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Zetetic comments on 6 Tips for Productive Arguments - Less Wrong
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I've done my best to make this a habit, and it really isn't that hard to do, especially over the internet. Once you 'bite the bullet' the first time it seems to get easier to do in the future. I've even been able to concede points of contention in real life (when appropriate). Is it automatic? No, you have to keep it in the back of your mind, just like you have to keep in mind the possibility that you're rationalizing. You also have to act on it which, for me, does seem to get easier the more I do it.
This sort of goes with the need to constantly try to recognize when you are rationalizing. If you are looking up a storm of quotes, articles, posts etc. to back up your point and overwhelm your 'opponent', this should set off alarm bells. The problem is that those who spend a lot of time correcting people who are obviously wrong by providing them with large amounts of correct information also seem prone to taking the same approach to a position that merely seems obviously wrong for reasons they might not be totally conscious of themselves. They then engage in some rapid fire confirmation bias, throw a bunch of links up and try to 'overpower the opponent'. This is something to be aware of. If the position you're engaging seems wrong but you don't have a clear-cut, well evidenced reason why this is, you should take some time to consider why you want it to be right.
When facing someone who is engaging in this behavior (perhaps they are dismissing something you think is sensible, be it strong AI or cryonics, or existential risk, what have you) there are some heuristics you can use. In online debates in particular, I can usually figure out pretty quickly if the other person understands the citations they make by choosing one they seem to place some emphasis on and looking at it carefully, then posing questions about the details.
I've found that you can usually press the 'citingpeople' into revealing their underlying motivations in a variety of ways. One way is sort of poor - simply guess at their motivations and suggest that as truth. They will feel the need to defend their motivations and clarify. The major drawback is that this can also shut down the discussion. An alternative is to suggest a good-sounding motivation as truth - this doesn't feel like an attack, and they may engage it. The drawback is that this may encourage them to take up the suggested motivation as their own. At this point, some of their citations will likely not be in line with their adopted position, but pointing this out can cause backtracking and can also shut down discussion if pressed. Neither approach guarantees us clear insight into the motivations of the other person, but the latter can be a good heuristic (akin to the 'steel man suggestion). Really, I can't think of a cut-and-dried solution to situations in which people try to build up a wall of citations - each situation I can think of required a different approach depending on the nature of the position and the attitude of the other person.
Anyway, I think that in the context of all of the other suggestions and the basic etiquette at LW, the suggestions are fine, and the situation you're worried about would typically only obtain if someone were cherry picking a few of these ideas without making effort to adjust their way of thinking. Recognizing your motivation for wanting something to be true is an important step in recognizing when you're defending a position for poor reasons, and this motivation should be presented upfront whenever possible (this also allows the other person to more easily pinpoint your true rejection).
One should either cite the prevailing scientific opinion (e.g. on global warming), or present a novel scientific argument (where you cite the data you use). Other stuff really is nonsense. You can't usefully second-guess science. Citing studies that support your opinion is cherry picking, and is bad.
Consider a drug trial; there were 2000 cases where drug did better than placebo, and 500 cases where it did worse. If each trial was a study, the wikipedia page would likely link to 20 links showing that it did better than placebo, including the meta-study, and 20 that it did worse. If it was edited to have 40 links that it did better, it'll have 40 links that it did worse. How silly is the debate, where people just cite the cases they pick? Pointlessly silly.
On top of that people (outside lesswrong mostly) really don't understand how to process scientific studies. If there is a calculation that CO2 causes warming, then if calculation is not incorrect, or some very basic physics is not incorrect, CO2 does cause warming. There's no 'countering' of this study. The effect won't go anywhere, what ever you do. The only thing one could do is to argue that CO2 somehow also causes cooling; an entirely new mechanism. E.g. if snow was black, rather than white, and ground was white rather than dark, one could argue that warming removes the snow, leading in decrease in absorption, and decreasing the impact of the warming. Alas snow is white and ground is dark, so warming does cause further warming via this mechanics, and the only thing you can do is to come up with some other mechanism here that does the opposite. And so on. (You could disprove those by e.g. finding that snow, really, is dark, and ground, really, is white., or by finding that CO2 doesn't really absorb IR, but that's it).
