4 ms·

I'm hesitant about building a Chinese Wall between accredited experts and the broader society, and I regret a bit about even mentioning the bloggers' profession

by scarmig 14y ago

I'm hesitant about building a Chinese Wall between accredited experts and the broader society, and I regret a bit about even mentioning the bloggers' professions in my ancestral comment. Their posts, after all, speak for themselves. But for whatever reason, right now there's a giant gap of approach in how "amateurs" on both sides approach science. I guess what I'd like is amateurs who are actually interested in the science engaging with and contributing to expert discussion. Not merely for the sake of amateurs, but for the sake of the expert scientific discourse itself. Science has no sides except reality; but if you have a situation where one political side vociferously attacks you while another political side defends you, it's psychologically very easy to forget that and your role as a scientist.

jacquesm 14y ago
The way to deal with the problem imo is not to appeal to a group of uneducated people for support in the first place, but simply to increase the number of educated people to the point where such politicizing is no longer effective. Manipulative tricks only work when the vast majority of the people have no clue about the inner workings of the pale blue dot that we are stewards of. But I cringe at the way the polarization is worked on both sides of the divide, support by ignoramuses is just as sought after by both sides and just as meaningless. But since we all live in democracies support by the numbers is important even if those supporting you have no clue about the facts or the underlying mechanisms. In the end that support should not matter. What should matter is facts and the way (big) money is distorting the picture is very worrisome. Plenty of scientists (in absolute numbers, not in percentages, the far larger number are as ethical as can be and even some of those critical of the evidence are critical for pure motives, not because of some paycheck) have zero compunction about supporting whatever side pays for their mortgage. A preponderance of evidence (unfortunately) no longer offsets a preponderance of marketing dollars. And that is to me - for the moment, I may revise that statement, living 45' below sea level - far more worrying than climate change in and of itself. Considering the possibilities of a runaway effect and the reality of China/India starting to use far more power and hence emitting far more CO2 this may be a thing that is already too far gone to stop, even if we did act today (Nobody seems to be sure about that one, though the consensus seems to be there will be a mitigating effect, magnitude unknown). But then imagine some real disaster triggered by our carelessness does befall us, what are we going to do to deal with the aftermath if we can't even agree on what to do when it is not yet rearranging our lives with careless abandon? Nature doesn't care, one way or the other whether we're going to agree with each other or not. It'll just let physics run its course, and physics tends to be a pretty good if harsh teacher. Humans are pretty fragile. Maybe we will learn from this, maybe we won't, time will tell. But for now I'm not too hopeful about how this is playing out and both sides are guilty of trying to politicize this instead of letting the facts simply speak for themselves. An inconvenient truth indeed.
- anon1385 14y ago
  >The way to deal with the problem imo is not to appeal to a group of uneducated people for support in the first place, but simply to increase the number of educated people to the point where such politicizing is no longer effective. There is plenty of effort being put into preventing that [1]. More to the point, evidence suggests that education doesn't make much difference: https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/climate-science-and-scien_b_1956149.html https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/climate-sci... For Republicans, in contrast, increasing education makes virtually no difference in their acceptance of anthropogenic climate change. Roughly 70 percent of Republicans with a high school education (or less) reject climate science, and about the same percentage holds for Republicans with a post-graduate education. [1] https://ssl1.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html https://ssl1.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texa...
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    I guess that puts the lie to 'those without even a single college degree'. That one really hurt because: 1) I don't have a single college degree 2) What does it matter if you have a college degree in some soft science versus a someone without a degree that has tried very hard to keep current with a number of scientific fields? 3) What does support from uninformed / soft sciences people mean when it comes to stuff like this? To me it counts for next to nothing. Plenty of scientists are religious and you could easily find a way to argue that apparently being excellent in one field does not at all qualify you as even moderately informed in another. (and some would go a lot further than that). Scientists apparently have enough trouble dealing with the facts in their own fields, let alone those in other fields or in metaphysics or about something mystical. That doesn't mean that they are bad, but in that sense they may not be much more useful than your average, uninformed layperson when you're looking for support, depending on the area of interest. The only people that should have a say in the debate at all are the climate scientists (the religious ones too), and those versed in analysing large volumes of data with questionable pedigree and discontinuities. We pay those guys to do their jobs, policy should be informed by that and commercial interests should have 0 say in it. And those suckers that massaged their data to make it look more dramatic have done more damage than all the naysayers put together.

