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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>Eventually you just kind of see the writing on the wall (or _feel_ like you do).

I don't get it. You "see the writing on the wall" and then... throw science under the bus yourself as well?

There is no 'science of future events' only probabilistic outcomes based on models underpinned by chains of inference. The longer those chains of inference the lower the conditional probability the entire chain is correct becomes. Those models don't account for black swans Russia invading Ukraine and that suddenly massively changing a large portion of the worlds calculus on what sources of energy to leverage in the short-term. We have decades of data to draw a pretty good gut feel from looking at Kyoto Protocol and Paris Accord and COP26 and it's always the same story - "hey we're going to hit an iceberg!", "OK, well then we'll steer away from it :)" rinse repeat. I keep up with technological improvements that can help us avert disaster, but I also look around me and see human behavior changing not nearly fast enough. I dunno man... this is less of a 'science' thing for me and more of a human behavior thing.

Science can’t explain everything. It can’t tell you why the Empire State Building looks the way it does. There are other factors involved.

I’m not sure what the scientific model is based on, but it’s borderline impossible to quantify how societal views (one of the biggest factors) will evolve over time, and to account for that in the prediction.

I also “feel” the chance of overshooting is higher than 48%.

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