Hacker News Reader

Comment by qiskit | Hacker News Reader

> Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change, echoing a policy already in place at Google.

Maybe someone should tell twitter, google, etc that science isn't supposed to work on consensus. Politics works on consensus. And when you mix politics with science, you get social darwinism/scientific racism/etc.

> Twitter said it would provide more information in the coming months on how it plans to provide “reliable, authoritative context to the climate conversations” its users engage in, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N.-backed science panel’s reports on the causes and effects of climate change provide the basis for international negotiations to curb climate change.

The good old authoritarian, I mean authoritative sources. It's amazing how the entire establishment political/media/tech/etc all rallied around "authoritative sources". It's almost like someone flipped a switch and it's become a national mantra. "Authoritative sources", "authoritative sources", "authoritative sources".

A UN backed science panel. Great. If there is one thing we all know about the UN, it's that the UN isn't political. An institution ruled by the US, Russia, China, Britain and France. Seems very trustworthy to me.

View on HN

Science works on consensus, the consensus of experts. When the experts on a topic don't have consensus, we say the science is undecided. When they have consensus, we call that science settled.

And for the science to change under new evidence, again the consensus of experts is required, otherwise the new change remains on the fringe.

> Science works on consensus, the consensus of experts.

This is scientistry, not science. Science works on observation and experiment. In a perfect world perhaps consensus would be established scientifically, but that’s observably at odds with the history of science.

That's like saying that software engineering is about typing. Observations and experiments are low-level activities you perform while doing science. Actual science works on higher levels.

Convincing yourself that your ideas are right is a low bar. The key part of doing science is convincing yourself that your ideas are wrong. It's about telling the difference between actually discovering something new and making mistakes in experiments and reasoning. If you fail to convince yourself, you ask others to convince you that your ideas are wrong. If they also fail, you are starting to build a consensus that maybe you have actually discovered something.

Believing in something that contradicts the consensus is politics. Building a consensus among experts who are skeptical but open to new ideas is science.

Thanks for the clear demonstration that the use of analogy is no substitute for reason.

The problem is one of confusion. There are at least three distinct things that we call science. Primus, the social enterprise itself. This is where “consensus” applies. Secundus, the method for understanding the rules governing the system of the world. This is where what you call “low level” activities are. Tertius, the body of accepted knowledge that’s been ascertained. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily follow from the scientific method. Sometimes it instead follows from the needs of the social enterprise of science, which we rather clumsily call politics.

It’s only by clearly and distinctly considering these three concepts that we can avoid frankly intellectually crippling confusion.

Nah, when the science is settled it becomes a law. Like the Laws of Thermodynamics.

Those things take hundreds of years. We don’t even have a working model of climate change which is why they average out hundreds of them.

The science on climate change is far from settled.

It’s pretty easy to take any given climate change model and watch it give inaccurate predictions.

> when the science is settled it becomes a law

That's not how it works for most of science. Most consensus ideas are theories because they are impossible to prove well enough to call them a law.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Climate change is an unproven theory, far from the certainty that the political side of science makes it out to be.

For all intents and purposes until we have better modeling climate change is largely a political topic.

People for the most part have a pet form of energy generation they want the world to switch to and use wildly inaccurate climate models to beat everyone who disagrees with them over the head with.

See Germany and switching to oil and gas over climate friendly nuclear and trying to get gas added as a renewable form of energy and nuclear removed.

Laws aren’t based on consensus or age as we have plenty of Laws that are known to be wrong and stuff gets called a law fairly early.

F=MA fails really obviously at high velocity but the error doesn’t go away at low speed it just becomes small enough to be ignored. Even the most known Law of conservation of energy fails in expanding space time.

The basic rule of thumb is can you write a useful equation? And for climate change it’s just too complex for that.

> …when the science is settled it becomes a law.

This is absolutely and completely wrong. “Hypothesis -> Theory -> Law” is not actually the scientific pipeline. Theories and laws not only can co-exist, but often do.

From Wikipedia [0]:

> Scientific theories explain why something happens, whereas scientific law describes what happens.

An example of this is the theory of gravity [1], which contains laws of gravity [2].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law

[1]: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/ESSAYS/Bekenstein/bekens...

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gr...

Ok, Newtons law of gravity is settled science but also wrong.

The “settled” science of climate change makes wildly inaccurate predictions on earth, during time periods we have lots of data on.

Aren’t we past the point of no return 8 times over now?

To your points:

1) Newton's Law of Gravity is not wrong, it is just incomplete. Newton's Law of Gravity is a critical formula used for calculating rocket trajectories and behaviors. It is correct but has 'boundaries' where Einstein's General Theory of Relativity takes over.

2) I'm not sure what this means.

3) I'm not sure what this means.

This is my interpretation of his statement:

3)Dates for “Certain Doom”, with regards to the climate, have been proffered by prognosticators of climate science. Much like those that predict the religious End Of Time, these dates invariably pass with no notice or fanfare.