by scarmig 14y ago

jacquesm 14y ago

The way to deal with the problem imo is not to appeal to a group of uneducated people for support in the first place, but simply to increase the number of educated people to the point where such politicizing is no longer effective. Manipulative tricks only work when the vast majority of the people have no clue about the inner workings of the pale blue dot that we are stewards of. But I cringe at the way the polarization is worked on both sides of the divide, support by ignoramuses is just as sought after by both sides and just as meaningless. But since we all live in democracies support by the numbers is important even if those supporting you have no clue about the facts or the underlying mechanisms. In the end that support should not matter. What should matter is facts and the way (big) money is distorting the picture is very worrisome. Plenty of scientists (in absolute numbers, not in percentages, the far larger number are as ethical as can be and even some of those critical of the evidence are critical for pure motives, not because of some paycheck) have zero compunction about supporting whatever side pays for their mortgage. A preponderance of evidence (unfortunately) no longer offsets a preponderance of marketing dollars. And that is to me - for the moment, I may revise that statement, living 45' below sea level - far more worrying than climate change in and of itself. Considering the possibilities of a runaway effect and the reality of China/India starting to use far more power and hence emitting far more CO2 this may be a thing that is already too far gone to stop, even if we did act today (Nobody seems to be sure about that one, though the consensus seems to be there will be a mitigating effect, magnitude unknown). But then imagine some real disaster triggered by our carelessness does befall us, what are we going to do to deal with the aftermath if we can't even agree on what to do when it is not yet rearranging our lives with careless abandon? Nature doesn't care, one way or the other whether we're going to agree with each other or not. It'll just let physics run its course, and physics tends to be a pretty good if harsh teacher. Humans are pretty fragile. Maybe we will learn from this, maybe we won't, time will tell. But for now I'm not too hopeful about how this is playing out and both sides are guilty of trying to politicize this instead of letting the facts simply speak for themselves. An inconvenient truth indeed.

anon1385 14y ago
>The way to deal with the problem imo is not to appeal to a group of uneducated people for support in the first place, but simply to increase the number of educated people to the point where such politicizing is no longer effective. There is plenty of effort being put into preventing that [1]. More to the point, evidence suggests that education doesn't make much difference: https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/climate-science-and-scien_b_1956149.html https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/climate-sci... For Republicans, in contrast, increasing education makes virtually no difference in their acceptance of anthropogenic climate change. Roughly 70 percent of Republicans with a high school education (or less) reject climate science, and about the same percentage holds for Republicans with a post-graduate education. [1] https://ssl1.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html https://ssl1.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texa...
- jacquesm 14y ago
  I guess that puts the lie to 'those without even a single college degree'. That one really hurt because: 1) I don't have a single college degree 2) What does it matter if you have a college degree in some soft science versus a someone without a degree that has tried very hard to keep current with a number of scientific fields? 3) What does support from uninformed / soft sciences people mean when it comes to stuff like this? To me it counts for next to nothing. Plenty of scientists are religious and you could easily find a way to argue that apparently being excellent in one field does not at all qualify you as even moderately informed in another. (and some would go a lot further than that). Scientists apparently have enough trouble dealing with the facts in their own fields, let alone those in other fields or in metaphysics or about something mystical. That doesn't mean that they are bad, but in that sense they may not be much more useful than your average, uninformed layperson when you're looking for support, depending on the area of interest. The only people that should have a say in the debate at all are the climate scientists (the religious ones too), and those versed in analysing large volumes of data with questionable pedigree and discontinuities. We pay those guys to do their jobs, policy should be informed by that and commercial interests should have 0 say in it. And those suckers that massaged their data to make it look more dramatic have done more damage than all the naysayers put together.