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by headsoup
1428 days ago
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Ah, the old everyone's an idiot that can't think critically thing.
People might not form the opinion you want, but that doesn't mean they can't still be critical and come to an informed opinion. I think none of these topics are the problem being actually hinted at. Instead, I would ask bigger questions:
- Why do we seem to have an increasing number of politicians/positions of power with little to no depth of experience in their field? - After decades and more of scientific abuse and manipulation by corporations, how do we rebuild trust (I think this is particularly relevant to the discussion here)? - How do we ensure social media companies do not influence discussion, but also try to avoid echo chambers and propoganda? In other words, it's not people not understanding a topic or the 'wrong' voices getting too much attention or too many 'wrong' opinions that is the problem, these are just symptoms.
Good arguments, data and integrity and more discussion should always be desired and encouraged as the way to debate and understand. Most other options are roads to tyranny of some form. |
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To check whether someone's scientific arguments hold (assuming they are not ridiculously bad), you will need hours, days or weeks of research of your own, if you don't already know everything. You will need to check their math, to check their models, to compare with others' models in the literature, to do some small experiments of your own (even if just statistical experiments). You can't just listen to two people speak for 1 hour and meaningfully decide for yourself who is right.
Einstein couldn't have listened to two climate scientists debate for 1h and have decided for himself who is right. It just takes far more effort.
And the purpose of journalism and the scientific establishment is exactly to spare the rest of us that effort: journalists can talk to established scientists and help many millions of people form an informed opinion on what we know about a topic, without having to dedicate their week to that single topic. Those that do want to dedicate more time, and who do want to meaningfully investigate the fringe opinions shouldn't get it from Fox or BBC, they should go and read up on the literature, pro and against, with detailed technical arguments, once they understand enough of the field for those arguments to make sense.
To summarize: anyone who wants to contradict climate change should show you the math. If they can't show the math for various time constraint reasons, then it mustn't be on TV. If a TV station or news article is willing to spend 4-8 hours to discuss the technical details, then by all means, invite both sides of the argument.