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Comment by whatisthiseven | Hacker News Reader

What is wrong with appeal to authority? Fallacies don't mean your argument is instantly wrong. It just means your argument isn't perfectly sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

And you presume that I am arguing on behalf of authority, as opposed to giving an example of a "large mass of humans who believe the same thing". You haven't discredited them, you have only mocked me for choosing to believe in an expert body. That is fine, and we should always question authorities and their methods.

But flippantly saying "How is this not making an appeal to authority" is frustrating. Yea, so what? Are the authorities wrong? Unless you can answer that essential question your needling on this point is irrelevant.

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>What degree of confidence are you looking for, and is the IPCC not good enough for you?

>And you presume that I am arguing on behalf of authority

I mean.... yes?

I'm sorry you find the question frustrating to answer. But your post revolves around trusting the IPCC because they are an authority.

I think that's a weak argument because if a guy doesn't know what the letters IPCC mean, you're not going to win them over. I think it's more effective to be open to the idea that maybe we're all wrong, and work from that instead of the opposite. You know, healthy skepticism, science. If you approach it like that, you can still work towards all the same goals without being divisive.

The way we're all just supposed to never question the authorities or sacred texts is how this has become a wedge issue.

You're free to read the original papers, collect your own data and write a refutation. I'm pretty sure you can get it published with high impact if your data is sound. There are billions of people who would like to hear that they don't have to change their way of life.

I didn't say to blindly trust the authorities. I read some of the reports myself. You can, too.

If you mean you only want to trust primary research you do yourself, then this discussion is impossible.

We are discussing climate science. If the person I was trying to convince was so ignorant of the subject to not even know what IPCC was, I would point them to the body, its website, and NASA for summarized data.

If someone who wants to drag out useless arguments online without addressing real datapoints wants to pretend like "IPCC Is so foreign", then you are just wasting time.

You know what the IPCC is. You can find reports from NASA. You know the body of research out there. Why aren't you engaging with it? You decry the lack of discussion, but you won't even engage with the highest quality of research available on the topic.

Calling out a fallacy without substantiating further is just arguing for the sake of arguing. Either engage usefully or stop question begging.

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