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buybuydandavis comments on The insularity critique of climate science - Less Wrong
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You can demand anything you want, but that doesn't mean you'll get it.
But we can and should adjust our trust in their estimates according to our estimates of the truth finding power of their process.
At the moment climate scientists aren't getting the kind of legislative action that they demand either.
We can also freely ridicule climate scientists for saying silly things such as that our knowledge of climate change is comparable to our certainty about evolution or the age of the earth.
There are a lot of news outlets very interested to covering demands that climate scientists should get their act together in case someone actually goes for it.
I hope some high profile people start challenging big talkers with public bets. Put up or shut up, publicly.
Have you looked at http://www.theclimatebet.com (mentioned in an UPDATE at the end of Critique #1 in my post)?
Is this what it comes down to, that Gore refused to bet, so they presumed to make a pretend bet for him?
Boo. Lame. Worse than lame. Deceptive. (On their part.)
Tell me it aint so.
http://www.theclimatebet.com/?p=206&cpage=1#comment-229
“Now, assume that Armstrong and Gore made a gentleman‟s bet (no money) and that the ten years of the bet started on January 1, 2008. Armstrong‟s forecast was that there would be no change in global mean temperature over the next ten years. Gore did not specify a method or a forecast. Nor did searches of his book or the Internet reveal any quantitative forecasts or any methodology that he relied on. He did, however, imply that the global mean temperature would increase at a rapid rate – presumably at least as great as the IPCC‟s 1992 projection of 0.03°C-per-year. Thus, the IPCC‟s 1992 projection is used as Gore‟s forecast.”
The full correspondence is here:
http://www.theclimatebet.com/?page_id=4
Maybe it's lame (?) but I don't think they're being deceptive -- they're quite explicit that Gore refused to bet.
The fact that he refused to bet could be interpreted either as evidence that the bet was badly designed and didn't reflect the fundamental point of disagreement between Gore and Armstrong, or as evidence that Gore was unwilling to put his money where his mouth is.
I'm not sure what interpretation to take.
btw, here's a bet that was actually properly entered into by both parties (neither of them a climate scientist):
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/06/bauman_climate.html
No, but good stuff. Thanks.
See overcomingbias for some blogposts on betting, and some good reasons as to why people don't bet on such things (especially in the comments, and in the second post, since the first post was in favor of bets)
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/07/bets-argue.html
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/07/why-do-bets-look-bad.html
I read the second post as listing the various social advantages gained by not betting. Those are good reasons for social advantage.
But when you're interested in the truth, they're not good reasons. Converting social advantage talky talk into actions with consequences tied to the truth helps in two way.
The first way is the aforementioned "Put up, or shut up." Putting some skin in the game focuses the mind, and reveals true preferences.
The second way is more important. Making a bet entails converting all the talky talk into a testable proposition dependent on specific measurements.
Or at least it does if at least one of the bettors is actually concerned with the truth, and competent to formulate the proposition. Two social weasels could easily agree to a bet with ambiguous terms.
I'm not willing to pay excessive costs to prove myself right. Bear in mind that social costs are still costs.
I'm also not willing to impose excessive costs on others as part of proving myself right. Consider that if betting becomes widespread, it may have the effect that poor people are locked out of intellectual circles.
I'm also not willing to take excessive risks to prove myself right. If I have a 95% chance of being right, but the loss for the 5% chance of being mistaken is large enough that I'm risk averse about it, I'm not going to make the bet.
Some of those reasons are perverse incentives. For instance, if I am going to bet on X, that gives me a financial interest in not convincing people of X, and in weakening my arguments for X. (That's not in the posts, but it is in the comments.)
Furthermore, if I believe X,I don't need to bet on X to convince myself of it--after all, I believe it already! I'd be making the bet to convince other people. Needless to say, many of the problems with betting directly relate to convincing other people.