I think the "debate" is obscuring the real issue, which is the development of terraforming technologies. Stabilizing Earth's climate at the point most beneficial for its biosphere is good practice for more challenging future homes of the Earth biocomplex, such as Mars, the Jovian Big 4, Titan, Ceres, and even the hardcore nightmare mode terraforming: Venus.
If humans can change planetary climate accidentally, we can certainly do it intentionally with a smaller and more directed effort. And if we can "fix" Earth to be optimally friendly to Earth life, those efforts will translate to environments that are more hostile from the beginning.
I just wish that politics hadn't hijacked the science to turn it into a machine for moving money and influence around.
In response to your last sentence: people who can hijack systems to gain power, money and influence tend to end up running things. It's pretty much inevitable.
We don't know the point that is most beneficial for the biosphere. And if we did, I bet we would still aim at the point that was the most beneficial for humans.
(I'm not sure this can even be discussed objectively; how do you decide between biomass and biodiversity, and so on)
That's... interesting. I hope that they didn't ban people who deny that the current climate change is man-made? Denying facts is just silly, forbidding a discussion about causes for these facts seems non-scientific.
The article seems to indicate that they primarily forbade the posting of conspiracy theories (ie, the "Big Green" and "Big Oil" accusations), and that bans only came after repeated violations of the rules.
Reddit is not something that should be held up to scientific rigor.
Also, the assumption that the climate change denial comments have any chance of being well supported (not just because they're wrong, but because they're not authored by people with scientific training) is probably misplaced.
Certain reddit communities are vigorously trying to uphold scientific standards. AskScience, AskHistoriance etc come to mind. Yes, if deniers of man-made climate change can't cite scientific sources they shouldn't write in scientific reddits.
The problem I see with "people with scientific training" though is that it's very hard to make a career unless you support the view that the current climate change is man-made, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_science_opinion2.p.... But there should (still) be enough percentage points left to find valid opposing arguments.
Why didn't he give an example? He said they just talk without backing up their claims with substantial data, yet that is exactly what he did and we are supposed to take his word for it. (Even if I do believe him)
Giving a specific example turns the discussion from "a group of people do this thing, and we've banned them" and whether that's a good or bad idea into "here's an example" followed by bitter discussion of how that example should or shouldn't be allowed in the sub.
I think this shows scientific institutions and advocates in a bad light.
Rupert Sheldrake had a great TED talk on the dogma's of modern science, and was even further legitimized when a private council of TED banned the talk.
That's incorrect. Rupert Sheldrake gave a TEDx talk on his non-scientific opinions, which wasn't considered to be appropriate. The talk is still available, just not under the TEDx label. See here for more details: http://www.ted.com/conversations/16894/rupert_sheldrake_s_te...
> ...be removed from the TEDx archive if the ideas contained in it are wrong to the point of being unscientific...
So who judges this? Did you even watch the video? The whole thing was about questioning things we already THINK we know the answers to. How is the opposite of such not Dogma? Did you even research Constants? He had. But you're right, just plain wrong.
So if you were a scientist interested in a field that others called, "stupid", you would just change for fear of peer pressure? I admire following your interest with scientific method... Which is what this man advocates, and not just blind faith to stats... Did you even watch the video before forming your opinion?
I wouldn't go that far. So how would one approach doing scientific work on additional sense in addition to the known 5?
Or what about the idea of constants not being so exactly concrete? Just do yourself a favour and watch the video.
And besides, his theory on morphological evolution isn't based on anything but experimentation and theory. If you dismiss it simply because it seems "too crazy"... then I could argue it could be comparable to the scientists of Galileo, dismissing such ridiculous ideas. Not even worth entertaining...
> his theory on morphological evolution isn't based on anything but experimentation and theory
Alright, I'll bite. Can you point me to his papers that describe falsifiable experiments, and to the peers that have repeated his results? Or just some books on Amazon?
Again, not saying he's right. I'm saying that to dismiss an actual scientist when they say that in general, the field of science has "believers", and not enough people entertaining the questioning of "facts", is a dogmatic, and bad trend.
So, over time, chicks unrelated to each other began to not peck at a given object as much, given a negative stimulus. Results aren't really in question, it's the "oh, they're all psychically linked" that's pretty much in question. There are multitude of other explanations possible, including involuntary corruption of the test by the experimenter (see also: the 'counting' horse that was actually responding to visual cues from its trainer, and not actually counting).
