Guest essay by Leo Smith
Introduction
I decided to pen this, not because I am a ‘philosopher of climate change’ like the esteemed Rupert Read, whose self styled ‘philosophy of climate change’ is really a thinly disguised justification for Green politics, but because it appears to me that very very few people in the climate change business, actually understand why they need to understand a little philosophy to enable them to judge the climate change phenomenon – the social phenomenon that is – in a suitable context.
I am not a trained philosopher. I am an engineer, by training, but that was just a job. I have always retained a curiosity about other things, and part of that curiosity led me to try and understand the issues of philosophy as a part of something else I was engaged in, which has no bearing here.
I was moved to write this, because a short post as an obituary to one of the greatest philosophers of science ever – Hilary Putnam – received essentially no comment at all. I realised that not only did no one actually know who he was, but no one even recognised the importance of what he did.
What the philosophy of science does, and its part of what I want to introduce today, is to define what science is, and particularly what it is not, and to clearly delineate its limits. Since Climate Change is variously described here in disparaging terms as ‘Climate Sceance’, and ‘Scientastic methodology’ , It’s clear that many people have a gut feeling that Climate science is not ‘proper’ science. Also, a few years ago I was also involved in some online arguments with Creationists who declared that Creationism and Intelligent Design was equally valid a science as say Physics.
Finally, this gem caught my eye from Judith Curry’s site:
“In our post-modern world, climate science is not powerful because it is true: it is true because it is powerful.”
Lucas Bergkamp
All these examples show us that there is a problem: We feel that Science is being usurped by imposters, who are almost perpetrating a modern form of black magic with its tenets, and yet we can’t actually say why they are wrong…without which we can’t refute their arguments…and this is made worse by the conclusions of modern philosophers that actually, we don’t know and can’t know what is really real, because what we deal with is ‘Reality as a Social Construct’. This is taught to every good PPE. And a brief diversion into metaphysics is necessary at this point – a horribly crude one, but the attempt must be made – to outline what this actually means, and why it’s sort of true, but not the whole truth…
Reality as a Social Construct
I am going to assume everyone has seen the film The Matrix, about which I will say nothing beyond noting that it highlights a very real problem that has been at the basis of Metaphysical ponderings for millennia. Namely, how can we be sure that our perception and experience of the world, shows us what it really is, rather than some abstract model of it?
Or in fact, to go even further in the direction of what is called in Philosophy, Idealism. Throughout its history, Philosophy has veered from one extreme to the other, at times claiming that the material world, was merely a manifestation of Spirit, or Mind (Idealism), and at other times, claiming the exact opposite , that spirit and mind were merely what you get with physical beings as a property of what they are (Realism, especially Material Realism). If you like, Idealism said ‘what you see is what you (or God) create as a sort of illusion’ and the Realists said ‘what you see is what is really there, no need for all this god/spirit/consciousness rubbish. THAT is all an illusion…’. And no one could in fact decide which was which until the rise of Newtonian physics rather made it look like the Realists were onto something, and that by careful analysis of the material world, as it appeared to be, we could predict the future, in small but important ways.
And then Kant first, and then Schopenhauer put the spanner in the works by pointing out that the world, as it appeared to be, had to be at least partially a human construction. Now, two things are worth pointing out about that last sentence, and the first is that Kant and Schopenhauer and indeed their intellectual descendants were safely ignored by science, for the next 150 years or so, but their descendants were not ignored by more ‘social’ scientists. And the second is that all important qualifier – at least partially. Both Kant and Schopenhauer introduced the concept of (in Kant’s case) ‘Things in themselves’ – that is, what was ‘actually there’ beyond our mere perception of it, whilst Schopenhauer corrected that to ‘thing in itself’ claiming correctly that number and quantity were in fact part of the human construction, so we couldn’t say whether Reality consisted of one or many things!
Which is why today you will find social scientists glibly talking about reality as a social construct as if that were all it were, and scientists talking about reality being very nearly exactly what it seems to be, as if quantum physics had never been invented.
I personally grappled with these issues and came to a certain conclusion, and so I think did Hilary Putnam, before I even knew he existed, because neither model worked very well to describe the way science worked, especially quantum physics. And our resolution of the problem, expressed in as simple terms as it is possible to do, is basically this:
“We cannot know (lacking a Red Pill) whether we are in a Matrix, or not, and whether that Matrix is our own construction, someone else’s, or an aspect of what the world really is. So we cannot assume that our experience is ‘what is really there’ but on the other hand, to say that ‘all that is really there, is our own construction‘, implies that magic (control of Reality by Mind) ought to work, and it doesn’t. Therefore a model which says that there is something unknown and perhaps unknowable there, all right, but which we can only experience via self-constructed perceptions of it, seems to be the most efficient. And this is precisely what Kant and Schopenhauer said, and what quantum physics is revealing, and What Hilary Putnam said, and what I feel is worth trying to understand – namely that the world is in fact utterly weird and different from our experience of it, but all we have to work on is our mentally ‘socially constructed’ models of it. That is, we know our experience is limited, and less than the whole, and filtered by our own cultural prejudices, but that is all we have to go on”.
Of course the above, itself, is in fact just another model! And so is not ‘true’. But this brings me to one of the most fundamental issues that the philosophy of science has emphasised, are we actually looking for Truth, at all, when we Do Science?
Truth, Science and Occam’s Razor
People talk glibly about ‘scientific truth’. But, is there such a thing? Most philosophers would say no, there isn’t. And the way science is done, shows us why. Science begins in a view of the world – a model if you like – that starts with some ad hoc assumptions (the Kantian a-prioris) that we cannot know to be true. Namely that the world of our experience as a collection of ‘things’ in a space time universe where ‘stuff happens ‘ to change the experience of it over a a period of time, cannot in any way be shown to be correct. Nor indeed a further assumption, that in fact these changes are brought about by timeless Eternal Rules, what we would call the laws of Nature, or Physics, operating mathematically and exactly to turn the present into the future, via Causality.
But in order to ‘do science’ we have to assume that they are true. Which is why they are referred to as ‘metaphysics’ and ‘a priori‘ because they are ‘beyond physics’ and ‘before the fact’ of science.
Science made a huge impact on the philosophy of its day, because in spite of these objections to it, which were quite well understood by the theologians and philosophers of the day, it worked, and worked spectacularly well. And is is that success that led its protagonists, from Galileo to Dawkins, to claim that must mean it was True. And to this day the ‘social sciences’ are trying to emulate its successes and claim some truth content thereby, by calling themselves sciences, a condition known as ‘physics envy’.
And from there, it was but a short step from observing that one didn’t need to ‘believe on God’ to ‘do science’ which worked, to thereby claim that therefore God did not exist. But that’s a whole new can of worms.
Let me state the position that I believe Philosophy of Science to be in. The fact that Science works, when operating on the ‘rational materialist’ model that it has to assume is the case, neither ‘proves’ that the inductive hypotheses that it posits are ‘true’ or that indeed the whole rational materialist edifice upon which it all rests, is in fact valid metaphysics at all!
And this is where the pseudo-scientists and religious fundamentalists step in to say ‘well it’s all just another belief system, innit?’, and claim that it’s therefore no better than ‘climate science’ or ‘creationism’. Or ‘my little Jihad’..
And in a limited sense they are right! But there is one thing that separates proper science from the rest, and that is that it works! Yes, behind all the formulae and the mumbo jumbo that it seems to be, if you take the rational materialist’s world view, and operate upon it scientifically, you get to predict the future, more or less. The ‘planets’ will be where you thought they would, experiment will more or less produce the predicted results, and science based technology will mostly just ‘work’ as evinced by the fact that I can type this, and you can read it.
And that in the end is the only defence Science has to offer. Not that it’s true, or has any ‘truth content’ at all – although some still claim that the fact that it works is ‘strong evidence’ that its ‘true’ more or less – but that it works. And when it stops working, that’s a sign that it’s no longer science, or is refuted science. A proposition that didn’t produce predictions that matched reality…
The acknowledgement of this utter inability to provide any sort of proof of being true, is what the widely quoted and usually totally misunderstood ‘Occam’s Razor’ is all about. What the monk William of Ockham actually said was roughly “apart from God and the Holy Scriptures, and things that are self-evidently True, we should not construct elaborate fancies to explain things when simple ones are just as good”. This is widely misunderstood to mean that the simple explanations are the true ones. That was never Occam’s point. His point was all about utility – not truth content.
And that really sums up the second part of this diversion into philosophy: Science isn’t true, it’s what works to predict the future, and if it fails to work, it’s not Science any more. Creationism, Intelligent Design, and My Little Jihad, don’t predict the future. In fact they don’t actually even set out to predict the future. They are therefore Not Science. And not on a par with science. Insofar as Climate Science does set out to predict the future, its failed, or refuted science, because it’s failed to predict it accurately or usefully, and, insofar as it never was really intended to predict the future, it’s just another metaphysical position entirely on a par with Creationism, Intelligent Design, and My Little Jihad.
