Comment by EliRivers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EliRivers | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

None of that evidence counts. It's all falsified. Or the people producing it are stooges. Or they're so stupid they get it wrong. Some of it is a conspiracy. Some of it is misinterpreted. And it's a good thing anyway. And even if it's real (which it isn't) it's not caused by anything humans do.

I can come up with a million of these. When an axiomatic starting point is fixed (hello religion and other cultural beliefs), you can come up with post-hoc rationalisations that not only mean you get to be right, but you get to feel smart and special (and with this one, you get to make people who have no idea what they're talking about feel that their street-smarts or some bullshit "common sense" is superior to actually knowing things, like those scientists who think they're so much better than everyone else). Trying to reason anyone out of a position they did not reach through reason is a wasted effort. You'll just go insane if you try :)

If it's a calm, rational discussion about evidence then science usually wins. In fact science wins that one so often it isn't very exciting.

If it's a heated debate about who can call who which names then everybody loses. Which is why I chose to present them with the evidence they asked for while giving them the benefit of the doubt. When somebody with views like this gives the invitation to discuss evidence I say take it in good faith and encourage them to continue down that path.

You forgot, "whatever humans have contributed is minuscule compared to how much the sun has affected things."

Now that's a clever one. It's true in that the energy being dumped on the planet every day by the sun is huge compared to what we burn, so at first glance people will think it's a decisive argument. It's easily understood, so people with little understanding of the situation can think they've seen right through all the conspiracy etc. I'll add that one; if you can make your audience feel clever doing it, they'll believe anything you want.

Hence the common refrain in a lot of the denialist screeds of, "This is just common sense", "we already know this", "it's simple science", "THINK, PEOPLE!!!!', etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com