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On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change.
Nailed it. Well said. I would only add to #3 in a way similar to #10, in that STEM-only focuses are inappropriate but there are also many states (mostly Bible belt/ least educated states) where general science education in general (like sex education) is a fucking joke.
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Yeah, Stratos’ post matches up with my take on education here in the states as well. The increasing lack of emphasis on public education as a collective, inherent good is doing damage everywhere.
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On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 15:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 14:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 16 2019 13:51 Danglars wrote:On June 16 2019 11:31 Pangpootata wrote:
Since we're debating about debates, let us think about what the point of a debate is.
If one is a logical and fair-minded person, the purpose of a debate is to find truth or weigh value judgements. One would go into a debate with an open mind, and be willing to concede to superior points.
But of course in modern western-style democracy this is never going to happen. The optimal heuristic is "I am always correct and I going to keep arguing and never concede no matter what". It's the only way to get elected.
This behavior is true of politicians and true of most average people as well. What percentage of people whom you know always argue fairly?
Televised debates are held by networks for their own ratings, it's commercially motivated. Most people who watch debates have already made up their minds. They will watch it and then proceed to post on the internet about how their candidate is very good and the other one is very bad. Very few actually come in with an open mind.
Hence, the optimal strategy (for maximizing political capital) in a televised debate is to use it as a platform to drum up your own voter enthusiasm. Trump does this very well, he knows that logic doesn't work on most people and he can say anything he wants as long as it fulfills the purpose of getting his supporters emotionally charged up. Trump is actually a pretty skillful political operator, whether by intent or chance. I'm with you on your point about politicians and the political debates among nominees. I'm even a little optimistic with large fields in that political points and lines of disagreement spawn a host of news articles and provoke reading afterwards. I like the increase in exposure to counterarguments even if they're phrased in sound bites. My other point is in weighing value judgments. Like it or not, people will vigorously disagree on what law and society should value. They'll do it to the point where it appears to outside observers that they don't have an "open mind" and are unwilling to concede. The societal values disagreements only scratches the surface on that topic. The largest one is weighing freedom vs safety. Not all policy disagreements stem from big gaps in values, but sometimes the gulf between policies is so large that bridging it in a series of debates is unlikely. It might take over a dozen new individuals debating in some capacity over a period of many years. It's also going to look like somebody's arguing in bad faith, simply because one can't wrap their minds around any of the framework supporting the contrary idea. That relates directly to your point: politicians are better off assuming one conclusion from the priors and debating from that, for example, that increased government control and subsidization of the medical industry is the right direction for prices and availability. It's also a key feature of the American republic. What we can't agree on, we'll take to the ballot box. What most affects me will be decided by state and local, where several states may disagree and have totally different systems and be equally happy with the result. Aristotle pondered these questions thousands of years ago and yet here we are. I think the idea that we can have public debates/discussions where people change their minds based on reason and fact presupposes a population that doesn't exist. That's to say our democracy isn't very good at settling matters of fact in which people maintain false beliefs. Climate change is a pretty good example of that. I wouldn't call it a false belief. In fact, climate change is a good example of facts that are not falsifiable. Based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, we already know that there will be certain things that math or science can never prove conclusively to be true or false. Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy. There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing. The most reasonable argument I have read about climate change is the one Taleb makes in his book Antifragile. If there is uncertainty about the impact of our actions, but if there is a small chance it could be catastrophic, we should not do it at all. If I want to release a gas that might harm people, the burden of proof should be on me to proof that the gas is safe, not on other people to prove the gas is dangerous. This is an argument based on decision making under uncertainty, and not based on confidence in the correctness of models from "experts" that consume taxpayer money and produce poor predictions. Been so long since I've seen such a good critique that I just want to acquiesce in entirety to it. I think I will, and just agree. EDIT: Just add that I think we also agree that sort of critical decision making presupposes a population/system we don't currently have (but could)? Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time). Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'. The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely. The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"?
The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know.
I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history).
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On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change.
I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) at all but what really confuses me is
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system
That makes absolutely no sense to me? Can anyone explain this "grand conspiracy" as they imagine/interpreted it?
If no one can articulate it, can we retract it?
On June 17 2019 11:09 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2019 01:26 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 01:18 iamthedave wrote:On June 16 2019 15:50 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 15:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 14:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 16 2019 13:51 Danglars wrote:On June 16 2019 11:31 Pangpootata wrote:
Since we're debating about debates, let us think about what the point of a debate is.
If one is a logical and fair-minded person, the purpose of a debate is to find truth or weigh value judgements. One would go into a debate with an open mind, and be willing to concede to superior points.
But of course in modern western-style democracy this is never going to happen. The optimal heuristic is "I am always correct and I going to keep arguing and never concede no matter what". It's the only way to get elected.
This behavior is true of politicians and true of most average people as well. What percentage of people whom you know always argue fairly?
Televised debates are held by networks for their own ratings, it's commercially motivated. Most people who watch debates have already made up their minds. They will watch it and then proceed to post on the internet about how their candidate is very good and the other one is very bad. Very few actually come in with an open mind.
