[bokonist]

The issue is so heated because so much is at stake. The reason laymen have to weigh in on their opinions, is that ultimately, it is our tax dollars that will be spent and our way of life that will be altered. So at the end of the day, we have to decide, do we trust the scientists enough to spend $x hundreds of billions of dollars.

Most issues that a) have a lot at stake and b) are non-obvious are going to generate a lot heated controversy. But it seems to me those are precisely the issues that need to be talked about in a forum with a lot of intelligent people ( Hacker News).

[mattmaroon]

When Wal-Mart needs to make a big decision they don't ask the door greeters for their thoughts. Door greeters know nothing of running a giant corporation (at least most of them). The results certainly have major impacts on the door greeters' livelihoods, but they're not qualified to make decisions like who should be the COO, or should the stock split 2:1, or how many stores they should open in China next year.

It's much the same with science. If you let the hoi polloi decide what we should do about the global warming issue (or lack thereof) you're going to get a result not based on science or economics, but based on whether more people believe Hollywood actors or radio talk show hosts, neither of whom know the slightest thing about it either.

As a concerned tax-payer that is exactly what I'd like to avoid. All of that is, of course, way off-topic, which is ironic in a thread where I initially exclaimed that these sorts of posts are off-topic :)

[bokonist]

Wal-mart is a joint stock corporation. The chain of decision making goes: line employees < middle management < executives < board < shareholders. So on the big decisions, executives, the board, and for really big decisions, the shareholders must vote.

The United States is essentially a giant property management company, run as a consumer co-op. The chain of decision making is: civil service (including NSF funded climate researchers) < Congress < voters.

So as voters we actually do need to research and understand the big issues, just as a shareholder needs to research the companies they invest in.

Of course, perhaps the U.S. should not be run as a consumer co-op (aka democracy). I am sympathetic with that view, but that is really a whole other discussion. But for now it is, so people do have to take an interest in the issues.

It would be nice if we could just delegate these issues to a class of experts. But how we do know if these experts are on the right track? At some point we must do at least some verification ourselves. There is no other option.

I am not an expert in climate science. But I do know quite a bit about politics and government. In college I began to major in political science. But I found that the researchers in political science were incredibly off base. Their research was wrong, irrelevant, and used models that couldn't properly work.

Thus I do not have a strong, baseline trust in academia. My experience in political science shows me that systematic error can flourish among "scientists". These leaked emails illustrate the climate "scientists" are not scientists seeking truth wherever it may lead, but are advocates with an institutional agenda.

So we have climate scientists who are smart, but who should be treated with the same amount as trust as the prosecutor lawyer in a criminal case. We have the hoi polloi who are ignorant. That leaves us, smart, thoughtful people, who have to make the best judgments we can.

[mattmaroon]

We're a Republic rather than a direct democracy. You really don't vote on climate change at all (unless you're a Senator and I just don't know it).

Your job isn't really to study climate change and come to a conclusion. It's to elect someone who you think will do a good job of that.

It would be impossible to be informed enough about every issue you'd need to vote on while not working full-time on that sort of thing. Legislators have entire staffs for that purpose.

I realize I'm not thinking like the average American in that respect. They think something along the lines of "I think gay marriage is wrong, so therefore I'll vote for someone else who thinks gay marriage is wrong. He agrees with me so his decision making process must be good." To choose candidates by that system you'd have to be an expert on a large number of topics that 99.9999% of voters are not.

Instead my goal is to figure out which politician is most intelligent, hardest working, and has the correct motivation, and assume that they and their staffs will come to better conclusions than me since that's their job and not mine. I don't assume that someone who agrees with my relatively uninformed notions on things like climate change or the economy is correct just for that reason.

So I guess my point is, there is no relevant judgment we can make on the global warming topic. Consumer behavior is a drop in the bucket (if the CO2 problem really exists) and its going to take radical public policy changes that we do not get a direct vote on to fix.

[bokonist]

Well, I'm not a Senator. But one of my close friends works in the Senate, on climate change, and is responsible for briefing his Senator about the issue. And you know what? My friend doesn't really know that much about climate change. I would trust him less than the top commenter on a Hacker News articles. Hackers live in a world where they continuously have to make tough technical decisions that result in success or failure, that provides discipline at truth seeking. Staffers do not live in such a world. And while most hackers do not usually study climate change full time, on every comment thread on issue there are usually a select few who really know what they are talking about and get voted to the top.

I have two reasons for caring about climate change:

1) I find it intellectually fascinating. To me it unfolds like a mystery story, except one in which we're all involved. Thus I want to find the truth simply because I innately enjoy truth seeking.

2) Elite opinion matters for policy making. It might not matter directly. But maybe it's a NY Times reporter who reads a comment on Hacker News, that causes him to write an article differently, that is read by a Senate staffer. Or maybe it's a Hacker News reader who sees the article and decides to alter his career path and become a top scientist. Or maybe its a reader who forwards an article to his friend who is a policy maker.

Hacker News is a site of elite, intellectually curious people. Talking about important, controversial issues in any technical subject should be fair game. What's important is that whatever topic we discuss on this site, we discuss well (thoughtfully, politely, and backed with evidence).