American Politics Discussion Thread

[Mjmd]

Word.

[Kristian95]

<p>

This is the problem with climate deniers. Here is this peer reviewed scientific article. "ITS BIAS"

Every study of anything is biased. Every one.

For every study you ever read about, it was designed to get the result they already wanted to get. Every study chose its methodology, cherry-picked and selectively omitted its data points, and chose its peer review group so that it would all lead to the result they already wanted to get. And if the result still somehow didn't come out that way, the study just won't get published, bias by omission. No study is credible, every study is deliberately designed to get what its studiers already wanted to see.

If you didn't do the experiment yourself, you're not following science, you're following propaganda.

</p><p><br></p><p>As someone who has written scientific papers (not in climate science) I can assure you that no, any scientist worth their salt are not setting up studies to give the result they want rather and you absolutely have no influence on who peer reviews your paper.&nbsp; The only thing you have some influence on is what journal you submit your paper to.... and you have no way of knowing whether your paper will even get accepted.</p>

[greenline]

The way bias works commonly is a little more subtle than you describe. When creating models, analyzing statistics or data, each scientist will respond to any results they get with the feeling of - is this right? Most climatologists go into their line of work thinking that climate change is real, and that climate change causing intensifying hurricanes and record sea level rise is real, so if they were to create a model or gather results that did not agree with this, they would be the first to question them, well before the peer review begins. Some of this is simply peer pressure - there are already thousands of Peer Reviewed Studies on climate change, so it must be right. But more critically there is a moral pressure to conform. You can see that in this very thread - Mmjd repeatedly makes the argument that even if the models are incorrect or unreliable, one should still give their claims the benefit of the doubt because 'if they are true', they would demand action.

The job of a scientist making observations should not be to nudge for specific outcomes thinking the question - 'if they were true'. The job of a scientist is only to hazard on whether something is verifiably true or not. But most scientists are easily tempted to fall into the pattern of being concerned over whether something is true, because it gives a moral purpose to their work. Most scientists do not want to just work a job where the endlessly plug numbers into spreadsheets to guess at whether average temperatures will be one degree Celcius higher in the future, they would rather think they are working to Save The World by Spreading The Truth about Climate Change.

[BING_XI_LAO]

So there is a reason I like the half argument. So you know if for some odd reason you don't believe the predictions from scientists across multiple countries and different political persuasions, you can still say ok if half of what they think will happen happens, is that still bad? YES. So yes we can't 100% know EXACTLY what will happen. But we have a pretty good idea and even if that is half wrong, its still pretty bad.

This is a great example of the importance of repetition and ubiquity with a propaganda narrative. If it's spammed enough, then no matter how unconvincing or low quality it is, people start to get molded by it anyway. 

(Not trying to be rude to you personally and I don't even have an opinion on whether climate change is real, except that it's obviously a surrogate religion to many post-christian westerners, since it offers a doomsday and purification ritual)

To protect yourself from the compromise fallacy, you should mix things up occasionally by asking yourself "what if the exact opposite is true" rather than "what if 50% of it is true" when presented with someone's opinion. 
Compromise is not a path to truth, because it rewards whichever viewpoint got shouted first and most often, when the truth might be completely unrelated, not even a mirror inverse but some completely alien framing of whatever the issue is. This is yet another way that democratic ideology is a metaphysical enemy of truth, because democratic ideology constantly implies that truth is found in compromise, which is false.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Lets say this, Bidens major green bill cost $800 billion over 10 years (it was paid for btw and not all of it went to green initiatives). We got green energy jobs and investment (amounts differ depending on time frame and source) Again most of the world believes scientists (for some odd reason) so having things built in the US is a nice plus going forward. There is anticipated energy savings. And of course predicted significant reductions in emissions. Not enough, but significant. So we got multiple pluses in our countries capabilities, job creation, and reduction in C02 and we did it for 1 years of military budget over 10 years. I mean we had do a 15% min corp tax rate and step up IRA enforcement to pay for it, but such measures don't seem too bad to help prevent future climate disasters.

I don't dislike the IRA's energy segment but really you need a federal-only approvals process for coast to coast UHVDC transmission lines and for Texas to be the nexus of that instead of being a semi-isolate grid unto itself.

[BING_XI_LAO]

1st off Japan is re-militarizing (and Germany and we want both, what a world).

Well you still occupy both of them and rewrote their constitutions, you can even bomb one of Germany's biggest infrastructure projects without a peep from its comprador democratic regime. So of course you need not feel any concern about re-arming them. Though I suppose it was prudent to wait this long; they're both a lot weaker than in 1990, when in any case there was no rival which would require them to be armed.

