

You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof - oozcitak
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_not_that/

======
Eliezer
I'm flattened by the degree to which people assume that, because I'm willing
to go along with the guess that anthropogenic global warming is occurring, I
must also be in favor of loony policy proposals.

Was saying that I was against ethanol-from-corn, and for building 10,000 LFTR
nuclear power plants, not enough of a clue?

Was saying that I don't worry about AGW in the real world because we have much
worse problems not enough of a clue?

Is all that just flatly overridden by my being willing to provisionally
believe what mainstream climate scientists say? It's a question of simple
fact, not values! I should be able to believe something about how the Earth's
atmosphere works without automatically ending up lumped in some particular
political cluster! I'd understand if you assumed that by default, but I went
out of my way to provide you with specific evidence to contradict that
assumption! Geepers.

~~~
lionhearted
It comes with the territory - for instance,

Subset of AGW people overlaps quite heavily with subset of environmentalists.

Subset of AGW people overlaps quite heavily with subset of "catastrophe is
coming" people.

Subset of AGW people overlaps quite heavily with subset of "regulation is the
answer people".

Subset of AGW people DOES NOT overlap much with pro-thorium/pro-fusion people.

It'd be like if I made the argument that I'm against income inequality, that
we need a "fair distribution", and things like that for an article - but wrote
a couple sentences that I'm not in favor of taxation/redistribution. I'd be
one of the few alive that thought that way. "AGW is happening, but isn't a big
deal" is a rare position. "AGW is happening, but we've got bigger fish to fry"
is a very rare position. "AGW is happening, and so I'm for nuclear" is also
relatively rare.

For the record, I believe some global warming is happening, much of it isn't
human created, some of it is, it won't be a catastrophe, bureaucratic
regulations would be poorly implemented and accomplish very little, there's
more bang for your buck in working on local ecosystems, and better nuclear
power/batteries does to energy what modern farming and biochemistry did for
food while largely ending problems of air pollution. Finally, I think people
in the future laugh at what a panic those silly folk back in the early 2000's
were thinking.

So yes, when you go heavily against the grain, you've got to keep disclaiming
every paragraph or people will just assume you're for the things that everyone
else with those positions is for. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and
all of that. If you use terminology and speak of things in a certain way that
almost everyone else who speaks that way is in favor of certain kinds of
solutions, people will drift into thinking you're in favor of them. That said,
enjoyed this article quite a bit besides that.

~~~
Locke1689
_Subset of AGW people overlaps quite heavily with subset of environmentalists.
Subset of AGW people overlaps quite heavily with subset of "catastrophe is
coming" people. Subset of AGW people overlaps quite heavily with subset of
"regulation is the answer people". Subset of AGW people DOES NOT overlap much
with pro-thorium/pro-fusion people._

You're just making that up... Personally I think a huge amount of people who
believe that AGW is happening are huge proponents of nuclear fusion. In fact,
I think that almost everyone is pro-nuclear fusion if it is scientifically
possible. As far as fission goes, a large part of the Obama administration
favors expanding nuclear fission and they also take an AGW position.

------
ellyagg
The article makes a false assumption. He starts by saying that AGW has the
ball, but then carries that on through the rest of his reasoning as a proxy
for "global temperatures will be 6 degrees higher in 2100 hundred has the
ball", although he doesn't come out and say it.

Few educated people disbelieve in the evidence for some AGW. There are a few
things that many of us _don't_ believe.

We don't believe that there is any reasonable evidence that the magnitude and
impact of AGW will be dire. When the IPCC reports come out, there is tons of
evidence for weak AGW. But that tons of evidence applies to weak AGW. Each of
those studies is evidence for modest claims. It doesn't matter if you
accumulate 10 times as many studies supporting those modest claims, it will
not be evidence for the incredibly less likely hypotheses that they are made
to do work for by the press and politically-motivated scientists.

In fact, there's plenty of reason to believe increased temperatures will be a
net benefit to humanity. Humanists, but not reactionaries, should be open to
this. There is no reason to believe we're currently at our "ideal
temperature", and there's no reason to freeze our current ecosystems in time
as if they're sanctified objects of a disorganized but fervent religion.
Regardless, the claim that rising temperatures will leave us worse off isn't
remotely proven.

The author waves his hands by the "cost-effective things we can do to mitigate
global warming" as if such a thing exists in the current public debate. Almost
every proposal normally under discussion in the public venue have overwhelming
costs.[1]

This is a costs/benefits judgment, and you can't make that judgement without
knowing the benefits. On an episode of Mad Men, Don Draper is standing in the
living room with his wife and the interior decorator. His wife asks him what
he thinks about the new furniture and its arrangement. He says, "Well, it's
kind of hard to judge without knowing the price." People seem to forget that.

