4 ms·

It's an even older truth that people believe those who disagree with them are wrong (and less intelligent, less careful, misled, etc.). It's far too easy to fo

by kbutler 15y ago

It's an even older truth that people believe those who disagree with them are wrong (and less intelligent, less careful, misled, etc.). It's far too easy to fool yourself and then believe others are the fools. See Feynman's discussion of confirmation bias in the measurement of the charge of the electron: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm and remember that this is scientists doing experiments and publishing results.

moldbug 15y ago
I'm always kind of astounded that HNers reflexively believe Michael Mann over Steve McIntyre. Of course it's simply because they don't know. And where would they find the time? What we call "science" is what Washington calls "science." If Washington funded astrology and laughed at astronomy, astrology would be "science" and astronomy would be for crazy people on the Internets. Mind always submits to power.
- rvkennedy 15y ago
  What I call "science" is the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon. There's nothing reflexive about believing Mann over Steve McIntyre - as with all such judgments we look at who's saying what, who they are, where they're coming from and why, and make a call. Within limitations, we also look at the evidence. Why do we believe Hubble (expanding universe) over Hoyle (it's static)? Hoyle is a much more impressive figure than McIntyre, but his ideas have been tested over and over in many different ways, and found wanting. You could say that the expanding universe is just a theory, that it's unproven, because you could construct an elaborate static universe model that creates the red shift in some arbitrary manner, and causes distant stars to dim sufficiently that space is black and not white, and so on. You could create an elaborate theory that explains why things fall to earth but rejects both Newton and General Relativity. But it seems to me that the reason this doesn't happen is that it doesn't affect the bottom line of well-capitalized companies in the energy sector. You are correct that we appeal to authority for most of what we know of science. But it's not Washington that's the authority, it's the corpus. And we trust it because it's constantly subjected to self-scrutiny. Voices like McIntyre's are heard, and either the whole of one single branch of science is engaged in a massive conspiracy to not listen, or he's probably wrong. But we keep our minds open.
  - moldbug 15y ago
    It's not a conspiracy. It's simply a bureaucracy. Don't be looking for conspiracy theories. Be looking for bureaucracy theories. I know this bureaucracy - my mother worked for it. (To be exact, she worked for Joe Romm at DOE.) Your vision of what "science" is dates to the pre-World War II era, when "science" was actually a bazaar. You can't have a "conspiracy" in a bazaar, because there are no coordination mechanisms. So bazaars can err, but tend to converge on the truth. Why was science a bazaar? Distributed effort, distributed reputation systems, distributed funding sources. The last being the most important. "Science" today is a government program. It's not a bazaar. It's a cathedral. You don't have to read a lot of the climate emails to see the coordination mechanisms. For instance, editors who accept dissenting papers are rapidly drummed out of their positions or even professions. The de Freitas case is a good example: http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt. Think about Soviet science for a minute. Soviet science was a branch of Western science. Soviet scientists would no doubt describe their work as "the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon." I would describe their work as: "a government program supervised by the Politburo." For Politburo read NSF, DOE, DOD, etc, etc. And yet, there was good science in the Soviet Union. There's good science at Harvard. You're not advised to trust it unconditionally, however, just because it comes with the impressive logos "science" and "Harvard." They're just brands - they mean whatever they mean today, not whatever they may have meant in the past.
    - rvkennedy 15y ago
      You seem to be quite keen to tell me, and others here, what we really think. I laid out my position above, but your case is that actually I accept unquestioningly the facts and opinions approved by the scientific establishment. On the contrary, I am a sceptic, in the original (non climate-related) sense. If the US government ran the scientific community, that community would not have its strong consensus on climate change, because half of congress, and every other president, is committed to at least equivocating on whether that consensus exists. I'm afraid the link you posted does not cast Chris de Freitas in a positive light. If I knew of sloppy science that had been passed through peer review, I'd expect the person responsible to be excoriated, much more so if that work contradicted my own. This would not make me wrong, or the editor in question some kind of victim. You have one good point though - money, be it from government or corporations, distorts the process. The procedures for the allocation of fund lead to too much being done in some areas, not enough in others. The academic economics profession has been a particular victim of this. The trouble with the idea that climate science has fallen victim to a grand counterfactual groupthink (if you don't like the 'c' word) is that the numbers, the physics, and the reasoned opinions of the vast majority of apolitical observers support the climate consensus. As for Soviet science: did the Soviet Union promulgate any kind of false science that you're aware of? Not in the peer reviewed journals, to any great extent I know of. What would be the point? That's peer review in action. But who's trusting anything unconditionally here? As I said, we keep an open mind.
- MaysonL 15y ago
  Have you noticed growing season changes and bird migration changes and polar ice changes and glacier changes and (low temperature record #s/high temperature record #s) ratios lately? Screw Steve McIntyre, screw Michael Mann, look at what's happening.
vannevar 15y ago
See Feynman's discussion of confirmation bias in the measurement of the charge of the electron... Confirmation bias indeed affects science, but only as a sort of drag. In the end, the measurements Feynman refers to did converge on the correct result, because people kept performing experiments and testing their hypothesis. The same is true for climate research. The difference between science and politics is that politics converges on the popular answer and science converges on the truth.