Hence, the optimal strategy (for maximizing political capital) in a televised debate is to use it as a platform to drum up your own voter enthusiasm. Trump does this very well, he knows that logic doesn't work on most people and he can say anything he wants as long as it fulfills the purpose of getting his supporters emotionally charged up. Trump is actually a pretty skillful political operator, whether by intent or chance. I'm with you on your point about politicians and the political debates among nominees. I'm even a little optimistic with large fields in that political points and lines of disagreement spawn a host of news articles and provoke reading afterwards. I like the increase in exposure to counterarguments even if they're phrased in sound bites. My other point is in weighing value judgments. Like it or not, people will vigorously disagree on what law and society should value. They'll do it to the point where it appears to outside observers that they don't have an "open mind" and are unwilling to concede. The societal values disagreements only scratches the surface on that topic. The largest one is weighing freedom vs safety. Not all policy disagreements stem from big gaps in values, but sometimes the gulf between policies is so large that bridging it in a series of debates is unlikely. It might take over a dozen new individuals debating in some capacity over a period of many years. It's also going to look like somebody's arguing in bad faith, simply because one can't wrap their minds around any of the framework supporting the contrary idea. That relates directly to your point: politicians are better off assuming one conclusion from the priors and debating from that, for example, that increased government control and subsidization of the medical industry is the right direction for prices and availability. It's also a key feature of the American republic. What we can't agree on, we'll take to the ballot box. What most affects me will be decided by state and local, where several states may disagree and have totally different systems and be equally happy with the result. Aristotle pondered these questions thousands of years ago and yet here we are. I think the idea that we can have public debates/discussions where people change their minds based on reason and fact presupposes a population that doesn't exist. That's to say our democracy isn't very good at settling matters of fact in which people maintain false beliefs. Climate change is a pretty good example of that. I wouldn't call it a false belief. In fact, climate change is a good example of facts that are not falsifiable. Based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, we already know that there will be certain things that math or science can never prove conclusively to be true or false. Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy. There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing. The most reasonable argument I have read about climate change is the one Taleb makes in his book Antifragile. If there is uncertainty about the impact of our actions, but if there is a small chance it could be catastrophic, we should not do it at all. If I want to release a gas that might harm people, the burden of proof should be on me to proof that the gas is safe, not on other people to prove the gas is dangerous. This is an argument based on decision making under uncertainty, and not based on confidence in the correctness of models from "experts" that consume taxpayer money and produce poor predictions. Been so long since I've seen such a good critique that I just want to acquiesce in entirety to it. I think I will, and just agree. EDIT: Just add that I think we also agree that sort of critical decision making presupposes a population/system we don't currently have (but could)? Yes I agree. The modern education system is designed to indoctrinate people with "facts" instead of teaching critical reasoning skills (probably has been like that since the beginning of time). Well if you think about it, from the beginning of time there really wasn't much of an education 'system'. You had 'clusters' of educated people educating others as best they could using the knowledge they'd acquired; it wasn't until relatively recently that humans invented a proper 'system'. The Greek system - since we're mentioning Aristotle and co - mostly involved a single teacher and classes of like ten rich kids, and even then the quality varied immensely. The situation today is because we've decided on a semi-arbitrary 'standard' of education that we want everyone to have. I don't believe the education system today is the worst; but it could definitely be better. With wild variation depending on which country you live in, of course. Just curious what you're referencing with "the quality varied immensely"? The Greeks - as far as we know - had no real concept of a curriculum, so it mostly came down to whatever your teacher thought you needed to know. I'm sure you can imagine the difference in quality of education (and content) that Therestones down the road and, say, Plato or Socrates would provide. Not saying either of them were employed as teachers per se but it wouldn't surprise me if they were (little details like that are mostly long lost to history).
I don't think it's a completely unreasonable assumption, I just thought you might be referencing something specific.
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We all know Trump's been thinking it from day 1. If we get there, the question has always been whether the institutions are strong enough to stop him.
I don't have a lot of faith in the current crop of Republicans doing anything other than bend over, especially if he wins the next election for them, but he should need more than just them on board. As a final backstop he also has a fair chance of dying of old age by the time he's looking at term 3.
It's a bit concerning that he felt confident enough to out and say it, but the spectre is not really anything new.
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On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?)
I would say that they're a huge obstacle when it comes to actually getting their kids to critically think and problem solve and not just believe a fact, especially when it comes to math education. Besides the fact that many parents don't reinforce the importance of learning at home, don't communicate with teachers, don't hold their kids accountable, and think that teachers are just glorified babysitters, plenty of parents are resistant to their children learning new and improved explanations and strategies for solving math problems (because it's different than how the parents- who suck at and hate math- learned it, and "different" automatically means "bad"... not realizing that if *they* learned math differently, then maybe *they* would be better at the subject or enjoy it more). The number of legitimate math problems and explanations I see circulating on social media, that are being criticized by idiotic adults who don't know math and don't know math education, is insane.
Sometimes I have parents who, from Day 1, insist that their child "can't do math" because their parents couldn't do math, so it's okay if they fail and don't try in my class. Like, you're already telling your child that it's okay not to give a shit about my subject? My job isn't hard enough as it is without you literally sabotaging me every day after school?
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On June 16 2019 23:51 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:
Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy.
There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing.