That’s a serious straw man argument. Where exactly do you see some “Certain Doom” prediction in say an IPCC report that’s predicted something beyond X equivalent CO2 results in Y temperature?

The 2022 version for example basically says 1.5C above preindustrial levels by 2025.

That’s not some doom that’s basically exactly where we are now and only relevant because the keep updating past predictions. Go back to reports from 1990 and 1.5C in 2025 is well within error bars. We are experiencing negative effects that could have been avoided in 1990, then again things could also have been worse before now without quite a lot effort into improving efficiency etc.

Predictions further into the future assume net emissions continue and therefore the effects will be worse. That’s not some “doom” that’s cause and effect. 1.5C, 2C, 2.5C, and even 3C, as long as net emissions continue we well eventually reach all of those milestones. Arguably what’s changing is 2025 and 2040 etc don’t seem to be in the distant future they way they seemed in 1990. Kids today are thinking they could be around in 2100.

Not OP and not a physicist.

I think wrongness is inherent to any well-proven theory, because each theory is a model.

It’s just understanding where the theory falls apart and where it makes accurate and useful predictions.

Like Newtonian physic. Even where it’s accurate, the math can get hard for very simple scenarios.

The classic three-body problem can be computed; but it’s also inherently chaotic so any computation quickly becomes inaccurate (sensitive to initial values).

I think they compute many different times with different initial conditions, to generate probabilities.

I imagine the climate science of “what happens” is also the same: We may not turn into Venus, but we also know all that excess heat and energy has to go somewhere and in our fragile global supply chain it won’t take much to make a disaster.

Still, I don’t like the quasi-religious aura that climate journalism has. It’s very off-puttingz

Broadly speaking laws are a thing of the past.

Also modelling basically anything is hard. Applying the laws of thermodynamics to a kettle well enough that you can predict it's exact dynamics is not a simple task.

How can the consensus ever change if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus?

How can the consensus change if only the side that can afford the most twitter ads get to put their position forward?

Allowing one side to advertise doesn't mean the other side doesn't get to "put their position forward."

If, as you say, not advertising on twitter doesn't mean you don't get to put your position forward then nothing of value is being lost by the twitter policy change.

I'm saying that allowing A to advertise on twitter doesn't prevent B from advertising on twitter.

If one side has a financial incentive to push bad faith arguments, whereas the other side has no financial incentive or resources and is just interested in science for the sake of science, then by supporting having the debate via twitter ads you've created a system that locks out one side.

that's how dissent in science has always been treated, going back to things like "the earth is round". i'm not saying it's the best system, but it's not new. historically, science gets it right in the end, but shifting the scientific consensus is a long and slow process that happens among scientists, not something that uninformed masses contribute to in any meaningful way. the barrier to getting widespread acceptance of your dissenting theory is much higher than for getting widespread acceptance of your theory that matches the status quo.

i don't think it's obvious that there's a benefit to making it easier to promote ideas that contradict the generally accepted science. if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that. promoting fringe theories on twitter amongst people who have no underlying knowledge of the subject matter won't do anything to advance the most correct ideas, only the loudest ideas or the ideas that most match our pre-existing biases.

> if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that.

That's not how science has historically worked. Smart people won't be convinced, new people will. Status quo changes when the previous generation is laid to rest.

This is the result of the academia being just another human social system obeying the same laws of power as all the rest, thus inheriting all their flaws.

There are plenty of cases where things have moved much faster than that - e.g. the adoption of QM and relativity, dark energy becoming a respectable hypothesis, plate tectonics, dinosaur extinction via impact... In each of these cases, either new evidence or a new explanation for previously-puzzling evidence was key.

It took 50 years for plate tectonics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#History_of_the...

Are you not conflating continental drift with plate tectonics? The former was, for several decades, not widely accepted on account of the lack of a plausible mechanism. The latter is not the theory that the continents drift, but it provided the missing mechanism for how they do. Acceptance of both was swift once the distinctive paleomagnetic patterning of the oceanic crust was discovered. This scientific revolution was data-driven.

Science has often worked like that. As an example consider Galileo's discovery of the phases of Venus. It immediately destroyed the Ptolemaic model of the solar system. Even supporters of that system overwhelmingly immediately abandoned it.

Many substituted the hybrid model where everything but Earth and the moon went around the sun, and the sun and moon went around the Earth.

But that was reaching, and they must have known it.

Twitter is already pretty much the worst possible communication medium for engaging in scientific debate. Challenging scientific consensus in a way that is credible and easily distinguished from trolling or corporate PR requires a more in-depth discussion of facts and explanations than Twitter is designed to facilitate.

That isn't what Twitter is banning. There are plenty of academics working to refine our knowledge around the climate. Conservatives who have dug into the full science have concluded that the consensus today has merit.

