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Comment by msbarnett | Hacker News Reader

You're being snide, I suspect, but that's a time-tested and well-proven method of reaching the segment of the population that is currently being inundated with anti-science messages.

Many, many people believe what they hear first and what gets shouted loudest. Not liking that fact, and therefore refusing to engage in those tactics, doesn't make it any less true; it simply cedes a large segment of the population to anti-science proponents who are willing to do what it takes to get their message heard.

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By relying on such tactics you are abandoning science. You are saying essentially "who cares that these techniques can be used to get people to believe anything, what matters is that we are using them to promote The TRUTH(TM)". And every religion in history has believed exactly the same thing.

I don't want science to die, I don't want it to be replaced with some new ideology or religion which can trace its roots to some sciency origin.

Perhaps you can claim that in the short run you've improved things, but in the long run you've drowned out the vital dialog that keeps the process of science alive, you've killed the goose that lays the golden eggs. Meanwhile, someone else figures out how to shout even louder and more convincingly than you and we're back to square one, or the dark ages.

People aren't accepting what you believe to be scientifically provable facts? Argue more persuasively, provide better evidence. Don't just shout louder.

P.S. Yeah, it's a tough and frustrating process. Nobody said it'd be easy. It took millenia for human civilization to pull itself out of the morass of uncritical and superstitious thought. People, many people, suffered and died for that achievement, and the results have been spectacular so far. Giving up on science just because convincing other people of something is a frustrating and difficult process is the height of immaturity.

How about if the message promoted (i.e. THE TRUTH(TM)) is that that the scientific method works and that we should place our 'faith' in it? ;-)

> By relying on such tactics you are abandoning science.

I don't think this is true. Science is a means of building knowledge via testable predictions. It's not a promotional tool.

It's unrealistic to expect that effective techniques for performing science will be at all effective for promoting science; in fact, we have ample evidence that trying to promote science via reasoned engagement doesn't work very well. Anti-scientific proponents of vaccine-avoidance or evolution-denial continue to gain the mindshare of a significant and powerful segment of the voting population that "better evidence" has been unable to sway.

By "unable to sway" you mean "unable to sway everyone without any effort and with almost no delay".

How many people believed in evolution in 1500? How many people believed the Sun was powered by nuclear fusion in 1900? It's possible to convince people of the value of scientific inquiry and the truth of the results of scientific research, but sometimes it takes a lot more time and effort than anyone would wish.

On the plus side, we have it a lot easier than Galileo did. Our lives aren't in immediate danger merely because we challenge the dogma of powerful institutions.

The idea that Galileo's life was in danger is itself dogma.

He put himself into trouble by using the Pope's views in the form of his bot Simplicio, embarrassing the Pope. He was in trouble, but not in physical danger.

The irony is that the Church was open to heliocentrism, but demanded more scientific proof before teaching it.

Galileo was convicted of heresy, placed under house arrest for 9 years (until his death), and his books were banned. He could easily have been placed in prison rather than house arrest, at the whim of the Inquisition, the same Inquisition that executed Bruno 30 years prior and tortured and then imprisoned Campanella for 27 years. The idea that Galileo was never in any danger (assuming that one can write off house arrest as non-dangerous) is patently ridiculous.

The point is that he wasn't in danger from challenging the dogma, as you asserted above. That is dogma itself. If he was in danger, it was from embarrassing the pope. He advanced helicentrism long before his heresy trial. The Pope met with him and said that he could write about Copernican theory.

He was under house arrest for those years at the house of the Archbishop of Siena. It was a fairly nice life in those times. Galileo and the church got along very well, but they had to do something to save face for the Pope. I don't think it's ridiculous.

He's using known tested methods for getting people to listen to points of view that they don't agree with. That's psychology.

He's also using some set of content matching algorithms, and may introduce other deeper learning algorithms. That's computer science.

Seems like science to me :P

Yes, you can use science to destroy science, why shouldn't that be so? What's your point?

My point was that he's using psychology, computer science, and climate science to battle global warming denialists. That is actually in support of Science. That was my point, which opposes your seeming claim that his software wasn't using science (where in fact, it does).

Zeolots spamming random paper citations that they've never read to people whose arguments they've never read is not supporting science. It is actually, attempting to stifle science by stifling critical thinking in favor of rote repetition of The Global Warming Faith.

Since you used the word "Denialists" I already know you deny the scientific method and actually know nothing about the science of this issue. You're just repeating the Global Warming Faith (one of whose tenants is that anything that disagrees with the faith is not science) and attempting to shout down someone accurately pointing out the spam your ideology is resulting in.

Did I ever once say that I supported the chatbot? No.

However, I did refer to AGW followers as denialists. Not because I follow the "Global Warming Faith" [1], but because AGW followers' tactics of argumentation (or lack thereof) typically follow the Denialist Deck of Cards: http://www.denialism.com/Deckofcards/deck.html

The vast majority of arguments I've heard from AGW proponents can be categorized into one of the following: * No Problem * No Harm * Wait and See (we don't have enough proof, so let's wait and see if something changes - this argument is made quite often by AGW proponents, and is even referenced in the deck of cards) * Stifles Innovation (pushing money into clean energy stifles non-clean energy innovation - this claim was made with regards to California Proposition 23) * Already Highly Regulated (made by auto companies and oil companies) * Jobs (hello prop 23 proponents again) * Red Herring (claims of Neptune's warming is a red herring) * Federal Issue (AGW-funding companies claim that California's tougher emission standards are illegal) * Duh! (AGW proponents saying that they understand the science better than the scientists who are writing the papers, even claiming that the few papers that they have read make them better experts than people who have been studying the issues for decades) * Nit Pick (this is what you are doing, right now) * Muddy the Waters (and again with prop 23) * Poison the Well (this is also what you are doing, right now) * Exploit Others' Ignorance (hello prop 23 again) * Temper Tantrum (this is what targets of the bot do when chatted into a corner) * You're a Ninny (you are doing this) * Big Government (any regulation is big government) * We'll Lose Money (hey, back to prop 23 again)

[1] Actually having examined the evidence at Nasa, from climate scientists, etc., to the best of my ability (I'm not a climate scientist, I am a applied theoretical computer scientist with experience in distributed systems, search, and simulation), the evidence supporting global warming is orders of magnitude more compelling to me than the lack of evidence offered by AGW proponents. Others with differing experience and expertise are welcome to disagree with my judgement of who to believe, as you have. And a healthy dose of skepticism is great for science. But the behavior of AGW proponents is not skepticism, it's denialism.

Regards.

I believe you have your terminology mixed up.

AGW stands for 'Anthropogenic Global Warming' and 'AGW proponents' are those people who actually support the thesis that industrial CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic warming. It looks like you would have a very confused bot on your case if you went on twitter with comments like the above.

By AGW, I mean Anti-Global Warming, in the context that they claim that Global Warming, even if it does happen (which they claim it doesn't), is not human caused.

With this disclaimer, your post now makes sense, but your use of AGW is non-standard and misleading, and doesn't help you in any way.

And this is why the ignorant mob always wins, in the end.

People who make arguments that can be refuted in 5 mins are not contributing to "vital dialogue". They're noise-makers.

People who won't change their opinions when confronted with evidence aren't playing the same game you're playing.

The subject under discussion is not science, but who to trust on scientific issues that affect politics. People act out this argument dramatically by repeating the arguments of the people they think should be trusted. This is not a good thing -- as usual, when people aren't explicitly talking about what they're really arguing over, the debate goes nowhere fast -- but at least you can comfort yourself with the thought that the public discussion about global warming has nothing to do with the process and progress of science.

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