper and many others. > Before Einstein there was > 99% consensus that Newtonian gravity was ultimate description of gravitational force. Certainly not: They knew there was a lot unknown about gravity; they just didn't have the answers. And after Einstein, there was plenty scientists were aware was unknown, such as the mechanism for mass - the Higgs Boson wasn't discovered until 2012. There's a lot unknown now; no scientist will tell you that we have the ultimate description; for example, we can't reconcile gravity yet with other fundamental forces. Newton's predictions are accurate to this day, except in the narrow circumstances described by Einstein. And what does it have to do with climate change? If the predictions are as accurate as Newton, we aren't going to get much more certain information. What alternative theory is a better bet?
- throwaway69123 5y ago
  hypothesis and repeatable experimentation
  - addicted 5y ago
    Repeatable experimentation to what end? What does repeatable experimentation prove? For that matter, what about the Apple falls to the ground experiment disproved Newton’s theory?
addicted 5y ago
This is hilariously wrong.
mgraczyk 5y ago
This isn't true in general, and your specific example isn't true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Perihelion_precession_of_Mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Pe... For nearly 50 years, the "consensus" was "Newton's theory explains most things but doesn't explain this one big thing". The same could have been true of climate change, but there is no "precession of Mercury" for human-caused climate change. The data is clear, and the theory matches the data close enough to justify overwhelming consensus.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
First off: the main opponents of action to address climate change - the coal and oil industries - found the science behind human-activity-induced-climate-change to be sound more than fifty years ago, according to their own internal documents: https://www.sciencealert.com/coal-industry-knew-about-climate-change-in-the-60s-damning-revelations-show https://www.sciencealert.com/coal-industry-knew-about-climat... > Consensus is the currency of politics, not science No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus "Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus generally implies agreement of the supermajority, though not necessarily unanimity.[1] Consensus is achieved through scholarly communication at conferences, the publication process, replication of reproducible results by others, scholarly debate,[2][3][4][5] and peer review." > Before Einstein there was > 99% consensus that Newtonian gravity was ultimate description of gravitational force. Again, no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity "Albert Einstein published the theory of special relativity in 1905, building on many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others did subsequent work. Einstein developed general relativity between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. The final form of general relativity was published in 1916." ...but it's worth noting two things. The first is that Newton himself found his own theory, to put it colloquially, fucking absurd, and said that anyone who believed him was out of their goddamn gourd. He was never able to experimentally show the cause of gravity. Second: you have a strange basis for your criticism of science, given the scientific community tossed a centuries-old theory about motherfucking gravity out the window pretty rapidly once there was experimental evidence to back the new theory. To this day, we're still finding all sorts of new evidence that Einstein was right. Just like we keep finding new ways to verify almost every aspect of human-induced climate change theory. We have exhaustive amounts of evidence around CO2 levels, climate change, and sources of said CO2. The state of science is such that we've been able to figure out CO2 levels on earth going back 400 million years, with ice cores alone providing evidence of CO2 levels going back 800,000 years. Some of the evidence and experiments around CO2 date back more than a hundred years. "We're causing the climate to change" was something that scientists theorized several centuries ago. Almost every day, as science keeps gets better, we keep confirming that centuries old core theory. https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...
jlebar 5y ago
I do "love" how a wrong, one-sentence comment spawns so much argument. So many person-hours spent arguing this point online. So much of our lives. I'm as guilty as anyone. Yes, "someone's wrong on the Internet", haha. But really. This guy isn't arguing in good faith. Frankly at this point nobody arguing online that climate change is not real is arguing in good faith. Can we find a way to channel our collective energy towards productive climate action? Serious question.
Xixi 5y ago
It's important to first note the obvious: physics didn't change when Einstein came up with his theory of relativity. Where classical mechanics had proven to be very accurate, Einstein's relativity had to be in agreement. It could not have been otherwise. It's only where classical mechanics had not been tested (or not been tested with much success) that relativity could diverge. This is something that is often misunderstood by those who dismiss scientific knowledge: accumulated observations and experiments don't end up in the trash. Any new breakthrough theory is first going to have to be in agreement with all of them. That's why classical mechanics is still not only taught at school, but also widely used by engineers to this day: it's extremely accurate (within some bounds).