This is knowable.

It's like the difference between someone researching the exact strength of antibiotics and claiming that medicine doesn't work. One of those isn't science.

By publishing their science in academic journals rather than twitter.

This is it. The conclusions should match the weight of the evidence being written about, and that of existing papers. This can be seen with semi-recent FTL neutrino experiment… it was probably a faulty cable. There are often many reasons for counter evidence that explain it better than changing the current understandings. That has to be worked through first, and isn’t a headline grabbing process.

Rather than twitter ads, in the case at hand.

Hypothetically: a study finds racial differences in intelligence, or something equally taboo.

Do you really believe an esteemed journal would actually publish it? Or would they find a reason to politely decline, such as "it's out of scope", "didn't pass peer review", "doesn't align with out values, reword"?

Do you believe, even if the study is published, that it would not destroy someone's career?

And finally, if researchers believe there is a chance of that happening, would they actually start to investigate the taboo area?

My answer to all these questions is "no". This is why when you say, "just publish in academic journals", I am highly skeptical. And why I am annoyed at yet another example of the social media oligarchy enforcing what ideas are allowed to propagate.

Behold, exactly what you are talking about: https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/positively-motivated-to-he...

Emil Kirkegaard? That's your example? Did you dig that out not knowing who he is, or did you post it with full knowledge of who he was, hoping HNers wouldn't actually look at who he is?

For those who aren't aware: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_O._W._Kirkegaard

> Emil Ole William Kirkegaard is a Danish far-right eugenicist, perjurer[3] and activist for legalising child pornography. He has a wide range of crank views and is a global-warming denier, anti-feminist, ableist, anti-vegan, homophobe, Islamophobe, transphobe and has promoted white supremacy. He is most notorious and obnoxious online for his ableism and calling transgender people, liberals, feminists and pretty much anyone with left-wing political views who merely disagrees with him as "mentally ill".

> Aside from his controversial writings on eugenics and race, Kirkegaard has been involved in other activities such as publishing personal data of 70,000 OKCupid users without permission, including their sexual preferences,[10] considered by Vox to be "without a doubt one of the most grossly unprofessional, unethical and reprehensible data releases".[11] His writings on race and intelligence[12] have caused controversy and because peer-reviewed journals refuse to publish his work, he set up the OpenPsych pseudojournals.[13] However, after this journal was discredited he now publishes pseudo-scientific race articles in the open-access Psych journal.[14][15]

[...]

> His highest qualification is a Bachelor’s in linguistics. Having dropped out of his Masters degree, instead preferring to be "self-taught in various subjects"

[...]

> Kirkegaard’s own personal blog is home to topics such as "Is miscegenation bad for your kids?" and how one could empirically verify a Jewish conspiracy

I read the entire rationalwiki page on him, and followed the links to the primary sources, and I learned the following:

a) whoever wrote the wiki really doesn't like him. A lot of the claims about him are a stretch.

b) he does make some good points

1) Ad hominem; even if it were an accurate claim, it would also be an irrelevant one.

2) You're broadly dismissing factual statements as "claims" with no supporting evidence. Given the statements on RW are backed extensively by citations, please support "a lot of claims about him are a stretch" with citations of your own.

3) I take it your "hypothetical" example about race and intelligence isn't actually hypothetical but something you actually believe?

You know what, this has rapidly degraded, so I'm gonna peace out. Tell your friends about the crazy evil racist you dunked on online.

Emil Kirkegaard tried to sue one of the writers of that article, lost the libel suit and got himself nearly £40,000 in debt. He's now being counter-sued: https://oliveratlantis.com/emil-kirkegaard/

Emil Kirkegaard tried to sue one of the article writers but lost the libel suit - he put himself nearly £40,000 in debt and in contempt of court. https://oliveratlantis.com/emil-kirkegaard/

> Do you really believe an esteemed journal would actually publish it?

You seem to be forwarding an idea of an information ecosystem where what is an "esteemed" journal is static. Like you cannot imagine Nature being anything but the top journal - so Nature must publish works they find suspect because otherwise nothing will change.

Frankly, that's not how anything works. Groups of people organize around beliefs and there is a relatively stable (but shifting) understanding of the prestige of those organizations. Look at, for instance, the understanding around the stonewall riot / protest (depending on who is describing it). If these heterodox views are correct (and for the record I think the race 'science' that claims to show non-white people consistently test below white folks is obviously and embarrassingly wrong. I encourage you to check out this critique of the bell curve[1]) then they will, over time, become more and more accepted and their articles in "alternative" journals will be key in that process.

The way that previously alternative views have come to the center is that they were published in their own "fringe" publications for years - and then, over time, as those view were more and more accepted, the papers start appearing in 'mainstream' publications. The "years in the wilderness" is a feature not a bug! You have to let subaltern movements develop their own ideas and voice outside of the mainstream to see if they really have a substantial critique of the mainstream - because inevitably any real critique involves getting the mainstream to let go of one or more central axiom of their worldview.

