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Every generally accepted theory starts out as a theory held by one. And sometimes directly contradicting the consensus. We think independently for a reason.

Every generally accepted theory starts out as a theory held by one. And sometimes directly contradicting the consensus. We think independently for a reason. Not submitting to the PERCEIVED consensus is a good thing. It means we can have different deeply committed people investigating different theories at the same time, rather than waiting for a central authority, financed with other people's money, to give up on one and pick up the next when it finally gets over its ego.

wtallis 4y ago
It's fine to have competing explanations for the available evidence. But that's not what anti-science political positions usually look like. Rejecting both the evidence and the explanation without justification or alternative is completely different from reasonable scientific dissent.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Would you consider any of these reasonable scientific dissent: 1) We should not be overly concerned about global warming because near/future technology will likely solve the problem. 2) The weather changes will be gradual enough that people can adapt. People frequently migrate due to weather/climate. 3) There are a lot of climate-related orgs now that fund climate research. Is it possible that the existence of these organizations and continued-funding incentives result in a selective pressure to publish some results and not others?
  - wtallis 4y ago
    Those are all mere suppositions that assume evidence which needs to actually be furnished for a proper debate. But aside from that: 1) is wishful thinking that may end up coming true, but is naturally not currently a position supported by science. I don't think this can be discussed much in a scientific context beyond basic stuff like calculating the magnitude of carbon sequestration needed, what such efforts would cost with current technology, and how many orders of magnitude cheaper future technology would have to be to provide a viable solution for the problem as it will exist by the time such technology is invented. 2) boils down to a question of the precision of climate forecasts, and there's certainly room for reasonable debate when framed that way. But given how many of the historical instances of weather/climate-related migration and adaptation came with immense humanitarian costs, you have to be really sure that global warming will be sufficiently slow-moving to not actually be catastrophic. I suspect the bulk of the evidence is against the proposition that global warming will be too slow to cause large-scale famine, or that rising sea levels will be too slow to cause major disruption to coastal cities. At the very least, it seems unjustified to be confident that climate change effects will never approach the scale of what something like a volcanic winter causes. 3) simply ignores the existence of political and corporate resources that are eager for climate change to be disproven. Opponents of climate change are both directly involved in the search for evidence against climate change, and indirectly pressure mainstream researchers to publish only their strongest, most defensible results. So it's quite hard to imagine how the mechanism of bias you point out could be strong enough to produce the net effect of a scientific consensus that greatly exaggerates the magnitude of climate change. This is a reasonable question to investigate, but the question itself does not provide any grounds for rejecting the available evidence for climate change. (This mechanism was able to preserve the wrong scientific consensus regarding the charge of the electron for only about three decades before it was overcome by new results.) Obviously, none of this discussion is a good fit for Twitter.
- rhino369 4y ago
  Right. The vast majority of people rejecting global warming are doing it for irrational reasons. But Twitters rule would also exclude earnest differences of opinions. During law school, my class had a talk that included a tenured climate scientist at our university (a major research institution). He had a non-census view of climate change that predicted warming 25-50% less than UN models. A bunch of law professors came and read him the riot act for DENYING SCIENCE. It was crazy. That's exactly the type of censorship big tech is engaging in.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    > Right. The vast majority of people rejecting global warming are doing it for irrational reasons. No they are doing it for rational reasons from the perspective of an individual but presenting irrational arguments for their position. For any given individual the impact of climate change is going to be irrelevant in western countries. Worst case, you just move somewhere else. However, on a societal scale, having a mass of people migrate from one place to another is a recipe for chaos.
  - pornel 4y ago
    Twitter ads are not the place to overturn scientific consensus, especially not such an important and well-established topic. If you have material new information, write a paper, get it verified/replicated, etc.
mach1ne 4y ago
> rather than waiting for a central authority, financed with other people's money, to give up on one and pick up the next when it finally gets over its ego. Arguably, currently the ego problem is very real with the individuals who hold power in academia due to status quo. I don't think the development of science would significantly change even if there was a central authority - it might even speed up, since the people making the decision would not have their careers dependent on preserving the current consensus.
- stretchwithme 4y ago
  Why wouldn't their careers be dependent on preserving the current consensus? Who do you think would be controlling the money?