I'd usually avoid taking the bait from epistemology knights attempting to find a technicality that would deem science as unscientific but given the importance of this particular topic and the swathes of unnecessary confusion on the topic, here are the claims and why all of them are falsifiable: 1. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 absorb infrared radiation, trapping heat. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence such spectroscopic laboratory measurements showing otherwise. 2. Human activity is increasing the amount of GHG in the atmosphere. This can be falsified by measurements from the atmosphere showing GHG not to follow human trends in emissions OR by finding a different source accounting for more of the increase. 3. The amount of radiation leaving the Earth is decreasing. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence from satellites measuring infrared spectra which would not find drops in outgoing radiation at the wavelenghts at which GHG absorb energy. 4. The Earth is accumulating heat. This can be falsified by direct temperature overall measurements showing otherwise. 5. The GHG increase in the atmosphere is he primary cause of the accumulation of heat. This can be falsified by showing GHG energy absorption to be incapable of accounting for most of the heat increase OR by finding a larger source such as ingoing solar radiation. 6. Where GHG concentrations are decreasing (the stratosphere), temperature is decreasing as well. Again this can be falsified by direct measurements from satellites showing otherwise. The accuracy of climate models has no bearing whatsoever on GHG being the main culprit. In the same sense that the accuracy of a model predicting what traits species of animals will have in the future has no bearing whatsoever on selection being the main culprit of biological changes. Your take betrays a lack of understanding of Popper. AGW is not a hypothesis in his sense of the word, it is theory that encompasses a myriad of hypotheses, each of them falsifiable. The biggest mistake you make is confusing falsifiability with the feasibility of a litmus test. With this mistake, a heliocentric model in the 18th century would be unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. Whereas the different hypotheses encompassing a heliocentric model were entirely falsifiable by various things from shadows to existing mathematical knowledge at the time, despite not being able to go to space and falsify the theory as a whole in one swoop. To this day we are still testing and providing additional proof for some of Enstein's theories and various other well known accepted theories in a way that wasn't technologically possible at the time, but that doesn't mean that the proofs that could be done at the time weren't enough or scientific. The falsifiability attack on climate "science" relies on interpreting the scientific method in very much the same manner that a sovereign citizen interprets a constitution.
Yes of course GHG is a factor in the Earth's temperature. You can falsify that GHG affects temperature (which is what all 6 of your points are about), but you can't falsify exactly how much of Earth's temperature change is due to GHG. With so much multi-collinearity with other factors, interactive effects between them, and noise in temperature trends, there is no model or theory that can tell how much of Earth's increased variance in temperature is due to GHG instead of other anthropological factors.
The scientific method is to make a hypothesis and test it. In this case it would be to make a model and get good predictions with it on out-of-sample validation data. Climate modelling has wasted a lot of taxpayer money, but produced poor results.
My point is that the over reliance on the predictions of "experts" is dangerous to humanity. What is likely to kill us are not the pollutants that we already have theories of harmfulness about. The epistemic risk comes from the things we are releasing into the environment that we do not know are harmful yet.
At every stage of scientific history, we have realized that something we were doing in the past has been really harmful. It would be abject foolishness not to understand that the future will be likewise. The "experts" of the past are the fools of the present. The "experts" of the present are the fools of the future.
By pinning most of the blame on CO2 (which accounts only for PART of climate change), and claiming that fixing this one thing can save the Earth, leftist political propaganda is exposing us to other risks as well.
My argument is that we do not need to know or prove something is harmful to restrict the levels of it in the environment. By increasing levels of what we emit into the environment, we have a finite financial benefit for a possible extinction of humanity which is an infinite loss (think of a payoff matrix like Pascal's wager). The burden of proof should be on the people releasing anything into the environment to prove it is safe, not from other people to prove it is harmful.
Decision making under constraints of uncertainty is paramount. Danger comes from unwavering belief in models or theories and over reliance on forecasts from "experts". We do not need to know facts (some of which we can never confirm to be true or false) to make good decisions in life.
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On June 17 2019 19:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) I would say that they're a huge obstacle when it comes to actually getting their kids to critically think and problem solve and not just believe a fact, especially when it comes to math education. Besides the fact that many parents don't reinforce the importance of learning at home, don't communicate with teachers, don't hold their kids accountable, and think that teachers are just glorified babysitters, plenty of parents are resistant to their children learning new and improved explanations and strategies for solving math problems (because it's different than how the parents- who suck at and hate math- learned it, and "different" automatically means "bad"... not realizing that if *they* learned math differently, then maybe *they* would be better at the subject or enjoy it more). The number of legitimate math problems and explanations I see circulating on social media, that are being criticized by idiotic adults who don't know math and don't know math education, is insane. Sometimes I have parents who, from Day 1, insist that their child "can't do math" because their parents couldn't do math, so it's okay if they fail and don't try in my class. Like, you're already telling your child that it's okay not to give a shit about my subject? My job isn't hard enough as it is without you literally sabotaging me every day after school?
Yes, parents are outsourcing the role of educating children to teachers. Formal schooling can satisfy a certain part of education, but can never provide a complete education by itself.
Your point on learning new and improved explanations and strategies for solving math problems is important. That is exactly the difference between arithmetic and mathematics. Being good at arithmetic, and being able to solve problems like a calculator is not a very useful skill apart from carrying out simple daily life calculations (Grade 3 level arithmetic). Mathematics on the other hand is about building intuition and appreciation of mathematical beauty. The ability to look at problems in different ways and tackle them from different angles. Sadly, some parents (particularly east asian ones) just want their children to be good at completing examinations.