If you are serious about supporting these ideas (and I really hope you are using 'race science' as an attention grabbing flash point rather than a thing you believe), you really should start talking about them like you're aware of the history of how previously controversial ideas become mainstream.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo

half your comment is spent debunking my "claim". You cannot even discuss discussing taboo ideas.

>The "years in the wilderness" is a feature not a bug!

You just invented that. Never have I heard a suggestion that for a new theory to become mainstream, you must first create a new fringe journal that can exceed the existing journals in reputation.

In fact, I can think of several examples of brand new findings that upended the mainstream that were published directly in Nature or Science.

You literally just invented this entire process just to give a reason why politically taboo ideas are unpublishable.

This is a silly hypothetical for a number of reasons.

1. There are a million reasons it could be rejected. For one thing, we have decades if not centuries of terrible science here, motivated by even worse agendas. A journal is going to be extremely skeptical of any study in this area for that same reason, and they would be for anything much less controversial that had centuries of garbage behind it.

2. Science is not morally exempt. A journal may ask themselves if the scientific implications of this paper are worth the practical implications of supporting the work at that stage - that's going to depend a LOT on the paper itself, and since this is a hypothetical, we have no way of discussing this point.

> Do you believe, even if the study is published, that it would not destroy someone's career?

I don't know, maybe? Again, it's a hypothetical. What is this paper showing? Who is it by? There's so much context missing here. I'd certainly think whoever did this research, with no other context, is probably an idiot, but I could be convinced otherwise.

> And finally, if researchers believe there is a chance of that happening, would they actually start to investigate the taboo area?

Maybe? Like, yeah, good point, I would definitely question the motives of anyone doing this research. But this is a hypothetical so it's impossible to say.

> My answer to all these questions is "no".

Given this extremely broad hypothetical it seems pretty absurd to answer any way definitively.

Regardless, this in no way supports the idea that the research rejected by journals is somehow fit for Twitter ads. It is, at best, a criticism of journals, without any comment on what the right solution would be.

The idea that advertising on Twitter is somehow the bandaid we need for purported issues with scientific peer review is absolutely fucking laughable and I think people on HN should seriously question the competency of the average user here.

>people on HN should seriously question the competency of the average user here.

Intentionally miss my point, misrepresent my claim, insult me in the last sentence. Nice.

This is a fair argument but it seems like the proportion of climate deniers who are driven by bad faith massively outweight climate skeptics acting in good faith.

Even without any of the more modern forms of deplatforming, defunding or ostracization, people have been concerned for at least several decades about an inability for new ideas to make inroads and change overall scientific consensus or understanding.

I am speaking of the idea often described as "science progresses one funeral at a time" - which Wikipedia informs me is sometimes known as "Planck's principle"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

How does allowing people to advertise on Twitter make that process better? I don't see it.

It doesn't, and I was not claiming anything like that. In fact I wasn't making any claim about anything at all. I was just pointing out some broader context that the way ideas spread and consensus forms or changes is a messy and human process and always has been, and that it's something people have been thinking about for a long time already, so there are plenty of ideas to read about the topic for anyone who is interested in it.

If you do want a claim, my personal opinion is that Twitter's choices to ban or allow certain advertising will make no noticeable difference to the progress of scientific understanding, because I don't think adverts on Twitter are a communication channel that matters for the spread of ideas within academic communities. I can imagine that over time it might make a difference to lay-people's beliefs about some things, although I'm not sure whether Twitter has a broad enough audience to really change much here. Since I personally am fully onboard the "climate change is real, and it's real bad" train, I don't have any problem with Twitter banning adverts that spread the opposite idea. If it was a ban on what general Twitter users can post then I would have a problem with it, but I'm ok with a ban on adverts. Maybe that's inconsistent of me, I don't know.

They can submit their papers to journals for review. No one is stopping them. Twitter is not the place for that.

Advertising on Twitter should not be the way people try to change the consensus.

This is risible. Next we'll cry a tear for all the good scientists who can not get heard with their findings that Tobacco is harmless after all?

There has been concerted funding and propaganda _against_ the science by an industry that is literally earning billions a week.

Others have already pointed out that it's always been hard to go against the consensus in science. It's supposed to be hard. The consensus became the consensus for a reason. Overthrowing it is a monumental effort that gets you into the history books.

This is not what this is about and this is not what is going on here though. In the 80s serious scientists debated man made global warming. They raised objections, and contradicted the models. Eventually all the reasonable and important objections were addressed. The debate settled. The evidence came in. We now have 30 years of observational data on top of that!

