Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Over at “SkepticalScience”, which is neither skeptical nor scientific, they’re hyping a new “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) tool developed by John Cook et al. to identify “denialist claims”. The paper laying out this foolishness is in Nature Scientific Reports in an article with the most sciency title of “Computer-assisted classification of contrarian claims about climate change“. The Washington Post reports what they want to do …
“Ultimately, our goal is the Holy Grail of fact-checking, which is being able to detect and debunk misinformation in real time,” said Cook, who partly developed the framework previously at George Mason University. “Ideally, I would have social media platforms using it to detect misinformation in real time.”
Their hope is to use it to censor views that disagree with theirs “in real time” … can you imagine anything more anti-scientific and totalitarian than wanting to disappear scientists who disagree with you before anyone can even read their ideas?
In the Nature paper, Cook and the Cookies describe their work as follows:
Let’s start with a quick, 10-word introduction to climate change. There are 5 key facts that summarize everything you need to know about climate change. And they are:
1. It’s real
2. It’s us
3. It’s bad
4. There’s hope
5. Experts agree
We’ve developed a taxonomy of denialist claims that aim to cast doubt on climate science. Climate misinformation can be broken into five main categories, which we call super-claims. They’re the opposite of the five climate beliefs: it’s not real, it’s not us, it’s not bad, experts are unreliable and there’s no hope.
1. It’s not real
2. It’s not us
3. It’s not bad
4. Experts are unreliable
5. There’s no hope
When I saw this, I broke out laughing. Why? Because in total contradiction to point 4 immediately above, that experts are not unreliable, one of the finest physicists of my lifetime, Richard Feynman, famously said:
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Feynman is 100% correct. If no one ever questioned the claims of “experts”, science would come to an immediate halt. Einstein questioned Newton. Wegener questioned immobile continents. Science is the slow process of overturning the “scientific consensus” by scientists who question the beliefs of the experts. Feynman was right.
So clearly, the folks putting together this ludicrous “artificial intelligence” tool have no idea how science is supposed to work … and with that as its basis, there’s no hope for this tool.
Look, I’ve been programming computers for fifty-seven years now, longer than John Cook has been alive. And one thing I’ve found to be true, at times to my cost:
Computer programs are nothing but a physical embodiment of the understandings and more importantly the misunderstandings of the programmer.
And as a result, when you start out by programming “artificial intelligence” with a profound misunderstanding of science, as John Cook and his workmates are doing, you’ll end up with artificial stupidity every time.
In any case, here is a full list of their sub-categories of their five main categories of “denialist claims” listed above. Headers are in bold. (And in passing, anyone using the term “denialist” is not a scientist—they’re pseudo-scientists trying to discredit their opponents by a personal attack rather than a scientific falsification of their opponents’ ideas … but I digress.)
1 : Global warming is not happening
1.1 : Ice/permafrost/snow cover isn’t melting
1.1.1 : Antarctica is gaining ice/not warming
1.1.2 : Greenland is gaining ice/not melting
1.1.3 : Arctic sea ice isn’t vanishing
1.1.4 : Glaciers aren’t vanishing
1.2 : We’re heading into an ice age/global cooling
1.3 : Weather is cold/snowing
1.4 : Climate hasn’t warmed/changed over the last (few) decade(s)
1.5 : Oceans are cooling/not warming
1.6 : Sea level rise is exaggerated/not accelerating
1.7 : Extreme weather isn’t increasing/has happened before/isn’t linked to climate change
1.8 : They changed the name from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’
2 : Human greenhouse gases are not causing climate change
2.1 : It’s natural cycles/variation
2.1.1 : It’s the sun/cosmic rays/astronomical
2.1.2 : It’s geological (includes volcanoes)
2.1.3 : It’s the ocean/internal variability
2.1.4 : Climate has changed naturally/been warm in the past
2.1.5 : Human CO2 emissions are tiny compared to natural CO2 emission
