Comment by hzay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hzay | Hacker News Reader

Firstly, none of my wood-burning-loving-friends would refuse to accept the truthiness of the wood-burning-is-bad theory after they look into the sources. They'd do the same of any other argument that interests them. I guess I'm luckier than the author is with respect to the openness of our friends.

Secondly, when he says that the resistance you feel to new ideas is itself bad, I detect a suggestion that you ought to be less questioning than usual when someone claims something as "science", especially if it goes against your taste/interests. This is a dangerous suggestion because being an unquestioning science-fanboy is no better than being unquestioningly religious or being an unquestioning brand-fanboy or brand-hateboy.

Among a lot of my facebook-friends, it is sacrilegious to suggest that global warming is perhaps not happening. I'm not drawing your attention to the truthiness of that idea but the fact that it is considered unacceptable to be ignorant or misinformed about that topic - you are instantly understood to be "unscientific" if you question it. OTOH, it is completely okay to be ignorant or misinformed about say, the runtime complexity of dijkstra's - you just "didn't know" and it can be explained to you.

Thirdly, I didn't get the wood-burning thing at all because we don't have fireplaces in south india. At least I've never seen one here. Obviously I don't mean that you shouldn't talk about fireplaces but I wish more people and magazines realized that their readership is no longer purely american. I distinctly remember a statement by NASA a few years ago that said that nobody needs to worry about this upcoming meteor because there won't be any harm caused to anyone, everything is fine, there's an insignificantly tiny chance that it would hit north america. I know NASA is funded by the US govt. and all that but by now a lot of people in a lot of countries look to them as the forerunner in space research and I wish they'd realize that.

State governments in North India distribute wood during winter. See http://urbanemissions.blogspot.com/2012/11/pollution-in-delh...

>I guess I'm luckier than the author is with respect to the openness of our friends.

I am sure many running state governments up North(India) are aware of wood smoke being a bad thing. But I think the argument author is going for is - people are willing to set aside their scientific training/knowledge when confronted with something they have been traditionally considered okay. My Dad for example has Bachelors in physics and almsot finished masters - But I can see his argument going on the lines of, "Our body can tolerate some amount of these chemicals, it has been doing that since 10 thousand years and so it is okay".

Let me give you another example. Ayurveda . There are government run colleges in India, training people to practice Ayurveda as alternative medicine. Winter may not be same in India everywhere, but Ayurveda is. Now it has been scientifically proven that, many Ayurvedic medicines contain arsenic, lead in dangerous proportions. Beyond Yoga, their usefulness as medicine is also questionable. Try having argument with someone who believes in this (I used to be one). So, I think I understand authors POV of traditional beliefs sometimes overriding our scientific training.

A quick Google search throws up instance of people buying medicine on-line which contains arsenics. Is this not similar to how we get fake English medicines. I do not see any source which says that ayurveda advocates adding this. Can you link me to some relevant source? I have been using medicines from arya vaidya sala one of the trusted ayurveda centres in India and never heard or had any issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurveda#Scientific_appraisal

See the safety section.

That is scary... the website for the medicine I use seems to stress that it uses herbs over metal or minerals. Hope they are safe. But the fact that there is no central body which can check and authorise these medicines is a cause for concern.

I agree with you on the first two points.

With regards to the third, I've seen this gripe before, but I feel its misplaced.

This author has personally noticed a parallel between the reaction of his friends to wood-burning and religion. Something he though was interesting and decided to write about. Expecting him to fit that realization in to an analogy that would cater to the entire world, will water down the effectiveness of his point.

Additionally, he may not have any inkling about what will cater to the world audience. When I write something, I write from my own experiences, I have no idea if a reader in the U.K. will relate to my problem or my thoughts.

I am from South India too.

Thirdly, I didn't get the wood-burning thing at all because we don't have fireplaces in south india.

Aren't wood-burning stoves pretty common? Like these,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_India#Fuel_wo...

Exactly what I was going to say. Wood burning stoves are very common especially in villages and also among poor people as wood is more widely available and is cheaper than LPG. We ourself have wood burning stove as an alternate to the LPG stove because cooking in slow fire on a stone or iron vessel is considered to produce tastier and healthier food. I understood that wood smoke was harmful but that it contains carcinogens is new for me.

I would suggest it's the medium in which you choose to question it. People "questioning" global warming on Facebook are making a statement and appending the ?.

There is any number of outlets or resources where they could've sought to become informed on the science, the consensus and the weakness or blindspots of current research. Instead they decided to "just ask questions" in a forum which cannot possibly support complex explanations.

http://www.realclimate.org/ is a good place to start if you actually have questions about what is, inherently, a very complicated topic (that is also very interesting when people don't have an agenda with it).

What about, say, questioning evolution though? Or vaccines?

Most people questioning those topics aren't questioning them because of genuine curiosity--at least if they're college educated or equivalent. Instead it's as part, conscious or not, of a planned campaign of misinformation.

Saying someone is unscientific is, in that context, more of a statement of being actively anti-scientific, not science-resistant.

On vaccines, there haven't been that many RCT's (with the notable exception of polio) so one could make the argument that causality hasn't been proven.

I probably wouldn't make the argument, but I know some well educated professionals who would.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com