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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

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Doubt is not a strategy and nay-saying rarely moves a conversation forward.

My comment was not intended to illicit the abdication of responsibility - quite the reverse.

Where was my petitioning? Your response is combative, seemingly intended to be personally offensive and built on a straw-man argument, likely the result of a multitude of others treating your opinions like crap. I'm not them...

You are absolutely right, agency and the realisation of it is a key component to shifting us out of this mess. I put significant daily effort into building an alternative kind of personal existence, at significant personal cost. I attempt to carry as much of this as I can since I recognise my own complicity in this mess.

My more relevant point to the OP, with reference to your comment, is that no, we are not amusing ourselves to death. It's more that we are worrying ourselves to death, despite a lack of personal indicators about this or that. If you want to proceed meaningfully to self, this requires prioritising one's personal experience over the provided stats, which are as much a control/guidance mechanism as anything.

I have lived in South Florida, close to the Atlantic ocean for close to 40 years. In the time I have lived here, the insect populations have noticeably dropped. I have also queried relatives from the midwest. It used to be every summer your car would get covered with dead bugs, not so any more. As for plastics in the ocean, every time I go to the beach I see a lot of macro plastics.

Thank you for your personal testimony. It's good to hear that in your experience it seems that the insect populations really have dropped. Of course, there may be other reasons - eg if there are highways where it used to be small roads, you would expect insects to stay clear of the area. Also, litter you can see, is not microplastics - you can't see the microplastics.... But they are there! Apparently.

So, objective science is untrustworthy and subjective testimony is easily explained away. Let me guess - only your opinion is the one that matters.

You have a poorly-crafted answer for both sides of the coin, but also fail to read the details of the things you oppose.

One has to ask oneself, is it better to have a comforting story, that is likely leveraged for someone, somewhere's benefit, or to start with the honest position, which is that "I don't know". One can of course become more certain of whatever-it-is, but not without attempting some personal research. Or, one can just defer all personal responsibility and parrot whatever the consensus view is.

So then, obviously, you've been personally responsible and tried to replicate all of the studies that led to the conclusion that microplastic concentrations in reservoirs are increasing, as well as the ones that concluded that bioaccumulation of microplastics have deleterious effects on human health, and then got them peer reviewed, right? And you also decided that 'personal responsibility' is actually tacitly accepting that when petrochemical lobbyists write op-eds that deny these scientific consensuses and that you don't need to make any lifestyle adjustments and their clients don't need to make any changes to their supply chain, they're telling the truth. Truly heroic that you still have time to shitpost on HN after all that.

No, I haven't replicated these tests. I'm just not assuming them to be true.

And demanding that everyone else adopt this policy of radical individualist solipsism, built on a deliberate misunderstanding of what scientific consensus is. The net effect of which is basically indistinguishable from being contrarian for its own sake because to do otherwise is actually quite discomforting.

Well to be honest, we don't truly 'know' anything, we can only make best guesses. My best guess based on what i've read from who i perceive as smart people is that microplastics are everywhere, not enough exercise makes you ill, looking in the sun kills your eyes and doing drugs is no good. Are you just can say "I don't know"

Yes, we don't truly know much (not nothing). We can, on occasion, drill into whatever is being claimed, look at the data and see if we agree with the conclusion.

If you personally sample test studies, comments or whatever you then get a handle on how many assumptions you feel are being made, whether you always/occasionally/never agree with what is stated.

Are you aware of widespread fraud in the data associated with insect population decline? Or are you arguing that science is just inherently fraudulent or unreliable? These sound like pretty extreme responses of the type ancaps gave for years to the claim that global surface temperatures were rising. Those looked pretty quaint even without the benefit if hindsight.

I am arguing that scientific data is unreliable in general.

Which is simultaneously broad and vacuous. Why? Compared to what? In this specific context, what method would provide a better intellectual foundation?

Personal verification. At least some attempt towards that. And I don't mean reading an article.

The scientific method applied personally.

Pretty much no one is checking anything.

Would be nice if strengthened by some concrete examples.

Well, did you see with your own eyes the earth is round rather than flat? No, so you can't state either? That makes most reasonable statements impossible to make.

Are you able to say that 'you assume that the earth is a sphere but don't know that to be the case'? Do you actually say 'I know the earth is a sphere' even though you don't "know"? Do you know the difference between belief and knowing?

I think/believe/know that the main difference between thinking/believing/knowing is in their nuance. Fundamentally i believe they reflect the same meaning, mainly their strongness is different.

I believe the earth is sphere shaped. I'm pretty sure it is, but I haven't seen it with my own eyes. I have seen parts of the curvature of the earth, but can't be 100 percent sure this was not due to lens effects of the atmosphere. Nonetheless I am quite strong in my belief because all i read and heard about the topic seems to make sense. I never met Newton, Keppler but I believe what was written by/about them is correct.

Great. I'm glad you are happy to use 'believe' rather than 'know', if you are trying to convey your meaning clearly.

I think there is a huge value in this, in being clear on what one knows (that I am sitting on a chair) and what one believes (that the earth is a sphere). Belief in a thing indicates that something is a hypothesis to oneself, while knowing conveys whatever-it-is is a fact.

I totally accept that think/believe/know are used interchangeably in conversation etc, but I also hold that there is a (huge) value to oneself in being able to keep these distinctions clear.

Taking a moral angle to it, misusing these terms is actually to lie or mislead others by overstating or understating your certainty.

Do you have a definition for 'know', in a hard/technical/non-colloquial sense?

I understood what you are trying to say an i mostly agree. I guess most people find it a bit pedantic to make a hard distinction between believing and knowing. One of the pet peeves of mine is to use words correctly. Often in the office we use words that are incorrect but everybody uses them and hence I'm the pedantic one pointing them to the fact those wrong wording might create a wrong view on things. There are plenty such words and expressions and often things would clear up by using the most appropriate term or expression.

That said, indeed saying 'I know God exists' is misleading. It is trying to convince by stating beliefs as being True.

The thing is, i believe knowing is simply a colloquial term. I read the book 'reality is not what it seems'. We make models of the world. Those models are wrong but mostly good enough to get along, but over time science prooves that each should be replaced by a less wrong model. Models stay wrong ad infinitum. That all to say that just maybe Truth with a capital does not exist, we can only converge toward it. Hence non-colooquial knowing might not exist.

Yes, the model one has and the terms one uses probably vary from person to person. However, a meaningful exchange of ideas can occur anyway, if we are prepared to hone in on definitions of words, and correct the difference in personal meanings. This requires patience and good will.

It is the opposite to making Barnum statements, such you get in politics like: 'this is a good thing' allowing each individual to mislead themselves with their own definition of 'good'.

Imo, truth with a capital T does exist - it is that which has happened. This is valid if we are not living in a simulation... which I personally don't think we are in. However, we only have our personal view on truth/reality. Pretending we can have anything more (via shared models such as religion or science) is flawed. Recognising the (very limited!) boundaries of what we know, and knowing the difference between belief and knowledge is essential.

I can only agree!

Thanks for the exchange

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