wtallis 4y ago

It's fine to have competing explanations for the available evidence. But that's not what anti-science political positions usually look like. Rejecting both the evidence and the explanation without justification or alternative is completely different from reasonable scientific dissent.

aeternum 4y ago
Would you consider any of these reasonable scientific dissent: 1) We should not be overly concerned about global warming because near/future technology will likely solve the problem. 2) The weather changes will be gradual enough that people can adapt. People frequently migrate due to weather/climate. 3) There are a lot of climate-related orgs now that fund climate research. Is it possible that the existence of these organizations and continued-funding incentives result in a selective pressure to publish some results and not others?
- wtallis 4y ago
  Those are all mere suppositions that assume evidence which needs to actually be furnished for a proper debate. But aside from that: 1) is wishful thinking that may end up coming true, but is naturally not currently a position supported by science. I don't think this can be discussed much in a scientific context beyond basic stuff like calculating the magnitude of carbon sequestration needed, what such efforts would cost with current technology, and how many orders of magnitude cheaper future technology would have to be to provide a viable solution for the problem as it will exist by the time such technology is invented. 2) boils down to a question of the precision of climate forecasts, and there's certainly room for reasonable debate when framed that way. But given how many of the historical instances of weather/climate-related migration and adaptation came with immense humanitarian costs, you have to be really sure that global warming will be sufficiently slow-moving to not actually be catastrophic. I suspect the bulk of the evidence is against the proposition that global warming will be too slow to cause large-scale famine, or that rising sea levels will be too slow to cause major disruption to coastal cities. At the very least, it seems unjustified to be confident that climate change effects will never approach the scale of what something like a volcanic winter causes. 3) simply ignores the existence of political and corporate resources that are eager for climate change to be disproven. Opponents of climate change are both directly involved in the search for evidence against climate change, and indirectly pressure mainstream researchers to publish only their strongest, most defensible results. So it's quite hard to imagine how the mechanism of bias you point out could be strong enough to produce the net effect of a scientific consensus that greatly exaggerates the magnitude of climate change. This is a reasonable question to investigate, but the question itself does not provide any grounds for rejecting the available evidence for climate change. (This mechanism was able to preserve the wrong scientific consensus regarding the charge of the electron for only about three decades before it was overcome by new results.) Obviously, none of this discussion is a good fit for Twitter.
rhino369 4y ago
Right. The vast majority of people rejecting global warming are doing it for irrational reasons. But Twitters rule would also exclude earnest differences of opinions. During law school, my class had a talk that included a tenured climate scientist at our university (a major research institution). He had a non-census view of climate change that predicted warming 25-50% less than UN models. A bunch of law professors came and read him the riot act for DENYING SCIENCE. It was crazy. That's exactly the type of censorship big tech is engaging in.
- imtringued 4y ago
  > Right. The vast majority of people rejecting global warming are doing it for irrational reasons. No they are doing it for rational reasons from the perspective of an individual but presenting irrational arguments for their position. For any given individual the impact of climate change is going to be irrelevant in western countries. Worst case, you just move somewhere else. However, on a societal scale, having a mass of people migrate from one place to another is a recipe for chaos.
- pornel 4y ago
  Twitter ads are not the place to overturn scientific consensus, especially not such an important and well-established topic. If you have material new information, write a paper, get it verified/replicated, etc.

mach1ne 4y ago

> rather than waiting for a central authority, financed with other people's money, to give up on one and pick up the next when it finally gets over its ego. Arguably, currently the ego problem is very real with the individuals who hold power in academia due to status quo. I don't think the development of science would significantly change even if there was a central authority - it might even speed up, since the people making the decision would not have their careers dependent on preserving the current consensus.

stretchwithme 4y ago
Why wouldn't their careers be dependent on preserving the current consensus? Who do you think would be controlling the money?