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'Maybe you are not well read enough to know, but that is a different problem' - is cheap abuse adding nothing to the discussion. To my mind, belittling someone

'Maybe you are not well read enough to know, but that is a different problem' - is cheap abuse adding nothing to the discussion. To my mind, belittling someone in this way has a reciprocal effect.

atoav 3y ago
I am not sure how many olive branches (olive trees?) one has to extend. The field of climate science is well established, the basic mechanisms behind global warming well understood, the pessimistic predictions for years surpassed by the actual data and by this point the consequences are being painted more and more clearly. At some point, pretending this is irrelevant can sadly only be explained by malice – or what I tend to fall back to when I don't know – incompetence. If someone came around and tried this in the field of math: "guys, I think linear algebra doesn't work" or in the field of basic physics: "guys, I think I inventend the perpetuum mobile", they would be either just ignored, corrected or laughed out of the room. Not because mathematicians or physicists are arrogant, but because what they say is so obviously wrong that it can be discarded as wrong by someone who finished high school and read on the topic once. At the danger of sounding condescending, but I believe at a certain degree of wrongness the burden to inform oneself is on the person being wrong and not on the room around them. I happily point out that they are wrong and maybe even why they are wrong, but it is not my job to do the reading for them. Although in some parts of the world the basic findings of climate science is still wrongly being seen as a matter of opinion, there are things in this world which don't care about ones political views – and if these things mean potentially mean the end of humanity my otherwise ever-present humour will dry up and the otherwise ever-present slack I will give people who are uninformed (who isn't at some topics) will not be given. If your reaction to someone saying a true thing in a bad tone is to "reciprocally" go and believe the wrong thing out of spite, I truly cannot help you.

'Maybe you are not well read enough to know, but that is a different problem' - is cheap abuse adding nothing to the discussion. To my mind, belittling someone in this way has a reciprocal effect.

atoav 3y ago

I am not sure how many olive branches (olive trees?) one has to extend. The field of climate science is well established, the basic mechanisms behind global warming well understood, the pessimistic predictions for years surpassed by the actual data and by this point the consequences are being painted more and more clearly. At some point, pretending this is irrelevant can sadly only be explained by malice – or what I tend to fall back to when I don't know – incompetence. If someone came around and tried this in the field of math: "guys, I think linear algebra doesn't work" or in the field of basic physics: "guys, I think I inventend the perpetuum mobile", they would be either just ignored, corrected or laughed out of the room. Not because mathematicians or physicists are arrogant, but because what they say is so obviously wrong that it can be discarded as wrong by someone who finished high school and read on the topic once. At the danger of sounding condescending, but I believe at a certain degree of wrongness the burden to inform oneself is on the person being wrong and not on the room around them. I happily point out that they are wrong and maybe even why they are wrong, but it is not my job to do the reading for them. Although in some parts of the world the basic findings of climate science is still wrongly being seen as a matter of opinion, there are things in this world which don't care about ones political views – and if these things mean potentially mean the end of humanity my otherwise ever-present humour will dry up and the otherwise ever-present slack I will give people who are uninformed (who isn't at some topics) will not be given. If your reaction to someone saying a true thing in a bad tone is to "reciprocally" go and believe the wrong thing out of spite, I truly cannot help you.