

Trust Science - byrneseyeview
http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Math/trustscience.html

======
motters
"It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how
and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are
based on evidence, not on authority or intuition."

Bertrand Russell

~~~
gnosis
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die,
and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

    
    
                -- Max Planck

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ugh
Grand words, but not much content and brazen attempts to sneak in ad-hominens
under the radar:

"The climate change legions are recruited mainly from the Western left-
intelligentsia, their kitbags stuffed with all the sub-Marxist and ethno-
masochist flapdoodle of the modern Academy. They hate capitalism, they hate
Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors. The kind of dramatic
social engineering implicit in the phrase "combatting climate change" is
emotionally appealing to them."

With all the nice words around you would hardly notice.

~~~
byrneseyeview
It would be an _ad hominem_ if he said "And thus they are wrong." But he
doesn't even say they're wrong! He just says that they happen to reach the
conclusion that lets them act in their ideological interests.

Was there any language in the article that you found particularly wasteful?
Did you have any criticisms besides the misplaced accusation of _ad hominem_?

~~~
joe_the_user
Jeesh,

Your criterion for distinguishing an ad hominem argument is not at all valid.

It's enough for someone to say "that theory is the darling of every
cannibalistic child-molesting moron in Sweden". If they said "that theory was
created by a cannibalistic child-molesting moron _and thus it's wrong"_ , all
they would be doing is giving away the irrationality of the implied _ad
hominem_ argument. It's much more effective _and much more common_ for an
arguer to toss insults and let the reader's emotional reactions create the
conclusion.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_Your criterion for distinguishing an ad hominem argument is not at all
valid._

...

 _An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin:
"argument toward the person" or "argument against the person") is an argument
which links the validity of a premise to an irrelevant characteristic or
belief of the person advocating the premise._

There is a difference between saying "cannibalistic child-molesting morons
agree with that" and saying "thus it is false." That's why we have the term
_ad hominem_ : to distinguish between valid statements (i.e. "child molesters
believe that the sky is blue and that encryption technology should be legal,")
and invalid statements ("Thus, the sky is red and PGP should be banned.").

You are complaining about something legitimate, but what you're complaining
about is not _ad hominem_. The closest term is probably "rhetoric."

~~~
joe_the_user
Uh,

If you read the definition you posted, you'll notice it says "linking". The
link can be explicit or implicit. The original article certainly established
an _implicit link_ between the beliefs of the left and the belief in global
warming.

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tybris
No. Science, like democracy, is based on the very principle of distrust.
Instead, simply accept it. Accept that scientists are humans. Accept that the
process if often flawed. Accept that peer-review doesn't really mean that
much. Accept that most theories aren't fully supported by the data. Accept
that we have such a diversity in science that experiments are rarely repeated.
Accept that it's hard to tell the good science from the bad. but most of all,
accept that it is the best thing we've got.

(scientist)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I didn't RTA, but I find it interesting you compare science and democracy.

In a good democracy, the politicians are _assumed to be gaining the system for
personal power_. That is, the political system is built up to make it
extremely difficult for power to centralize in any one spot for a long period
of time. There are lots of ways to do this, checks and balances, term limits,
parliamentary systems, etc.

However in the current "scientific" system -- the system that allocates
political and monetary power to scientists -- none of this seems to be in
place. It's much at the same place democracies were in the 1600s or so; there
is a lot of reliance on the "right" people being in power.

I'm not at all trying to slam science -- it is truly the best thing we have --
but I found your metaphor very enlightening, perhaps in ways you didn't
realize? Thanks for sharing it.

~~~
tensor
Actually, the allocation of money has nothing to do with the idea of _science_
, but is rather a simple necessity brought on by, ironically, politics. That
allocation process also has many of the same _safe-guards_ you mention.

The part of the metaphor that is completely incorrect, is that democracy is a
truth finding system at all! You can not vote the law of gravity out of
existence, for example. As a truth finding tool, democracy is only as strong
as the education of its members, and even then, it provides no strict
framework for judging quality or correctness of results.

In that sense, democracy has little at all to do with science. It is merely a
tool for managing and controlling human actions.

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jacoblyles
I think his intended audience are right-wing people who use incidents like
Climategate to justify their beliefs in ideas such as creationism. I don't
think many people here are part of that audience.

~~~
gjm11
If you consider the denial of anthropogenic global warming to be an "idea such
as creationism", there's ample recent evidence that many people here _are_
part of that audience.

(FWIW, (1) I think it's clearly less crazy than creationism, (2) I think it's
somewhat crazy none the less, (3) I think the overblown rhetoric from the
anti-AGW camp around "Climategate" is an indication of the weakness of their
actual arguments, and (4) I've now said all I'm going to in this thread on
that subject.)

~~~
jacoblyles
>"If you consider the denial of anthropogenic global warming to be an 'idea
such as creationism'"

No, I don't.

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euroclydon
I love John Derbyshire! Whenever I lament the current stock of presidential
candidates, I always say, "We need someone like John Derbyshire running";
somebody who can employ logic and think on their feet.

~~~
msie
Being homophobic is illogical.

~~~
euroclydon
Really, he's homophobic? Well I didn't know that. I like hearing him talk. I
like his dry British wit.

Anyway, isn't homophobia defined as a strong disdain or dislike for
homosexuals? And if so, must homophobia be logical or illogical? I think
discrimination or malice toward homosexuals is immoral and unethical, but mere
dislike when not called to coincide with a value system, does not provide
enough information, by itself, to be considered illogical.

~~~
byrneseyeview
He is a homophobe:

“I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an
even more mild and tolerant one."

[http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200405140...](http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200405140857.asp)

~~~
astine
That article looks a little bit tongue-in-cheek to me.

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azgolfer
"I have to cop out on that." This is the kind of intellectual laziness that
almost let the nonsense of AGW succeed. Fortunately there are people like Watt
(check out surfacestations.org) and McKintyre (Climate Audit) who have the
skills and put in the time and effort to reveal the horrible corruption in
'Climatology'. The emails and code have now made it obvious, but their release
might never had happened without the FOI requests. Here is the latest for
those who haven't seen it - One man has been controlling all the Wikipedia
climate articles to support the AGW view
[http://www.nationalpost.com/m/blog.html?b=fullcomment&e=...](http://www.nationalpost.com/m/blog.html?b=fullcomment&e=lawrence-
solomon-wikipedia-s-climate-doctor&s=Opinion)

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boredguy8
Oddly, the demand to trust science is itself not a scientific claim.

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dmoney
All the big words hurt my head. Well, my finger from going back and forth from
dictionary.com.

From the petition he links (<http://www.oism.org/pproject/>) signed by
"thirty-one thousand scientists":

> _The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment_

Maybe it wouldn't help, but how would limiting greenhouse emissions harm the
environment?

~~~
anamax
> Maybe it wouldn't help, but how would limiting greenhouse emissions harm the
> environment?

Less developed societies tend to be environmental disasters while more
developed ones use more energy. Compare urban China's air pollution with LA's.

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guelo
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle>

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bernoulli
just came here to point out that bernoulli's principle has nothing to do with
how airplane wings actually make planes fly.

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msie
He's a homophobe.

~~~
ugh
That quite obviously doesn’t matter when he is talking about climate change.

~~~
Locke1689
It does paint him as a form of hypocrite since there's no scientific reason to
discriminate against homosexuals and he's asking us to trust science.