Concerning the benefits, there is no plausible, let alone tested, theory of
risk prediction for climate temperatures in 2100. At all. So we're not talking
about science here anymore. When you say, well, we can't calculate the risks,
but the worst case is the extinction of mankind, you're getting dangerously
close to the St. Petersburg paradox. Spreading FUD is a principal mechanism by
which con men of all stripes manipulate.

[1] Although I'm all for as many nuclear reactors as we can build. By the
steady resistance to this cheap and plentiful source of new energy, it's clear
that a certain segment of the alarmist AGW movement is only willing to solve
our energy problems by putting a cap on human productivity.

Edit: Meant to write 6 degrees higher, not 106, in the first sentence.

~~~
AngryParsley
Are people voting this comment up because it's committing the mistake that
Eliezer is talking about?

From the parent:

 _Regardless, the claim that rising temperatures will leave us worse off isn't
remotely proven._

From the Less Wrong post:

 _And so the implicit emotional theory is that if something is not proven -
better yet, proven using a particular piece of evidence that isn't available
and that you're pretty sure is never going to become available - then you are
allowed to disbelieve; it's like something a student says, not like something
a teacher says._

What evidence would you expect to see today in a world where increased average
global temperature helps humanity? If you're going to argue from ignorance,
you should be on the side wanting to prevent change. Our understanding of the
earth's climate is incomplete at best. The same is true of our understanding
of the organisms that are adapted to that climate. We have historical evidence
of changes CO2 in the atmosphere causing changes in climate, in turn causing
extinction events. (See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event> and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoo_Ice_Age> )

Your comment touches on a lot of topics, and I don't have time to respond to
all of them. Still, here's what I gleaned of your opinions:

\- AGW might not be true, so we don't need to worry about it.

\- Even if it's true, it might not be large enough to have a significant
effect, so we don't need to worry about it.

\- Even if it's large enough to have a significant effect, it might be
beneficial, so we don't need to worry about it.

\- Even if AGW is harmful, current popular proposed solutions are ineffective,
outrageously expensive, or both. Since the costs of the solutions are higher
than the costs of AGW, we shouldn't do anything about it.

Doesn't this line of reasoning seem strangely convenient? Don't you think that
you're being just a little bit biased toward the "do nothing" approach?

~~~
yummyfajitas
_We have historical evidence of changes CO2 in the atmosphere causing changes
in climate, in turn causing extinction events.
(See<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event> and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoo_Ice_Age> )_

Both of the harmful climate events you have described were _cooling_ events
and were also many millions of years in the past. Why not consider more recent
climate events which are closer in scale to those suggested by AGW proponents?

 _What evidence would you expect to see today in a world where increased
average global temperature helps humanity?_

Overall, if warming were beneficial for humanity, I'd expect to see human
expansion during the medieval warm period, and human decline during the little
ice age.

Further facts: quite a lot of land is too cold for humans to prosper in. Crop
yields are poor, heating is costly, and life is generally unpleasant.

Regarding the "strangely convenient" line of reasoning by ellyagg, that's
simply the line of reasoning we must take when evaluating any measure designed
to prevent any event. We must evaluate whether the event is real, whether it
is significant, whether it is harmful, and whether the cost/benefit of the
mitigation scheme is favorable.

------
madair
Money quote:

 _Yes, we've never actually experimented to observe the results over 50 years
of artificially adding a large amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. But
we know from physics that it's a greenhouse gas. It's not a privileged
hypothesis we're pulling out of nowhere. It's not like saying "You can't prove
there's no invisible pink unicorn in my garage!" [Anthropological Global
Warming] is, ceteris paribus, what we should expect to happen if the other
things we believe are true. We don't have any experimental results on what
will happen 50 years from now, and so you can't grant the proposition the
special, super-strong status of something that has been scientifically
confirmed by a replicable experiment. But as I point out in "Scientific
Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence", if science couldn't say anything
about that which has not already been observed, we couldn't ever make
scientific predictions by which the theories could be confirmed. Extrapolating
from the science we do know, global warming should be occurring; you would
need specific experimental evidence to contradict that.

We are, I think, dealing with that old problem of motivated cognition. As
Gilovich says: "Conclusions a person does not want to believe are held to a
higher standard than conclusions a person wants to believe. In the former
case, the person asks if the evidence compels one to accept the conclusion,
whereas in the latter case, the person asks instead if the evidence allows one
to accept the conclusion." People map the domain of belief onto the social
domain of authority, with a qualitative difference between absolute and
nonabsolute demands: If a teacher tells you certain things, and you have to
believe them, and you have to recite them back on the test. But when a student
makes a suggestion in class, you don't have to go along with it - you're free
to agree or disagree (it seems) and no one will punish you._

~~~
Daniel_Newby
_But we know from physics that it's a greenhouse gas._

If by "greenhouse" you mean, well, "not a greenhouse". Greenhouses get warm
because the shell blocks convection, not radiative effects.

We really need a better term for them. Heat trapping gas?