And that brings me to the final point I want to try and make, as to how philosophy, and in particular the a priori model of the sort of metaphysics that I, and I believe Hilary Putnam, espoused, can make sense of the socio-political narratives of climate change alarmism. And indeed very much of the politics of what is generally termed the Left, which is inextricably linked to it, as well as the Religious Right.
Morality as a Social Construct – the Emotional Narrative.
When I described the function and purpose of what I consider to be Science, what is perhaps startling is that in the end, the only value judgement I applied, or indeed feel I can apply, to it, is that it just works.
And this brings me to a peculiar moral position. Morality, more than physical reality, is a social construct. Moreover its not based on anything beyond humanity. Does the Universe care if we live, love, die, or were never born?
Only if you believe in an Anthropic God.
Otherwise it is simply not possible to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, in any absolute sense. And yet our media is awash with narratives – emotional narratives – exhorting us to ‘Do the Right Thing’. But what actually is The Right Thing? Where can we find some objective yardstick for moral behaviour? Scriptures? The Democrat Party or the UK Labour Party? The Koran?
What light does the metaphysical model outlined earlier shed on the issues of right and wrong, good and bad?
Almost, but not completely, none. It has no concept of a morality in the traditional sense, it, like science, is totally amoral. But just as we arrive at a justification for Science in terms of its utility, we arrive at something like a moral position in terms of utility, too…
…It is conventional wisdom that Darwin’s theory of evolution leads to a sort of law called ‘survival of the fittest’ . However on closer inspection, that sort of Nietzschian perspective is shown to be false as well. What is actually the deductible corollary of the Theory of Evolution, is that it only leads to eradication of that which is so counter-survival, that the young of the species do not live long enough to reproduce themselves.
And that is why we still have appendices. They haven’t killed us. Yet. Mostly.
This basic principle, that ‘That which persists, is that which is not sufficiently dysfunctional to create its own downfall‘ is a very important point to note, because it explains in a way why this is the worst of all possible worlds. It simply only needs to be that good, to keep ticking over.
If we apply it to humans and their socially accepted ideas, not just about the nature of physical reality, but the nature of the sort of moral and social reality which is the sandpit of the Intellectual Left, and of course those involved in proselytising Religions, like Radical Islam (My Little Jihad) and Creationism, we can see that any sort of elaborate nonsense, provided it doesn’t lead to complete mass suicide, is as good as any other, especially in a socialist post-modern industrialist society with welfare, where frankly all you need to do to survive is work out how to game the system for the welfare, and walk to McDonalds. What you happen to believe – whether you are in fact God’s chosen ones, or the dregs of society – is a free choice at the functional level. As long as it doesn’t make you sufficiently depressed to kill yourself before Having Sex, and Making Babies, it’s cool!
And if you have a Vote, or a pocketful of Someone Else’s Money, given to you by a Compassionate Caring State (allegedly), why then, if someone wants that money or that vote, and are not particular about how they get it, they will tell you anything you want to hear, and basically what that means is they will tailor an emotional narrative to exactly make you feel as good about yourself as possible, and sell it to you. Or one to make you feel as bad about yourself as possible, and sell you the antidote!
Whatever.
c.f. Marxism as the classic example. You the mass of voters are miserable, because they, the few people who have a bit of cash, are oppressing you, and so by revolting against them, you will all be as rich as they were before you took all their money. Or the State did, on your behalf.
The problem with selling you a reality that makes you feel good about yourself – ‘God loves you: Chill!’ is that you can’t actually really sell a product based on that. All the best marketing comes from identifying, or if not creating basic needs that the product will satisfy. Over and over.
Until Colgate, no one brushed their teeth twice a day, let alone after every meal, and if they did, they used salt. The Genius of Colgate, ‘For people who can’t brush their teeth after every meal’ was the subtle implication of guilt if you didn’t do that (and who did?) and the instant catapulting of Colgate Toothpaste into the top brand arena…
Prior to the invention of Radio, then TV, of course there wasn’t much opportunity for all this. OK we had religion, and could sell ‘indulgences’ to free people from sin, and pieces of the One True Cross. And saint’s bones and the like, all of which were profitable, but there are only so many bits of The One True Cross that you can sell.
But with the invention of the Printing Press, the Radio, and the State Broadcast, all this stuff – previously the province of either priests chanting in the Churches, or hedge witches muttering curses under their breath, in the pagan arena, this became a billion dollar business, and the primary means by which nation states that didn’t want to actually start a real war, fought each other. As an offshoot of the Great Game, propaganda and marketing became the primary weapon of war of all power blocs, and parties with aspirations. Less a Game of Thrones and more a Game of Lies.
And the reason is simple. Morality and emotion are in the end human constructs, and so are all the beliefs about rights and wrongs, good and bad, and so on, and have absolutely no objective Truth at all. When I talked about Idealism and Realism, it was with respect to the science of the material world, which I posited did at least represent something external, beyond human construction.
Where morality is concerned, however, there is nothing. Not if we are considering it as rational beings. We need to posit an external physical world in some sense, to make sense of everything, but there is no need whatsoever to posit an external moral standard. And that is the frightening and appalling truth that people find very hard to stomach, and why they find it easier to behave as if there were such a standard, and what we can say is that societies that have such cultural patterns, that behave as if there were some moral standard, are less dysfunctional than those that do not. If this is sounding a bit Nietzschian, and God forbid, Third Reich-ish, you are right. Societies bound by common beliefs that are strong, and beliefs not so fallacious as to ensure their destruction, are likely to trample all over societies that really can’t say any more what is right or wrong. My Little Jihad trumps Western Liberalism, Western Liberalism trumps careful scientific scepticism, because at a given level, they are simple clear and cohesive messages.
Not because they are true, or even morally right, but because they have a momentum and a quality that makes them successful.
And this is, I would aver, precisely where we are with Climate Change, the socio-political phenomenon. Most people do not know the truth of whether it’s science or not, or whether it is true or not, even if it is science. And, most tellingly, most people do not care. Because in the field of human behaviour, voting and spending power is deployed not according to what is true, but according to what people (want to) believe to be true, or can be manipulated to believe to be true, and those can be poles apart. And Climate Alarmists are simply acceding to this position, They either don’t know that they are lying, or they actually don’t care if they are lying, because lying actually gets them, personally, a better life, than the truth!
It’s only when we have to deal with the physical reality of the world, that the truth has any point to it.
False beliefs spin no turbines, but they can spin the economies and politics and religions of this world indefinitely. So long as they are not so dysfunctional as to result in “no sex and no propagation”.
And the wonderful post Christian compassionate Welfare States that we have built, with the best of intentions, have resulted in a population who can believe in almost anything, from Aromatherapy to Zoroastrianism, without it actually being a huge problem for their survival.
Until the wind drops, the turbines stop and Physical Reality kicks them in the pants.
Then the law of eradication of that which is counter-survival will happen, and billions will die.
Up till now, the questions have been:
Do you want to be:
(a) On the winning side?
(b) Morally right ?
and
(c) Scientifically correct?
(d) Alive?
And by choosing climate alarmism most people felt they made (a) and (b) and hoped that if (c) were true, (d) would result.
But a careful recourse to sceptical philosophy, shows that (c) is almost certainly wrong, and because it’s wrong, (d) becomes a real issue, and because (d) is a real issue, it’s not so clear that (a) accrues either. And who cares about being morally right, if you’re scientifically wrong, on the losing side, and dead?
The very great danger that we face, is that political propaganda, hearts and minds, and all that, has gone too far. Much too far. It’s one thing to sell toothpaste to guilty teeth-brushers, but to sell wind turbines and Carbon Credits to guilty Ecos, is pushing it. And if the total inanity and confusion with which the Left have flooded Western Society for the last two generations has resulted in a society that no longer knows what it believes in, or why, and where anything it feels is probably wrong in someone’s moral handbook, and is too polite and nice to say ‘so what?’, proves to have basically resulted in no ability to cohesively resist forces which will destroy it, well, so, it will be destroyed. There comes a point at which dysfunctionality will destroy a society that is full of crazy ideas and has no idea how to keep itself alive.
A simple message went out: “Climate change threatens our very existence, because it is true”.
We need to reverse that with a simple statement: “Climate change threatens our very existence, because it isn’t true”.
And if you want voting guidance, remember that all you are voting for is always going to be a pack of lies, no matter who is telling it. Just vote for the most amusing liars, and the ones that look too incompetent to wreck everything, and hope that someone somewhere has the intelligence to realise that it is in the end it is not in anyone’s best interest to destroy the world in pursuit of power and profit, no matter how much they tell you that that is in fact exactly what they are trying to prevent.
In conclusion
It has been interesting trying to compress a lifetime’s personal journey, into just a few pages, and focus the impact down to a very selective target audience. What I really hope to have done, is to show why and in what way some of the more interesting aspects of metaphysics are really important in terms of real-life/here-now issues.
