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Comment by stolenmerch | Hacker News Reader

I have no issue whatsoever with calling it a "Climate Emergency". However, when you open nearly any Scientific American topics page and find a bunch of partisan opinion pieces all leaning towards Progressive causes, it's going to be too easy to dismiss this for a lot of people.

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I know that "progressive" is a political term with some baggage at this point but it still, essentially, is trying to connote "progressing and changing". Scientific American isn't a magazine about how amazing it is that decades old devices are still functioning adequately - it's about how the world is progressing into the future.

This is not a reasonable summary of Progressivism. It has 100+ years of history and has a thoroughly developed ideological, political, and moral framework. It's not just "we'd like things to progress", because "progress" (vs "regress") is subjective. Pick whatever controversial topic you care most about, and the people on the other side(s) also want things to be better — perhaps by enacting the policies you hate!

Wild that science leans towards the left wing.

the idea that people follow Science is pure fiction. Nobody does Science: you only hear about Science through other humans talking about it, and mostly misinformed ones (like journalists) or people with a political agenda (WHO obviously lying about everything COVID related during the first months of the epidemic). Also, "Science" is not a static state, it's ever-moving with new discoveries and topics that end up being revised over time as more data coming in.

Science is not dogma.

From the perspective of western peers like Australia, NZ, Germany, France, or the UK, the American right is rather extreme, and the American left is rather moderate in its energy, economic, civil, and ecological and climate politics.

No it is not. American left with its identity politics and wokism is way more extreme than anything else in other western countries.

oh yeah for sure, if only things werent so partisan then we'd definitely do something about the climate

The scientific method is a tool.

The same people making these claims tell me that I should "believe science".

Not sure if I really want to worship any sort of tool, e.g. a wrench, when my community of faith is already a sustaining source of joy.

Nobody asks anybody else to “worship science”. Even the phrase does not make any sense. Believe it or not, you can know that something works without worshiping it. In fact, you can spend your whole life without worshiping anything.

God will not stop us from destroying ourselves. I wouldn't bring faith into a political discussion.

Precisely my point. I'm being instructed to believe something as though politics are a new faith.

Moderation thus far is QED.

You aren't being instructed to believe something based on faith. You're encountering evidence you disagree with and making up, which is to say hallucinating, the idea that the evidence of science is something that is like faith.

It is nothing like faith.

Don't make your problem with the available evidence a question of faith or you discredit faith.

Like I said, don't bring faith into politics.

If you believe that people who believe climate change is an emergency are taking part in a faith-based movement that is a huge logical error on your part.

Faith is a personal choice. Examining evidence and coming to a conclusion about what is real is a matter of logic and reasoning. They are completely different, and mixing them is not just poor form, it exposes your motivated reasoning.

We're arguing past each other. It happens.

I bet it happens to you a lot.

Chiefly due to my lack of religious faith in science.

No, mostly because you come into topics about serious issues and opine inanely about how science is a religion.

You talk past the topic. You get called out on it. You double down. You loftily say that we're talking past each other, when you're the one who tries to insist we follow you on a journey to how science is a religion.

Naturally your experience must be that people are talking past you. Because you don't know how to engage in the conversation, you just know how to divert.

If you insist on talking past the topic then pointing out that we're talking past each other is your first step to, maybe, perhaps, noticing that your approach to this conversation is the problem.

> who tries to insist we follow you on a journey to how science is a religion

It's unclear where I have insisted anyone do anything.

But let me do that now, and insist that you have both the last word and an excellent rest of your life.

Referencing the fictional arguments of 'a lot of people' just means you're too ashamed to own your own opinion.

The voting bloc that considers themselves "climate change skeptics" or whatever label they identify with is neither fictional nor small. I simply pointed out that there are going to be several people who throw this "climate emergency" piece out immediately because this magazine has a history of supporting left-leaning causes. It may or may not be a good strategy. That's it.

Those people are capable of speaking for themselves and don't need your advocacy. Rethink your approach, muddling equivocator.

There is no good strategy to convince the unscientific. Your project of seeking a good strategy is deluded nattering which adds nothing.

Your strategy, in other words, is bad.

To reiterate: Referencing the bad arguments of other people is stupid. Don't do it.

Racists aren't going to be convinced that Black Lives Matter but if I spend my time pointing that out in every topic about a cop killing a human being I'm doing something wrong.

There’s room here for opinions of what a voting population will think about something.

That wasn't an examination of voting population dynamics, that was just lazy opinionating with a flimsy curtain over the motivated reasoning.

It seems otherwise to me. I don’t read many articles in Scientific American, but I recall they endorsed Joe Biden for president last year (it was posted on HN.) My understanding of American politics is that many Republican voters oppose publications that openly support Democratic candidates. Here we have such a publication making a pronouncement about what could be a bipartisan initiative, and it seems like the publication’s political history could influence Republican voters to dismiss the emergency wording.

Laziness is a problem, but I don’t see a problem with a comment speculating that popular behavior will occur using and using fewer words to explain the potential mechanism than I did.

Happy to accept criticism of this explanation of the user’s opinion, how it could be more clear, etc.

Scientific American didn't merely endorse Joe Biden for president last year, they justified it with a description of the biggest crisis currently facing humanity (the Covid-19 pandemic) that was both nakedly partisan and really obviously contradicted by what was actually happening in the real world but that they declared was pure indisputable Science.

It doesn’t bother me that they endorsed him, nor would it if they hadn’t. I was only interested in the idea proposed by your original respondent that a user on HN can’t in good faith surmise the behavior of a voting population.

One party decided that progress was bad and science was a hoax. How can you accommodate such beliefs in a scientific magazine?

That description describes both parties. Each denies inconvenient science and blocks progress. Literally the only reason I know which party you're talking about is because of the context of this thread.

Stupidity transcends parties. I have no dog in your fight, and I would not be voting for democrats if they were politicians where I live.

That said, despite all the new new age stupidity and antivaxx misinformation from some liberals, only one party has a platform that is obviously anti-science.

I wonder what kind of inconvenient science you have in mind that democrats are supposed to ignore.

Biology.

You mean, like evolution, epidemiology, vaccines and stuff?

If you think about the gender thing, this is a social ideology. Biology is irrelevant to which bathroom someone can use.

Tell that to women getting their skull crushed by biological men in female sports.

Biology does not say anything about how we create categories for athletes either... Separating men from women is arbitrary, and we could very well use other criteria (weight, height, or whatever). Choosing to separate genders instead of sexes is a political decision; you are conflating social and scientific issues. Also, citation needed.

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