2.2 : It’s non-greenhouse gas human climate forcings (aerosols, land use)
2.3 : There’s no evidence for greenhouse effect/carbon dioxide driving climate change
2.3.1 : Carbon dioxide is just a trace gas
2.3.2 : Greenhouse effect is saturated/logarithmic
2.3.3 : Carbon dioxide lags/not correlated with climate change
2.3.4 : Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
2.3.5 : There’s no tropospheric hot spot
2.3.6 : CO2 was higher in the past
2.4 : CO2 is not rising/ocean pH is not falling
2.5 : Human CO2 emissions are miniscule/not raising atmospheric CO2
3 : Climate impacts/global warming is beneficial/not bad
3.1 : Climate sensitivity is low/negative feedbacks reduce warming
3.2 : Species/plants/reefs aren’t showing climate impacts yet/are benefiting from climate change
3.2.1 : Species can adapt to global warming
3.2.2 : Polar bears are not in danger from climate change
3.2.3 : Ocean acidification/coral impacts aren’t serious
3.3 : CO2 is beneficial/not a pollutant
3.3.1 : CO2 is plant food
3.4 : It’s only a few degrees (or less)
3.5 : Climate change does not contribute to human conflict/threaten national security
3.6 : Climate change doesn’t negatively impact health
4 : Climate solutions won’t work
4.1 : Climate policies (mitigation or adaptation) are harmful
4.1.1 : Climate policy will increase costs/harm economy/kill jobs
4.1.2 : Proposed action would weaken national security/national sovereignty/cause conflict
4.1.3 : Proposed action would actually harm the environment and species
4.1.4 : Future generations will be richer and better able to adapt
4.1.5 : Climate policy limits liberty/freedom/capitalism
4.2 : Climate policies are ineffective/flawed
4.2.1 : Clean energy/green jobs/businesses won’t work
4.2.2 : Markets/private sector are economically more efficient than government policies
4.2.3 : Climate policy will make negligible difference to climate change
4.2.4 : A single country/region only contributes a small % of global emissions
4.2.5 : Better to adapt/geoengineer/increase resiliency
4.2.6 : Climate action is pointless because of China/India/other countries’ emissions
4.2.7 : We should invest in technology/reduce poverty/disease first
4.3 : It’s too hard to solve
4.3.1 : Climate policy is politically/legally/economically/technically too difficult
4.3.2 : Media/public support/acceptance is low/decreasing
4.4 : Clean energy technology/biofuels won’t work
4.4.1 : Clean energy/biofuels are too expensive/unreliable/counterproductive/harmful
4.4.2 : Carbon Capture & Sequestration (CCS) is unproven/expensive
4.5 : People need energy (e.g., from fossil fuels/nuclear)
4.5.1 : Fossil fuel reserves are plentiful
4.5.2 : Fossil fuels are cheap/good/safe for society/economy/environment
4.5.3 : Nuclear power is safe/good for society/economy/environment
5 : Climate movement/science is unreliable
5.1 : Climate-related science is uncertain/unsound/unreliable (data, methods & models)
5.1.1 : There’s no scientific consensus on climate/the science isn’t settled
5.1.2 : Proxy data is unreliable (includes hockey stick)
5.1.3 : Temperature record is unreliable
5.1.4 : Models are wrong/unreliable/uncertain
5.2 : Climate movement is alarmist/wrong/political/biased/hypocritical (people or groups)
5.2.1 : Climate movement is religion
5.2.2 : Media (including bloggers) is alarmist/wrong/political/biased
5.2.3 : Politicians/government/UN are alarmist/wrong/political/biased
5.2.4 : Environmentalists are alarmist/wrong/political/biased
5.2.5 : Scientists/academics are alarmist/wrong/political/biased
5.3 : Climate change (science or policy) is a conspiracy (deception)
5.3.1 : Climate policy/renewables is a hoax/scam/conspiracy/secretive
5.3.2 : Climate science is a hoax/scam/conspiracy/secretive/money-motivated (includes climategate)
Let me wander through and comment on a few of these. I’ll start with their very first “denialist claim”, the top of the list:
1.1.1 : Antarctica is gaining ice/not warming
Nature Magazine, a premier scientific journal and a huge defender of the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis, has an article on the subject which says:
The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.
Ooops …
So clearly, Nature Magazine is a secret nest of climate “denialists” whose claims should be censored before anyone can be misled by them … and while that example alone should be enough to totally discredit their artificial stupidity, it’s just the first of many.