Metaphysics is, in itself, the study of the assumptions we have to make in order to be able to think and talk about the world at all, the concepts and ideas and prejudices that underpin our idea of ‘what the world consists of’. It has gone out of fashion because after millennia of argument, the modern philosophers decided that it wasn’t possible to decide what the One True Picture really was, and that argument was therefore pointless. If I read him aright, that’s probably where Wittgenstein left the matter. However as an engineer, I am not interested in the One True Picture, just a useful picture (or indeed pictures) that work, to solve the problems I encounter. And that is where I find value in metaphysics, in the construction of pragmatic metaphysical systems, that actually solve problems. These metaphysical systems are of course just models, and therefore can never be proven to be true, all one can hope for is that the insights they provide and the pictures they produce help to solve immediate problems.
Hilary Putnam was the philosopher who most seemed to be taking a similar approach. Unsurprisingly since he was working with physicists at the edge of quantum theory to try and make sense of the ‘facts’ of quantum physics and reconcile them with the ‘facts’ of ordinary common sense, a similar conflict led me to similar territory. Namely the hypothesis that the world we experience as individuals and indeed cultures, is a model, that is limited in scope, thoroughly and inevitably steeped in prejudice, and is an unknown and unknowable distance from ‘the Truth’. It is that dreaded Social Construct . And conflicts arise because we deny this. Once we acknowledge the terrifying truth that everybody lives in their own world, and that stuff which they will swear is Real and the Truth, is to other people, simply perplexing rubbish, because they are employing a different metaphysical set of assumptions about it, most of the conflicts disappear.
It is the humility needed to accept that science is not truth, on the one hand, but neither is the moral high ground of the ‘Liberal Arts’ crowd either. There is an apocryphal joke that sums it up:
“When I want to get somewhere, the last form of transport I would choose is a Harley Davidson”
“But when I am awn ma Hog, I am already exactly where I wanna be!”.
And there, in a nutshell we have it. In the absence of an external point of moral reference, we need the emotional narratives to somehow inform us at a personal level of where we want to be. But in terms of getting there, we have to throw out the left brain, and invoke the right brain, to arrive. The mistake of the adherents of the Left, is that they fail to do this. The mistake of the adherents of the Right, is that they don’t actually know where they want to go.
Perhaps Western technology came so fast that we were spoiled for choice as to where we should go, and that explains the rise and rise of the ’emotional’ side of ourselves, as we desperately looked for reasons why we should or shouldn’t deploy the technology in terms of creating a ‘better future’ without really knowing what that meant, until it arrived. And found that perhaps after all it wasn’t better. Just bigger. A telling point is, that as compared with say a generation ago, the biggest killer of young males is no longer road accidents, but suicide.
We have lost the emotional certainties of a cohesive religious culture, and thrown open the door to any and every kind of nonsense, all competing for space in our brains, and most of which is marketed to strip the individual of his vote or his cash, or both.
I have no solution, other than to reiterate what I answered in reply to “You claim to be an Atheist, or at least an Agnostic, yet seem to behave as a better Christian than most churchgoers. How come?”
“Because I think it’s a better way to live, to behave as if there were a God, as if there were some judgement over one’s life, and not only does it make me personally feel better, it creates a cohesive humble and co-operative and strong society. Why can’t we accept paying lip-service to a religion we don’t believe in, on the grounds that its simply a good thing for us, and society to do, for our own survival?”
Where metaphysics is concerned, we are compelled to behave as if the a priori assumptions we make about the world are in fact ‘true’.
In the end, my point is that we can’t prove that they are, and they may not be, so we should not prosecute our deductions from those assumptions with the zeal of certainty. But neither should we give up. They may not be the Truth, but they are, used correctly, nearer true than anything else we have to hand. And what is manifestly and demonstrably false is when we hypothesise a structure that claims to explain and predict some aspect of the metaphysical position we have already taken, when in fact it does nothing of the sort. AGW fails to actually pass the tests of a scientific theory.
There is no moral compass. But there is a pragmatic one. It is the one that gets us where we want to go, and its name is Science and Reason. It can’t help with deciding where we want to go, but it can once we have decided that, tell us how to get there efficiently. If applied correctly.
There is no way we can know absolute truth, but, inside of a set of metaphysical assumptions, we can tell if some hypotheses are less true than others, because they don’t actually work.
It’s a pretty lousy set of criteria on which to base the survival of a whole species, but friends, in the end, that is all we have got. Put your trust in what works. Not because [it is] true, but because [it] is not demonstrably false. Yet.
And hope that you have not simply found a temporarily advantageous metaphysics.
The one and only cautionary picture belongs here.
“How are you getting on with that Jumping Out of the Window and Not Hitting the Ground thing, Carruthers?”
Leo Smith
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Leo Smith,
Thank you for your most thought provoking essay. And even more for your strenuous efforts to respond to the many comments.
While I’m a regular reader of both essays and comments, I rarely comment at WUWT these days, and almost never at length. But I’ll break my own rules this time. For, like you, I am an amateur at philosophy (career in software development; trained long ago as a mathematician). Now, I’ve been reading WUWT for sufficiently long to know who among the regulars I trust (both scientifically, and in a more general sense) and who I don’t. What I noticed about this thread was the many good and often supportive comments from among those regulars whom I do trust and respect. So, let me add my two pence worth.
First, science. For me, science is a way of constructing a model of our surroundings, intended to match as closely as possible the “reality” that we measure. (Re-reading your essay, I don’t think we are far apart on this). The better such a model matches measured reality, the more confidence we gain in it, and so in the assumptions and principles which underlie the model. If we are doing honest science, then if our model doesn’t match what we measure, we need to modify the assumptions behind it.
But the reason why climate science isn’t science, for me, is not that it doesn’t work – not that the models’ predictions don’t match the measurements. It is that “climate science” has never been intended to match what we measure, but merely as a ruse to provide an apparent justification for harmful political policies. This is why, when their climate models’ results fail to match reality, the “scientists” don’t go back and modify their assumptions, like ditching the CAGW hypothesis; they just scream the same conclusions louder. For me, “climate science” is about perjury, not about science.
Second, morality and ethics. I myself make a distinction between ethics (what is right and wrong) and morality (the customs of a particular society). You seem to suggest that there are no absolute standards of right and wrong, so that ethics is vacuous. I disagree. For if you reject ethics, you allow yourself no way to argue against a morality that has become corrupted. You are ceding the high ground, on which you should be able to criticize the powerful when they lie, mislead, steal or commit or order aggressive force. You are, in essence, taking the position that “Might makes right.” Granted, accepting the existence of absolutes of right and wrong doesn’t tell you what they are. But accepting that they exist allows you the opportunity to argue about what they are – which might prove a bit embarrassing for warmist hypocrites!
One last thing. There is a concept I think you could have brought into in your essay, but didn’t. That’s the idea of honesty, particularly as applied to science. Look through this thread for the phrase “honest science,” and you’ll find that only one person has used that phrase before I did; that’s Willis Eschenbach. Everyone here will do well to re-read Willis’s comment on March 31st at 3:46pm (skipping his first paragraph).
Interesting. I am not sure that climate science was never intended to match reality. I think there is a lot of in between say the original exponents of it, and what happened after Al Gore and the rest got their hands on it.
I understand why you think I say might is right, but I dont actually claim that. I say that what persists is what fails to die. Might is not always the optimal strategy. The storm uproots the mighty oak, abut the grass just bends before it.
Likewise, honesty. Is it an optimal strategy? IN a relatively free and unregulated market, dishonesty means loss of business in the longer term. IN a market controlled by a few dominant de facto monopolies, it’s an every day part of doing business and will actually increase profits and returns
And that is my problem with you and Willis, you are clear in your positions, and you make strong value judgements based on an ethical system you somehow assume everybody ascribes to.
I am less sanguine. I think that for most people, lying cheating, gaming the system and generally behaving in a dishonourable and even criminal fashion, is actually getting them far more of what they want than being upright honest citizens.
A more long term view of such behaviours will perhaps show that its somewhat self and socially destructive, but for now, its working very very well.
Well written article. I realize that it states more “thoughtfully, clearly, and completely” what I have long felt vaguely. Similarly to you, the author, I am, by training, vocation, and avocation, an “Engineering Scientist” (an old one) who philosophies (to myself) a lot. Could be “why we see things similarly”?
I’ve copied this one into my small “library” of “the best articles I’ve read on-line”.
There is nothing in physics that yields any understanding of the origin of any sort of life.
A free society can only exist when people exercise self-control . The Declaration of Independence gave the guidance for this great nation. God-less societies that depend on a police state to control their populace do not endure.
“… For if you reject ethics, you allow yourself no way to argue against a morality that has become corrupted. You are ceding the high ground, on which you should be able to criticize the powerful when they lie, mislead, steal or commit or order aggressive force. You are, in essence, taking the position that “Might makes right.” …”
___
Governments everywhere are doing just that. And for them, might does make ‘right’ in the morality of action, in-action and reactions of governments. And also anything else, as ‘society’ morality is relative to whatever government and society says, as the standard (and invariably deeply hypocritical and one-eyed) and what Dear-Leader says, and does, plus expects, especially with regard to self-censoring, conforming and being a ‘right-thinking’ little nationalist, and a positive team-player (yes-men, and women).