And _now_ people complain that there is no scientific debate! No one was paying attention when the debate happened! That's why you are getting the conclusion! That's why people who object are told "Yeah we covered this, check the papers." Which doesn't feel like debate but in reality just shows that the person coming in hasn't done their due diligence or isn't arguing in good faith.

>Next we'll cry a tear for all the good scientists who can not get heard with their findings that Tobacco is harmless after all?

Don't forget that the consensus used to be that tobacco was harmless. The consensus can change from an incorrect position to the correct one.

I think you'll find that as soon as researchers began looking into the harmful effects of smoking, the link to cancer quickly became the scientific consensus. It did not become the popular consensus for decades because of the indefatigable opposition campaign funded by the tobacco companies.

A good history of all this is here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22345227/

Imagine if a company had prohibited tobacco advertising that asserted smoking was healthy. That's the parallel here.

I am not disagreeing with your points. I was just trying to point out the consensus can be wrong and the consensus can change.

The problem I have with this is they will almost certainly allow things that contradict the consensus. Let's say the consensus is like 2C increase in 50 years. If somebody says it will actually be 3C they would be contradicting the consensus but probably would be allowed the ad. If somebody says it will only increase 1C they would probably not be able to sell an ad.

Yeah, consensus changes. Especially when new evidence and new ideas arise. That shows that scientific consensus is working.

If the scientific consensus threatens assets and income of powerful industries they run massive lobbying and ad campaigns against it and try to interfere with the scientific process itself by funding biased studies.

Pretending like the people that exaggerate the effect of climate change are a comparable issue is dishonest and not backed by facts. Classic false symmetry fallacy.

Also, the scientific consensus is conditional: If we emit like this, then that will happen. The IPCC report doesn't predict a certain amount of warming.

> Don't forget that the consensus used to be that tobacco was harmless

No? Tobacco companies themselves knew tobacco wasn't harmless. Just like oil companies have known for almost a century that humans were causing drastic climate change due to CO2.

I don't think tobacco companies knew 100 years ago. The data didn't really become conclusive until something like the 50s. There absolutely was a consensus in the 20s and 30s that cigarettes were not harmful.

Do you think it changes with political ads on social media? I think this is completely decoupled from the science itself. Luckily.

By presenting good evidence that the consensus is wrong, and then after the existing model is thrown into doubt, presenting a better model. But there actually has to be that evidence. Bogus evidence (such as that presented by global warming deniers) does not suffice.

> if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus

Because the announced policy is none of those things?

We don't. We do that to people ignoring science that post things that demonstrably hurt people.

Any scientist is welcome to publish science and have the truth of arguments win out.

Science isn't done on Twitter or Facebook.

(Assuming the parent comment is normative/prescriptive rather than just descriptive) This is a dangerously wrong perspective. There are many beliefs that we consider laughably crazy today that were “settled” per the experts of the day.

Remember “Eppur si muove”? It is impossible to establish who the “experts” are by the old truths — we need the new truths for that.

To channel Max Planck, scientific revolutions happen not publication to publication but funeral to funeral as old experts die and people grow up with new truths.

The number of bad and wrong ideas stopped by this format vastly outnumber the few examples you think this format impedes.

The proper way to evaluate this system is not to cherry pick a few rare examples and claim it as the norm. The correct way is to take all inputs, true and false, and see the outcome. Then you compare this info to other systems that have been tried. And maybe propose new systems, but only after you understand the problems with previous systems that led to the current one so you don't simply repeat past errors.

> Science works on consensus

No it doesn't. I can't believe people are even claiming this. Science has NOTHING to do with consensus. If evidence is produced that goes against a consensus then the consensus is wrong. Consensus has nothing to do with science. Consensus is a problem of humans that disrupts the scientific process.

Worth remembering the scientific method relies on some sense of repeatable phenomena for idealized "experiment". Social science, medicine, astronomy, geology, earth science, each have their own axioms for what that means. (E.g., assume the universe is isotropic).

I don't think each of these are as solid as the other. Climate science is certainly less testable than say particle physics. Not that we shouldn't work together as humans to model, understand and keep our (only) planet stable as best we can.. but "scientific consensus" is less meaningful in this field.. used as a political word to motivate people at the expense of more nuanced understanding.

But like vaccines, it's probably better to act now before we understand it all.. (on the day before we go extinct).

> If evidence is produced that goes against a consensus then the consensus is wrong

To be more specific, then the consensus may be wrong. The bar to demonstrate that something is wrong and be taken seriously is meant to be higher than simply claiming one can produce evidence to the contrary.

When such evidence is discovered, the idea is that one would present that evidence to peers, who would attempt to replicate the findings, and support them if they are able to do so, or otherwise publish their counter-findings in response. This is obviously more complicated in practice because we're dealing with humans and not ideals (and thus we have things like the replication crisis), but that is the theory of how we advance the body of knowledge that we derive from scientific theses and experiments.

