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Scientists And Philosophers

11 Comments

Why they need to talk to each other:

Most of climate science is in ‘shut up and calculate’ mode. This is a very dangerous place to be given the substantial uncertainties, ignorance and areas of disagreement, not to mention the problems/failures of climate models. Climate science needs reflection on the fundamental assumptions, re-interpretations, and deeper thinking. How to reason about the complex climate system, and its uncertainties, is not at all straightforward. And then of course there are the ethical issues, including understanding how the climate debate has gone so badly wrong.

Yes.

11 thoughts on “Scientists And Philosophers”

  1. “understanding how the climate debate has gone so badly wrong.”

    Says the man calling people academic frauds….

      1. And yet you are being sued for defamation.

        Now how could a man who calls so many people names, ever not be actually a defamer?

        1. I’m not being sued for calling anyone an academic fraud, you moron. And I don’t call very many people names. It’s mostly you.

          Go ahead and sue me. Though you don’t really have a reputation to be damaged, because the only reputation you have is as a moron.

          1. “I’m not being sued for calling anyone an academic fraud”

            And yet you are being sued for defamation…

    2. You have the AGW community equating skeptics with Holocaust deniers, which is part of a larger effort to tar any opposition as racist. And you have people calling for the imprisonment and mass executions of skeptics. Defense of AGW alarmism has nothing to do with science and everything to do with attacking people as non-humans who’s thoughts and actions are paid for by evil companies.

      That is a policy of persuasion that has gone off the rails.

    1. There was a required “ethics” class in my computer science degree. But the teacher was a leftard loon. Half of what she taught didn’t quite add up, but the error was buried deep in selective “logic”. Someone who didn’t go in with a solid ethical foundation could easily swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Sometimes I suspect I passed in part because she didn’t want to deal with me again.

    2. The Google search for “engineering syllabus ethics” yields 1420000 results, with the first page linking to some major universities (MIT, Georgetown, Texas A&M). “Physics syllabus ethics” also yields over a million results. “Mathematics syllabus ethics” gives 34 million results. Based on those three searches, the answer is probably yes across the board.

      1. Sometimes, when I am lazy, google is cheating.

        I didn’t have to take any ethics classes as an undergrad in any of the departments I experimented in. But in business school, we did have an ethics class and the focus was on whether or not you were making ethical decisions. There is some sensitivity considering the negative stereotypes applied to the business community.

        It looks like the engineering ethics classes take a similar track due to the welfare of so many people depending on the work of engineers. But when a similar google search is used for environmental studies and ethics, a casual review of the syllabi shows that the focus isn’t on conducting one’s work ethically but how morality and ethics can be used to justify the work being done. It looks more like moral indoctrination, giving a moral purpose to the work, and using morality to persuade people about the importance of climate science. Perhaps if climate science wants to be taken as seriously as other disciplines, they should change what is taught in their ethics classes to something more traditional about how the individual should act in an ethical manner. A lot of the problems in climate science and the activist community revolve around people acting unethically.

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