by j0ba 5y ago

Consensus is the currency of politics, not science. Before Einstein there was > 99% consensus that Newtonian gravity was ultimate description of gravitational force.

jacquesm 5y ago

The scientific method does not deal in 'ultimate descriptions', it only deals in 'to the best of our knowledge' and the whole point of the scientific method is to be able to replace today's best version of the explanation with a better one tomorrow.

dumbfoundded 5y ago

Not really. Consensus is used all the time when a definitive answer isn't possible or attained. Most people assume the Riemann hypothesis is true and then build from there. Sometimes a definitive answer isn't possible yet.

anonporridge 5y ago

Except that the consensus on the science has been growing, in defiance of the consensus of politics and the public, which has been slow to get on board. Your analogy doesn't work.

Leparamour 5y ago
>Except that the consensus on the science has been growing, in defiance of the consensus of politics and the public, which has been slow to get on board. The consensus on man-made climate change has grown following the rise of aggressive identity politics and "social justice warrior" cancel culture on social media.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Alternatively, aggressive identity politics and "social justice warrior" cancel culture regarding climate change has grown following the rising scientific consensus that we have a disastrous future ahead of us. Looking at another political/scientific issue, abortion, that is also steeped in aggressive identity politics and "social justice warrior" cancel culture which instead of growing in consensus that it is bad seems to be declining, I would argue that politics and social power follow rational thinking, not the other way around. At least on long enough time scales.

WalterGR 5y ago

“Consensus” in this context does not mean that all the authors of those 3,000 papers got together in a room, debated it out, and released a statement. Re. Newtonian physics, the scientific method demonstrated otherwise. That’s how it works. Your point simply means that anthropogenic climate change may be incorrect. However, currently, it’s far and away the most likely explanation.

UncleMeat 5y ago
I find it baffling how the "bayesian reasoning is best reasoning" style of thinking promoted by lesswrong and others has fully spread into online tech communities for every topic except science. As soon as you say "it is thoroughly reasonable to go with the conclusions of the bulk of professionals who competitively analyze a particular field" then people leap out of the woodwork with maximally rigid views of the function of science and largely argue that we cannot hold any view with sufficient confidence to ever act.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

adrianN 5y ago

And if you made your politics based on the Newtonian consensus you'd make exactly the right politics in all fields concerning mechanics that don't involve extreme proximity to very heavy objects, speeds not attainable by objects we care about in our corner of the galaxy, or extremely precise clocks. Heck, the same is true to a somewhat lesser degree if you based your celestial politics on the consensus before Kepler, the epicycle models weren't half bad either at predicting celestial movement.

headsoup 5y ago
Alright, make it simpler then. There was once broad consensus the earth was flat. I believe the OP's point was around consensus as truth, rather than which example is used to demonstrate...
- adrianN 5y ago
  Asimov wrote a nice essay about this topic: https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht... The point is that unless you're omniscient, using the best knowledge available at your time to choose which policies to apply is the best course of action. Of course it might later turn out to be wrong, but you don't know in which way it might turn out to be wrong.
  - headsoup 5y ago
    Of course, my thoughts are that's fine so long as those proposing or supporting alternatives may still do so, rather than be silenced entirely. This based on where political interference abuses the scientific consensus or manipulates it. As the OP said, there's a difference between science and consensus (not saying I disagree with the climate change consensus, I think it's absolutely an anthropogenic issue)
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      > This based on where political interference abuses the scientific consensus or manipulates it. Funny how this standard is never applied to oil companies. You know, the ones that figured out half a century ago that climate change was a problem, and have been running an interference campaign since then? Given the state of energy consumption today, the idea that it’s the green side that’s abusing the political process to get what it wants is downright laughable. Meanwhile congress is openly bought by fossil fuel interests, and we can’t even stop burning coal. > not saying I disagree with the climate change consensus, I think it's absolutely an anthropogenic issue Ahh, the anti-anti position, how annoying. You’re convinced that climate change is real, but you’re going to waste a lot of time making bad arguments about consensus and scientific change because…? For someone who thinks it’s “absolutely” an anthropogenic issue, you sure are trying to muddy the water a lot.