~~~
Locke1689
Eh. And it's not protons that comprise moving current in a circuit.
Conventions happen and sometimes we're stuck with them.

~~~
bdonlan
Actually, sometimes protons _do_ carry the current in a circuit:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_conductor>

~~~
Locke1689
True, but you understand my point
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_current#Conventions>).

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Polarity conventions are arbitrary. "Greenhouse gas" is an analogy, one that
is deliberately deceptive in order to provoke a maladaptive political
response.

------
gxs
I don't mean to single the author out- and maybe I'm just off to a rough
morning - but, while good, that article is unnecessarily verbose. As much time
as I spend reading nowadays, I've grown an appreciation for straight-to-the-
point articles that use flowery language sparingly and only when it adds
meaning to the article itself.

~~~
khafra
I've had that thought before, when reading Yudkowsky's articles. But, given
the number of misinterpretations of Eliezer's basic points even amongst the
relatively erudite and incisive audience here at Hacker News, it's hard to say
what he could've cut out without sacrificing even more reader comprehension.

~~~
Eliezer
In every one of my essays, half the words are unnecessary. Unfortunately it's
a different half for every reader.

------
oconnore
Well, I'm going to approach this from the political angle instead of the
scientific angle, because I have my doubts about the accuracy of modern
climate models. The Earth is really complex, and while single float
thermodynamics equations recalculated on a grid map of the world are probably
pretty close to reality, I have yet to see any reason why a few degrees error
per century is unthinkable for these computer models.

That said, I have seen two political motions within AGW. One, to motivate
people to consume less, to accept a reduction in their standard of living.
Two, to motivate people to confront and resolve an issue in a sensible way
with modern technologies. The latter actually makes sense, AGW or not, unless
you really do like breathing exhaust fumes; unfortunately the former seems
more common, and less acceptable.

~~~
cabalamat
> _One, to motivate people to consume less, to accept a reduction in their
> standard of living._

While I agree with your point that some people do argue in favour of ACC for
the reason you've given, I'd point out that consuming less doesn't mean a
lower standard of living. For example, per capita oil consumption is lower now
than it was during the 1970s, yet per capita GDP is a lot higher. So we're
doing more with less.

~~~
oconnore
I suppose I wasn't clear. A drop in raw material consumption is not a bad
thing, as long as it is accompanied by an increase in material efficiency to
match it.

For example, we may be buying less gas at the pumps, but that's just because
our cars have improved. This did not effect our standard of living, because we
still have the same individual mobility.

------
dkimball
This writer missed or is ignoring both the deliberate fraud known as
Climategate, and the new discovery about the importance of sunspots; does he
know or care about climate change in the past, the Little Ice Age, the
Medieval Warm Period, the freeze towards the end of the Roman Empire, and the
like? He seems to be too committed to American liberalism, and to have spent
too much time arguing with creationists (which, from my personal experience
arguing with them, is not good for anyone's sanity), to be able to discuss
these issues scientifically.

Also, does anyone else get tired of the canard about apes evolving into
humans? Recent science indicates that apes and humans are different
evolutionary paths; no human or human-precursor species ever evolved knuckle-
walking or the simian proportions of arms to legs (and both Neandertals and
Cro-Magnons looked mostly like Germans, Scandinavians, or Finns). Pop-cultural
understanding of human evolution -- including the pop-cultural understanding
held by the evolutionary apologist culture -- is frozen in time at 1945 or
earlier; the Holocaust has frightened us away from discussing human evolution
(and its natural corollary, human race).

This is all the more ironic because, if we _were_ willing to discuss human
evolution and race, we would discover pretty quickly that the Nazis were
wrong. There is an Aryan race, but it's local to Persia and the Indian
Subcontinent (hint: languages and cultures can spread without genetically
significant numbers of people spreading with them); there is no Nordic race,
but two mostly-unrelated races coexisting in northern Europe; the whole
narrative of the development of Western man is the evolution of the Iberian
race and its descendants...

I'll get off my hobby-horse now.

~~~
madair
Explaining my vote down:

(1) You make a lot of bold statements to refute a highly researched article
full of references, with not so much as a nod to your sources

(2) Your first sentence makes an assumption that he's missed or ignoring the
very thing that the article is reacting to. The _whole_ point of the article
is to discuss first principles. The author of the article is pretty well known
for his ability to do so

(3) I'm unclear on your statements about human evolution, all sorts of
potential background for those statements spring to mind, but whatever it is,
it is on you you to provide _strong_ references or original research in order
to refute evolutionary science

(4) Godwin's law in the very first comment!

~~~
nathanwdavis
Where are the references? Mostly I just see links to other lesswrong articles.