Again, for both of you I think the most likely scenario if China invades Tiawan isn't an actual world war. Its probably a blockade and economic sanctions. Those are things our allies might do. The Asian ones will be afraid they are next (with good reason). The European ones realize we've recently helped stop a country who likes invading neighbors (which is why we should do more here). A lot of US alliances are built on "heh being allied to the US aint too bad compared to that guy actually trying to take us over". So would Korea and Japan directly fight China? No. But even some trade sanctions would  hurt them a lot, but I bet they would do it, which would hurt China. That is they key to preventing war. Make sure they know it would cost too much. Not that dictators haven't miscalculated before (see world wars, Kiaser in WWI didn't think Britain would join, and WWII Hitler didn't think partitioning Poland would cause)

I mostly agree, and this is why a "Taiwan" war is not even possible, what we'll get is a Sea War possibly covering the Indian Ocean AND the Pacific. And China will obviously not launch such a war until its navy is powerful enough to be the one doing the blockading against the US and its democratic vassal state regimes. At which point, the War would likely be surrendered quickly, since it wouldn't just be Ukrainians getting the sharp end of the stick, but real Golden Billion Westerners.

Very sad to see Chiang Kai-Shek's statues getting destroyed, at this point it's clear that democratic regimes are no less hostile to their citizenry's history and heritage than even Islamists or Communists.

[BING_XI_LAO]

China's economy is already hurting because countries and companies are very minorly starting to think about the repercussions of trade sanctions.

 Its electricty consumption is up 7% year-on-year, the nominal GDP is weaker but this may just be because various things are a lot cheaper in China now compared to one year ago. (Is that how GDP works? I honestly don't know or really care)

Now 2022 was a lockdown year so maybe it's still posting high growth in comparison to that - but let's revisit this in a year.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I do think its wise to analyze bias and no where more important than in ourselves. I'm an accountant and no you should not hate us (unless its a small company). The ones you should hate are the financial analysts. Those are the people asking you why you spent money on x or telling you not to spend money on that thing you 100% need to spend money on. They also come up with the forecasts. And even for a business forecast in the short term I don't think I've EVER seen it be right in 10 years....

Wait what, you have direct personal experience of an intellectual class failing to forecast a chaotic system, in one where they have MUCH more incentive to get it right, and a MUCh faster pace of incoming empirical feedback to adjust to (ie they are mostly NOT forecasting to 2050).... but you trust the climate scientists to do better? Why? I suppose there's no psychology or game theory involved in climate science, but it's still got plenty of feedback positive and negative feedback loops.
Are climate scientists in a higher category of intellectual than economists?

[BING_XI_LAO]

Edit: ya lets ban AI. I don't want to fix it.

AI scientists make similar arguments. They say, AI has a non zero percent chance to destroy the world and kill all humans - so one should give them as much money as they ask for, so they can solve AI alignment. Or something. At least they have the curtesy not to try and shut down the entire industrial base as well as covering their salaries.

Heh, I wonder if the same psychological preferences are at play across AI and climate change. If someone doesn't believe that AI can become a threat, perhaps they're also unlikely to believe that climate change can run out of control (both share this concept of "passing a threshhold")

Sorry for posting 6 times in a row.

[Mjmd]

I do think its wise to analyze bias and no where more important than in ourselves. I'm an accountant and no you should not hate us (unless its a small company). The ones you should hate are the financial analysts. Those are the people asking you why you spent money on x or telling you not to spend money on that thing you 100% need to spend money on. They also come up with the forecasts. And even for a business forecast in the short term I don't think I've EVER seen it be right in 10 years....

Wait what, you have direct personal experience of an intellectual class failing to forecast a chaotic system, in one where they have MUCH more incentive to get it right, and a MUCh faster pace of incoming empirical feedback to adjust to (ie they are mostly NOT forecasting to 2050).... but you trust the climate scientists to do better? Why? I suppose there's no psychology or game theory involved in climate science, but it's still got plenty of feedback positive and negative feedback loops.
Are climate scientists in a higher category of intellectual than economists?

This is a fair question. I think I said it somewhere in the book of the argument, but I don't believe in the specific predictions, but only in the direction. Part of it is historical. We can look back at pretty solid science even in the last million years where we can track C02 in air bubbles and things like ice advances and sea level. Let alone just looking at data from last 150 years. Part of it is things like warm = more energy make sense to me.

I do think its important to once in a while go "what if the other side is true". Again, in the book of an argument in that case we end up wasting some money but still get some useful tech. Ya its not a great outcome, but its not that bad of an outcome. But considering the energy companies have reports from their scientists predicting negative consequences from climate change I don't consider this to be likely. Again, not even accounting for fairly firm geologic history or simple weather knowledge.

All I have to believe is the general direction and again the cost comparison math is such I don't have to believe that far in the general direction before doing more makes sense.