whpearson comments on You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 February 2010 07:58AM

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Comment author: whpearson 15 February 2010 01:54:43PM 4 points [-]

I personally distinguish between branches of science and the amount of trust I give them. The simpler the things they are talking about and the more successful the field is at making predictions the more weight I give it.

Climate science has a number of complex feed back loops such as increasing plant growth and is regularly changing its predictions as it incorporates more details into the simulation (although they are all trending positive temperature increase), so that I don't assign it the same weight as the predictions of a particle physicist on particles in standard conditions.