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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

I think you missed my point. It's not a dichotomy at all, it's a spectrum. There is some (incomplete) evidence, and some choices of action available, and some (uncertain) costs to be borne because of those choices.

Your point seems to be that we should do nothing, because we don't know that the "data/predictions are correct".

That's not a middle ground, it's a choice. You are making an AFFIRMATIVE decision that the costs (amortized over probabilities) of regulation are greater than those of inaction. I don't think you realize this. You think you're just delaying a decision, but because the cost models aren't constant, you're actually making one. And obviously I think you're making it based on some very flawed logic.

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It's only a decision in the sense that each day I "decide" not to go to medical school, and so sacrifice some future earning potential. Inaction may have consequences, but that doesn't make it a decision. And by inaction I mean maintaining the status quo not literally doing nothing.

Inaction is always our default position: innocent until proven guilty. Your argument is tantamount to "consider the cost (amortized over the probability that he actually did it -- which we can't actually know) of letting this murderer go free!"

Your first point is semantic. I grant it, but I don't see that it changes anything. You still oppose carbon regulation, which is the issue at hand.

Your second is just a bizarre analogy. Yes, that's exactly what my argument is saying. But analogizing a decision of real world regulation (where we should be able to make a rational decision) to criminal justice (where we get tied up with the moral issues of unjust punishment, or "soft on crime" tolerance) is just weird. Are you trying to argue that "unjustly" regulating carbon is a violation of someone's basic human rights? Again, weird.

Granting more power through regulation just because you think "something" needs to be done about something you haven't proven to exist. That doesn't seem like a bad idea at all, does it? "Don't just do something, stand there."

That's the absolutist argument. You want "proof" before you will do anything at all. Read up the thread, it's exactly what I'm arguing against -- that logic just plain doesn't work. If you're not looking at risks and costs, you're not looking seriously at the problem.

I want proof that there is a good possibility of a problem happening before I do something about it. You would really venture into throwing around labels and debating against that stance? Regulation is bad if it's not needed, that doesn't make me and absolutist. That means I've evaluated the potential of a problem and the proposed 'fix', and I think it does more harm than good. I don't write code unless it solves a clear problem, why should I treat regulation any differently?

You still oppose carbon regulation

In fact I do not, and you've placed me into one of the two mutually exclusive categories I accused you of creating earlier.

I'm only arguing that relevant data/predictions should be reasonably vetted (this article makes some pretty strong claims against that point). And second, that whatever policies we enact should be supported by rational gathering of evidence, not just fabricated urgency.

You are making the mistake assuming that the level of understanding of our climate for scientists is a limited as your own. If that was the case then certainly there would be good cause to delay action until further knowledge was gained. However it turns out that many brilliant people all around the world have been devoting their professional lives to understanding this. The data/predictions have been 'vetted', evidence has been 'rationally gathered' the urgency is based on fact and has been not fabricated.

Unless you are prepared to devote a large portion of your life to studying climate there is no chance you (or I) will develop anything like a sufficient understanding of the models to have a meaningful opinion their accuracy. All we can do is choose who to believe on the topic. We are all 'blindly following' other people's opinion on the matter.

The reasonable default position is to believe the people who are spending the most time and effort looking into the issues - the 'experts'. For whatever reasons you are choosing not to believe them but instead following a group that has devoted far less time and effort in research.

"It's only a decision in the sense that each day I "decide" not to go to medical school"

Well, it is a decision in that sense. That's a real sense in which a decision can be made. At each point in time we choose to do one thing from among the infinite possibilities available to us. And in making the decision to do that one thing, we are making the decision not to do any of the other things, even if not consciously.

I don't know where you're coming from with the "inaction is always our default position" thing. What do you mean when do you say "default"? Do you mean that we should (oof, I hate to bring "should" into this) sometimes maintain the status quo even if doing so doesn't have the highest expected outcome for us? Do you mean that we should sometimes maintain the default even if the expected outcome of doing so is dramatically lower than doing something? (I'm gonna go ahead and assume that this isn't what you believe, but if it is, our argument has to end here, because the only response that I've got is, "Well, that's really stupid.")

Because I would argue that that's the situation that we're in with global warming. I actually agree with you that the scientific establishment should be treated with substantial skepticism. But I also think that global warming is probably happening, and through applications of logic I've decided that reacting to a fictional global warming is SO SO much better than not reacting to a real global warming that we'd be insane to choose inaction as long as there's still some non-infinitesimal probability that global warming's happening.

You seem to think that you have an ace in the hole with your argument that our society supports an "innocent until proven guilty" approach. In fact, I am both a believer in the "expected value" approach to choosing a course of action and an ardent defender of innocent-until-proven-guilty. This is because the downside of convicting an innocent person is dramatically larger than the downside of letting a guilty man free -- not only because locking up an innocent guy for 40 years is much worse than letting some embezzler get away with it, but because every time our legal system sends an innocent person to jail the public loses some faith in it, and faith in the legal system is one of the most fundamental elements of a stable and happy society.

Okay, I think I'm done. I'm pretty damn sleep deprived at the moment, though, so if I missed anything please point it out and I'll address it later.

*Not a criticism.

I do see your point that in some sense we make infinite many implicit decisions all the time, but I think the word really refers specifically to the intentional act of creating a position. Though that's a semantic argument and not really important because my main point in the above comments was that this is not a now or never issue. Inaction today isn't a commitment of any kind, because the same options will be available tomorrow.

Do you mean that we should (oof, I hate to bring "should" into this) sometimes maintain the status quo even if doing so doesn't have the highest expected outcome for us?

No, certainly not. I mean that we should maintain the status quo until we can reasonably estimate those expected outcomes and their costs/benefits (ask questions first, shoot later). This article is arguing that we don't yet have those reasonable estimates.

I think the "innocent until proven guilty" approach is and expected value approach. Public loss of faith in the system is a huge cost (probably much bigger than letting the average criminal go free). So I think there's an implicit cost/benefit analysis there.

There are also costs associated with (at least some of) the proposed global warming solutions. I'm thinking specifically of cap and trade, a system with far reaching economic consequences we can't fully understand until it's actually implemented. So before we implement it, we'd better know with some degree of certainty that the current situation is bad enough to warrant a potentially dangerous economic experiment. On the other hand, I think investment in alternative energy is a relatively low cost decision (sort of a "what the hell, it can't hurt").

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