I’m not willing to accept religiosity, now or ever again, or ‘scriptures’, or spiritual ‘guides’. They all fail and backfire and are deeply hypocritical and contradictory, as well as oppressive. The alleged positives don’t meet my law of diminishing returns testing.
The author, Leo, suggests his own sort of morality, via pretending their is a god? So we will act like we have something to prove, and to fear of not living up to if we don’t, presumably? I don’t want to put words in his mouth but that seems to be the general gist. I would just say I don’t really see or experience a need a pretend there’s a ‘God’, with divine aspirations from my holy whatever, higher purpose or something? To become, or rather, to be ethical, moral, honest, sincere?
It’s hard to see how that lines up and works itself out.
There is however something I’ve noticed which makes all the difference for me. Firstly, I don’t ‘prey’ or ‘meditate’, or follow any belief construct, or believe in a god. However we do seem to be in an infinity, and an infinity does have potential for a god, I would admit that.
But the naturally arising sense of ‘thankfulness’ I feel emerge, for what I eat, for bed and clean sheets, for a lover, for a piece of delicious fruit, for this sunset, or just a perfectly still night – produces a human being that’s more functional, orderly, stable, with constructive intent, and who remains outside the area of religious stipulation, or guidance of others, even philosophers, and remains distinctly unimpressed with governments as right via might, coercion and force, and indifferent to society’s ‘values’.
But I also feel no desire to reform others as that’s their job. I have no say in it and I admit to ceding nothing by default – however, they may be, but that’s for them. To me this concept of ceding a high-ground is a fiction, that high ground is in me not in some other imagined contrivance.
I might disagree with others but I’m not interesting in preaching to them, for them to develop or maintain a sense of ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’, that’s their job. and if you are naturally thankful it takes no effort to be ‘right’, yourself. I don’t accept it’s up to me, or to you either, to thus create a quandary or problem of immorality in others, for either me or you to solve. I can’t solve it, nor can you, but maybe they can.
I also don’t accept that guides are helpful in this area, this is something people find in themselves or they don’t, it can not be an imported ideal or set of moral regs and codes. That doesn’t work, it’s as much the disease as a proposed ‘cure’.
I’m just naturally thankful and what I think and do flows from there, and that seems to be complete and sufficient for what I find myself in, or doing. Others mileage may vary.
But this has been an interesting post and comments that followed.
Potter: Professor, is this real, or is it all in my head?
Dumbledore: Of course it’s all in your head, Harry. How does that make it any less real?
Interesting essay and the engineering organization and logic are well-displayed. The observations of behavior and manipulation are spot on. Regarding the philosophical part, though, the question left unaddressed is what is the First Cause of this reality (either actual or perceived, take your pick)? Settle that and a lot comes into focus.
Regarding the philosophical part, though, the question left unaddressed is what is the First Cause of this reality (either actual or perceived, take your pick)? Settle that and a lot comes into focus
First Causes are like One True Sticks. They are part of the world view, and do not lie beyond them.
Your statement implies that causality itself exists beyond human ken. I say that its an anthropic quality that we use to form our view of the world, not an innate quality of it, any more than space or time are.
Causality is a magic tool,. it lest us separate things, and yet still preserve a relationship between them over time. In a sense, if we split sensation into matter-time-space-phenomena, Causality comes along as part of the package, as the remnant of the ‘interconnectedness of everything’ that we have removed by creating a world of discrete objects and moments.
Or you can do the Buddhist thing, Grasshopper, and lurch into the Absolute, and experience it all as a single object in a timeless moment in Eternity, and ditch all that processing, and see it as a big transcendent blob. Shrug. Its one way I guess. “Before Enlightenment chopping wood, fetching water: After Enlightenment, chopping wood, fetching water”
The value of enlightenment is not that it changes anything, but that it reminds you of what is under your control and what is not. 😉
As I said, all of this is ultimately indecidable. Certainty only exists in terms of deductive logic applied to conditional propositions. If this, then that etc.
The nearest I can go to a prime cause, and its not exactly a cause, is to say that mathematically, I suspect that we need to have two independent variables to create a result that is of the nature of a perceived external reality.
So we end up with a Trinity, just like the Jews figured out, and as it says on the cover of Shopenhauers book
1/. The world (as we perceive it to be)
2/. As Will. (whatever is the case, the stuff that has a ruleset of its own)
3/. And Representation (consciousness, the means by which whatever is really there, is brought to our attention, in the way it is.
Or maybe that’s what is meant by, respectively, the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost.
Or in other (mystical) arrangements one finds more than three elements. But its seems that the worldview we inherit can be reduced to these three, in the limit, and beyond that, there might be Existence, but fer sure, we don’t have a view of it any more.
They are not ’causes’ though, just the three pillars of the structure that underpins our world views. If they exist, so does the view. If they dont, no view is possible.
And that’s as far as you can go. Its a Great Mistake to assume that anthropic qualities – space – time and causality, matter and energy, good and evil, or any of the elements that comprise our view of the world, are in themselves intrinsic properties of the world as it really is. Casually and mundanely we treat them, as if they were so, but in the limit, at the bleeding edge, I think its important to understand that they really are not.
They are representations of something else. Dumbed down by our apparatus to be vaguely digestible.
@gnomish.
Maybe the fact that I appear to be behind you, is that in a finite universe, I am so far ahead of you, that I am in danger of kicking you in the butt.
😉
I knew you were a contortionist…lol
that’s how you are able to unhinge your mind to swallow contradictions bigger than your head.
seriously, though – finite universe? ctrl – alt – del. start from scratch.
Any 4 year old child of 2 can figure this stuff out.
It’s your responsibility and there is no acceptable excuse for failure. Get sincere. Stop playing princess.
Check each premise Did you know the sun is white, for instance? Somebody may have told you it was yellow, but logically you know that the solar spectrum defines the concept ‘white’.
Use your reason. Nobody can do this for you.
Enjoyed your essay. Any comment on the Scholastic school of philosophy and the Natural Law derived from it?
Good read – thanks from another engineer. Can’t remember the quote but it was something like you can’t fully examine the concept within the paradigm.
Interesting essay, and I share many of your conclusions. Some clarifications. Science predicts future observations, not necessarily “the future” per se. The observations may be about things that happened in the past.
I view religion as a successful mechanism for producing cohesion among large social groups. There is an ongoing discussion about the evolution of “altruism”. Groups that contain altruistic individuals should be more successful than groups where everyone is selfish. However, within each group the selfish individuals should be more successful. They will benefit from the group’s altruistic members but will not bear any of the costs. The result is it should be impossible for altruism to evolve, because it would always be out competed within groups. There are mechanisms where groups come together, mix and then separate where it can happen, but these models do not match most societies or animal groups.
Small groups can maintain cooperation (altruism) because everyone can remember the defectors, and punish them. As groups get larger, the punishment of defectors becomes more difficult, so the group will be taken over by the selfish. If a group could maintain the cooperative behavior whilst growing larger, then it would be more successful. Religion provides just such a mechanism. I believe that all large groups have religion because it is a successful way of ensuring cooperation. People often say that all religions are basically similar in their core beliefs. This would make sense as this is a successful set of beliefs for societies to grow.
Occam’s razor you have right. It is the explanation with the fewest assumptions that is most useful. This is not “the simplest”. For example, we might say “god did it” to explain anything, which sounds like a simple explanation. From a scientific point of view this is a huge assumption, and hence not a simple explanation. Similarly with climate, we could say “nature did it”, which sounds like a simple explanation, but in fact requires huge assumptions about nature.
This is all very interesting philosophy, but you stray outside philosophy with your conclusion about climate science. It is true that people will believe many things that are not true. This is the realm of psychology, not philosophy.
“And Climate Alarmists are simply acceding to this position, They either don’t know that they are lying, or they actually don’t care if they are lying, because lying actually gets them, personally, a better life, than the truth!”
How do you know if it the alarmists or the sceptics that are in this position? Continued use of fossil fuels will enrich those today whether or not climate alarmists are correct. Whatever mechanism would result in alarmists believing a falsity applies equally to the sceptics. For your discussion, you simply assume that the alarmists are wrong.
“Western Liberalism trumps careful scientific scepticism, because at a given level, they are simple clear and cohesive messages. Not because they are true, or even morally right, but because they have a momentum and a quality that makes them successful. And this is, I would aver, precisely where we are with Climate Change.”
You do not demonstrate why climate change should provide a successful narrative. After all, it requires people to make sacrifices. In the absence of a reflection of reality this should not be successful. I provided a reasoned argument why religion is a successful belief. I can offer a realistic argument why not believing in climate change is a successful mechanism. The fact is that most of the costs will occur in the future. Those currently consuming fossil fuels will pay the costs to benefit people in the future. For younger people today, those future people will be themselves. For older people today, they will be someone else. There is therefore a strong incentive not to believe in climate change. To believe in it requires either change – which will adversely affect your standard of life, or rejection of change- which makes you appear selfish.
This means that scepticism offers a successful way to maximise your own benefits, without appearing selfish.
On the other hand, belief in climate change requires either sacrifice or acceptance of selfishness. Either you change your ways or you acknowledge that you don’t want to pay for the benefit of other people in the future.