headsoup 5y ago

Indeed. And while we can confidently agree with an outcome and believe evidence as we please, it is dangerous when we decide that consensus means we should no longer consider other opinions and then worse, actively shut them down to prevent speaking. For instance we can disagree with and admonish others' views without silencing and removal through the 'disinformation' label. worrying times seeing this grow.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

brink 5y ago

Right, Galileo was sentenced to prison because the consensus about the solar system in the 1600's was geocentric. Just because the mob is with you doesn't make you right.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Galileo was sentenced to prison because the consensus about the solar system in the 1600's was geocentric Except that he wasn't sentenced to prison, and what he was sentenced to was not for that reason, either in the superficial sense (that wasn't the nominal offense) or the substantive one (that wasn't the thing that changed between the time when the same people wanted him punished where he wasn't and when he was.)
SquareWheel 5y ago
That was a view from the church which wasn't arrived at scientifically. Using it as a criticism of science thus seems unfounded. Besides, modern climate scientists are hardly a mob. They collate data and come to their own conclusions. Those conclusions happen to agree, indicating a very strong position.
wolverine876 5y ago
> Galileo was sentenced to prison because the consensus about the solar system in the 1600's was geocentric That was not the scientific consensus. > Just because the mob is with you doesn't make you right. Science is not a mob. What basis do you have, other than the mob with you?
malloryerik 5y ago
If I understand correctly he was given life imprisonment by the Church, not by other scientists vying for turf in the department.
tzs 5y ago
Galileo got in trouble for a combination of reasons. 1. His heliocentric theory wasn't noticeably better at explaining or predicting the motion of heavenly bodies than the geocentric theories such as the Ptolemaic system. Galileo, like the Church, believed in a universe that was intelligently designed by an all-powerful God, and he believed that the laws of physics that such a God would choose would be mathematically beautiful and elegant. If observation did not match beautiful and elegant rules, then he would dismiss the observation as error or optical illusion. The Church's position was that God made the universe, and if empirical evidence from observing the universe showed it clearly working in ways that didn't fit what the Church believed the Bible said the mistake must be in the Church's interpretation of the Bible. 2. He had a big ego. His genius brought him fame. He became a celebrity who was regularly invited to hang out with the rich and famous and powerful. His big ego really loved that. 3. He was an asshole. He was rude and intolerant to those he saw as rivals or that he saw as his inferiors (which due to his big ego included pretty much everyone). 4. He had a poor sense of politics. He failed to realize that some of those rivals or inferiors that he was a major asshole towards either had way more political power than he did or they had good connections to such people, and that they could wield that power to make his life miserable if he kept being a major asshole to them.

godelski 5y ago

Einstein writes hypothesis. Hypothesis gets submitted to peer review. Peer review passes and grows in acceptance. Peers challenge the idea and try to poke holes, better proving the hypothesis stands. Peers test implications of hypothesis. Eventually this becomes a theory and consensus is born. That's science working in action. Science depends on consensus. Consensus doesn't mean you're right, but it does mean that no one can find a serious flaw.

b215826 5y ago
> Consensus doesn't mean you're right, but it does mean that no one can find a serious flaw. This assumes a very naive view that the average university researcher is trying to challenge prevailing theories on a daily basis. The reality is that challenging prevailing theories of science is near impossible in today's grant-chasing arena called academia. Do you really think a grant proposal that questions some of the prevailing views in climate science is going to get funded? And even if does get funded, good luck getting it published in any mainstream journal.
- addicted 5y ago
  This is hilarious considering there’s trillions of dollars invested in assuming climate change doesn’t exist.
  - slt2021 5y ago
    If you think that the market is wrong, you are free to bet your money in an opposite side and get rich from being right about climate change. Put your money where your beliefs are, so to speak
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Do you have solid evidence of these claims?
  - tasogare 5y ago
    Anybody who had a feet for more than 5 minutes in a lab know he's right. Heck I can't even challenge my own supervisors when they make swallow statements that are in fact contradicted by a bunch of papers, how could I get funding from external entities by submitting socially unpopular ideas? Impossible, especially in highly politicized fields.

hotpockets 5y ago

It is the oil companies who are speaking truth. Yes, that is it.