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On June 17 2019 19:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2019 11:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change. I'm not on board with putting so much blame on parents (maybe this is something that happens at the schools that teach critical thinking and aren't awful, like the ones most here seemed to attend?) I would say that they're a huge obstacle when it comes to actually getting their kids to critically think and problem solve and not just believe a fact, especially when it comes to math education. Besides the fact that many parents don't reinforce the importance of learning at home, don't communicate with teachers, don't hold their kids accountable, and think that teachers are just glorified babysitters, plenty of parents are resistant to their children learning new and improved explanations and strategies for solving math problems (because it's different than how the parents- who suck at and hate math- learned it, and "different" automatically means "bad"... not realizing that if *they* learned math differently, then maybe *they* would be better at the subject or enjoy it more). The number of legitimate math problems and explanations I see circulating on social media, that are being criticized by idiotic adults who don't know math and don't know math education, is insane. Sometimes I have parents who, from Day 1, insist that their child "can't do math" because their parents couldn't do math, so it's okay if they fail and don't try in my class. Like, you're already telling your child that it's okay not to give a shit about my subject? My job isn't hard enough as it is without you literally sabotaging me every day after school?
Thank you this is super helpful.
Basically I'm not saying that parents don't play a significant role (and do that stuff), but just like I don't blame an addict for being addicted, I don't blame parents for growing up in a society that left them ill prepared to raise children in the 21st century.
Society is more at fault for these parents than they are themselves, tbh I expand this thinking to include wealthier people than many of my comrades would probably sign on to as well. Not that I don't believe in "personal responsibility" but we're in far less control of our actions than a lot of us like to believe imo.
Pang mentioned a way that traditionally "good parents" also contribute to these problems and may be easier for people to see the societal component.
EDIT: -1 post lol. Why is that the first comment I've seen actually deleted?
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United States42283 Posts
Only admins can delete posts, as far as I know, and they very rarely do. I’m not sure why that “please delete” post managed it but that’s why there’s -1 new posts.
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On June 17 2019 23:15 JimmiC wrote:It is interesting that China is so against Cannabis, with them blaming North America for a very slight uptick in use in their country. Most of the people caught have been returning students or people who worked NA. I also thought it is a good little indication in life in China that they can do random spot checks on anyone at anytime and that they do it. Also, that when people talk about the archaic drug laws in the states and evil of the three strike policy (rightfully so) it is still nothing compared to the one time caught dealing Weed and death penalty in China. Kind of a good reminder that while the USA has lots of issues, it is a hell of a lot nicer to live in the US than China. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/17/asia/china-us-marijuana-smuggling-intl-hnk/index.html
I think the Opium wars might have left some scars there. There are also few benefits for a totalitarian state in allowing recreational drugs since it costs a lot of money for no productivity gain.
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On June 17 2019 23:20 Yurie wrote:
I think the Opium wars might have left some scars there. There are also few benefits for a totalitarian state in allowing recreational drugs since it costs a lot of money for no productivity gain.
Yeah, China definitely has some cultural issues left over from opium but N. Korea allows cannabis use so I'm not sure it's a totalitarian thing.
The US still has it's fair share of draconian drug laws though.
Life in prison for some pot plants isn't a lot better.
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On June 17 2019 20:35 Pangpootata wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2019 23:51 Dan HH wrote:On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:
Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy.
There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing.
I'd usually avoid taking the bait from epistemology knights attempting to find a technicality that would deem science as unscientific but given the importance of this particular topic and the swathes of unnecessary confusion on the topic, here are the claims and why all of them are falsifiable: 1. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 absorb infrared radiation, trapping heat. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence such spectroscopic laboratory measurements showing otherwise. 2. Human activity is increasing the amount of GHG in the atmosphere. This can be falsified by measurements from the atmosphere showing GHG not to follow human trends in emissions OR by finding a different source accounting for more of the increase. 3. The amount of radiation leaving the Earth is decreasing. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence from satellites measuring infrared spectra which would not find drops in outgoing radiation at the wavelenghts at which GHG absorb energy. 4. The Earth is accumulating heat. This can be falsified by direct temperature overall measurements showing otherwise. 5. The GHG increase in the atmosphere is he primary cause of the accumulation of heat. This can be falsified by showing GHG energy absorption to be incapable of accounting for most of the heat increase OR by finding a larger source such as ingoing solar radiation. 6. Where GHG concentrations are decreasing (the stratosphere), temperature is decreasing as well. Again this can be falsified by direct measurements from satellites showing otherwise. The accuracy of climate models has no bearing whatsoever on GHG being the main culprit. In the same sense that the accuracy of a model predicting what traits species of animals will have in the future has no bearing whatsoever on selection being the main culprit of biological changes. Your take betrays a lack of understanding of Popper. AGW is not a hypothesis in his sense of the word, it is theory that encompasses a myriad of hypotheses, each of them falsifiable. The biggest mistake you make is confusing falsifiability with the feasibility of a litmus test. With this mistake, a heliocentric model in the 18th century would be unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. Whereas the different hypotheses encompassing a heliocentric model were entirely falsifiable by various things from shadows to existing mathematical knowledge at the time, despite not being able to go to space and falsify the theory as a whole in one swoop. To this day we are still testing and providing additional proof for some of Enstein's theories and various other well known accepted theories in a way that wasn't technologically possible at the time, but that doesn't mean that the proofs that could be done at the time weren't enough or scientific. The falsifiability attack on climate "science" relies on interpreting the scientific method in very much the same manner that a sovereign citizen interprets a constitution. Yes of course GHG is a factor in the Earth's temperature. You can falsify that GHG affects temperature (which is what all 6 of your points are about), but you can't falsify exactly how much of Earth's temperature change is due to GHG. With so much multi-collinearity with other factors, interactive effects between them, and noise in temperature trends, there is no model or theory that can tell how much of Earth's increased variance in temperature is due to GHG instead of other anthropological factors. The scientific method is to make a hypothesis and test it. In this case it would be to make a model and get good predictions with it on out-of-sample validation data. Climate modelling has wasted a lot of taxpayer money, but produced poor results. My point is that the over reliance on the predictions of "experts" is dangerous to humanity. What is likely to kill us are not the pollutants that we already have theories of harmfulness about. The epistemic risk comes from the things we are releasing into the environment that we do not know are harmful yet. At every stage of scientific history, we have realized that something we were doing in the past has been really harmful. It would be abject foolishness not to understand that the future will be likewise. The "experts" of the past are the fools of the present. The "experts" of the present are the fools of the future. By pinning most of the blame on CO2 (which accounts only for PART of climate change), and claiming that fixing this one thing can save the Earth, leftist political propaganda is exposing us to other risks as well. My argument is that we do not need to know or prove something is harmful to restrict the levels of it in the environment. By increasing levels of what we emit into the environment, we have a finite financial benefit for a possible extinction of humanity which is an infinite loss (think of a payoff matrix like Pascal's wager). The burden of proof should be on the people releasing anything into the environment to prove it is safe, not from other people to prove it is harmful. Decision making under constraints of uncertainty is paramount. Danger comes from unwavering belief in models or theories and over reliance on forecasts from "experts". We do not need to know facts (some of which we can never confirm to be true or false) to make good decisions in life.