We do not advance it by claiming that evidence has been found and then leaving it at that, in a vacuum. So it's not exactly that science "works on consensus", in the sense that just a majority doesn't prove anything, but -- convincing, using evidence, the majority of the scientific community in your field, is certainly part of the process.

> Consensus is a problem of humans that disrupts the scientific process

No, no, consensus is the only reason we have science, or language, or much of anything humans find interesting. Let me explain:

Science is a thing humans do. Without humans around, I don't see ants doing science anytime soon :) When humans share the stuff they do and reach agreement, that is called consensus.

In other words, any word you use, it is because humans wanted to communicate and reach consensus, so they invented a word for it.

So you have it backwards, it's humans -> consensus -> science, not science -> consensus -> humans.

No it doesn't. Consensus is at best irrelevant to science, and if anything it's harmful because it reduces the search space for the truth.

It also focuses questions and helps allocate resources to worthwhile areas to pursue.

I doubt any modern science breakthroughs are done by someone who mastered none of the previous consensus to learn where to dig.

Kuhn and Popper may have something to say about that.

physics was settled by newton. any writing about those pesky quantum effects should have been banned

Science works on empirical evidence. Consensus perhaps is important in testing that evidence is repeatable and true. But the basis is evidence.

No, science works on skepticism.

Labotomies won the Nobel prize supported by the consensus.

Heliocentric theory and antiseptic theory was scoffed at by the mainstream.

Consensus is merely a guide, there's no such thing as settled science.

The reason is, we're studying an infinite universe with the limited technology and when that technology or that current mode of understanding changes, our entire understanding of the univ. changes.

Let say someone want to advertise natural gas as an green energy source. What is the consensus among climate researcher on that, and what does EU politicians consensus say? Which authoritative sources should we pick here?

Choose your experts carefully.

> Maybe someone should tell twitter, google, etc that science isn't supposed to work on consensus. Politics works on consensus.

The ads are politics, not science.

This is a case of twitter's political stance being at odds with some of their potential advertisers.

I don't see why advertisers should have some right here that overrides twitter's.

> authoritarian

If you're interested in liberty here, you should be backing twitter's right to do this.

No one’s saying Twitter doesn’t have the right to do this. They’re saying it’s a bad policy and Twitter should choose to allow content it disagrees with. Silencing others is not Liberty.

Except it’s well within their rights to do this. They’re not beholden to be the platform that furthers false things like climate change denial

>> No one’s saying Twitter doesn’t have the right to do this.

> Except it’s well within their rights to do this.

Swing and a miss.

That's a very difficult thing to moderate, to manage, and from personal experience Twitter doesn't even enforce their existing rules accurately.

For example, will posts denying the hysteria of climate change - let's say the ideology of climate change activism that has formed, perhaps fuelled by for-profit industrial complexes, perhaps also leveraged by some governments wanting to use fear to manufacture consent toward control - be ban on Twitter, will that be considered denial if they point out things like some parts of the world actually cooling - and "heat deaths" in those areas are actually going down? Climate change hysteria media seems to only want to report the increasing heat deaths annually, but not deducting the reduced deaths from the cooling areas.

Now I don't even know for 100% if the above is true, or how true it is, as I haven't had a chance to dive into some of the leaders of that effort who're supposedly trying to have a grounded, balanced conversation on climate - referencing data, etc.

An organization or individual claiming they can be or are an arbiter of truth is a recipe for disaster; what New Zealand Prime Minister once actually said comes to mind, that if you hear something not from government (about COVID, the pandemic) then it's not true.

Actually, it’s the opposite. Liberty is for individual freedom, not institutional freedom.

I would back a small business’s right to do this. Somewhere between there and twitter scale, the decision changes.

The outrage at one large corporation (Twitter) acting one way while implicitly defending other large corporations, e.g., Exxon-Mobil’s propaganda-spreading— seems a weird tightrope to walk. Not sure how large a problem small-business-climate-disinformation-spreading is.

Twitter is not outraged for spreading a specific opinion but for muting the opposite side.

So you’d impose the small business or political groups rights to advertise on twitter (a larger corporation)? Where’s the balance there?

This argument is so boring, it's the same every time.

"They can build their own Twitter!"

We have monopoly laws, they are not fundamentally at odds with liberty, they recognize that it's undesirable for society to have monopolies exercising market power. These need to be updated to reflect the current platform monopolies. Just like the phone company can't tell you what you can talk about on the phone, or railroads have to share their tracks under some conditions. Applying the same thing to Twitter and other bug tech platforms is a logical extension. The only difference is it would also involve the government/establishment giving up power

Nah. I don’t buy it. Don’t like Twitter? You have a few options:

1. Create a competitor. Network effects here are tough. Inertia is a thing. But perhaps those Twitter users with your sentiments will follow you to your new platform. See ya!