1.3 : Weather is cold/snowing
So it’s gonna identify articles pointing out that while in most of the media heatwaves are always explained as climate change, cold spells are just plain old weather …
1.6 : Sea level rise is exaggerated/not accelerating
I’ve shown that sea-level rise is both exaggerated by improperly splicing satellite data to tide gauges, and is not accelerating. See “Inside The Acceleration Factory” and “Munging The Sea Level Data“. Those are scientific analyses of the subject, not “denialist claims”. I deny nothing—I investigate and report back, wherein I demonstrate and cite and support what I find.
1.7 : Extreme weather has happened before
Seriously? This is a climate denialist claim? Are they truly trying to say that there’s never been extreme weather before? How about this?
Pointing out that 200-year drought is not “denialism”. It’s science.
2.3.6 : CO2 was higher in the past
This is widely accepted scientific fact … why is it somehow a mark of “climate denialism”?
3.1 : Climate sensitivity is low/negative feedbacks reduce warming
Both of these are the subject of active scientific debate and dispute. One of the huge failures of mainstream climate science is their inability to determine climate sensitivity. Pretending this is settled is unscientific to the core.
And as is obvious from the name, negative feedbacks reduce warming … the scientific question is not “Do negative feedbacks reduce warming.” The question, about which there is little agreement, is “How much?”
3.2 : Species/plants/reefs aren’t showing climate impacts yet/are benefiting from climate change
For most species, including humans and coral reefs, a change of a degree in average temperature over fifty years means nothing. We see more temperature change than that every day, month, and year. Here are the noted “climate denialists”, National Geographic, in a piece entitled These 38 Coral Reefs Are Thriving, Despite Threats.
And in general, plants have benefitted from the additional carbon dioxide, leading to the “global greening” noted by NOAA. But heck, they’re just a government agency, so they must be closeted “climate denialists” too …
3.2.1 : Species can adapt to global warming
Protip: Species are amazingly resilient. If they weren’t, they’d have gone extinct millennia ago. Adaptation is what they do, 24/7/365.
3.2.2 : Polar bears are not in danger from climate change
This is absolutely true, beyond dispute. They are thriving. Why is this still in question?
Well, by chance I got an example of why this is in question. I was listening to an ad from the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) today, and guess who their poster child for fundraising is?
Gosh, you got it first try … polar bears. You too can “adopt” a polar bear for a mere $60.
And why haven’t the WWF folks noticed that the polar bears are doing quite well, thank you very much? Well, as Upton Sinclair said,
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Sure ‘nuf …
4.1.4 : Future generations will be richer and better able to adapt
Again, this is obviously true … how on earth is this “denialism”?
4.2.2 : Markets/private sector are economically more efficient than government policies
Um … duh. Markets and the private sector have penalties for inefficiencies. Governments have no such constraints, which is why the California “train to nowhere” that was supposed to cost $33 billion and be finished by 2020 is now up to $100 billion, unfinished, and the cost is still rising.
4.2.3 : Climate policy will make negligible difference to climate change
Yes, we’ve all seen how amazingly effective climate policy has been to date.
4.3.1 : Climate policy is politically/legally/economically/technically too difficult
Some is, some isn’t … but “Net-Zero By 2050” is all of those things.
4.5.2 : Fossil fuels are cheap
Again, duh … it’s why we use them.
4.5.3 : Nuclear power is safe/good for society/economy/environment
Nuclear power is all of those things. It is also the only carbon-free baseline power source available. If you think carbon dioxide is a problem and you don’t support nuclear, you’re either a virtue-signaling poser or an idiot.
5.1.1 : There’s no scientific consensus on climate/the science isn’t settled
I turn again to the amazing Richard Feynman, a hundred times the scientist that these artificial stupidity proponents will ever be, who said:
“If you thought that science was certain, well, that is just an error on your part.”
Feynman was a true genius and an honest scientist.
5.1.2 : Proxy data is unreliable (includes hockey stick)
Proxy data is indeed unreliable, which is why different proxies for the same variable often differ by so much. And as for the Hockeystick, that’s a scientific joke. See Steve McIntyre’s extensive falsifications here, and my own comments on it here.