See also: Venkman and the pretty girl at the beginning of Ghostbusters
I tried to find instances of other scientists
Morphic resonance (and the 'morphogenic field') is an old idea from before we even knew about chromosomes, let alone DNA: it's a lot like how homeopathy was a big thing until we kind of figured out that bacteria caused disease.. A low statistical correlation with no corresponding replication with a high probability of accidental corruption by the original experimenter does not a compelling argument make.
Your 'unbiased look' at the event is by the guy himself. I don't think that really counts..
> Your 'unbiased look' at the event is by the guy himself.
Agreed lol.
I guess we just don't agree on the merits of materialism. While I definitely think it helps explain the world, and is our best friend when it comes to our perceptions or reality, it is a poor agent in even CONSIDERING non-materialistic characteristics in anything.
I find the whole thing highly ironic. It's almost like the highly educated / scientifically literate persons in our day and age worship materialism instead of the scientific method. Thats all science is. The methods and the steps we take to create reproducible research. Not the institutions and boards that write to editors claiming that the constant of the the speed of light did NOT change during the 20 years between X and Y.
I for one, can hold onto the ideas of constants, without engaging in a flight or fight response in my neocortex that forces me to reject new or creative ideas without even entertaining them.
For instance, could you investigate the possibility that global warming isn't because of human action? I could even thought I dont BELIEVE it. The dogmatic idelogue of modern science would have you act like a religious person regarding it. /rant.
Except no one wants to even peer review or try to replicate this guy's experiments, because a) they're flawed and b) they're batshit insane.
The conclusions he draws are -way- out there. It's like newton comparing the dropping of two objects and their rate of fall, and saying the penny drops at the same rate as the bowling ball because the penny thinks faster. Complete disconnect between results and hypothesis.
He's saying "look, their behavior changes over time (even this is disputable)! Without the chicks talking to each other! IT MUST BE PSYCHIC." God of the gaps, and all that.
Reading the article, and then seeing responses posted here, I am starting to think hacker news isn't the place for these kind of discussions. Any time any kind of contentions topic is posted a small number of people, similar to those described in the article, come out of the wood work and feel the need to share their uninformed opinions.
On an unmoderated forum like this one, perhaps it is better to keep the discussions restricted to subject like programming languages and operations systems, and avoid inadvertently providing a microphone for those with an axe to grind.
I have no problem from banning people that refuse to accept reality from any educational or political forum. If they banned people for talking about Intelligent Design or alchemy (outside a historical context) I would say that's a feather in their cap as well.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If you're confident in your views and your opponent is incapable of articulating his (and, in fact, may actually be hurting his cause) ... you make sure he has a big audience.
People do not pay detailed attention when evaluating two sets of plausible and highly technical claims, when there is emotional loading attached. We get "teach the controversy". This makes it quite easy for the determined and self-interested to manipulate public opinion.
It's like spam: people have long since ceased to argue with spammers, they just remove the spam. "Sunlight" has no effect on it; rather, it risks blocking out the light to other messages.
A valid argument for not banning viewpoints is that it prevents accurate dissent from getting through, and results in the status quo drifting into being wrong because it cannot be critically re-evaluated. But in this case it has been evaluated often and thoroughly enough that we can be confident. They should nonetheless put a sunset date on the policy for future review.
Let me see now: You start your comment with an ad hominem attack on the author and then move to making an unsubstantiated claim that contradicts the experience of Every. Single. Online. Community.
I don't think you're contributing to this discussion, and in fact, your comment is an example of what drags discourse into the gutter: Emotional, personal attacks coupled with information-free claims contradicting the established body of knowledge in a field.
If I had the power, I'd mod your comment and all like it into oblivion without hesitation, along with being very clear to you and anyone asking why I would make that choice.
If I had the power, I'd mod your comment and all like it into oblivion without hesitation, along with being very clear to you and anyone asking why I would make that choice.
I hope that's sarcasm, otherwise you're simply reinforcing my point.
No, it isn't sarcasm. Online communities need moderation to thrive. If you allow people to insult each other at will, eventually you drive all the thoughtful folks away: We have better things to do than constantly point out Discussion 101 things like fallacies and abusive behaviour.
