[leetcrew]

I'm certainly convinced at this point that climate change is a real thing that we should be concerned about, but that's only because I have (to the best of my ability as a cs person) critically examined the position taken by the climate scientists.

no one is immune to bias and misaligned incentives, especially on contentious political issues, and especially in fields where your entire job depends on government funding. in general, I am quite skeptical of academics.

[lifeformed]

I'm not saying we should accept it all unquestioningly, but I feel like that ship has sailed a long time ago. As a society, we should be taking action yesterday, not still asking if it's real or not. The only reason why we are still doing it is because of malicious high-influence individuals holding everyone back, trying to squeeze every last drop out of society.

Scientists and academics indeed have their own biases, but when you look at the big picture of the distribution of peoples' motivations, very clear patterns emerge that scream out: there is a lot of bad-faith, deliberate disinformation out there, and we need to take that into account. As rational people, it's tempting to just take arguments at face value and focus on the information. But this is all taking place in a larger context where psychology and game theory play a role. Impartiality is exploitable - tying up people's judgement is just a victory for the status quo.