5.1.3 : Temperature record is unreliable
Ummm … since the temperature records from Berkeley Earth and JMA and UAH MSU and HadCRUT and RSS MSU and GISS all disagree with each other … just which one of them are we supposed to believe is “reliable”?
5.1.4 : Models are wrong/unreliable/uncertain
As noted above, the models cannot even agree on an equilibrium climate sensitivity … so it’s clear that either all or almost all of them are wrong. And despite that, they all do quite well at hindcasting the past. How can that even be possible?
5.2.2 : Media (including bloggers) is alarmist/political/biased
5.2.3 : Politicians/government/UN are alarmist/political/biased
5.2.4 : Environmentalists are alarmist/political/biased
5.2.5 : Scientists/academics are alarmist/political/biased
Double duh … it would take a double-dose either natural or artificial stupidity to not have noticed that.
5.3.2 : Climate science is a hoax/scam/conspiracy/secretive/money-motivated (includes climategate)
I try not to ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by ignorance … but regarding Climategate, I was forced to make an exception. You see, I knew what was actually happening because I was the first person to make a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Phil Jones and the rest of the liars at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. I describe their conspiratorial conniving in my post called “Freedom Of Information, My Okole“. And here’s the irrepressible James Delingpole with Climategate 10 Years On – The Bastards Have Got Away With It!
So … those are just a few of the clearly true and totally defensible scientific claims that will demonstrate to the Artificial Stupidity Program that you are an eeeevil climate denialist …
The only good news out of all of this?
Clearly, John Cook and the Cookies are getting desperate … because when you actually think your scientific claims are solid, there’s no reason to conjure up some bogus “AI” program to automatically censor your scientific opponents.
Here in our lovely forest, we’re expecting three days of rain. It’s only December, but we’ve already gotten two inches (5 cm) more rain than all of the last rain year (which around here goes from October to September). Of course, last year was a drought year, which as the graph above demonstrated is quite common in California. And again of course, everyone was blaming the drought on “CLIMATE CHANGE! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! EVERYONE PANIC!” … but this year not a word.
How come climate change is so one-sided that it only gets blamed for the bad weather and is never credited for the good weather?
And so, having now firmly established my “climate denialist” credentials, all I can do is wait until the Artificial Stupidity program engages the Climate Thought Police to disappear my heresies … because everyone knows that’s how the very best science works in the 21st century.
My best to all,
w.
As Is My Wont: I ask that when you comment, you quote the exact words you are referring to, so we can all be clear just what and who you are discussing.
(this is sarcasm on my part, quotes are from the Nature paper)
After reading the paper on Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01714-4
Oh Jeez Willis, why do you get so pissed off. This tool doesn’t attack your scientific claims against junk science, it only targets WUWT or you as a blogger.
See, they’re only targeting your writing style. Thus, anyone who thinks like Willis, Dave, Chris, or any other WUWT poster must be a bad person. Bad ideas will be tracked through the fingerprints of their writing style.
Furthermore, it took a small army of undergrad students to track your style
Alas, they couldn’t do the job, so they were fired. A team of 30 well indoctrinated souls was recruited.
Ordinary self-reliant thoughtful undergrads weren’t able to find fault with your science, so they needed fully brainwashed team players.
(think about the budget to do this).
(giggling to myself), here’s a great opportunity to influence the artificial intelligence. Just insert a bunch of relevant paragraphs from papers of climate activists as keywords within WUWT posts. Suddenly, everything these activists say is flagged as contrarian.
TLDR: Any scientific claims made on WUWT are flagged as contrarian. This is not a problem … it is an opportunity … to have fun.
After reading the Nature paper, and examining the creds of the authors, it becomes clear the authors hold in their minds that contributors on WUWT are terrorists, and must be tracked as such. Thus I surmise, the cook recruits the lead author (not saying his name, lest it be flagged). But its important that He Who Must Not Be Named hereafter: “HIM” is person who hunts terrorists by use of software that tracks writing style.
So the cook decides that WUWT is a terrorist org, and hires HIM to flag the words of WUWT writers in any social media posts.
Let me have a go at Cook’s number 4 – “There is hope” With his artificial intelligence he mindlessly switches the list to its negatives and for ‘4’ he comes up with “There is no hope” as a ‘contrarian’ thing. In what possible way would a contrarian, who says (and shows) there is no problem with climate, find this hopeless?
