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You understand “following the science” arguments are stupid right?

• codetrotter 3y ago
  No. Why?
  • brutusborn 3y ago
    Because science just updates our beliefs, it doesn’t produce ‘truths’ that we can follow. See the Problem of Induction or the Duhem–Quine thesis.
    • hnbad 3y ago
      What do you think truth is other than confident beliefs? Nothing can produce "truths". If you want absolute truths, pick a holy text and decide for yourself what absolute truth you can pin on it.
      • brutusborn 3y ago
        You summarised my point nicely. What we call ‘truth’ is just the beliefs we think are most accurate. ‘Just follow the science’ is silly because it essentially means following beliefs on faith without questioning whether they are the best theory. In many cases the better theory goes against the consensus. E.g. mothers who ‘just followed the science’ and took Thalidomide caused their children untold suffering. They could have been skeptical but instead they had faith in science, which was unfortunately done badly.
  • newsclues 3y ago
    It’s a process not an end state. “Follow science” and ‘follow “the” science’ are two different things, and we just need to go back in history to understand that humans did some horrible stuff because of “the” science.
    • codetrotter 3y ago
      Hm.. I don’t see that distinction in this case. To me when they say they “follow the science” it does not imply an end state. To me it only implies “everything we know so far”. I am sure that if scientific results showed the opposite of their current idea, they would once again update their view.
      • brutusborn 3y ago
        Your intuition of scientists updating views is wrong, see Kuhns scientific revolutions for more examples. Scientists generally stick to preconceived notions long after there is data to refute them. E.g. heliocentrism, germ theory, cigarettes being unhealthy, lobotomies being optimal
• was_a_dev 3y ago
  It isn't if you aren't a scientist in that field. As you're not qualified to do otherwise. As a physicist in quantum sensing. I follow the science (opinion) of climate scientists as they're the experts of that field. And that opinion is constantly evolving, but I follow that. Anything else is just being an armchair scientist.
  • brutusborn 3y ago
    Surely a physicist is best placed to ‘Nullius in Verba’ and to do his own research. Climate models are fundamentally physical simulations after all…
    • downWidOutaFite 3y ago
      Everything is fundamentally physics.
    • was_a_dev 3y ago
      Climate models are fundamentally physical, but I don't have the insight in the field to have the deep insight to make qualified opinions. I could after significant research as suggested. But that is a significant endeavour, hence following the opinion of the field is typically sufficient. It's like a fronted developer making comments on kernel development and vice versa. It's both fundamentally code, but different fields.
      • brutusborn 3y ago
        I think if you’ve looked at numerical models then you have enough knowledge to at least judge the underlying assumptions: boundary conditions, numerical stability, discretisation methods, validation methods and results. In the same way that I can verify a SAT solution, I don’t need to know how to code a sat solver. Unfortunately there are fundamental disagreements about most of the critical parts of climate science, so going by the opinion of the field isn’t foolproof (who to choose? How to choose?). Many fields have had false consensus beliefs before, and most of their problems weren’t 1000th the difficulty of climate modelling.
    • 3y ago