On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 9:40 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 5 April 2014 23:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: > >> On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 11:47 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> That doesn't narrow it down too much. >>> >> >> Je m'accuse. I was one of them. >> >> My point was that conspiracy theories, in the sense of power elites >> secretly cooperating to further their own interests against the interests >> of the majority are not, unfortunately, unusual events in History. We know >> of countless examples of this happening in the past. I think it requires >> some magical thinking to assume that this type of behaviour is absent from >> our own times. >> >> I further pointed out that broadly discrediting any hypothesis that some >> elites might be conspiring against the common good, in broad strokes, seems >> to benefit precisely the ones in power. Furthermore, thanks to Snowden, we >> now have strong evidence of a large-scale conspiracy by western governments >> that I would not believe one year ago. In this case I'm referring to the >> secret implementation of global and total surveillance, with our tax money, >> by the people we elected, to spy on us, infringing on constitutions. >> >> I can't help but notice the very common rhetorical trick of using the >> nutty conspiracy theories (UFOs, the Illuminati, fake moon landing, etc.) >> to discredit the much more mundane and reasonable suspicions of elites >> abusing their power. The paper you cite in this thread uses that trick too. >> >> This broad denial of the existence of conspiracies is silly, if you think >> about it. The official explanation for 9/11 is a conspiracy theory: some >> religious arab fundamentalists conspired to create a global network of >> terrorist cells with the objective of attacking western civilisation. They >> hijacked planes and sent them into buildings and so on. If you don't >> believe in this explanation, you are then forced to believe in some other >> conspiracy. >> >> Of course conspiracies exist. The current denial of this quite obvious >> fact feels Orwellian, to be honest. >> >> OK, it seems likely that conspiracies exist, however it seems unlikely > that the IPCC is part of one of them (I've lost track of whether you're > claiming this or not, so please let me know) >
I'm not saying that. On the matter of AGW, I am simply skeptical of the level of certainty that is claimed for the models or that subsidising wind power or solar power is a wise corse of action. Then I also suspect of opportunism, in the case of the very shady business of carbon credits. > because the ruling interests are in favour of business as usual - i.e. > there is almost certainly a conspiracy to discredit the science. > Sure, I also find it quite likely that powerful fossil fuel companies are lobbying or using even dirtier tricks to discredit AGW theory. On the other hand, this says nothing about the truth status of AGW theory. > The fact that they will use the idea of conspiracy theories to do this is > indeed Orwellian, not to mention ironic. > Indeed. Governments are doing this too, by the way: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ > How does the paper use this trick? > I find this paper to be a convoluted ad hominem. It finds a correlation between rejection of AGW and a number of ridiculous beliefs -- and I don't doubt this result, but then goes on to frame this as a possible reasons for the "rejection of science". There is nothing wrong in social scientists studying the interaction between scientific activity and popular opinions. The problem is that this paper takes a very naif view of science, where instead of "scientific theories" we have just "science", and instead of the "rejection of scientific theories" we have the "rejection of science". A not so hidden pre-assumption of the paper is that scientific theories can only be doubted for irrational reasons. Then it finds a group of people with irrational beliefs that also question certain theories, and goes on to propose that irrational ideation is the reason for the rejection of such theories. The problem is that, unfortunately, irrational ideation is still the norm in our society. See the percentage of the population that still believes in ancient desert religions. I bet you that a correlation could also be found between popular acceptance of the AGW theory and the belief in crystal healing, feng shui or the health benefits of veganism. Then one could use this correlation to arrive at the opposite conclusion of the paper -- that science is supported by irrational belief -- and it would be equally invalid. All tribes have their irrational beliefs, this is not news and it tell us nothing about the truth status of scientific theories. Cheers, Telmo. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