There is a big ‘tell’ in this! Yes, Hope is a big presence with the consensus. With real scientists, hope is not tool they make use of. After having projected 300% too hot compared to observations (and if it doesn’t hurry up and start warming the error is only getting larger), and suffered psychologically almost 2 decades of zero warming ended by an el Niño, now gone and cooling returned, Hope seems to be all that’s left.
Having cost a couple of trillion on useless political mission oriented ‘research’, hundreds of sq miles of renewable nightmare energy farms that don’t really work, damaged the fossil fuel industry, destroyed economies, impoverished a world that really needs this money to for betterment of their lives, yeah, you better hope for hell and high water to start making an appearance soon! This will certainly be laid at the feet of the consensus when it doesn’t occur.
Cook and the Cookies describe their work as follows
:”Let’s start with a quick, 10-word introduction to climate change.
There are 5 key facts that summarize everything you need to know about climate change.””
A pathetic and patronizing summary is hardly an auspicious start for them.
The problem with AI is simply this.
With a program there is no ability to correct an error that enters the program.
This is not to say that a smart AI program does not have an ability to run checks on data entering the system and try to remove anomalies.
Just that both at the entry point and during the running of the program assessing the data errors can occur which are not correctable because there is no way of assessing errors in the program or errors that occur because the inputted data is wrong.
There is a third type of error in that rounding up of minute changes can over time lead to horrendous outcomes.
Human supervision can identify and overcome this issues or cause the problem to worsen when greed and self interest dictate.
I would still rather play a human opponent than an AI at chess because a computer cannot change the right way to do things programmed in.
Once you beat it at an opening once you can wrack up the same game over and over again.
If it is programmed to play a different move the weakness in that move can be identified in time with the same result.
.
“he comes up with “There is no hope” as a ‘contrarian’ thing. In what possible way would a contrarian, who says (and shows) there is no problem with climate, find this hopeless?”
The only hopeless people are the alarmists trying to promote this climate change scam.
Skeptics are full of hope for the future because we don’t see a problem with CO2. And it’s not like we haven’t been looking.
What he probably means is that contrarians believe renewable energy is hopeless. (Say, was that topic on his list?)
What this lot are talking about is not AI. It is pattern matching from a database.
They’re just using a buzzword to try and add credibility to their efforts.
You can’t have actual artificial intelligence without first having sufficient actual intelligence to understand what intelligence itself is.
Of course, if they were actually developing a useful AI that would look dispassionately at the data, it would soon tell them that they’re barking up the wrong tree.
Well the deadline to the essay contest – 11th December – came and went with no mention at all.
Is it still being run or has it been quietly dropped??
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/11/11/submissions-open-the-first-wuwt-climate-change-essay-contest/
Cook et al have done a pretty good job of cataloging the skeptical arguments in general terms. This can be very useful for skeptics. I find this amusing. It is something I have wanted to do for a long time but never had the funding.
For example it will be very helpful to say which arguments are being advanced by a research result, or in a long video. One could even build a search engine that finds content by argument. I love it!
That they call our arguments misinformation does not change the value to us of their catalog.their
Yes!
Willis? There is nothing artificial about the stupidity of the left, it is 100% pure and unadulterated.
Willis,
You should ask for a free copy of the program, then edit the 50 or so statements they use, to things like:
1] Arctic Ice will be gone by…
2] Major cities to be inundated by…
Etc… and then set the program to work. It would probably be a boon to all of us here at WUWT. (lol)
From the article: “Clearly, John Cook and the Cookies are getting desperate … because when you actually think your scientific claims are solid, there’s no reason to conjure up some bogus “AI” program to automatically censor your scientific opponents.”
That says it all.
Very good article, Willis. Lots of reading material here.
I would go with “CO2 is plant food” as showing the whole project is utter garbage
That Reviewer 2 rant does not abide by the wise advice of Teddy Roosevelt, Willis:
<blockquote>
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better
</blockquote>
Or better get a life. <a href=”https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2021/12/11/classification-of-contrarian-claims-about-climate-change/#comment-203312″>Your endless criticism, carping, and whimpering is boring as hell</a>.