Unmoderated forums end up full of people who have a great deal of time on their hands and a large emotional attachment to arguing online. If that's your bag, you should hang out in such places. If it isn't you should try to avoid comments that come out swinging with insults.
I favour moderated forums, and I favour moderating away comments that are blatant examples of abuse. Your tastes may vary.
p.s. Normally I just downvote and move on, but since this discussion is actually about moderation, I thought that explaining myself was appropriate. But normally, I don;t engage in much of this kind of discussion, because it "feeds the trolls:" People with an emotional axe to grind thrive on arguing angrily about why they should be allowed to argue, angrily.
Have you actually read the article or only the headline? The main point the author makes is that a small but very vocal minority kept derailing any serious discussion which left the moderators no other choice.
Those poor helpless /r/science masses, unable to control theirselves when a controversial post is made. It's a good thing we have moderators to save us from ourselves. (Face it: People suck)
Your comment may be correct, but it may not be in line with the goal of the mods at r/science. If their goal is better discussion rather than predictable, emotional rabble-rousing, then removing the biggest obstacle to that end seems like the right move.
There are some people who simply disregard reason/evidence and rationalize their beliefs on emotion.
That's true, and the world will never be rid of them.
And that's probably a good thing, because every now and then, they might be right. I'm not saying that this is the case with global warming/climate change, but history is full of examples where a contrarian turned out to be correct.
Repressing speech because it is unpopular or simply wrong is ultimately counterproductive, because it establishes a precedent.
Climate change denial has been going on for 20 years. I, too, believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, but that runs into trouble when you have a democracy -- not everyone knows how to properly vet whether each side is articulating their point.
Regarding reddit, sometimes the internet just doesn't work that way. When the con positions become disruptive instead of debates (and the knowledgeable people tire of having their positions constantly attacked by the unknowledgeable,) you have to weigh banning against transparency.
As with global warming, though, the truth hasn't stopped a cottage industry of deniers from getting "he-said-she-said" style media coverage and lots of followers willing to ignore the science.
Codifying circle jerks is a dangerous precedent for a sub-reddit. Of course that assumes that the goal of the forum is fostering discussion and not just engaging in choir-preaching...
When the global warming scientists can actually use their theories to predict something, then I'll pay attention.
For now, the only thing they seem to predict is the number of government grants, conference invites, and headlines they'll get from their unproven, dire predictions.
In fairness, the default stance would be no change at all. I can't find any that said earth would get colder or stay the same. However, that query is hard to google for. Are you saying Hansen just got lucky? The paper is pretty accessible, i found a copy at nasa http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html
The reality is, there are a small vocal minority of people that will reject every climate change claim out of hand. There is no known standard that will satisfy those folks. They don't assign the probability as .0000000001, they assign it as zero. now and forever zero. That seems irrational to me, but maybe they know something i don't.
I dunno. Me personally, I'd put a high probability on climate changing, and a slightly lower probability on it being caused by humans. I'd put a low probability on us doing anything about it. I'll be dead before the big consequences kick in, so it really doesn't matter much to me. It's kind of ridiculous i'm wasting time commenting about it given my beliefs about any sort of change, but whatever. I'm inconsistent.
Nietzsche describes "der letzte Mensch" as the lowest form of human life. His scientific materialism is the most degrading, smallest illusion, worse than any religious dogma. The last man has regressed to the thoughts of what we used to call "beasts," that is, life which is concerned with, can only understand, biological sustenance. Even that may be overly generous, as beasts can be at least curious. His religion, such as it is, is survival, or, at the most, health.
He is not so much scientific as scientistic. Science, understood as a type of mathematical empiricism, is not metaphysical. Empirical rigor prevents the authentic scientist from making claims about the existence of God or the proper ends of human life -- or about science itself. When one's gaze turns from the empirically quantifiable to examine the scientific method itself, one has started doing philosophy. One cannot look through the microscope and look at the microscope at the same time.
The idea that science is a metaphysical system rather than a method for modeling the world mathematically is scientism. Scientism makes claims that are not susceptible to mathematical analysis or reproducible experiments; that is what distinguishes it from science. These claims include: the world as perceived by human senses is the primary or ultimate reality; science is the best way of understanding the world; God (the Hebraic, infinite God) does not exist; health (understood as reproductive fitness) is the primary object and standard of value of human life. These are all metaphysical or moral claims and as such do not describe objects in the world or physical matter that can be examined by the scientific method.
