Science by democracy doesn’t work

https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/science-by-democracy-doesnt-work-ea74d160daa4

by Red_Tarsius • 11 years ago

72 62 11 years ago

fapjacks2• 11 years ago

This person doesn't get it. The vote was introduced as a means of identifying with a single vote who is a climate change denier and who is not. There is no scientific consensus attempted here. It's just a clever way of getting a solid, no-frills yes or no out of our elected officials.

aswanson2• 11 years ago

Climate change is a funny topic. I don't see the populace or scientifically illiterate senators (read that as James Inhofe of Oklahoma) weighing in on the standard model of physics, proteomics, or the results/implications of steroid use...but when it comes to anthropogenic warming...everybody has an unequivocal answer. Those most certain seem to be of the political stripe that had the certainty that Iraq had wmd and posed an existential threat to human existence. The scary thing about these folk is that they are so convinced they are right that they are able to convince the people who look at things probabilistically that they are ABSOLUTELY right. Because economics.

guscost• 11 years ago

In fairness, you don't see politicians arguing for energy taxes and subsidies by saying that the standard model indicates a global catastrophe will happen otherwise.

BerislavLopac• 11 years ago

There is actually a term for this phenomenon: bikeshedding.

tjradcliffe2• 11 years ago

Climate change is a funny topic in part because some elements on the far Left (represented by Naomi Klein, for example) want to use it as a lever to justify the kind of radical social engineering that failed so spectacularly and murderously and repeatedly throughout the 20th century, and the far Right have decided that to fight the politics they have to fight the science.

This has resulted in a situation where the Left, who abandoned science decades ago, pretend to care about it, while the Right--which has long had an ambivalent relationship with reality--has decided to go full-post-modern and construe all facts as pure social constructs, which is exactly what the Left has been saying for a long time.

Almost none of the discussion of "climate science" in the public sphere has anything to do with science, and if you're an actual scientist with relevant expertise and you say anything about the science you will get beaten up by both sides.

As a computational physicist I've given my opinion on occasion that climate models are non-physical and therefore non-predictive, no matter how well-tuned they are to past climate (because only the correct physics can extrapolate the past forward, and the unphysical approximations in climate models are not small in the relevant sense.) What climate models do show fairly convincingly is that we are increasing the Earth's heat budget by 1.6 W/m2 or so, which is in the range of 0.5% overall, and this is plausibly a very bad thing.

So because I criticize climate models the Left attacks me as a denialist, and the Right embraces me as one, whereas I'm actually saying the models give a pretty decent reason to take some fairly mundane steps, like implementing carbon taxes and tariffs. The "tariff" part is important because it exports the cost of emissions to other jurisdictions. At this point the Right attacks me as being a socialist taxer (because taxes are socialist?) and the Left attacks me for not wanting to "change everything" (because that always works so well.)

There simply isn't any science in the "climate science" debate. It's all politics.

lumberjack2• 11 years ago

But it isn’t arguments or votes or opinion that herald the acceptance of a scientific explanation: it’s the evidence. Follow it wherever it leads.

But you cannot actually do that. You cannot be an expert in every field and actually follow the evidence to make up your own conclusion (which btw does not guarantee that your interpretation of the evidence is correct).

As an aspiring physicist I feel helpless every time I'm at the doctor's office. I cannot just "follow the evidence". Heck I cannot "follow the evidence" on anything in physics unrelated to my field.

This is more generally an economics problem about information asymmetry and it will become more prominent as professions become increasingly sophisticated and specialized. I don't think better access to information makes up for it, either, because there is just as much misinformation.

The solution seems to me to build ever more complex social institutions with complex trust relationships which I know makes some cryptofans cringe.

fapjacks2• 11 years ago

It is a distant cousin of the "if you don't like software X, write your own", which is often impossible because we don't have ninety-hour days and the technical wherewithal to accomplish such a task.

Qwertious2• 11 years ago

Which is itself related to "if you don't like open-source software X, you can just fork it", which has the same problems.

I find it interesting in that it's a useful argument, but only at a communal level - if the entire community hates the direction of a project (e.g. OpenOffice), they can fork it and take it in a different direction.

You're still boned as a discerning individual if you dislike the program, though.

emptytheory3• 11 years ago

"You cannot be an expert in every field and actually follow the evidence to make up your own conclusion (which btw does not guarantee that your interpretation of the evidence is correct)."

It's pretty easy to follow the evidence in most situations, actually. That doesn't make me an expert. That makes me a person who understands the methodology of science, logic, and statistics. You have to know precisely what your assumptions (observations) are and how to make correct conclusions from those assumptions. The only constraints are your time, your determination, and your ability to get the original research (a constraint is not "guaranteeing your interpretation is correct").

Some people are highly opinionated and don't have the understanding to match. That doesn't mean you can't have any sort of understanding as a non-expert.

"As an aspiring physicist I feel helpless every time I'm at the doctor's office. I cannot just "follow the evidence"."

Doctors aren't necessarily better trained at making inferences and recommendations. Consider their education. Some of them are very poor thinkers.

ics3• 11 years ago

The only constraints are your time and your determination.

...The combination of which is often a luxury that experts in one field cannot afford, thus the statement that one cannot be an expert in every field. "Cannot" is most likely being used for practicality, not in the literal sense of information being totally unfathomable given infinite time and determination.

You both have good points but they really needn't conflict so harshly.

tjradcliffe2• 11 years ago

It's pretty easy to follow the evidence in most situations, actually.