Point of confusion: Cook’s paper asserts that alarmists contend “There’s hope” and skeptics contend “There’s no hope.” If the subject is climate-caused doomsday, this is exactly backwards. Why are alarmists so full of alarm? Why are children across the globe fearful and depressed?
For skeptics, hope doesn’t enter the picture. Nature, the weather, and climate will do what they will do, and humanity will largely adapt.
“Clearly, John Cook and the Cookies are getting desperate … because when you actually think your scientific claims are solid, there’s no reason to conjure up some bogus “AI” program to automatically censor your scientific opponents.”
Says it all really – thanks for putting all the current info all in one place.
It is scary seeing how science/medicine has being politicized to take away our rights and our money, while patting us on the head and saying it’s for our own good. Shades of the fascist/socialist/communist totalitarianism build-up of about a hundred years ago.
It was well said many years ago in a BBC broadcast.
Those who believe in the absolute correctness of their science and scientific theories are the dangerous ones. Those who believe in the tick-toc mathematical magic of their science are the same people who condemn the unbelievers, and especially those who see the strange chaos that resides in all those variations within the error-bars.
<blockquote>
“It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken.”
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here [at Auschwitz], to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”
― Jacob Bronowski (Ascent Of Man, episode 11 – Knowledge Or Certainty) </blockquote>
Very powerful – and very pertinent
Re:
2.5 : Human CO2 emissions are miniscule/not raising atmospheric CO2
Are you referring to the CO2 exhaled by humans? Otherwise I thought it was accepted that human activity was causing the observed increase in CO2.
I just want to be sure to give Willis credit for one of the mostest hilariousest examples of (unintentional) irony I think I’ve ever seen!!
So Willis quotes Feynman, as an expert on experts, to prove that experts aren’t reliable?
PERFECT!!!!
Once again, Joshua shows up to do all that he knows how to do—criticize, carp, and whine about anything that I might say.
And once again, Joshua totally misses the point. Feynman was well aware of this.
Get another hobby, Joshua, or at least get a grip. All you’re doing here is making people point and laugh.
w.
Willis – only a person of your grand(iose) stature could teach that epic level of cluelessness and lack of introspection.
You actually appealed to the authority of an expert to argue that experts are unreliable.
Seriously, that’s perfect, bro. Just perfect.
Joshua, if I want to know about the unseen faults of doctors … I’ll ask a doctor.
If I want to know about sketchy stuff the police are doing … I’ll ask a policeman.
If I want to know the truth about the weak points of lawyers … I’ll ask a lawyer.
If I want to know what firemen are doing wrong at fire scenes when no one is looking … I’ll ask a fireman.
And if I want to know about the reliability of experts …
My advice?
Quit while you’re behind. You’re embarrassing yourself.
w.
Thanks Willis –
Exactly. So when you want to know something about an area where you lack expertise, you ask an expert. Exactly like you said.
And back up your view of experts, you referenced an expert! And not just an expert but “one of the finest” experts of your lifetime.
That was my point. Thanks again for showing how you agree with me despite your protestation otherwise.
Willis is exactly right, you are beclowning yourself. There was no “appeal to authority” in Willis’ quote. He wasn’t using it to prove anything.
And you sit here claiming HE is the clueless one?
Right. There was no appeal to authority in Willis’ appeal to Feynman’s authority when he appealed to Feynman’s authority. Nor was there any appeal to authority in his appeal to the authority of lawyers, doctors, policemen, or firemen.
Thanks for that explanation with such logical clarity.
> He wasn’t using it to prove anything
Willis never needs to prove anything. He’s a **doer**.
And thanks to him, I now discovered anchors:
https://climateball.net/but-science/#ignorance
***
The pickle is easy to solve. If you distrust expert E1, you ask E2. Then E3, E4, and so on and so forth. If most experts agree on something, you get some kind of reliability. So in an indirect way Willis is rediscovering why science is intersubjective.
That does not mean that you get infallible knowledge. That does not exist in empirical sciences. That just means that’s the best we got so far. You can always bet against that. That’s what contrarians do.
For every Warren Buffett millions of contrarian investors lose money. It’s really hard to beat the market.
So Willis’ trick is to confuse reliability and fallibility.