People don't understand difference between calculating predictions, and just free-form hypothesising that may well be wrong, and needs to be tested with experiment, etc etc.
(i choose global warming because I trust it is not a controversial issue on LW, but I do want something that is generally controversial and not so crazy as to not be believed by anyone)
It might very well be possible that the calculation is correct, and the basic physics is correct, and yet an increase in CO2 emissions does not lead to warming -- because there's some mechanism that simultaneously increases CO2 absorption, or causes cooling (as you said, though in a less counterfactual way), or whatever. It could also be possible that your measurements of CO2 levels were incorrect.
Thus, you could -- hypothetically -- "counter" the study (in this scenario) by revealing the errors in the measurements, or by demonstrating additional mechanisms that invalidate the end effects.
If there was a mechanism that simultaneously increased CO2 absorption, the levels wouldn't have been rising. For the measurements, you mean, like vast conspiracy that over reports the coal that is being burnt? Yes, that is possible, of course.
One shouldn't do motivated search, though. There is a zillion other mechanisms going on, of course, that increase, and decrease the effects. All the immediately obvious ones amplify the effect (e.g. warming releases CO2 and methane from all kinds of sources where it is dissolved; the snow is white and melts earlier in spring, etc). Of course, if one is to start doing motivated search either way, one could remain ignorant of those and collect the ones that work in opposite, and successfully 'counter' the warming. But that's cherry picking. If one is to just look around and report on what one sees there is a giant number of amplifying mechanisms, and few if any opposite mechanisms; which depend on the temperature and are thus incapable of entirely negating the warming because they need warming to work.
I was thinking of a scenario where you measured CO2 emissions, but forgot to measure absorption (I acknowledge that such a scenario is contrived, but I think you get the idea).
That's a possibility as well, but I was thinking about more innocuous things like sample contamination, malfunctioning GPS cables, etc.
In all of these cases, your math is correct, and your basic physics is correct, and yet the conclusion is still wrong.
You mean like the fact that clouds are white and form more when it's warmer.
Do they, really? Last time I checked they formed pretty well at -20c and at +35c . Ohh, i see knee jerk reaction happening - they may form a bit more at +35c in your place (here they are white, and also form more in winter). Okay, 55 degrees of difference may make a difference, now what?
There comes another common failure mode: animism. Even if you find temperature dependent effects that are opposite, they have to be quite strong to produce any notable difference of temperature as a result of 2 degree difference in temperature, at the many points of the temperature range, to get yourself any compensation beyond small %. It's only the biological systems, that tend to implement PID controllers, which do counter any deviations from equilibrium, even little ones, in a way not dependent on their magnitude.
The way I've always heard it, mainstream estimates of climate sensitivity are somewhere around 3 degrees (with a fair amount of spread), and the direct effect of CO2 on radiation is responsible for 1 degree of that, with the rest being caused by positive feedbacks. It may be possible to argue that some important positive feedbacks are also basic physics (and that no important negative feedbacks are basic physics), but it sounds to me like that's not what you're doing; it sounds to me like, instead, you're mistakenly claiming that the direct effect by itself, without any feedback effects, is enough to cause warming similar to that claimed by mainstream estimates.
Nah, I'm speaking of the anthropogenic global warming vs no anthropogenic global warming 'debate', not of 1 degree vs 3 degrees type debate. For the most part, the AGW debate is focussed on the effect of CO2, sans the positive feedbacks, as the deniers won't even accept 1 degree of difference.
Speaking of which, one very huge positive feedback is that water vapour is a greenhouse 'gas'.
Why the quotes? Water vapor's a gas. There's also liquid- and solid-phase water in the atmosphere in the form of clouds and haze, but my understanding is that that generally has a cooling effect by way of increasing albedo.
Might be missing some feedbacks there, though; I'm not a climatologist.
Well, thats why quotes, because it is changing phase there. The clouds effect on climate btw is not so simple; the clouds also reflect the infrared some.
I think the debate, and certainly the policy debate, is (in effect) about the catastrophic consequences of CO2.