Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sandoooo 2354 days ago
Since twitter is horrible on mobile, here's a summary:

# Nasorg sounds like NAS and could be mistaken for it.

# Nasorg is conservative and have published material with conservative slant.

# 7 out of 21 speakers are climate denialists.

# Therefore it is righteous to deplatform them.

2 comments

The wsj article is actually fairly accurate, since it has basically listed all the same arguments.

The question is the last point: assuming everything else here is true, is this sufficient grounds for deplatforming? Do you want to live in a world where it is?

Edit: apparently the HN answer is: yes, we totes do.

Please don't add flamebait to HN comments, regardless of how frustrated you feel by other users. It only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes, denial of man-made climate change is sufficient grounds for deplatforming in my book. Not that that's happening here. A scientific conference calling for freedom of speech is upset that a scientist is using their freedom of speech in a way the conference doesn't approve of.
Do you want your children to live in a world with +4 degrees because some purely financially motivated people stopped progress on the environmental protection front?
Come on you guys, please keep predictable rhetoric off this site. It's tedious and we're here for curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I want my children to live in a world where they are free to think and to read and to listen to a wide variety of opinions, and not just parrot those that come from the loudest voices.
Come on you guys, please keep predictable rhetoric off this site. It's tedious and we're here for curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is the chance of this higher or lower in a world where scientists with opposing views are allowed to deplatform one another instead of applying the scientific method?
The scientific method deplatforms. It is skeptical. It is observational. It is experimental. It refines and eliminates failed hypotheses. It is not fair to all viewpoints.

For example, the scientific method deplatformed geocentrism.

># Therefore it is righteous to deplatform them.

It's not "deplatforming" when your objection to someone speaking is about what they're saying. An organization pushing climate change denial should not be treated as credible because climate denial is not science.

Anyone who has even the faintest experience with physicists -- anyone who has sat in a room full of them -- knows that there are thousands upon thousands of physicists in the world, any of whom are perfectly capable of interpreting the detailed technical reports from climatologists. If the theory of global warming was carious, there are a lot of people who would know. Physicists are known to complain about theories they don't like, and they do -- usually about string theory or fusion power, never about climatology.

And that's just it. Anyone who understands enough physics to read a paper knows that the "climate change debate" is a media ploy to trick people into voting for something stupid.

The people running the ploy have made their beliefs known as well -- they realize that climate change is going to happen, but they think that the world, or at least the West, will be OK. Ronald Bailey delivers the exegesis of this viewpoint, and his readers are largely the educated right, who go on to encourage this nonsense among the gullible.

Lubos Motls is a theoretical physicist and is probably classified as a denier. Though, I think this definition is applied too liberally. In his latest blog post he claims there is 1-2 deg of warming per century and this from contributions by mankind (he doesn’t break down the proportion). He doesn’t think the warming will be an issue for 200 years.

https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/12/rss-amsu-acceleration-of-...

This blog post is unhinged nonsense. Is that your defense?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luboš_Motl

> Since 2006, Motl's has focused less on fundamental physics research and instead on controversial questions in other, related fields. In these related fields, Motl is regarded as something of a crackpot.

> It's not "deplatforming" when your objection to someone speaking is about what they're saying.

The speakers aren't talking about climate denial. They are talking reproducibility in science.

> never about climatology

Bullshit. They look down their nose at climatology just like any other science without any experimental validation of theoretical models (a.k.a soft science).