Please don't quote people if you're going to ignore everything in that quote and keep preaching. Yes you can falsify how much of the increase in temperature is due to GHG by finding the proverbial black swan that accounts for more of it than the clearly observable increase in ppm of the GHGs released by human activity.
Yes the scientific method is (partly) to make a hypothesis and test it. The temperature will by x by x date is not a necessary hypothesis to climate science. I have listed you most of the key hypotheses on AGW and how they are tested and how they can be falsified with available tools.
The over reliance on predictions of experts has been entirely yours in this discussion. Climate models do not pretend to show anything more than long term trends and don't need to. Both I and Kwark have given you examples of theories whose validity not only does not rely on pinpoint predictions, but where it is absurd to expect one. It would indeed be nice to be able to simulate the universe or the Earth but not being able to do so doesn't mean we can't know anything about them.
No one is claiming that eliminating CO2 emissions is going to fix or cool the Earth, it's merely going to reduce the damage. If we cease releasing greenhouse gases (that we have control over) the temperature is still going to increase until it finds a new equilibrium, it will simply find it sooner and at a lower temperature than if we don't.
Just like how Pascal's wager is one only the choir finds persuasive, telling people that think climate change is propaganda to put convenience aside just in case is not going to cut it. No wager is necessary when the base statement is irrefutable: we've been moving gases that are good at trapping energy from underground, and precisely because they are good at trapping energy, into the atmosphere where they trap energy from leaving the Earth.
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On June 18 2019 00:49 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2019 20:35 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 23:51 Dan HH wrote:On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:
Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy.
There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing.
I'd usually avoid taking the bait from epistemology knights attempting to find a technicality that would deem science as unscientific but given the importance of this particular topic and the swathes of unnecessary confusion on the topic, here are the claims and why all of them are falsifiable: 1. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 absorb infrared radiation, trapping heat. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence such spectroscopic laboratory measurements showing otherwise. 2. Human activity is increasing the amount of GHG in the atmosphere. This can be falsified by measurements from the atmosphere showing GHG not to follow human trends in emissions OR by finding a different source accounting for more of the increase. 3. The amount of radiation leaving the Earth is decreasing. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence from satellites measuring infrared spectra which would not find drops in outgoing radiation at the wavelenghts at which GHG absorb energy. 4. The Earth is accumulating heat. This can be falsified by direct temperature overall measurements showing otherwise. 5. The GHG increase in the atmosphere is he primary cause of the accumulation of heat. This can be falsified by showing GHG energy absorption to be incapable of accounting for most of the heat increase OR by finding a larger source such as ingoing solar radiation. 6. Where GHG concentrations are decreasing (the stratosphere), temperature is decreasing as well. Again this can be falsified by direct measurements from satellites showing otherwise. The accuracy of climate models has no bearing whatsoever on GHG being the main culprit. In the same sense that the accuracy of a model predicting what traits species of animals will have in the future has no bearing whatsoever on selection being the main culprit of biological changes. Your take betrays a lack of understanding of Popper. AGW is not a hypothesis in his sense of the word, it is theory that encompasses a myriad of hypotheses, each of them falsifiable. The biggest mistake you make is confusing falsifiability with the feasibility of a litmus test. With this mistake, a heliocentric model in the 18th century would be unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. Whereas the different hypotheses encompassing a heliocentric model were entirely falsifiable by various things from shadows to existing mathematical knowledge at the time, despite not being able to go to space and falsify the theory as a whole in one swoop. To this day we are still testing and providing additional proof for some of Enstein's theories and various other well known accepted theories in a way that wasn't technologically possible at the time, but that doesn't mean that the proofs that could be done at the time weren't enough or scientific. The falsifiability attack on climate "science" relies on interpreting the scientific method in very much the same manner that a sovereign citizen interprets a constitution. Yes of course GHG is a factor in the Earth's temperature. You can falsify that GHG affects temperature (which is what all 6 of your points are about), but you can't falsify exactly how much of Earth's temperature change is due to GHG. With so much multi-collinearity with other factors, interactive effects between them, and noise in temperature trends, there is no model or theory that can tell how much of Earth's increased variance in temperature is due to GHG instead of other anthropological factors. The scientific method is to make a hypothesis and test it. In this case it would be to make a model and get good predictions with it on out-of-sample validation data. Climate modelling has wasted a lot of taxpayer money, but produced poor results. My point is that the over reliance on the predictions of "experts" is dangerous to humanity. What is likely to kill us are not the pollutants that we already