2. Buy up enough shares to put yourself on the board. This is akin to “write your congress person”. Amounts to little.

3. Buy Twitter. Only folks crazy enough (see also Elon Musk) can do this. I say crazy because Twitter doesn’t make decent money and is fine without him in my opinion. But ownership is a sure fire way to change things.

Other options you could also pursue are:

4. Wax poetic on the internet about how since they’re the only game in town they need to be open to taking money from anyone and everyone. They also need to allow all forms of speech. This also amounts to nothing.

I guess a future Trump or DeSantis or Carlson or other Q affiliated presidency could along with a majority in congress force Twitter to do the things you’re advocating for. I sure hope not.

So yeah, if you build it they will come. So go build a competitor or join the myriad of others that operate in the extreme free speech/anything goes mantra. The rest of us will keep using Twitter and enjoying the relatively benign place it’s become since Trump was banned.

> If you're interested in liberty here, you should be backing twitter's right to do this.

Indeed, so long as it isn't the government enforcing it on everyone, then the free market will come up with a competitor that will arguably start attracting those most aware of the importance of and aligned with freedom, freedom of speech - those people who arguably are on average much more highly competent and earning a higher income to be able to financially support a better model, and likewise bring their network(s) with them; I am working on launching such a competitor and believe I'm designing a platform model and launch/growth strategy that will work very well.

Yeah they rallied around it since the alternative is to just put everyone on an equal platform. Gatekeeping is good in areas like climate science where certain groups have a large incentive to spew demonstrably false information about it.

Gatekeeping is not good, providing education and insight is good. If you gatekeep then you are essentially advocating for propaganda because that is how it will be used and has been used.

That might work when you’re not talking about advertising. The vested interests in the status quo are the most profitable organizations in the world. How can the average citizen or “save the climate group” compete?

Corruption won't go away through censorship. It will only make it worse. The best solution IMO is for truth and transparency and to have honest leaders shift focus to education.

What group doesn’t have a vested interest to spew demonstrably false information about it?

Climate change isn’t science it’s mostly politics around preserving or not preserving the temperatures and sea levels from when the steam engine was invented.

Like I believe the climate is changing, but we should do almost nothing about it. That said I don’t own any property within 7 feet of sea level so I don’t really give a shit if the people who do lose a little bit of their waterfront property.

Consider it like this.

Sustainability is _only_ a waste management system that enables recycling rates of 90% or higher (which is damn hard). CO2 is also just one of many waste products, we totally dont care about, but _must_ to sustain our civilisation.

No politics, just input/output, same goal.

The earth has had higher CO2 levels… and had much more biodiversity when it did. If anything for a sustainable world for life we should probably be targeting the 800ppm of the Carboniferous and not the 200ppm of the little ice age.

Can you tell me why from a sustainability perspective why 200ppm is the ideal? Or if 200ppm is not the ideal what is the sustainable ideal, and why civilization collapses if we don’t reach that target?

I mean the totality of civilization not just that Buckingham palace or a few other places might be underwater? Like why can’t we build ports a little inland from Amsterdam? Why can Paraguayans survive 40C but civilization collapses if Europe goes above 27C.

>Why are 200ppm sustainable?

The higher CO2 levels of long gone times where probably not even remotely a problem for those critters around, because evolution had plenty of time to do its thing. Your whole point of "but what about back then" is comparing apples with oranges.

Looking at the steep graph today, the increasing weather extremes and how brittle our supply chains are, i think its very appropriate to call it a climate catastrophe, we are heading for.

Btw. I was using the ideal of perfect recycling and applied it to CO2, no absolute or relative ppm value is relevant for this.

> That said I don’t own any property within 7 feet of sea level so I don’t really give a shit if the people who do lose a little bit of their waterfront property.

Are you implying that those who are the most concerned about climate change are wealthy people afraid to lose their possessions?

How do you explain then that the wealthiest people, that is those possessing the greatest number of companies and contributing the most to climate change, are those that will do the least for climate change and will even fight to maintain the current economic model?

Excuse me? This is factually incorrect.

Most wealthiest people, big tech, big business, mainstream media are all backing climate change. Politicians have been trying to get political support for years to pass new taxes for that. Recently Europe bundled a bunch of climate change funds together with covid recovery and postponed that 10 years in the future.

Then, in terms of doing, I'm sure they will all find a way to make the middle class pay while the wealthiest pay zero like usual. And I'm also sure companies innovating will do way more to reverse co2 emissions and make renewables work than any western government will (China's dictatorship actually did some meaningful changes, especially in making solar cheaper; they must have been tired of pollution in the cities).

I don't think it's wealthy owners of seaside properties who are causing all this climate alarmism, I think it's the usual politicians who would never let a good crisis go to waste.

> Most wealthiest people, big tech, big business, mainstream media are all backing climate change.

They may indeed be backing it, but what are they really doing to fight it? Most of what's promoted by big businesses and such is just greenwashing. They solely talk about ecology for marketing purposes and to build their user base's loyalty.

