Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes, scientists get too much time on their hands so much so that it doesn't do a service to science.

I mean you can have fun in your free time predicting the end of mammals' life. But what's the point of writing a publication about this? At best, this is going to be completely useless. At worst it's going to be read as: "mammals will go extinct anyways in 250M years, what's the point in reducing carbon footprint now?" Or worse: "look at the crap the government is funding, we should end government funding for scientists".

Plus it's a complete disservice to the word "expert". These guys are true experts in their field and they know a lot of stuff that other people dont, but predictions like this are so random, it's almost certain that these guys are quite wrong. This gives ammunitions to the anti vax and flat earthers saying "experts" don't know shit anyways.

Sorry for the bad feelings, but that kind of research really annoys me. I only see negative outcomes from this kind of studies.

We're presently headed to a desert Earth with nothing bigger or more complex than a gecko roaming endless sand within 1000 years. Before that, hypercanes will flatten whole regions. We've already reached 38 C SST this year. Give it 20-25 years and some regions will be unlivable using conventional A-frame above-ground construction.

Dire and apocalyptic predictions on short time scales never come to pass and never take into account human ingenuity and ability to adapt and survive.

I had the same reaction. At what point does this cease being science? Because making predictions about the world in 250 million years is a tiny step above fortune telling.

At some point speculating about what happened 10000 years ago was “a tiny step above fortune telling”. There are several factors to consider:

- some people are interested in different things than you are;

- you only need so much time to write such an article, it’s not like someone set millions of dollars on fire;

- this is fundamentally just extrapolation of the movement of tectonic plates, which is a perfectly legitimate question to ask.

- things that are considered futile now might not be in the future, and we have no way of knowing that right now.

In the end, complaining about what gets published in the literature is about as productive as complaining about what ends up on HN’s front page: things are here because someone wrote it and others found it interesting.

What a strange comment. I am complaining about the misapplication of science toward predicting the future, not that the article is on the home page. “Some people are interested in different things than you are” has literally nothing to do with it.

As a side note, I’ve noticed that comments like this, which have basically nothing to do with the parent and are instead just functioning as weird hobby horse put downs, are becoming more and more common. Very strange phenomenon.

> I am complaining about the misapplication of science toward predicting the future, not that the article is on the home page.

Right. The sentence about the front page is just a comparison, because the complaints are similar. Sorry if it was not clear.

There are 4 points just above at least partly addressing your misapplication of science point.

I am complaining because in today's world where rationality is under siege, articles that cite "science" as a way to turn divination into fact don't do service to true scientific method.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com