wolverine876 5y ago

> Consensus is the currency of politics, not science. What is that based on? Scientists use the concept, including in this scientific paper and many others. > Before Einstein there was > 99% consensus that Newtonian gravity was ultimate description of gravitational force. Certainly not: They knew there was a lot unknown about gravity; they just didn't have the answers. And after Einstein, there was plenty scientists were aware was unknown, such as the mechanism for mass - the Higgs Boson wasn't discovered until 2012. There's a lot unknown now; no scientist will tell you that we have the ultimate description; for example, we can't reconcile gravity yet with other fundamental forces. Newton's predictions are accurate to this day, except in the narrow circumstances described by Einstein. And what does it have to do with climate change? If the predictions are as accurate as Newton, we aren't going to get much more certain information. What alternative theory is a better bet?

throwaway69123 5y ago
hypothesis and repeatable experimentation
- addicted 5y ago
  Repeatable experimentation to what end? What does repeatable experimentation prove? For that matter, what about the Apple falls to the ground experiment disproved Newton’s theory?

addicted 5y ago

This is hilariously wrong.

mgraczyk 5y ago

This isn't true in general, and your specific example isn't true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Perihelion_precession_of_Mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Pe... For nearly 50 years, the "consensus" was "Newton's theory explains most things but doesn't explain this one big thing". The same could have been true of climate change, but there is no "precession of Mercury" for human-caused climate change. The data is clear, and the theory matches the data close enough to justify overwhelming consensus.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

First off: the main opponents of action to address climate change - the coal and oil industries - found the science behind human-activity-induced-climate-change to be sound more than fifty years ago, according to their own internal documents: https://www.sciencealert.com/coal-industry-knew-about-climate-change-in-the-60s-damning-revelations-show https://www.sciencealert.com/coal-industry-knew-about-climat... > Consensus is the currency of politics, not science No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus "Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus generally implies agreement of the supermajority, though not necessarily unanimity.[1] Consensus is achieved through scholarly communication at conferences, the publication process, replication of reproducible results by others, scholarly debate,[2][3][4][5] and peer review." > Before Einstein there was > 99% consensus that Newtonian gravity was ultimate description of gravitational force. Again, no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity "Albert Einstein published the theory of special relativity in 1905, building on many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others did subsequent work. Einstein developed general relativity between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. The final form of general relativity was published in 1916." ...but it's worth noting two things. The first is that Newton himself found his own theory, to put it colloquially, fucking absurd, and said that anyone who believed him was out of their goddamn gourd. He was never able to experimentally show the cause of gravity. Second: you have a strange basis for your criticism of science, given the scientific community tossed a centuries-old theory about motherfucking gravity out the window pretty rapidly once there was experimental evidence to back the new theory. To this day, we're still finding all sorts of new evidence that Einstein was right. Just like we keep finding new ways to verify almost every aspect of human-induced climate change theory. We have exhaustive amounts of evidence around CO2 levels, climate change, and sources of said CO2. The state of science is such that we've been able to figure out CO2 levels on earth going back 400 million years, with ice cores alone providing evidence of CO2 levels going back 800,000 years. Some of the evidence and experiments around CO2 date back more than a hundred years. "We're causing the climate to change" was something that scientists theorized several centuries ago. Almost every day, as science keeps gets better, we keep confirming that centuries old core theory. https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...

jlebar 5y ago

I do "love" how a wrong, one-sentence comment spawns so much argument. So many person-hours spent arguing this point online. So much of our lives. I'm as guilty as anyone. Yes, "someone's wrong on the Internet", haha. But really. This guy isn't arguing in good faith. Frankly at this point nobody arguing online that climate change is not real is arguing in good faith. Can we find a way to channel our collective energy towards productive climate action? Serious question.

Xixi 5y ago

It's important to first note the obvious: physics didn't change when Einstein came up with his theory of relativity. Where classical mechanics had proven to be very accurate, Einstein's relativity had to be in agreement. It could not have been otherwise. It's only where classical mechanics had not been tested (or not been tested with much success) that relativity could diverge. This is something that is often misunderstood by those who dismiss scientific knowledge: accumulated observations and experiments don't end up in the trash. Any new breakthrough theory is first going to have to be in agreement with all of them. That's why classical mechanics is still not only taught at school, but also widely used by engineers to this day: it's extremely accurate (within some bounds).