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Comment by eisbaar | Hacker News Reader

I guess you could describe all science as "mental gymnastics". And all we humans have is common sense.

"The simple truth is you've already made up your mind about climate change in general, and now you're just looking for tiny crumbs of evidence that researchers are slipping up somewhere, and criticizing anything that doesn't fit your notion of how this should play out. "

That exact line could be handed back to yourself, except that you are sucking up all evidence that confirms your point of view.

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Science is specifically not just using "common sense", what are you talking about?

And no, I don't need to buy into the idea of climate change at all to take the contents of the article at face value.

So you are taking the contents of the article at face value, but somehow I am the silly person doing mental gymnastics?

Common sense is essentially how people think. Scientists are also people. If claims don't add up or data is missing to support a claim, common sense can be used to spot it.

> And all we humans have is common sense.

Quantum mechanics say hello

> except that you are sucking up all evidence that confirms your point of view.

how much evidence there is in the "there is no climate change" side?

You are thinking in Quantum Mechanics? Or scientists do, as opposed to normal people? Because scientists are somehow "superhuman"?

"how much evidence there is in the "there is no climate change" side?"

Why are you bringing up "there is no climate change"? Nobody made such a claim. But even if there is climate change, not every article has to be taken at face value, and not every theory on how it comes about has to be automatically considered true.

> You are thinking in Quantum Mechanics? Or scientists do, as opposed to normal people?

No, I'm saying that common sense doesn't have any saying in science

I haven't really seen Quantum Mechanics applied to climate science, though. Maybe it exists, but it doesn't seem to feature high in the public discourse. So I guess it is all bunk, because it is not Quantum Mechanics?

>I haven't really seen Quantum Mechanics applied to climate science

Ah, you';re missing the point completely

Quantum mechanics has nothing to do with climate change, but the point is that your claim that common sense is important in science is false

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