by kbutler 15y ago

moldbug 15y ago

I'm always kind of astounded that HNers reflexively believe Michael Mann over Steve McIntyre. Of course it's simply because they don't know. And where would they find the time? What we call "science" is what Washington calls "science." If Washington funded astrology and laughed at astronomy, astrology would be "science" and astronomy would be for crazy people on the Internets. Mind always submits to power.

rvkennedy 15y ago
What I call "science" is the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon. There's nothing reflexive about believing Mann over Steve McIntyre - as with all such judgments we look at who's saying what, who they are, where they're coming from and why, and make a call. Within limitations, we also look at the evidence. Why do we believe Hubble (expanding universe) over Hoyle (it's static)? Hoyle is a much more impressive figure than McIntyre, but his ideas have been tested over and over in many different ways, and found wanting. You could say that the expanding universe is just a theory, that it's unproven, because you could construct an elaborate static universe model that creates the red shift in some arbitrary manner, and causes distant stars to dim sufficiently that space is black and not white, and so on. You could create an elaborate theory that explains why things fall to earth but rejects both Newton and General Relativity. But it seems to me that the reason this doesn't happen is that it doesn't affect the bottom line of well-capitalized companies in the energy sector. You are correct that we appeal to authority for most of what we know of science. But it's not Washington that's the authority, it's the corpus. And we trust it because it's constantly subjected to self-scrutiny. Voices like McIntyre's are heard, and either the whole of one single branch of science is engaged in a massive conspiracy to not listen, or he's probably wrong. But we keep our minds open.
- moldbug 15y ago
  It's not a conspiracy. It's simply a bureaucracy. Don't be looking for conspiracy theories. Be looking for bureaucracy theories. I know this bureaucracy - my mother worked for it. (To be exact, she worked for Joe Romm at DOE.) Your vision of what "science" is dates to the pre-World War II era, when "science" was actually a bazaar. You can't have a "conspiracy" in a bazaar, because there are no coordination mechanisms. So bazaars can err, but tend to converge on the truth. Why was science a bazaar? Distributed effort, distributed reputation systems, distributed funding sources. The last being the most important. "Science" today is a government program. It's not a bazaar. It's a cathedral. You don't have to read a lot of the climate emails to see the coordination mechanisms. For instance, editors who accept dissenting papers are rapidly drummed out of their positions or even professions. The de Freitas case is a good example: http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt. Think about Soviet science for a minute. Soviet science was a branch of Western science. Soviet scientists would no doubt describe their work as "the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon." I would describe their work as: "a government program supervised by the Politburo." For Politburo read NSF, DOE, DOD, etc, etc. And yet, there was good science in the Soviet Union. There's good science at Harvard. You're not advised to trust it unconditionally, however, just because it comes with the impressive logos "science" and "Harvard." They're just brands - they mean whatever they mean today, not whatever they may have meant in the past.
  - rvkennedy 15y ago
    You seem to be quite keen to tell me, and others here, what we really think. I laid out my position above, but your case is that actually I accept unquestioningly the facts and opinions approved by the scientific establishment. On the contrary, I am a sceptic, in the original (non climate-related) sense. If the US government ran the scientific community, that community would not have its strong consensus on climate change, because half of congress, and every other president, is committed to at least equivocating on whether that consensus exists. I'm afraid the link you posted does not cast Chris de Freitas in a positive light. If I knew of sloppy science that had been passed through peer review, I'd expect the person responsible to be excoriated, much more so if that work contradicted my own. This would not make me wrong, or the editor in question some kind of victim. You have one good point though - money, be it from government or corporations, distorts the process. The procedures for the allocation of fund lead to too much being done in some areas, not enough in others. The academic economics profession has been a particular victim of this. The trouble with the idea that climate science has fallen victim to a grand counterfactual groupthink (if you don't like the 'c' word) is that the numbers, the physics, and the reasoned opinions of the vast majority of apolitical observers support the climate consensus. As for Soviet science: did the Soviet Union promulgate any kind of false science that you're aware of? Not in the peer reviewed journals, to any great extent I know of. What would be the point? That's peer review in action. But who's trusting anything unconditionally here? As I said, we keep an open mind.
MaysonL 15y ago
Have you noticed growing season changes and bird migration changes and polar ice changes and glacier changes and (low temperature record #s/high temperature record #s) ratios lately? Screw Steve McIntyre, screw Michael Mann, look at what's happening.

vannevar 15y ago

See Feynman's discussion of confirmation bias in the measurement of the charge of the electron... Confirmation bias indeed affects science, but only as a sort of drag. In the end, the measurements Feynman refers to did converge on the correct result, because people kept performing experiments and testing their hypothesis. The same is true for climate research. The difference between science and politics is that politics converges on the popular answer and science converges on the truth.