How can one believe that Amazon seeks to "reach net-zero carbon by 2040"[1] while Bezos blasted into space just because he found it fun?

> I'm sure they will all find a way to make the middle class pay while the wealthiest pay zero like usual.

That's the problem and that's what I wanted my comment to highlight.

> I don't think it's wealthy owners of seaside properties who are causing all this climate alarmism, I think it's the usual politicians who would never let a good crisis go to waste.

There is no alarmism. I see how some politicians may leverage the catastrophic (and real) news about climate change, but that's not because they seek to use it to fulfill their interests that it's not real. The consequences of climate change have already started being visible. Just this morning I saw that forecasts were predicting up to 48-49°C in Pakistan and up to 46-47°C in India[2], this in April(!).

[1] https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/about/the-climate-ple...

[2] https://twitter.com/extremetemps/status/1517904633859133448

"science isn't supposed to work on consensus" lol yes, let's throw out the concept of peer review, all science is equal now everyone

More often than not peer review acts as gatekeeping rather than actual analysis of the data and methods. The people who do peer review are often those with institutional political power rather than proper "peers".

This is such a bizarre take. Have you gone through the peer review process for a scientific paper? I have, and fairly reliably I’ve had experts in the field review the content and provide strong, thoughtful feedback. Maybe your particular subject field is more prone to politicking than mine? It’s hard for me to think of peer review as anything other than absolutely essential.

Does it? Someone should do a study and...huh wait a minute.

That's quite a claim to make, and impossible to falsify in the universe it posits.

Science policy is different from science research, and similarly, medical policy is different from medical research. Policy is the intersection of technical craft and politics, and it ought be consensus-oriented.

That doctors almost entirely practice consensus-based medicine does not mean that medical research is halted, but it does mean that not all clinics are labs, and thus medical research is not advancing at peak speed.

That's exactly how you get people to buy statins for 50 years because the consensus is that cholesterol should be a certain number. Or covid vaccines for everyone x3. And I can't wait to see what taxes we'll need to raise to fight climate change.

If science and profits wouldn't have a chance to mix in there would be value in a shared policy. In the real world, you'd better pay a good doctor for advice (enough to offset big pharma) and hope that policy being enforced by "the people's" government won't break your bank too much.

> A UN backed science panel. Great. If there is one thing we all know about the UN, it's that the UN isn't political. An institution ruled by the US, Russia, China, Britain and France. Seems very trustworthy to me.

A solid philosophy of science is difficult to live up to in the real world, but I guarantee that "I don't know anything about the IPCC but I see it's organized through the UN so I know enough to dismiss it" is not it.

Why not? It seems obvious to me that a UN committee will be under a lot of political pressure to bend the truth, where it is in conflict with politics. And I have seen many, many examples of committees bending the truth. Why is this one different?

You're totally right. Any day now we're going to discover the secret to alchemy and then those folks in Flint will have faucets full of gold.

> Maybe someone should tell twitter, google, etc that science isn't supposed to work on consensus. Politics works on consensus.

This was Twitter, not Nature or ArXiv.

This is sad, but good. It’s sad that this is the least bad of two bad alternatives.

I remember when we progressives used to be against the 3 letter agencies and authority in general. Remember the 90's? That's what classical liberals did.

Current progressive movement is completely unhinged and looking more like CCP, sorry to say. It is going to backfire massively.

Of course it will backfire. Progressives these days have no real values aside from extracting as much money as possible from governments and citizens without providing any value in return. Once this strategy stops working, they will turn on each other. Their loyalty to each other is fake, just like everything else in their lives.

Everything they say and do is founded on lies; that's why they depend so much on each other for support and reinforcement. It's a religion. The only way they can maintain their nonsensical ideologies is through repeated, mutual brainwashing.

> I remember when we progressives used to be against the 3 letter agencies and authority in general.

Neither the IPCC nor the UN are three letter agencies

The democratic institutions are broken, and the leaders are unwilling to put in fixes, and the electorate can't hold them to account without them

Preserving voting rights, reducing gerrymandering, and limiting the filibuster to be an infrequent tool have no real priority.

The old guard of bad 3 letter agencies have some insulation against that, making them the old evil instead of the new

To address your last sentence: yes, if you can get those five countries to agree on anything, it's probably trustworthy.

If you can get those five countries to agree on anything, the lobbyists/politicians running those countries have found some way to benefit from that message.

Unfortunately, two of those countries aren't allowed to vote so we don't know what they agree on.

Which two countries would those be?

Like voting changes much. Countries are all basically oligarchies, some of them have extra steps (a sprinkle of democracy, a pound of corruption) so people won't look up from their iPhone and feel superior to those backwards goat farmers with a dictator and no potable water.

Still, I'm glad to see you enjoy seeing your 1/xxxM representation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com