Scientism leads naturally to pseudo-science. If you believe in scientism, then you believe that "science" can provide answers to metaphysical and moral questions. If you believe that, then you believe things like <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131217210540.ht... are scientific, rather than pseudo-science. It is pseudo-science because it is based on beliefs concerning what is better as the end of life. Such beliefs are not susceptible to mathematical modeling and are therefore not part of science.
Pseudo-science leads to progressivist political ideologies. Karl Marx is merely the most infamous proponent of "scientific materialism," his term for a baroque and metaphysical religion. It is a religion, based on scientistic historical analysis, atheism, and economics as the valuation of human flourishing. Following the disastrous horrors of the Soviet and Maoist experiments, few today openly fly the Communist banner, but similar ideals persist in more subtle forms.
Progressivism, because it is inherently a metaphysical system based on mythological pseudo-science, views Christianity as infidels. As in Islam, the infidel is sometimes tolerated, sometimes more aggressively attacked. Militant atheism distinguishes itself from science by, again, making metaphysical claims about the nature of reality instead of mathematically modeling certain phenomena, and further by enacting legislation (or more thug-like vigilantism) enshrining its particular mythology (scientism). The infidel, as again in Islam, is not argued with but attacked in a jihad, whether through official legislation or "activism."
Why ban them? It's important to hear multiple opinions on the topic. If they are trolling or not adding anything to the discussion, then yes, ban them.
> It's important to hear multiple opinions on the topic.
Like evolution? It's important to hear that a God created everything, and directs the Universe?
Or like Earth sciences? It's important to hear that God created the world 6,000 years ago and all those scientists have got it wrong?
It's pretty clear why they were banned. It's not for presenting opposing views, but for aggressively dismissing real science without scientific evidence to support them.
> After some time interacting with the regular denier posters, it became clear that they could not or would not improve their demeanor. These problematic users were not the common “internet trolls” looking to have a little fun upsetting people. Such users are practically the norm on reddit. These people were true believers, blind to the fact that their arguments were hopelessly flawed, the result of cherry-picked data and conspiratorial thinking. They had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong. They were completely enamored by the emotionally charged and rhetoric-based arguments of pundits on talk radio and Fox News.
[...]
> Over and over, solid peer-reviewed science was insulted as corrupt, while blog posts from fossil-fuel-funded groups were cited as objective fact. Worst of all, they didn’t even get the irony of quoting oil-funded blogs that called university scientists biased.
Reddit has not banned anti-science denialists. A scientist run sub-reddit about science has banned anti-science denialists, after attempting to talk to them.
People interested in hearing the various view points of climate change scientists and campaigners and denialists could set up a sub-reddit.
Here's how it works. Any redditor create their own subreddit. Subs are self-moderated. If a redditor doesn't like the current science sub, then they can make their own. There's plenty of paranormal and conspiracy theory subs that coexist with /r/science. The admins don't ban anything, so it's not like the entire science subreddit could just disappear. If admins actually moderated subs, then I doubt reddit would have things like /r/braveryjerk. If you wanted to seriously debate climate change with deniers, there's a sub called /r/cmv for "change my view".
It's a science discussion subreddit. I think "your statements must be within a standard deviation of reality as measured" is not an unreasonable requirement for posting to a scientific discussion. It actually is quite nice to have, say, young earth creationists denied a chance to show their views when you are trying to have a discussion about reality.
What if reddit was run by people who were the skeptics? Then the science community would be banned.
No, they wouldn't. A skeptic can be reasoned with, a hardliner in skeptic's clothes isn't. Or, more specifically, a "climate skeptic" is not skeptical about climate research.
Reddit isn't run by the /r/science mods. If you want to create a subreddit dedicated to emotional vitriol on subjects which already have scientific consensus, there's an easy way to do that: http://www.reddit.com/subreddits/create
> Like evolution? It's important to hear that a God created everything, and directs the Universe?
If it makes people realize that the strongest critique against creationism is its lack of falsifiability, then yes.
At some point they might realize that evolution has the same defect which might lead to a much more interesting discussion on the subject of falsifiability as a requirement for scientific theories.