Neither of these approaches says anything about whether climate change science is right. I believe it offers a better – or at least as good an – explanation of scepticism existing if the science is correct than it does of alarmism existing if the science is wrong.
To me, the “dead giveaway” that “climate science” is a pack of lies is the way they (and you) use language.
” I can offer a realistic argument why not believing in climate change is a successful mechanism. ”
I’ve never in my entire life encountered a single person who believed climate does not change. You are spewing nonsense.
JohnKnight. I am sorry my language was insufficiently precise for your liking. When I used the words “climate change” I believed that it would be understood to be a sort of short-hand for anthropogenic climate change. Given the context here I think this is pretty obvious. I assure you it was not an incredibly clumsy attempt to trap the unwary into saying they agree or disagree with anything, nor to convey the impression that those that oppose the idea of AGW believe the climate does not change. That would be pointless anyway, since it is not a point I would wish to prove.
Is that the only objection you have to my argument?
It’s not just about any old effects humans might have on any old climates, and you know that, I’m sure. Keep moving toward meaningful English and maybe I’ll believe you’re not a con artist.
Reality exists independent of our wants, desires, perceptions, or needs. It is what it is. A = A Tiger = Tiger.
Reality exists independent of our wants, desires, perceptions, or needs.
can you prove that, or is it simply and axiom of your world view 😉
It is logical. What exists, exists – it is a tautology. However it is quite useless as it tells us nothing about what reality is, nor whether what we perceive is reality.
Leo, we perceived a flat earth at first. We then came to know it was spherical (or so). If this is not the final answer, it does seem to be a demonstrably better notion of the reality of this situation. If a meteor is lighting up the sky and instantaneously 100 people turn and point to it, how can we define ‘reality’. We can even test the optical aspects of our eyes and find among us those whose optics don’t work. This little refinement must be based on at least some fuzzy reality.
It does seem fanciful that we are living on a spinning ball among quadrillions of other spinning balls, but strength of materials demands that such large objects become round even if they were momentarily cubic at their creation. Perhaps we should define reality as consistent behavior of inanimate things at least if the question is a crippling one. The bunny rabbit doesn’t think, therefore he is. The opposite of Cogito ergo Sum of Rene Descartes.
One of the problems is the human need for certainty. Put another way, ambiguity makes us uncomfortable. A further problem is that when we see what seems to be a pattern or story that makes sense, we jump on it and it feels good. When a narrative such as climate change lines up with ethical feelings (capitalism is bad) and religious feelings (nature is good, man has fallen from grace), you get a total loss of the ability to reason dispassionately. You get certainty where there should be room for doubt. And then anyone who does not agree is evil. And that is where we are.
Disbelief in climate change lines up with other feelings, I enjoy my SUV, I don’t want to pay more for fuel, I don’t want to pay more tax, I don’t want to be responsible for harming others etc. There is no reason why this should affect only one side.
” you get a total loss of the ability to reason dispassionately.” This presumes there ever was an ability to reason dispassionately. There will always be reasons for belief that are unrelated to pure reason.
This is psychology rather than philosophy. It may explain why people do not agree but it does not help at all in deciding who is right.
I started there, I like my cars. But I didn’t stop at that, I got the data and looked at how much it cools at night compared to how much it warmed the prior day, and on the land, since 1950 on average, it’s cooled slightly more than it warmed.
micro6500. Confirmation bias afflicts us all. We none of us can know for sure that we are not victim of it. You found the evidence that convinced you, I found evidence that convinced me. We can argue about the strength of that evidence. It is not conclusive to point out that “the other side” might have reasons to believe the wrong answer because it aligns with a certain preferred narrative, since everybody has such reasons.
My evidence can beat up your evidence 🙂
Well, as you can imagine I don’t agree, but since this post was about philosophy, perhaps we can take up the cudgels in specific posts later? 🙂
Indeed.
seaice1
April 1, 2016 at 7:36 am
” It may explain why people do not agree but it does not help at all in deciding who is right.”
seaice1, would you say then, that scepticism about all important propositions is the premier, natural, first position to take under the circumstances? Confirmation bias may confound the picture and in cases where their is strong evidence of an ‘other’ agenda, there is a tendency of bias being actively sought. Scepticism is a refusal to simply jump in and agree without compelling evidence.
The sceptic can put forward what he believes to be problems with a proposition to be ‘answered’ without risk. If he offers an alternative proposition then he would also be subject to sceptical response, of course. This is why the position of sceptic is so universally annoying to those who want an easy passage of their ‘beliefs’. This why things also can turn ugly. If 97% of scientists buy into CAGW, why, oh why is there so much animosity, threats of punishement, incarceration and even death. Why not ignore the flat-earthers and move on? The reason of course is over time (especially with the much hated and revised “Pause”) niggling little doubts are pricking the minds of research scientists. The epidemic of climate science depression/blues that began a few years ago was a product of suppressing the betrayal of their own minds.
Guy Pearce. “Why not ignore the flat-earthers and move on?” Largely because the debate is political rather than scientific. If the flat Earthers had a significant power base and were successfully challenging maritime trade, then we would not be ignoring them. Similarly with creationists, HIV/AIDS doubters and anti-vaxers. We need to engage them only because they are affecting politics and policy.
The problem I see with the doubters is that there is no cohesive view of what they don’t agree with. It is a defensible position to say that the world is warming but we should not do anything because the damage will be relatively slight and future generations will be much wealthier than ourselves. There is something in the idea that a warmer world is better for humans. I might not agree with it, but it is a reasonable position to take. The trouble is that in order to defend the “do nothing” position too many people end up rejecting established facts such as the greenhouse effect, and that the earth is continuing to warm. That the current temperatures are much higher than the last equal sized El Nino really should make people realise that the warming is continuing. By trying to reject the facts it is diverting the argument form the real one we should be having, which is how should we adapt to the warmer world to take advantage of the benefits?
There are good arguments for adaption rather than prevention. It has been pointed out that cities need not relocate instantly. Each building in a city only lasts about 20 years. if instead of rebuilding in the same place, we re-located the new building to higher ground we could re-locate the whole city in time at little cost.
Maybe adaptation is better than prevention. That is a debate worth having. We cannot have that debate if attention is focused on rejecting reality.
Thank you seaice1. I believe you may be at least a bit closer to my view than you think. I agree it has gotten warmer (and, so far, am grateful for that compared to the LIA) but that there are many things happening at once including multi decadal natural variation and likely a longer term climb out of the LIA. I am a geologist (and engineer) and I studied paleoclimatology back in the 1950s when it was not a topical issue but rather part of the science of geology. This has given me some perspective on the considerable range climate has gone through throughout earth history. I’ve mapped ancient shorelines of Lake Agassiz in Manitoba which record the draining of this glacial lake (northern shore was the receding ice sheet which had attained about 2km thick over Winnipeg during the climate optimium).
As a scientist, I am a natural sceptic (I hope this hasn’t become old fashioned!). As a knowledgeable person in some aspects of the subject of climate, I became a strong sceptic when I saw the egregious liberties taken with the facts and data and the manipulations engaged in by at least a few of the most prominent climate scientists to patch and perserve their CO2 control knob theory. Think here the erasure of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age because it gave too much to natural variation which they had been studiously ignoring until it was called out in the climategate emails that ‘something had to be done’ about these annoying periods. So said, so executed! I became appalled at what was convincingly the subversion of science to support a Eurocentric/UN political left. Of course politicians will take advantage when they can, but when they also generously fund the work, they become the masters and their agencies and beneficiaries become to some degree paid mercenaries for their cause.
Now, looking at the natural aspect of things, we have been, in fits and starts, experiencing the expected decline in temperatures from the Holocene optimum ~7-8k years ago in harmony with previous interglacial periods of this general length. It has been warmer and the longer geological record has known periods of great biological abundance with 20 times the amount of CO2 presently in the atmosphere !
Also, having (under the pressure of sceptics) to accept there was an LIA, they’ve changed the tune that CO2 only became a problem after 1950 to it having reared its ugly head in 1750 to harness the LIA to the cause. Did you know that the horror of +2C is now being measured starting with the LIA as the datum (when 1/3 of Finnlanders died of starvation, New York harbor froze over in the early 1800s and people used to walk to Staten Island, the Bosphorus and the Thames frozed over, expanding glaciers in Switzerland came into the valleys and crushed villages hundreds of years old…..). Ask yourself what the CO2 levels were during the MWP when the Scots enjoyed viniculture…. Look, it may warm or, frightfully it may cool this century. This could become very serious particularly in the latter case.
Not a few think that warming a degree or two could have great benefits that outweigh negatives. Certainly large arid regions of the world are experiencing a ‘greening’ and food harvests have grown seemingly miraculously over the past 50yrs. Looking at the long sealevel rise of the past 12,000 years, rapid in the early millennia (up about 120m) with current rising only a couple of mm a year despite the hype over warming less than 1C in a century.