have theories of harmfulness about. The epistemic risk comes from the things we are releasing into the environment that we do not know are harmful yet. At every stage of scientific history, we have realized that something we were doing in the past has been really harmful. It would be abject foolishness not to understand that the future will be likewise. The "experts" of the past are the fools of the present. The "experts" of the present are the fools of the future. By pinning most of the blame on CO2 (which accounts only for PART of climate change), and claiming that fixing this one thing can save the Earth, leftist political propaganda is exposing us to other risks as well. My argument is that we do not need to know or prove something is harmful to restrict the levels of it in the environment. By increasing levels of what we emit into the environment, we have a finite financial benefit for a possible extinction of humanity which is an infinite loss (think of a payoff matrix like Pascal's wager). The burden of proof should be on the people releasing anything into the environment to prove it is safe, not from other people to prove it is harmful. Decision making under constraints of uncertainty is paramount. Danger comes from unwavering belief in models or theories and over reliance on forecasts from "experts". We do not need to know facts (some of which we can never confirm to be true or false) to make good decisions in life. Please don't quote people if you're going to ignore everything in that quote and keep preaching. Yes you can falsify how much of the increase in temperature is due to GHG by finding the proverbial black swan that accounts for more of it than the clearly observable increase in ppm of the GHGs released by human activity. Yes the scientific method is (partly) to make a hypothesis and test it. The temperature will by x by x date is not a necessary hypothesis to climate science. I have listed you most of the key hypotheses on AGW and how they are tested and how they can be falsified with available tools. The over reliance on predictions of experts has been entirely yours in this discussion. Climate models do not pretend to show anything more than long term trends and don't need to. Both I and Kwark have given you examples of theories whose validity not only does not rely on pinpoint predictions, but where it is absurd to expect one. It would indeed be nice to be able to simulate the universe or the Earth but not being able to do so doesn't mean we can't know anything about them. No one is claiming that eliminating CO2 emissions is going to fix or cool the Earth, it's merely going to reduce the damage. If we cease releasing greenhouse gases (that we have control over) the temperature is still going to increase until it finds a new equilibrium, it will simply find it sooner and at a lower temperature than if we don't. Just like how Pascal's wager is one only the choir finds persuasive, telling people that think climate change is propaganda to put convenience aside just in case is not going to cut it. No wager is necessary when the base statement is irrefutable: we've been moving gases that are good at trapping energy from underground, and precisely because they are good at trapping energy, into the atmosphere where they trap energy from leaving the Earth.
The main point is that our confidence level about the exact effects of CO2 is immaterial to climate policy.
If you don't really get what I'm saying, let me spell it out in simple terms.
Left wing climate argument -> Let's regulate things that our experts have theories about
Right wing climate argument -> Let's not regulate because we don't have enough proof
What I am saying -> We don't need proof or theory to regulate things we pump into the environment. The burden of proof should be on the people releasing things into the environment.
If you see a puddle of water on the floor, do you drink it unless you have proof it is harmful? Or do you not drink it until you have proof it is safe?
There are many things that "experts" don't know about. Every couple of years we find out something we have been releasing in the past is harmful, and try to regulate it. Something we don't know is harmful right now is going to kill us in future. Releasing too much CO2 in the atmosphere is bad, but there are many other things we don't know about that might be worse. People need to stop focusing specifically on the theories about CO2, and start creating a general heuristic to protect society against all existential threats.
If you wait 40 years and look at how much the scientific conversation about climate change has changed then, you will realize I am right. Actually, just look 40 years into the past and see how much the scientific conversation about climate change has changed already.
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On June 18 2019 01:22 Pangpootata wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2019 00:49 Dan HH wrote:On June 17 2019 20:35 Pangpootata wrote:On June 16 2019 23:51 Dan HH wrote:On June 16 2019 15:22 Pangpootata wrote:
Anyone with basic statistical or data science ability can see that all existing climate models have pretty bad prediction R2 scores when going forward on real validation data (not past data it has been fitted on). This is due to the multi-collinearity of so many different human and environmental factors, and the large amount of noise in environmental data. Mechanistic models of the greenhouse effect fare even worse. So when "scientists" push climate theories that pin all the blame on greenhouse gases, they aren't following the scientific method at all, which is to make a model based on their hypothesis and use future data to confirm the model accuracy.
There is no reason or fact in the debate about climate change. We have uncertainty about exactly how different human actions affect the climate. The left pushes climate theories based on Baconian inductivism instead of Popperian falsification, pins most of the blame on CO2, and demonizes everyone who disagrees with them. The right says they lack evidence and it can't be proven, so we should continue what we have been doing.
