Posts Tagged ‘Science’
Why You Should Be A Skeptic
As you may have heard, an unknown hacker breached the Hadley Climatic Research Centre and disclosed a large volume of email and documents, thus giving us a peek inside the sausage factory. First, let me say that the breach itself rather concerns me. We’re talking about a government sponsored research facility. Somebody virtually waltzed right in and and took everything but the kitchen sink. Heads should roll in the information security department.
Second, the email correspondence is pretty damning. It won’t affect my position much because I was already fairly sure these types of shenanigans were going on. But if you put your faith in the “consensus”, you should consider updating your position. There are numerous instances of three types of egregious behavior from senior scientists:
- Coordinated efforts to portray all results as supporting the conclusion that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a serious threat. Such efforts included the spinning of results, application of statistical “tricks”, and selective use of data.
- Coordinated efforts to suppress professional dissent. Such efforts included going after editors of journals that published articles supporting a skeptical view and lobbying university administrations to pressure researches who didn’t toe the line.
- Coordinated efforts to evade Freedom of Information Act requests and destroy data that might support the skeptical position if disclosed.
By themselves, these actions should be alarming because they obfuscate the real answer to the question of how serious a threat AGW presents .
But the real take home point is the tone of many emails. These are leading scientists in the field. Yet they clearly hold bitter contempt for colleagues who don’t agree with them. This isn’t business. This is personal. To paraphrase, Robin Hanson, climate science isn’t about the science of climate. It’s about social status. The AGW proponents see themselves as an “in group” and AGW skeptics as an “out group”. They are more concerned about destroying the out group than actually figuring out what’s going on with the climate.
Given this attitude, it’s hard to have any confidence that we’ll get a rational, scientific answer any time in the near future.
Will The Real AGW Skeptic Please Stand Up?
Normally, I don’t debate random bloggers on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). However, I made an exception for Robin Hanson. For those who don’t already know of him, he was both an early proponent of decision markets and has a reasonably well known journal article on why two Bayesian rationalists can’t agree to disagree. I’m a fan of his work and have been reading his blog for years.
Yesterday, he put up a post titled CO2 Warming Looks Real. He’s not an expert. Like me, he has an economics background and did some detailed research. Yet from the title and body of the post, I though he must have reached a very different conclusion than I did. So I thought I’d try to engage him to find out where we differ. The results were interesting.
Approaching the Singularity from Two Points
I happened to come across two interesting posts with Singularity implications that I thought you might be interested in. First, the Singularity Hub reports that Osiris has a promising phase II trial underway for a treatment that uses foreign stem cells to repair the muscle damage from heart attacks. If you’re about 40 like Rafe and I, this means your chances of dying from heart disease could go way down. Now if we can just make some progress on cancer, we’ll be centenarians.
Second, via Prometheus, Wired reports on a robot-software combination that was able to generate, test, and refine it’s own hypotheses to identify coding for orphan enzymes in yeast. Obviously, this is a very special purpose kind of science. But the fact they got a closed loop is very impressive. I also like the fact that it’s in the biological sciences. Hey, maybe some descendant of this program can solve the aformentioned cancer problem.
Two Books On Cognitive Science You Should Read
As I mentioned in this post, one of the three primary planks of my worldview is that, “…the human brain is a woefully inadequate decision making substrate.” I started adopting this posture in graduate school and have refined it with constant input from the cognitive psychology and neurobiology literature over the years. Luckily, you don’t have to put in that kind of time. Simply go out and read Rational Choice in an Uncertain Worlds by Hastie and Dawes and The Accidental Mind by Linden.
Climate Shifts as a Complex Systems Property
Via a post at the always terrific Watts Up with That, a pre publication version of this paper examines the non-linear coupling dynamics of the climate. Its hypothesis is based on the mathematics of synchronized chaos (sorry, no good introductory link available).
But I Was Probably Right About Climate Models
I try not to practice false modesty (those of you who know me well probably just did a spit take at that understatement). So while I try to stand up and admit when I’m wrong, I also like to stand up and point out where I’m right.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you that I came to the conclusion that climate models are pretty much total bullshit. My problem with them is that they are incomplete, overfitted, and unproven. It turns out that one of the foremost experts on forecasting in general also thinks that these models have no predictive value. In fact, items (6) and (7) of their statement shows that you can predict the future temperature really well simply by saying it will be the same as the current temperature.
You can read their more formal indictment of climate forecasting methods here.
Oh snap!
Particle Physics Follow Up
In the comments to this post, Rafe and Daniel asked me to tell them the punch line of Lightness of Being. I’ll do my best. Spoilers ahead.
Good Particle Physics Book
I apologize for the posting lull. I’ve had a bad cold and been struggling to add Monte Carlo simulation to my discrete stochastic model of the startup lifecycle (if anyone is planning on using Oracle’s Crystal Ball, I can tell you the good and bad). But I’m almost finished with my next substantial post.
In the meantime, I finished a really good physics book: Lightness of Being by Nobel prize winner Frank Wilczek. It requires a basic knowledge of quantum mechanics (I suggest Al-Khalili’s Quantum) and particle physics (any recent popular book that spends more than one chapter on the Standard Model).
Given that, it does an awesome job of explaining three things that have always bothered me. First, how the strong force can possibly get more powerful the farther away you get. Second, why we can’t break protons and neutrons into their component quarks. Third, where the heck a proton’s mass really comes from. It turns out all three things are related and the explanation is quite elegant. I don’t know why the dozen other physics books I’ve read in the last five years ommitted an explanation (or at least an explanation that stuck with me).
Don't Cop Out on Knightian Uncertainty
I apologize for the posting lull. I actually spotted an issue than I wanted to address a few weeks ago, but I’ve been pondering how to approach it. It’s pretty complicated and subtle. I even ran a couple of drafts by Rafe to refine my thinking. So please bear with me.
As I’ve mentioned before, I am a fan of Dave Zetland. When I saw him propagate what I think is a fundamentally false dichotomy in this post, I knew I had to take on the concept of Knightian uncertainty. It crops up rather often in discussions of forecasting complex systems and I think a lot of people use it as a cop out.
Possible Insight 