I'm a physicist who has done work on data analysis in cancer genomics. The depth and complexity of cancer biology is enormous, and "following the evidence" is the work of years.

It's easy to follow superficial arguments about specific experiments. It is very, very difficult to get hold of the ambiguous morass that is the true leading edge, which is so far away from the layperson's event horizon they aren't even aware it exists, and so end up believing that it's not that hard to follow the evidence in most situations.

pdonis• 11 years ago

You cannot be an expert in every field and actually follow the evidence to make up your own conclusion (which btw does not guarantee that your interpretation of the evidence is correct).

This is true; but it doesn't mean that trusting experts is necessarily going to make you any better off. If the experts themselves aren't following the evidence, either because they have an ideological axe to grind or because there simply isn't enough evidence to be helpful, their opinions won't be of any more value than yours.

I feel helpless every time I'm at the doctor's office. I cannot just "follow the evidence".

And many doctors can't either. Medicine is not a very advanced science compared to your field, physics. In fact, there are practically no sciences which are as advanced as physics. So if you're expecting that experts in other fields are basing their advice on the sort of evidence and predictive theories that you're used to seeing in physics, you're going to be very disappointed.

return0• 11 years ago

You're talking about trusting experts, which is a different thing. Doctors and judges are not selected by popular vote, but by formal exams, therefore you have a reason to trust them, even if they are wildly unpopular otherwise.

johnpowell• 11 years ago

I wish people would just come out and say, "Humans can change the climate. The question is how we deal with that from a economic standpoint."

I understand that argument and would like to have the debate about the trade-offs. But flatly denying isn't helping us move forward.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

Oh I am sure we could change the climate, China does with artificial rain. However I am not convinced about the dire predictions or short of a collective effort to affect the climate that we have a large effect by default.

We cannot accurately model changes in the climate yet there is no shortage of people who want to scream bloody murder we are all going to die. Trouble is, far too many of them come off as traveling religious leaders, just missing a tent.

lumberjack2• 11 years ago

China does with artificial rain

That's weather not climate.

iopq2• 11 years ago

Oh, I totally agree with that. But try telling that to your average Green Peace liberal who just wants to abandon technology because it's "killing our planet" or some such. Nuclear plants on average pollute less than coal? Nope, gotta get rid of both, YESTERDAY. It's this kind of all-or-nothing debate that makes people not want to give in.

coldtea5• 11 years ago

Oh, I totally agree with that. But try telling that to your average Green Peace liberal who just wants to abandon technology because it's "killing our planet" or some such.

Abandoning something (e.g. some technologies) because it's "killing our planet"? What a crazy idea!

No, we gotta have more of it, forever increasing, and it will sort out the problems it creates itself. Why ever be content with anything we have? After all the meaning of life is having more and more of everything.

mercurial3• 11 years ago

But try telling that to your average Green Peace liberal who just wants to abandon technology because it's "killing our planet" or some such.

Why do you feel so concerned about Greenpeace when they don't make the laws anywhere (not that I think you're representing their position accurately anyway)? They're not the lobbying heavyweight that fossil fuel industries are.

crdoconnor• 11 years ago

Kill the nuclear liability cap and start taxing carbon at a rate commensurate with the damage it actually does and we wouldn't have to debate about which form of energy generation was superior.

It wouldn't make financial sense to build anything other than solar, hydro or wind farms.

Clean energy via free markets. Imagine.

mercurial3• 11 years ago

Apparently, people come out and say this instead:

"Climate is changing, and climate has always changed, and always will, there's archeological evidence of that, there's biblical evidence of that, there's historic evidence of that, it will always change," [GOP Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma] said on the Senate floor. "The hoax is that there are some people that are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful that they can change climate. Man can't change climate."

"Biblical evidence", indeed.

mercurial3• 11 years ago

I understand that argument and would like to have the debate about the trade-offs. But flatly denying isn't helping us move forward.

You are right in saying that it is at its heart an economic question. Unfortunately, an economic model based on ever-increasing consumption of physical goods, combined with a large population with increased access to emission-creating technologies doesn't seem compatible with our mid-term survival (not to mention the rate at which non-renewable resources are consumed). But sticking your head the sand is much easier than come out and say that hard choices are coming.

Houshalter• 11 years ago

But really, who did win? And what is M31-V1? And what does any of this have to do with determining who's right, which really does matter, e.g. climate change?

cjg• 11 years ago

This explains what M31-V1 is:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/star-v1.htm...

malchow• 11 years ago

Hm. Maybe taxing and benefits assignation by democracy do not work, either.

Udik• 11 years ago

So I guess this means that the whole 'consensus' thing around global warming is pointless. "What matters isn’t what people thought the answer was- since they only had incomplete information- but rather that this debate was an important step in laying out what the arguments would be to support each of these two competing ideas."

Just about time, now please let's stop with the (completely flawed) 97% meme.

nine_k• 11 years ago

It's funny how the article's epigraph quotes Trofim Lysenko, who was known for his book-cooking and numerous earth-shaking irreproducible results.

Is it used ironically? I failed to grasp that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

pervycreeper• 11 years ago

Unquestionably, yes.

snowwrestler• 11 years ago

The vote in the Senate was not about science, it was about policy. Scientists obviously understand the science of climate change, and don't take votes on it. But policy is made by politicians, and in the U.S., they do operate by democracy. Hence the vote.

Science by democracy doesn’t work

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