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Comment by bena | Hacker News Reader

This is the one thing I dislike about Penn Jillette. The way he excuses himself from his former stance on climate change. He accepts it now, but he says "there wasn't enough evidence back then" and "they didn't do a good enough job to convince [me]".

But it's not their job to convince him. They're the ones who have spent their lives studying this. And they're convinced. The number of people with the education and expertise who are convinced far outnumber those who even claim the same level of education and expertise who are not convinced.

And this has been true for at least 30 years.

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David Attenborough was another skeptic, but he was eventually convinced by the weight of evidence. Perhaps we should praise them for being willing to change their minds when so few people seem able to.

Not just being able to change their minds but also to speak about it publicly. I'm sure plenty more have changed their minds but are afraid to speak up because they're afraid it will ding their popularity or cost them votes.

But he changed his position, and that's all that really matters. Why he held a different position before isn't actually that important, and I'm not inclined to criticize or shame anyone for stances they no longer have.

It actually is important. Let me try to explain: the way he phrases it is is as though he needed some internal level to be crossed before he would change his mind. Even though he is way out of his area of expertise. He should have said instead "I didn't know what I was talking about". That way others who also don't know what they are talking about (see some of the commenters in this thread) might take the hint that this isn't about your personal standards for facts, it is about the scientists who have devoted their lives to this subject whose standards apply.

So he could have done a better job on the retraction.

Oh yes, I agree, he could have done much better. But often, people with very healthy egos have trouble with that.

> He should have said instead "I didn't know what I was talking about".

This would have been ideal, yes.

He spent a lot of time and effort working against people who were working to promote climate change and mitigate its effects. Years, articles, TV shows. And he dismisses all of that with a “eh, guess I was wrong, still their fault”.

He hasn’t spent nearly the effort trying to correct his mistake that he spent making it.

His attitude is symbolic of why we'll eventually all burn up.

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