This century will, about the halfway mark reach peak world population – we are about 80% there and the world today is feeding twice as many people as when the Club of Rome stuff came out (BTW, I was also a strong sceptic then when 2000 was going to be the end of the world for food, minerals and metals, etc). Here we are one sixth the way through the new millenium and, except for the last several months, we have known no warming – this without question has diminished the potential effectiveness of CO2 as the most important driver of climate. Let’s talk again at the end of this year when we may have a La Nina that could put the “Pause” back in play. If that happens, you will see slippage in the official position on climate change.
I hope this hasn’t been a waste of my time. At least it should show you that all here are not floating on contrarian fluff or ideological clay. At my advanced age, I don’t really have any skin in the game but desire to at least see honest, inclusive analysis of the whole picture.
Gary Pearce says:
I hope this hasn’t been a waste of my time.
Probably with ‘seaice1’ it has been, but not for me, and I trust not for most other readers.
That was an excellent comment. It deconstructs the alarmist nonsense, which is fueled by a mountain of grant money, but no credible science.
It may not have been quite as apparent thirty years ago that the rise in CO2 has been a net benefit. But since then it has become increasingly obvious that more of that beneficial trace gas has held down food costs, and also that CO2 (at current concentrations) has no measurable effect on global temperatures. Nor, despite seaice1’s belief, has CO2 had any effect whatever on the amount of polar ice.
Since 20X more CO2 resulted in a much healthier, more diverse biosphere in the past, and since 20X more CO2 did not cause runaway global warming (or any global warming, for that matter), it is only the money and politics that keeps the current “carbon” scare alive.
That explains my disgust for people like ‘seaice1’, who totally avoid any scientific skepticism. They have an unspoken agenda, which has nothing to do with honest science.
Gary Pearce. My original point was that it is easy to see confirmation bias in others, whereas we all see our own quest as unbiased.
” except for the last several months, we have known no warming” Yet the peak temperatures after this recent El Nino are much warmer than the peak temperatures after the last similar El Nino. This is consistent with a rising trend with fluctuations. In order for Bob Tisdale to line up his graphs he needed to remove about 0.4C from the recent peak. This is not consistent with “no warming”. I don’t expect you to find this convincing, but it illustrates that even this simple statement is open to interpretation depending on your prior point of view.
Skepticism is a requirement for honest enquiry. That includes skepticism about our own ability to remain aloof from bad reasoning.
@seaice,
If there was a single thermometer that gave us a temperature, and it went up, it’s unambiguous, there was warming, but that isn’t the case, we have a lousy temperature record that has to be radically process to get that increase.
I see easy ways that the process used on surface data could take a temporary spike and turn that into warming, but if you look at the day to day change, the derivative of daily temp change shows no loss of cooling.
So even if there is warming, which isnt clear, it’s unlike from Co2.
All of the other evidence could easily be the “warm” of the planet could and is just moving around.
@Leopold Danze
I’m still reading, and got work to do.
If you haven’t run across him, you’d like reading some of Sascha Vongehr stuff.
Wheeler’s Delayed Choice Experiment, to me shows that reality isn’t real, the future millisecond devolves into an infinite number of possible solutions, and I might even agree that the Universe is only the shared, agreed picture the collective draws on that cloud of nothing.
Pragmatically, you get hit by a rock someone throws at you it really hurts.
🙂
Which is why I rejected pure Idealism from the start. There is whatever it is, something beyond merely MY mind and indeed other peoples’ minds, in play, with rules of its own.
Or at least that seems to be the best way of relating to it.
This is a great post, Thank you Mr Smith.
As a 74 year old pop (poor old pensioner), I think it is incumbent on all our, especially, younger bloggers to support Anthony’s great website, and others which are on my favourites list. In not any particular order are :
Bishop Hill, Andrew Bolt, Mark Stein, Paul Homewood, Pierre Gosseling, Marco Morano, Joanne nova,James Delingpole Briebart,Tony Goddard,Scottish Sceptics,Steve McIntire and greenie watch.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of realist bloggers – just add your own.
As a life long Catholic I can no longer abide with the pagan Gaian philosophy of the incumbent of Saint Peters chair in Rome. That said, it has been obvious that for many years the Catholic Church has gone down that road of apostasy.
When the Catholic Church supports, abortion, population reduction and the denial of grown up energy to the poor of this world, then how can I, a life long Catholic, support this agenda.
One of my hobbies is penning some indiscernible verse. The following should be read with access to the Club of Rome’s agenda to drag us all back to the dark ages
Malthus Revisited.
When birds begin to nestle
We can tell that spring is near,
A harbinger of summer
Which has happened every year;
Don’t heed Popes and scientists
Who feed us with dread and drear,
Birds and climate realists
Know that cold is what we fear.
The climate has been changing
Before Adam was a boy,
There’s only One can change it
And it’s not you nor I;
To try and prove the theory
There is one thing you can try,
Stop exhaling Co2
Then see how long before you die.
This Mann made global warming
Is a theory with no proof,
This world is not a greenhouse
With a man made plastic roof;
Just look at politicians
Gather taxes and aloof,
With Malthusian intent
Global Warming is a spoof.
A real scientist will allow
Any peer to replicate,
Their scientific findings
– but revisit Climategate;
Pseudo climate scientists
Refuse options to debate,
Global warming religion
Is now rife in every State.
To find the true Genesis
Of the Global Warming goal.
Read the Club of Rome’s agenda
– human breeding to control;
Population is a virus
A threat to mother Gaia,
To reverse human progress
– they found their panacea.
This reminds me of a couple of things:
1. Curly’s (from City Slickers) “One True Thing”
2. “But, how do you feel about 2 + 2 = 4?”
I posted a comment here four times. Usually the moderator tells the author why a comment is withheld. I got nothing. I said nothing offensive, didn’t talk about anyone, only mentioned the sun as the driver of weather and climate. Was that it?
Bob, there are no other comments from you in moderation or in the spam bin. It was probably some sort of form submission failure with your browser, but that is just a guess.
Thank you Anthony. It was weird since I’ve always been posted before. I tested several times, including my hello below, and on a few other of your pages, primarily because I thought I was being moderated. So I’ll post the original comment again. While I momentarily have your attention- I’m writing something up for you.
Hi Willis! How are you today?
I do not understand this. I posted the same comment to the test page, and the same thing happened then as happened here, where even the 5th attempt had the same result. Anyway the comment was regarding the type I and type II errors that warmists made and their consequences.
Bob, it ended up in the mail stream, I think I got 4 or 5 copies of it.
Good and thanks. if you would post the one that starts with “Leo…” I’d appreciate it. Thank you.
Greg April 1, 2016 at 2:39 am
As I mentioned above, I did not miss Leo’s point. Leo made a number of points. I responded to one of them, his strange claim that:
by pointing out that in fact some of us know exactly “why they are wrong”.
In response both you and Leo have accused me of ignoring the politico-religious aspects of environmentalism. Take a breath there, I don’t answer every point at once, and let me remind you that I have written extensively about environmentalism and environmental organizations, including among many others:
I do have to laugh when people try to pull your kind of nonsense on me, claiming that I’m missing the point when in fact they just haven’t done their homework. I’m the one who has spent the last decade writing the posts and taking the heat for discussing the exact points that you foolishly claim I’m ignoring or missing or evading.
So yes, Greg, environmentalism is not about science, these days it is mostly about religion … but I knew that already. Bear that in mind when you read my pieces about the environment, and you’ll see that I don’t approach posts about science the same way I approach posts about the environment.
Best regards,
w.
PS—Accusing me of “bringing a knife to gun fight” is an accusation of stupidity, that I’m too dumb to see what is going on. Making that accusation is fine if you are right … but making that accusation when you haven’t done your own homework, as you did?
Well, that’s about as dumb as bringing a knife to a gun fight …
Mr. Smith:
I worked with engineers for 27 years, and then retired at a very young age.
Engineers tend to be comfortable with numbers, charts, data and physical things.
An engineer writing a column about philosophy seems to be a mistake.
You are what engineers I knew used to call a: “pointy head with too many years of edumacation”
Your first sentence is a WHOLE PARAGRAPH.
Many of your sentences are two, three or four normal sentences combined with commas.
You may be a good engineer, but are one of the worst writers I’ve (tried) to read in years.
I tried three times so far, but can’t get through your essay.
I’ll present my own view of “climate science”,
and just wondered if we have any thoughts in common:
The “climate science” presented by politicians and the UN is not real science.
The “scientists” and their climate models are props paid for by governments who want scary climate predictions.
Politicians and UN officials want more control over the private sector of their economies.
When called socialism, some people object.
When called “Saving the Earth”, fewer people object.
Most people don’t realize this is a new way to “sell” socialism: “Save the Earth (Socialism)”.
Politicians claim don’t WANT more power to tell everyone else how to live, fill their pockets with Dollars, and enrich their “green industry” political supporters — only bad people would want that.
Politicians want you to know they are good people — they NEED more power ONLY because they want to save the Earth from a coming climate change catastrophe … caused by that dreaded boogeyman: CARBON POLLUTION (scary music here).
Politicians adopted a centuries-old principle that religious leaders have used to gain power:
— Scare people enough about something bad coming in the future, and you can control them now.
