As the Borg said to that Canadian fella:
You will be a simile, eh Ted?
Just wanted to chime in and say I’m one more of the supportive masses. I’m not even unwashed.
I’m not normally a fan of the +1 type post, but I’m pretty sure you get a ton of them in spirit.
You may want to look up what an Appeal to the Masses is. Then look back at your statement.
I do appreciate the fine point you attempt to place on this (and I really mean that), but I fear it’s not fine enough. If you look, you may notice that not one of your “cites” shows me claiming that a position I hold is correct because many people hold it. Nor do any of them even show me claiming that anyone else other than I holds my opinion. Though, at least some some others do and have stated so in this very thread. But I never sought to use that as proof of the veracity of my claim. So, not only did I not Appeal to the Masses, I didn’t appeal to even another person.
The point is that GIGO didn’t “Appeal to the Masses” any more than you did: not in the sense of committing a logical fallacy, which is what you were attempting to mock him for allegedly doing.
He wasn’t fallaciously asserting that some factual statement was justified on the basis of how many people believed it (which is what an “Appeal to the Masses” or argumentum ad populum fallacy is). Rather, he was responding to your claim about how his posting style “made him look”, i.e., according to you, “like an ass”. That’s a statement about a matter of perception rather than fact, and the impact of such statements does depend on how many people believe them.
After all, if you were sincerely convinced that you were the only person who thought that GIGO was coming across as an ass, you wouldn’t have even bothered to mention it to him, because Og knows he doesn’t care what you individually think about him. No, on the contrary, you were trying to make him worry that maybe his fellow posters in general thought he was coming across as an ass because of his aggressive posting style.
So GIGO’s response to the effect that plenty of posters have made it clear that they disagree with you on that claim was perfectly reasonable and not illogical. Consequently, IMHO, you were out of line to try to make fun of him for it.
The point is that those on both sides have financial interests in being ‘correct’. That doesn’t mean that the pro climate change people are wrong, btw.
And the fossil fuel companies aren’t going to lose no matter what until someone comes up with a viable alternative.
I think this is something of a false equivalence (someone please correct my terminology if it’s off).
I earn a very comfortable living, a good chunk of which comes from work in climate change policy. Others earn all of their livelihood from climate change activities. But that does not mean I or most of us have a vested interest in being ‘correct’. If things were different, the balance of clients or nature of work would shift to subjects that require similar skill sets but differ in subject.
Furthermore (and perhaps most important to my point), working for the private sector–particularly in the realm of denialism–would be much more lucrative. Some of the offers that have come in are ludicrously more lucrative. Note too that I am probably a bit outside the mean. Climate science and policy is not a field to be pursued for its salary bracket. From a strictly financial perspective, the private sector would be the better choice in most cases.
The extent to which it could be said that I (and most people working in the field) have a vested interest in being correct is not so much with the overall correctness of the theory, but that the work product, the analysis and conclusions presented, hold up to analytic rigor; that my work itself is correct.
In contrast, there is tremendous financial reward in obfuscation and delay in action. Large conglomerates and industries, acting solely as profit-maximizing, rational institutions face enormous incentives to create a climate (heh) that fosters public policy inaction.
The vast disparity in the nature and scale of financial incentives makes the quoted comparison somewhat farcical (with, despite being in the pit, no disparagement intended or directed at Uzi).
Note that this is a generality, but one that holds for the vast majority of cases. For example, there are corporations with outlooks that are broader than profit maximization, and there are cottage industries that stand to reap enormous rewards if their technology is adopted. These are, however, outliers in the overall scheme of things.
That’s not me, and GIGO will back me up on this. Back when he did predict warming over some estimated time, I didn’t call him arrogant or dishonest; I was simply delighted by the falsifiable prediction. When he later moved the goalposts for a new and different falsifiable prediction, I was equally delighted – but were he to now switch back to predicting warming rather than saying that either warming or cooling or a mere plateau would be consistent with his predictions, I’d remain delighted.
I’m delighted by falsifiable predictions, is all.
Again, though, I don’t dislike his explanation; I adore it. Why on earth would I try to tear down an explanation in which cooling or warming or neither would be entirely consistent with his predictions? I adored his previous approach, which predicted warming; I adore his current one, which doesn’t; far from damned if you do and damned if you don’t, I’ve been consistently delighted with both. I’m not trying to fool anyone; I’m trying to express my praise for a position I happen to share.
The scale is not relevant. Some people will benefit and as such a healthy skepticism should be adopted. Not all people on the opposing side are evil, nor is everyone on the other in it just for altruistic purposes. Of course, the older industries are going to lobby for their position. It is understandable given that most politicians are just looking for ways to tax them more rather than actually do anything about fixing the climate.
