4 ms·

Astral codex is now the new Freakonomics

by redisman 5y ago

yboris 5y ago
Could you elaborate? I don't know if you mean "Freakonomics = bad" or "Freakonomics = good", and if so, why?
- jonas21 5y ago
  Does everything have to be good or bad?
  - novalis78 5y ago
    Precisely. As long as the planet does not overheat, a warmer planet is a better planet.
    - tdeck 5y ago
      Define "overheat". The crust makes up less than 1% of the planet's mass, so theoretically everything on the surface could burn / boil off and 99% of the planet would still be fine.
    - lalaland1125 5y ago
      Except for the fact that most systems on the planet are adapted for the current temperature. In theory a rising sea level isn't a big deal in the abstract, but we have already built a ton of property along the coast ...
      - novalis78 5y ago
        Adaptations change. They will and must. Live is change. I think too many folks on here are too young to remember the very same green doomsday scenarios which we were mentally tormented with and NONE of them panned out. Not buying it. The planet will warm. Faster. Live will go on. The real focus should be on making life multi-planetary asap. That's more important in the long run than anything else.
        lalaland1125 5y ago
        I think you vastly underestimate the cost of redesigning / rebuilding all of our coastal cities to adapt to the fact that they are now below sea level.
    - HappySweeney 5y ago
      It isn't just the amount of heat, but how fast it is being introduced.
      - novalis78 5y ago
        Well, let's take a look. In 1978 we were going to be iceball Earth according to the sensationalist media. Let's take a look in 40 years from now and see if it all wasn't just a big scam to scare people into political policies they otherwise would not support.
        chipotle_coyote 5y ago
        Since we are commenting on an article that, whatever its other virtues and vices, is extremely well-researched, you might want to take a few minutes to look up the "fact" that you're claiming in your second sentence. The tl;dr is that "The Cooling Earth" was always a minority view among climate scientists; it was actually a competing theory to the anthropogenic global warming theory, as they both started in the 1970s; that one of the theories (global warming) persisted while the other (global cooling) faded quickly can be plausibly explained by both theories offering testable and mutually exclusive predictions, one set of which turned out to roughly match the data and the other of which didn't match it at all. That we are talking about global warming now and stopped talking about global cooling is not a sign of a "scam to scare people," it is a sign of science working the way it is supposed to.
    - AgentME 5y ago
      Did you only read the very beginning of the article? Most of the article is skeptical of the idea that there are a lot of deaths caused by cold that would be solved by rising temperatures. (And that's without even getting into that climate change would likely cause more temperature extremes in both directions rather than uniformly increasing the temperature.)
  - yboris 5y ago
    No, but it would be good to understand the intentions of the original comment. It feels like the author meant to communicate something but because of how vague it is, it feels like it was worse than having no comment. It makes me think "what am I missing about Freakonomics other than the book I read and the numerous episodes I listened to and enjoyed?"
- smegcicle 5y ago
  or maybe something more subtle like, freakonomics provided a fresh angle that became a meme and therefore ceased being fresh
renewiltord 5y ago
Going to choose to interpret this as “seeks counterintuitive results without heed to science”. If this interpretation is wrong, kindly supply clarification and ignore remainder. Posting level of epistemic certainty makes this not so. This is just a hypothesis and summary post. But also in a UI question, it appears that people are unable to read content without updating their priors significantly, even with a low proposed information gain multiplier. This helps understand comments like this.

Astral codex is now the new Freakonomics

yboris 5y ago

Could you elaborate? I don't know if you mean "Freakonomics = bad" or "Freakonomics = good", and if so, why?

jonas21 5y ago
Does everything have to be good or bad?
- novalis78 5y ago
  Precisely. As long as the planet does not overheat, a warmer planet is a better planet.
  - tdeck 5y ago
    Define "overheat". The crust makes up less than 1% of the planet's mass, so theoretically everything on the surface could burn / boil off and 99% of the planet would still be fine.
  - lalaland1125 5y ago
    Except for the fact that most systems on the planet are adapted for the current temperature. In theory a rising sea level isn't a big deal in the abstract, but we have already built a ton of property along the coast ...
    - novalis78 5y ago
      Adaptations change. They will and must. Live is change. I think too many folks on here are too young to remember the very same green doomsday scenarios which we were mentally tormented with and NONE of them panned out. Not buying it. The planet will warm. Faster. Live will go on. The real focus should be on making life multi-planetary asap. That's more important in the long run than anything else.
      - lalaland1125 5y ago
        I think you vastly underestimate the cost of redesigning / rebuilding all of our coastal cities to adapt to the fact that they are now below sea level.
  - HappySweeney 5y ago
    It isn't just the amount of heat, but how fast it is being introduced.
    - novalis78 5y ago
      Well, let's take a look. In 1978 we were going to be iceball Earth according to the sensationalist media. Let's take a look in 40 years from now and see if it all wasn't just a big scam to scare people into political policies they otherwise would not support.
      - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
        Since we are commenting on an article that, whatever its other virtues and vices, is extremely well-researched, you might want to take a few minutes to look up the "fact" that you're claiming in your second sentence. The tl;dr is that "The Cooling Earth" was always a minority view among climate scientists; it was actually a competing theory to the anthropogenic global warming theory, as they both started in the 1970s; that one of the theories (global warming) persisted while the other (global cooling) faded quickly can be plausibly explained by both theories offering testable and mutually exclusive predictions, one set of which turned out to roughly match the data and the other of which didn't match it at all. That we are talking about global warming now and stopped talking about global cooling is not a sign of a "scam to scare people," it is a sign of science working the way it is supposed to.
  - AgentME 5y ago
    Did you only read the very beginning of the article? Most of the article is skeptical of the idea that there are a lot of deaths caused by cold that would be solved by rising temperatures. (And that's without even getting into that climate change would likely cause more temperature extremes in both directions rather than uniformly increasing the temperature.)
- yboris 5y ago
  No, but it would be good to understand the intentions of the original comment. It feels like the author meant to communicate something but because of how vague it is, it feels like it was worse than having no comment. It makes me think "what am I missing about Freakonomics other than the book I read and the numerous episodes I listened to and enjoyed?"
smegcicle 5y ago
or maybe something more subtle like, freakonomics provided a fresh angle that became a meme and therefore ceased being fresh

renewiltord 5y ago

Going to choose to interpret this as “seeks counterintuitive results without heed to science”. If this interpretation is wrong, kindly supply clarification and ignore remainder. Posting level of epistemic certainty makes this not so. This is just a hypothesis and summary post. But also in a UI question, it appears that people are unable to read content without updating their priors significantly, even with a low proposed information gain multiplier. This helps understand comments like this.