I'd usually avoid taking the bait from epistemology knights attempting to find a technicality that would deem science as unscientific but given the importance of this particular topic and the swathes of unnecessary confusion on the topic, here are the claims and why all of them are falsifiable: 1. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 absorb infrared radiation, trapping heat. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence such spectroscopic laboratory measurements showing otherwise. 2. Human activity is increasing the amount of GHG in the atmosphere. This can be falsified by measurements from the atmosphere showing GHG not to follow human trends in emissions OR by finding a different source accounting for more of the increase. 3. The amount of radiation leaving the Earth is decreasing. This can be falsified by direct experimental evidence from satellites measuring infrared spectra which would not find drops in outgoing radiation at the wavelenghts at which GHG absorb energy. 4. The Earth is accumulating heat. This can be falsified by direct temperature overall measurements showing otherwise. 5. The GHG increase in the atmosphere is he primary cause of the accumulation of heat. This can be falsified by showing GHG energy absorption to be incapable of accounting for most of the heat increase OR by finding a larger source such as ingoing solar radiation. 6. Where GHG concentrations are decreasing (the stratosphere), temperature is decreasing as well. Again this can be falsified by direct measurements from satellites showing otherwise. The accuracy of climate models has no bearing whatsoever on GHG being the main culprit. In the same sense that the accuracy of a model predicting what traits species of animals will have in the future has no bearing whatsoever on selection being the main culprit of biological changes. Your take betrays a lack of understanding of Popper. AGW is not a hypothesis in his sense of the word, it is theory that encompasses a myriad of hypotheses, each of them falsifiable. The biggest mistake you make is confusing falsifiability with the feasibility of a litmus test. With this mistake, a heliocentric model in the 18th century would be unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. Whereas the different hypotheses encompassing a heliocentric model were entirely falsifiable by various things from shadows to existing mathematical knowledge at the time, despite not being able to go to space and falsify the theory as a whole in one swoop. To this day we are still testing and providing additional proof for some of Enstein's theories and various other well known accepted theories in a way that wasn't technologically possible at the time, but that doesn't mean that the proofs that could be done at the time weren't enough or scientific. The falsifiability attack on climate "science" relies on interpreting the scientific method in very much the same manner that a sovereign citizen interprets a constitution. Yes of course GHG is a factor in the Earth's temperature. You can falsify that GHG affects temperature (which is what all 6 of your points are about), but you can't falsify exactly how much of Earth's temperature change is due to GHG. With so much multi-collinearity with other factors, interactive effects between them, and noise in temperature trends, there is no model or theory that can tell how much of Earth's increased variance in temperature is due to GHG instead of other anthropological factors. The scientific method is to make a hypothesis and test it. In this case it would be to make a model and get good predictions with it on out-of-sample validation data. Climate modelling has wasted a lot of taxpayer money, but produced poor results. My point is that the over reliance on the predictions of "experts" is dangerous to humanity. What is likely to kill us are not the pollutants that we already have theories of harmfulness about. The epistemic risk comes from the things we are releasing into the environment that we do not know are harmful yet. At every stage of scientific history, we have realized that something we were doing in the past has been really harmful. It would be abject foolishness not to understand that the future will be likewise. The "experts" of the past are the fools of the present. The "experts" of the present are the fools of the future. By pinning most of the blame on CO2 (which accounts only for PART of climate change), and claiming that fixing this one thing can save the Earth, leftist political propaganda is exposing us to other risks as well. My argument is that we do not need to know or prove something is harmful to restrict the levels of it in the environment. By increasing levels of what we emit into the environment, we have a finite financial benefit for a possible extinction of humanity which is an infinite loss (think of a payoff matrix like Pascal's wager). The burden of proof should be on the people releasing anything into the environment to prove it is safe, not from other people to prove it is harmful. Decision making under constraints of uncertainty is paramount. Danger comes from unwavering belief in models or theories and over reliance on forecasts from "experts". We do not need to know facts (some of which we can never confirm to be true or false) to make good decisions in life. Please don't quote people if you're going to ignore everything in that quote and keep preaching. Yes you can falsify how much of the increase in temperature is due to GHG by finding the proverbial black swan that accounts for more of it than the clearly observable increase in ppm of the GHGs released by human activity. Yes the scientific method is (partly) to make a hypothesis and test it. The temperature will by x by x date is not a necessary hypothesis to climate science. I have listed you most of the key hypotheses on AGW and how they are tested and how they can be falsified with available tools. The over reliance on predictions of experts has been entirely yours in this discussion. Climate models do not pretend to show anything more than long term trends and don't need to. Both I and Kwark have given you examples of theories whose validity not only does not rely on pinpoint predictions, but where it is absurd to expect one. It would indeed be nice to be able to simulate the universe or the Earth but not being able to do so doesn't mean we can't know anything about them. No one is claiming that eliminating CO2 emissions is going to fix or cool the Earth, it's merely going to reduce the damage. If we cease releasing greenhouse gases (that we have control over) the temperature is still going to increase until it finds a new equilibrium, it will simply find it sooner and at a lower temperature than if we don't. Just like how Pascal's wager is one only the choir finds persuasive, telling people that think climate change is propaganda to put convenience aside just in case is not going to cut it. No wager is necessary when the base statement is irrefutable: we've been moving gases that are good at trapping energy from underground, and precisely because they are good at trapping energy, into the atmosphere where they trap energy from leaving the Earth. The main point is that our confidence level about the exact effects of CO2 is immaterial to climate policy. If you don't really get what I'm saying, let me spell it out in simple terms. Left wing climate argument -> Let's regulate things that our experts have theories about Right wing climate argument -> Let's not regulate because we don't have enough proof What I am saying -> We don't need proof or theory to regulate things we pump into the environment. The burden of proof should be on the people releasing things into the environment. If you see a puddle of water on the floor, do you drink it unless you have proof it is harmful? Or do you not drink it until you have proof it is safe? There are many things that "experts" don't know about. Every couple of years we find out something we have been releasing in the past is harmful, and try to regulate it. Something we don't know is harmful right now is going to kill us in future. Releasing too much CO2 in the atmosphere is bad, but there are many other things we don't know about that might be worse. People need to stop focusing specifically on the theories about CO2, and start creating a general heuristic to protect society against all existential threats. If you wait 40 years and look at how much the scientific conversation about climate change has changed then, you will realize I am right. Actually, just look 40 years into the past and see how much the scientific conversation about climate change has changed already.