Evolution doesn't lack falsifiability. Evolutionary theories provide falsifiable predictions of future observations -- which (while many have resisted falsification) are, in fact, sometimes falsified, which is why the theories in the field, while much of the broad outline is similar, have evolved over the whole time that the field has existed.
> It's how evolution is supposed to work: a simple organism gets some random changes and becomes more complex.
Er, no, that's not how evolution is supposed to work.
There is nothing in evolutionary theory that indicates a necessary preference for increasing complexity.
If (and this is a premise outside the scope of evolution) life starts with the something very close to the simplest form which can be "alive", it is unsurprising and consistent with evolution for evolution to produce some forms which are much more complex, and for the average complexity to increase over time -- especially if its not constrained by an upper bound on viable complexity.
But you, for instance, start with a bag of zeroes, periodically randomly add or subtract 1 to each number in your bag and then throw out any that are less than zero, over time the highest number and the average number in your bag is going to increase -- the change process isn't biased, but the selection process is.
The existence of a fitness function does not explain the increase in complexity. The most successful life forms on this planet are the unicellular ones. Why would the selection process favor anything else?
> The existence of a fitness function does not explain the increase in complexity.
That would be an interesting rebuttal if I calimed that the existence of a fitness function explained the increase in complexity.
Since that's not what I said, it's just a non-sequitur.
What I said was that if you start with a collection of items all uniformly near one boundary and then vary the collection randomly rejecting things that fall outside of the boundary, both the maximum and mean distance from the boundary will increase over time, until and unless that behavior is constrained by a boundary on the other end.
(In the case of life, I'm talking about a strong, "outside of this you don't have anything that counts as life" boundary, not a fitness function in the evolutionary sense, which addresses the relative reproductive success among viable life forms.)
One believes in a god and believes that god created everything and drives the universe forward. That user is polite and calm, but mentions his god in many posts.
The other has the same beliefs, but angrily rejects the science and provides links to idiotic blog posts to "support" his position that the scientists are wrong.
The first hasn't been banned, the second has. At least, that's how I read the submission.
They are banned because it's the Science forum, and the scientific consensus is as much in favour of Global Warming as it is in favour of Special Relativity. The climate change deniers do nothing but add noise.
Now, politics is a different beast altogether. It has nothing to do with observable reality and everything with who you know or can get to float your boat. Anyone who does not believe this is advised to read Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses and then come back. Climate change deniers are playing politics. That, or they are being played at politics.
A key difference is that special relativity makes predictions that have been repeatedly tested.
> Climate change deniers ... are being played at politics
I wholeheartedly agree with this. And the same thing goes for the supporters as well. Once politics enters the landscape, it's there. It affects who gets considered a 'peer', which publications are considered 'objective', who gets funded, and scientists' standings at their employers.
One of the key tenets of science is that by repeatably checking predictions, we can put a damper on humans' standard tribal behavior. The harder these predictions are to check (in this case, due to timescale and noisefloor), the less science actually works. When the results are then repeated dogmatically instead of questioned skeptically, it starts to seem an awful lot like religion.
Just like the idea of "teach the controversy," giving legitimacy to ridiculous ideas gives the impression that either side is equally likely/valid. Really it just wastes people's time.
Really though, what have climate change deniers added to the discussion in the last 5 years? I'm all for entertaining multiple opinions on any topic but I don't think deniers are operating in good faith.
They'd likely ban someone who believes in a flat Earth, too. Climate deniers aren't interested in adding to the discussion beyond reposting the same debunked arguments over and over.
By definition there is one correct hypothethis(as far as scientific consensus is established) and infinite number of wrong hypothethis. If community provides an opportunity for its members to hear multiple opinions, correct hypothethis will be drowned in the deluge of wrong ones. Cognitive capacity is limited and gatekeepers sometimes are a good thing. Peer reviewed journals is one example of that.
Radiation from fukushima is about to destroy the world's oceans and the fake environmentalists are still whining about carbon. Science is truly in the service of the State. Anybody who uses the word "denier" to denigrate their political opponents is employing dishonest tactics that only a fool would find convincing.
If humans can change planetary climate accidentally, we can certainly do it intentionally with a smaller and more directed effort. And if we can "fix" Earth to be optimally friendly to Earth life, those efforts will translate to environments that are more hostile from the beginning.
I just wish that politics hadn't hijacked the science to turn it into a machine for moving money and influence around.