Religious leaders have their own particular “boogeyman” … hell !
Religious right-wing political leaders used to have the “communism” boogeyman, and now they have the “global Islamic terrorism” boogeyman.
Secular left-wing political leaders have their “climate change” boogeyman (formerly called “global cooling”, until it started warming … and then called “global warming”, until there was a pause)
Real climate science concerns itself with climate history and the current climate.
The future climate is unknown, and may be unknowable.
How is it possible to “study” the future climate, and make predictions of the future climate, without a climate physics model that explains the causes of climate change?
Without a correct climate physics model, forecasts the future climate are wild guesses.
So far, climate modelers and their GCMs seem to be wasting taxpayers’ money.
But even if we have a good climate physics model someday, it may still be impossible to forecast the future climate.
Good science does not require a correct forecast of the near future to prove the science is correct.
In your essay I read:
“Science isn’t true, it’s what works to predict the future, and if it fails to work, it’s not Science any more.”
This statement is not true.
— Many things in life are not predictable, and will never be predictable.
—- We may someday discover some characteristic of the Sun is responsible for all long-term climate change on Earth = we will then have the science 100% right … but if that solar characteristic had irregular, non-cyclical variations, we still would not be able to predict the climate!
— There may be climate cycles that happen so far in the future, it could take hundreds of years to find out that a perfectly accurate forecast made today … was correct.
So far we know 40 years of forecasts, from climate modelers and their confuser models, have been so far from reality … that the people who own the models have become desperate — they have resorted to repeatedly changing historical temperature data (which, unfortunately, they also own) to make their forecasts look better.
That’s bad science, but it doesn’t matter, because climate change is mainly politics.
My climate blog for non-scientists
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Your view of climate science is based on you projecting onto the scientists and policy makers. I can do the same the other way, and say that climate doubters (for a shorthand term) want to carry on using cheap fossil fuels with a clear conscience so they don’t have to pay for damaging others in the future.
See – we can both justify our position by recourse to assumptions about the motivations of others. It is just storytelling, and means very little.
“Your first sentence is a WHOLE PARAGRAPH.”
Not necessarily a problem. Have you seen the first sentence of Robinson Crusoe? It is also a whole paragraph.
I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho’ not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family at Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Keutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our Selves, and writer Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call’d me.
Goodness, they could handle sub-clauses back then.
YOU WROTE:
“Your view of climate science is based on you projecting onto the scientists and policy makers. I can do the same the other way, and say that climate doubters (for a shorthand term) want to carry on using cheap fossil fuels with a clear conscience so they don’t have to pay for damaging others in the future.”
MY REPLY:
I do not have a “view” of climate science.
I do not “believe” in a coming climate catastrophe.
Science is not a field that needs “views” and “beliefs”.
I do have a view on why climate modelers,
who seem to think they are the only “climate scientists” in the world,
keep making wild guess predictions about the future climate,
that have been inaccurate for 40 years,
in spite of having no proof of what actually causes climate change,
and no evidence that much higher CO2 levels in Earth’s climate history
have EVER caused runaway warming.
My hypothesis is that some scientists will say whatever they are required to say to get government salaries and grants.
My experience is that politicians like having a “crisis”, real or imaginary, that can “fight” and be heroes!
left-wing governments that wanted a “crisis” would only hire scientists who predict a “crisis”, and the result is bad science … because there is too much confirmation bias to keep the coming climate catastrophe predictions “alive”.
This is one possible logical explanation of why such poor climate science comes from people with science degrees who should know better.
(1) There is no scientific proof that CO2 has caused any of the warming in the past 150 years.
(2) There is also no evidence that the warming since 1850 has been bad news.
Government scientists ignore facts (1) and (2).
That is bad science.
Sorry, I find Leo Smith’s prose more readable and very much more elegant
Leo,
I find much of your reasoning reasonable ; ) but some I find rather . . fanciful. For instance;
“And that in the end is the only defence Science has to offer. Not that it’s true, or has any ‘truth content’ at all – although some still claim that the fact that it works is ‘strong evidence’ that its ‘true’ more or less – but that it works.”
You’ve made a sort of entity out of “Science”, it seems, and that is just plain silly to me. There is no such beast, you’re imagining things, as I see the world I find myself in. There are people who do scientific experiments and such, and people who publish papers, people who sit on boards, apply for grants, etc, but no “thing” that exists independently of the people, which is “Science”, I say. (It seems almost an imitation of “the body of Christ” idea one sees in the Book . . to me.)
And this quasi entity status given to “Science”, seems to me to be ruthlessly exploited by some (including some “climate scientists” in the case in point), through associative presumptions others make. Those called scientist are essentially presumed to be imbued with a sort of reverence and integrity, via occult like forces, that are totally unscientific.
And this leads people to be baffled by something like the CAGW, as though it couldn’t simply be the handiwork of liars and cheats. like one sees routinely in organized crime . . Like all scientists are angels and saints or whatever, by some magical power. Science as “Savior” essentially. It’s a false religion to me.
It generally is best to limit insight to a few key points; much easier to establish agreement, indifference, or rejection by one’s peers. So, with that in mind…
I think you are misconstruing Ockham’s Razor, which was intended to be a guiding architectural principle for the construction of hypotheses, not a means of judging anything. (It is cheerfully being ignored by the cosmological-astrophysics community, lusting after cosmological recession, dark matter, and dark energy.)
Apart from the subjective idea that “it works” will be evident to an “impartial” observer, there is one axiomatic principle without which science cannot even begin, namely: Thou shalt not bear false evidence. This is an ethical or moral principle, and is the starting point. Without it, “science” is a waste of time…because there is no possibility of constructing a theory that “works.” (Science is not the product of a single hermit genius living out an eternal lifespan. It is the product of society after society, having many practitioners, whose lives become libraries and knowledge passed from generation to generation.) I should think this principle excludes “climate science” from further consideration. (Humorous aside: I almost wrote “client science; it may have been closer to the truth.)
Evolution is at best a hypothesis. A theory requires mathematical rigor and quantitative prediction. But it is a laughable hypothesis, since it is overthrown by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Can’t expect the emergence of order (reduction of entropy) out of a constant-temperature random process. Too much “workable” physics and engineering behind the 2nd Law (my background). An important part of science is that any new discovery must cohere with the rest of what is known. Difficulties over this point form controversies of unsettled science. Another deficit of “climate science.”
You should look up the second law. It refers to a closed system. Evolution does not contradict this, since the entropy of the sun increases more than enough to compensate for the decrease in entropy from our local organisation into complex forms. That you are prepared to reject evolution on such flimsy grounds does not inspire confidence in your rejection of climate science.
Well, let’s see… You don’t contest my first two sentences, so you concede that evolution is only an hypothesis
This brings us to whether evolution is consistent with the 2nd Law (no spontaneous reduction of entropy), and you make reference to the interplanetary environment as voiding the description of the Earth as a closed system. Actually, it is a closed system; it has no material connection to anything else (excluding the accumulation of meteoric dust as a negligible effect). You are probably referring to the work of Ilya Prigogine in the mid-19670s (when I first read of it), where he showed how pockets of reduced entropy could be produced so long as there was a stream of power between two temperature reservoirs. This allowed consideration of the Earth’s hydrosphere and atmosphere as a heat engine, resulting in (e.g.) natural refrigeration processes (reduction of entropy). I admire the singular beauty of a snowflake as much as anyone.
But a snowflake is not a living being.
Let us first get something clear, or we will get ensnared in equivocation. “Evolution” is often taken to mean that, in all the vastness of life, more complex living beings will emerge into the biosphere as time progresses. I think this is a fair description of its popular meaning as a phenomenon. But what evolutionists really mean as “evolution” is not the phenomenon, but its explanation–which they take to consist of (1) random mutation, and (2) “natural selection.” Any thoughtful person can appreciate that “evolution” in the first sense does not inevitably lead to this preferred process (it could alternatively lead to Lamarckian evolution, for instance). Or iterations of intelligent design.
I enjoy paraphrasing the above evolutionist position as: “It all happens by accident–somehow. …So long as we have something living to start with.”
Yes, evolutionists have no story for the origin of life. Darwin had to assume it as a starting point. But, let us proceed. Random processes lead only to statistical dissipation, or the reduction of order. It is a virtual definition of a random process that it is the highest entropy state of a system, thus going in the wrong direction from the outset. What does this mean in living beings? “Random mutation” is, simply, radiation damage. The evolutionist message is that improved beings are forced into existence by radiation damage. If there are any examples of this, I’m sure the world at large would like to know. Mutated fruit flies are not an encouraging menagerie to contemplate.
And what about natural selection? Or, better to ask: “What natural selection?” Have you ever looked at the variety of life in nature? The only lesson I can draw is that EVERYTHING thrives. If everything thrives, then virtually anything can thrive, and there is no selection, nor even preference. (Not to mention that the term “selection” involves the smuggled concept of a Selector and Criteria, neither of which exists, according to the evolutionists. An intelligent designer would make more sense.) The hollowness of this notion of “selection” is illustrated by the question of whether human beings are more “evolved” than bacteria. The usual evolutionist argument is that population dominance is the natural selector. So, it turns out that (according to Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge) the biomass of bacteria on Earth exceeds that of all other living beings. But do we think of bacteria as being more evolved? I think not. So what was that waste of time and effort on the part of Nature, to “evolve” human beings, if we are of no account in the population of living beings?