That's how it already works. The people 'releasing things into the environment' say they've analyzed the substance in question and found it safe. See agricultural companies on roundup or oil companies on CO2 or construction companies on asbestos. Now what? How do you review their purported findings if not through observation, measurement, experiment, formulation, testing? By ""experts"" of course, if you want non experts to do it you have to teach them how to and sadly they become experts in the process, losing their credibility to you.
Now if you can't get people to agree on restricting substances that are proven to have a negative effect on people's health, how do you get them to agree on restricting substances by default until their are proven otherwise? Especially since no one has the credibility to prove it either way in the eyes of the public.
On this particular topic "Let's not regulate because we don't have enough proof" is not a real position today. It was in the past, but now even Shell has PR initiatives about how to offset CO2 emissions. The position is more akin to "Let's not regulate because we don't know if we can make a dent and the guy next door won't do it"
If your only point were that you are an enlightened middleman smarter than the left and right I wouldn't have answered. I answered your more tangible point that AGW is unfalsifiable and unscientific by showing you how each of the hypotheses that it relies on is falsifiable with available tools and how you misrepresented and misapplied the concept of falsifiability. You've ignored all this.
Edit: I forgot about the puddle, whether I'd drink from it depends on how thirsty I am and whether there are presumably safer sources around. This doesn't quite work on energy, pesticides, etc largely due to the water analogy not requiring any sacrifices to not drink from the puddle without auxiliary conditions.
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"The" climate models are actually very apt at reconstructing the past.
It's questionable to pronounce them wasted taxpayer's money.
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On June 17 2019 07:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:
On education, I think why ZeroCool is getting confused is because "indoctrinate" is a very poor choice of wording.
GH has was basically amounts to a grand conspiracy about our education system, but a simpler explanation tends to be a much more fitting one.
The education system is simply built to feed the capitalist system. In other words, it's made to maximize working and earning potential. It doesn't specifically "indocrinate" or "brainwash" people, it just maximizes what it values. This is why you see such variability in our education system; I'm in the same boat as ZeroCool, where I received a great education from the public schools in my home town, having quality, passionate teachers that pushed me to think critically and do better. I then went to three different colleges and had the same experiences there, two of which were public.
You see this valuing or devaluing of educational aspects all the time with more conservative and less educated parents; they send their kids to school and want them learning something "relevant". They send them to college and want them to get a degree in "something that makes money". These people see school as little more than a fancy version of technical training where education pushes someone directly down a track to a better paying job.
What the vast majority of people don't get is that this isn't the point of education. Fully realized education is meant to increase critical thinking skills and properly inform a populace so that they can be quality, contributing citizens beyond the ability to work.
There are a slew of problems with our education system, but they come from every part of the political spectrum.
1) Teachers clearly don't get paid enough. There's also way too much administration, just like in most sectors of the workforce nowadays.
2) There is too much standardized testing.
3) There is way too much focus on STEM topics.
4) Class sizes are too big and students are basically on an assembly line, forced to memorize stuff and dance like monkeys in the education system.
5) Parents take basically no responsibility for their children's work ethic or ability to behave in schools.
6) Students are then treated like special snowflakes and excuses like "we all learn differently" are frequently used to justify a student that has no concept of a work ethic due to parents doing nothing but spoiling them constantly.
7) Disparities in funding are enormous.
8) Heavily institutionalized racism still exists in our education system.
9) People complain about their kids doing "useless" stuff (e.g. calculus, advanced science classes, more English classes, etc.) and wanting them to do "relevant" stuff like learning how to do their taxes etc. Never mind the fact that the very generation that removed those classes from our schools are now the ones complaining, and the reason our kids do so much extra classes is because they suck ass at math and reading to begin with.
10) Sex Ed is a fucking joke in this country.
Basically every facet of our educational system has massive problems with it and the whole thing is rotten. A huge part of the blame falls on parents for having 1) no concept of responsibility for how their child turns out and 2) a disgusting sense of "ownership" of a child, seeing it as property and not realizing that a child has a fundamental right to a certain quality of education. The only way to fix this would be a colossal cultural change on par with accepting universal healthcare or doing something seriously meaningful about climate change.
Looks like the discussion on this died down a bit but I had one thing to add - My experience with the food that was served all throughout my school years was terribly unhealthy, and I actually went to a good one that did well in all the areas called out above. It was a constant offering of chicken nuggets, tator tots, pizza, you name it. It is amazing that I made it out without a serious weight problem, and I would venture a guess that our school systems are a major contributor to the obesity problem that many adults fight later on in their life.
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EPT