Next time, keep the chin up.
There are experts to real questions. Like how to make good small modular nuclear reactors, how to classify stag beetles or how to obtain artefact-free X-ray tomographic images at submicron resolution (or at least voxel size).
But there are no experts on ill-posed questions. Like – is current climate change unprecedented or alarming? Or is sea level rise accelerating? Or what happened before the Big Bang or in parallel universes?
Naming oneself an expert in such a field is a strong sign that you are a charlatan.
Of course there’s not an “expert” on whether or not the risks posed by ACO2 emissions are “alarming.”. That’s a subjective assessment.
By the same token, there are no experts on whether risks posed by ACO2 emissions are a “nothingburger” or whether we’re all doomed by the AGW hoax, blah, blah.
Been trying to follow your logic, but I find none.
WE did not appeal to authority, to an expert.
His quote is basically framing the statement, trust no one including the person who did the quote.
> His quote is basically framing the statement, trust no one including the person who did the quote.
He appealed to Feynman’s expertise as an authority (one of the finest physicists in Willis’ lifetime).
Willis then went on to amusingly justify the general practice of relying on experts.
Let us not forget that the person we’re talking to here trusted his own expertise enough to confidently declare that there was a “hard limit” on population fatality from COVID – and that no country would exceed a 0.085% pop fatality rate.
And a renown “skeptic” expert (Nic Lewis) weighed in to largely agree with Willis’ expertise, after NIc put up a series of posts where he predicted that “herd immunity” would be reached at as low as 20% population infection rate, and that London, Barcelona, India, NYC, and Sweden, among other localities, had reacted a “herd immunity threshold” as early as Spring of 2020.
Interesting how so many “skeptics” found Nic’s and Willis’ expertise to be reliable, despite that it was unarguably not remotely reliable, isn’t it?
Of course it’s legit to question the reliability of “experts” as a class. The problem is when people apply the associated logic selectively to, basically, confirm ideological biases.
Joshua
Nice to see you posting at WUWT, don’t hold your nose too tightly 😁
The use of AI for this purpose makes no sense. AI is driven by a model and to make it work you need to train it with examples, such as correct science and bad science statements. The AI model then finds more examples of bad science automatically to help the censors do their job. The model clearly does not think in the manner of a human brain but simply follows the rules it has been given. The whole idea that it will correctly pick out examples of bad science is totally bogus. It can’t reason through logic it isn’t trained on, so any new science would likely be labled as bad science.
This is about the most stupid application of AI I have seen. It is similar to what William Briggs says about statistical models and how they can be designed to prove anything the author wants them to.
The father of environmental justice, on whether we’re all doomed – VOX
I should be getting paid to consume the comprehensive media from TV to the internet that is how much it is leveraged. Not sure how I missed this post. Excellent summary of how fact checking works as censorship/narrative control propaganda. Even broader algorithms are at work in terms to the detection of narrative themes in social media, searches, blog entries a and such paired the interventions response to those emerging themes is endemic of the intervention response to trends played out in music, images commercials, TV show’s moves, weather broadcast, news stories. The twisting and slanting of the news stories in the 1980s has turned into an endemic blitzkrieg of propaganda because the data shows that it works. it used to be that the actual current events drove the the news. Now something else entirely is driving the stories. In the past ten years there has been so many amazing current events that never hit the threshold of a new story. I
Can’t they be both?
P.S.: I couldn’t wade through all the comments, so if this is a repeat…
It is – but it’s well worth repeating
Here’s an image to help Herr Cook to train his deep learning algorithm
I think it’s great that SkS / Cook has created this outline of Points In Dispute (PIDs). Now let’s get the Oxford Union to host a series of deep debates on each point.
And/or let’s challenge SkS to fill in the blanks in its outline so that our side can come to grips with them and, by thus engaging, defeat or blunt them. (SkS already has posted its position on most of these points, which we could copy and paste in, so all our side needs to do is collaboratively put together responses—mostly from material we’ve already written.)
The resulting online document could attract a lot of attention because of its comprehensive nature, and its cheeky debunking-the-debunkers appeal. Cook has provided us with a perfect opportunity to counterpunch and land a haymaker in front of a global audience. Seize the day, y’all!