Personally, I don’t doubt for a second that man has affected the climate. How can we not? I tend to argue on what we should do about it.
So, what are we to believe here, Waldo? If, as you claim, global warming fails to meet scientific standards in terms of falsifiability and prediction, then you offer a predicament. Either you are wrong, or a growing consensus of scientists are wrong. Were all those scientists asleep in the class where they explained this whole crucial “falsifiability” criteria? How is it that they don’t know what you know?
Do you deny such a growing acceptance exists amongst scientists? Or do you assert that they don’t know what they are talking about, but you do? Perhaps I missed the part where you offer your own scientific credentials, have you any?
But I don’t claim it fails to meet scientific standards in terms of falsifiability and prediction, and thus don’t know what the heck you have in mind here; I’m at a loss as to how to reply to the rest, since you’re right off the rails right at the start.
Yes it is. If the money, rather than the truth, is what matters (which is the prerequisite to this discussion, for all intents and purposes), then the scale damn well does matter.
(emphasis mine)
Amongst other quotes asserting the essential importance of falsifiability. Are the scientists who are part of the concensus dishonest, then? Or do they simply not have your grasp on the issue?
Then, in conjunction with your truly incessant badgering on the topic, I regard this as an admission of trolling. Fucking knock it off. elucidator pegged this one (I understand that he is in to that sort of thing), and your dodge is fail.
Also, +1 to GIGO, and -1 to Dallas Jones for his sad admission that rather than engaging in a rational process of evaluating relevant information in order to reach a conclusion, as one hopes a fully functional adult might do, he makes important decisions to spite anonymous people on the internet.
IMHO it is, and there is support for that.
When one looks carefully at where, for example, the myth that all scientists predicted in the 70s that an ice age was coming, it came from the popular press, and it was the one that took advertisements like this one from ENCO:
Irony by the ton!
The point here is that in reality most scientists reported that warming was coming, and it was going to be thanks to our global warming gas emmissions, when one looks carefully at one of the original pieces on Time magazine that reported that myth, one encounters weasel words and equivocation from the writer to make it seem that “Climatological Cassandras” warned about an impending ice age while not telling the reader who those Cassandras were!
The main point here? After also looking at how the corporate press behaves, it is not a stretch to think that the popular press was influenced by the might of the sponsors, better to report the myth than the reality that scientists were actually telling us that the cooling of then was a temporary thing; indeed, scientists have less power to spread the word so it is really naive to minimize the magnitude of the efforts coming from the powerful fossil fuel industry.
With a shout-out to the OP, you’re taking that out of context.
GIGO originally made a falsifiable prediction which called for warming; cooling, or a plateau, would have been inconsistent with it. He later moved the goalposts to make a different falsifiable prediction: a plateau would be consistent with it, a considerable amount of cooling would be consistent with it – but it’s nevertheless still just as falsifiable, and in that respect delights me as much as the original.
The problem is, he’s no longer making a falsifiable prediction that the globe will get warmer; he’s now making a falsifiable prediction that the globe might get a bit cooler, or a bit warmer, or perhaps split the difference right down the middle by neither warming nor cooling.
So while I believe the latter prediction is falsifiable – and to that extent find it delightful – I take issue with the fact that it’s supposedly a prediction of “warming”. It’s a prediction that the world might get cooler, or might simply level off temperature-wise; either result would be entirely consistent with GIGO’s falsifiable prediction.
You are really dense.
Already on the cite that shows the “steps” of the cycles it is clear that they are getting warmer, in essence when one looks at the overall picture the warming trend is there, this is one of the reasons why the independent statisticians told us that it is dishonest to use the “cooling” or “pause” in those cycles to claim that it is not warming.
But then again, I already know that you are just a troll, the clarification here is just for others.
Yes, but your latest falsifiable prediction – unless you’d care to name a new one? – wouldn’t be falsified even if the world never gets any warmer from this day forward; it could even get a good deal cooler, without ever warming back up to present levels, and your prediction would remain unfalsified.
If no further “steps” of cycles ever materialize, and the world cools off, it’d be entirely consistent with your falsifiable prediction.
I don’t care why you clarify. I merely care that you clarify. You’ve clarified a prediction that’s not inconsistent with the world cooling off and never again reaching current temperature levels; it makes no difference to me who you spell it out for, so long as you keep making it plain.
Does anyone have Gobbledygook to English translation software?
It’s as if I said “That’s not a red horse” and you replied “Ah-HA! You said it’s not red!” You focused on the wrong part, and I corrected you.