It all happens by accident–somehow. This is truly flimsy ground, and it is incumbent on the proposer of an hypothesis to bear the burden of proof. Arrogant puffing is not argument, there is no theory, and genetic damage cannot be the basis for genetic improvement.
I must say, Avery good philosophical explanation,of “what is the truth” or not…:)
But if I may add a point….of my own view, in a philosophical approach……….is the always back of the mind dilemma or question…” what is really morality”, does it really count or not, is it simply really and only a social construct product or more than that, more like a product of social affairs in a given natural environment!!
Is it a fancy or a complete choice of humanity to have and act upon it or is it somehow one of the means borned and existing within the means of evolution and survival….which we in principle can not actually truly escape from….
Do humans know to swim because they some time upon fancied to, liked to and chose to or simply because the humans actually had to…….which is which………..for many the swimming is not a must of survival at some point anymore…..due to the better and easier conditions offered by the civic evolution at this point.
The point raised means that, if we can not properly anymore address the meaning of the concept “morality”, can we really pretend that it will be acted upon without any abuse and deception because in our modern world there is a lot of room to exploit it with no much regard, with no care and no regard that there still could be some limits which accordingly may actually back fire and cause at times in an “unprecedented” way problems in the social life and affairs of humanity if “trespassed” !
Just a thought anyway…
cheers
Leo Smith: ‘That is, we know our experience is limited, and less than the whole, and filtered by our own cultural prejudices, but that is all we have to go on.’
This is a reasonable, if unremarkable, set of claims about the human psyche. I support this statement, within reason, and admire its modesty and humility about the limits of knowledge.
From the supporting comments, I assume the author also agrees with these sentiments, especially since he says they are his solution to the problem of the claim of reality as a social construct.
What is not clear is how these claims support this statement:
‘They either don’t know that they are lying, or they actually don’t care if they are lying, because lying actually gets them, personally, a better life, than the truth!’
The author has agreed that he has only limited experience, filtered through his own cultural prejudices, and nothing else. And yet he is able to make claims that imply a high level of certainty about the states of minds of others.
The author needs to show the connection between these two statements, in a way that preserves the meaning of both of them.
(Merely pointing to ‘evidence’ of ‘corruption’ and the like cannot resolve this issue, because that would merely beg the question. The issue here isn’t the evidence, but rather how we trust and interpret the evidence given that our experience is filtered through our cultural prejudices.)
Brendan H. I agree with what you have said. The essay seems to switch from an interesting discussion of philosophical matters (with which I have much agreement) to a point of view, and there is not much connection between the two.
seaice1: ‘The essay seems to switch from an interesting discussion of philosophical matters (with which I have much agreement) to a point of view, and there is not much connection between the two.’
It’s a fairly common human practice to slip from description to judgement without realising we’ve made the jump.
The interesting thing about this essay is that the author has consciously tried to detail and explain the various assumptions and biases underlying human thought, but nevertheless seems to fall into the very errors he describes.
I say ‘seems’, because I could well be wrong, and the author has made a connection that has slipped my notice.
I enjoyed the post a lot… thanks.
I’m curious as to whether we CAN find a morality we can use and that might have a universal application.
Looking at children, they are born curious and adaptable – you can turn a child into almost anything if you work at it and it takes some years of careful indoctrination to cure them of the native wonder with which they arrive.
It seems to me, if we have a purpose, it is to learn the world we entered and given how many unique views there are, it would appear (if we have a purpose at all) we are here to learn every possible view of that world.
So, maybe morality is the measure of how much an action aids or impedes the drive to learn? This would fit with the general idea we seem to have that oppression is wrong, even if we usually only see oppression ‘over there’ and ignore what is being done in ‘our’ society.
This would make modern schools a very immoral choice for our society and help explain why we are (in general) turning out graduates with far less useful knowledge than we did a generation or more ago. We have very few who will questions the current ‘consensus’ in any field when it is clear the ‘Authority’ favours a specific PoV and ‘Climate Science’ is only the most glaring example of this.
MarkMcD
April 1, 2016 at 4:09 pm
I enjoyed the post a lot… thanks.
I’m curious as to whether we CAN find a morality we can use and that might have a universal application.
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Hello Mark.
In my view point and in my world or my own perception of reality, which actually it means that I still could be wrong, the morality still is a quantifiable entity as anything else, so to speak still it can be addressed and weighted through the” empirical’ angle,,,,, it could still be considered as a metric in assessments regarding human affairs and humans behavior in the prospect of social and civic progress….that is what all about it was always and still is.
As far as I can tell there is a lot of examples through the human history to show that the morality has being considered and played as a real metric in human affairs……..
For example lets take the USA, the most powerful nation in the world as per now.
Its constitution and the legislation is very well orientated to the basics of what we call the human “morality”.
At this point no much can be said or extrapolated as per considering the “morality” as a metric.
But lets look at history.
Galileo, is a very good example…. the Catholic church could not even find him guilty of heresy, even when his claims undermined the fundamentals of Catholicism itself more than anyone before him so plainly, simply because, regardless how wrong Galileo could have being with his conclusions, his science was basic and empirical in substance and very easy to replicate, therefore applying the metric of morality and find him immoral and sinful (a heretic therefor) would have made the case that the possible truth through simple scientific observation (experience) and empirical evidence would belong to immorality, sin and therefor the devil himself, and completely contrary to what the scriptures claimed.
So the Galileo case is an example to show that science, science research and the scientific method are no subject to the metric of “morality, therefor can be considered in principal as “amoral”, no subject to the morality metric. That is what actually in principle “amoral” means to me….no subject whatsoever to the judgment through what we call “morality”
So the straggle and the scientific endeavor towards the learning and the better comprehension of reality and environment in principle are no subject as to such as “morality” and generally are considered as “amoral”………
Another example will be Oppenheimer, if I am not wrong………..regardless of what seems to be that science is “amoral”, and therefor Oppenheimer science and engineering under such circumstances could not be considered and “judged” through the “morality” metric under any circumstances that still did not stop him from doing just that and claiming that he became a destroyer of worlds, a destroyer of worlds in plural never the less.
We know that not to be the truth (in our experience) in anyway, regardless of the claim.
At most he was a beautiful scientifically oriented mind, not a dark “angel” or a dark “god” engaged in some way with destruction of worlds….but never the less through, I would say his own vanity, he applied the morality metric and declared himself a destroyer of worlds and ending up to be an example of immorality by his own judgement on himself, contrary to the truth that he was just another human ……doing his best in accordance with his own nature and character…..as all the rest has actually always done…..
On my view point, considering your own self to be superior to other humans, or considering other humans as lesser, for whatever condition taken in account, even when considering your own intellect and IQ, gets you to be considered as under evaluation of what we call “morality”, and most probably than not will be that you are immoral in principle…..
Considering that something can be and should be done because simply is within the powers and means of you doing it, or because every one else would have done the same under same circumstances while this projects a given profiteering or wanted and wished outcome with no regard at all for other conditions related, could very well be considered as immoral…..and showing or explaining the criminal intent at least in your own actions.
In this context immoral means considering the “truth” to be and propagated as such in away against the “realistic” experience of what have being shown to work throughout all the history of experience that actually in the end happens to define your own life and existence…….simply because for a moment you happen to think and believe that you know better by a way of mass and industrial scale application of what you consider as a scientific discovery and in the same time consider that any one else under such conditions would do or would have done the same, and be completely justified in and by your own view point regardless of the environment you deal in ……..and that could very well mean that you do not care about the morality and therefor the “criminality” of your own acts………Hitler and Nazis come first at mind but that is not the only and an isolated case in human history, about genocide and crimes against humanity……..a product of an act of a wide scale social experiment in the bettering of humanity, still claimed to be based in some scientific research and discovery….and justified as a must be done…
Is no any problem with morality as per scientific research and scientific application, what could make it immoral and criminal at the same time is the way and the excuses and justifications when a scientific discovery or knowledge from science is applied to a mass production and in an industrial scale with no regard, or when it tries to effect national or international policy in the given subject with no regard that the main drive is not even based in science or the scientific method but rather in dogma and ideology as such as ” saving the world” or destroying it.
Either claiming that you are a destroyer of worlds or you are and belong with the “savers of the world” is no any much different, it is plainly immoral, in the verge of being criminal in essence…..or even insane at given degree of it…
Megalomania is a very clear expression of immorality as far as I can tell..
Immorality and crime are not very much different to each other, even in a given different scale or in a different perceived impact as……..the only difference in between is the excuse behind the act or the acts in consideration….and the time required to distinguish or appropriate in between the two…..
It is a confusing issue yes..:)
cheers
whiten,
Isn’t the basis of all morality pretty much based on the Golden Rule?