Bret Stephens Bullshit Arguments On Science & Why They Don't Work - Bloomberg

[hatrack]

A new argument has started to crop up in debates over climate change. It goes like this: Science couldn’t predict the outcome of the last election, or the bumps in the economy, so why should we believe scientists when they try to predict the future of Earth’s climate?

For example, a recent New York Times column -- the first from new op-ed writer Bret Stephens -- starts with a cautionary tale about the failure of data analytics to guide Team Clinton to victory in 2016, then segues into a discussion of climate-change skepticism. Given the “inherent uncertainties of data,” Stephens argues, doubters have a right to distrust “overweening scientism.” He writes:

We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris. From Robert McNamara to Lehman Brothers to Stronger Together, cautionary tales abound.

EDIT

Fields of science with good track records for prediction often work by discerning patterns and insights that explain the world. The better the insights, the better the predictions -- on subjects ranging from eclipses to chemical reactions to the behavior of ants to the existence of black holes. In contrast, many data-driven algorithms developed by private companies and used to, say, predict election results, are opaque. They aren’t peer-reviewed. Their claims aren’t subject to replication. They don’t reveal insights or explanations that others can test.

EDIT

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-01/conservatives-new-climate-argument-fails

[lapfog_1]

1. this is easy

Election prediction is a study in (largely) psychology. In particular, predictions of the actions of a large group of people. This is at best, "soft science" based on mass psychology.

Climate Change is based on physics and chemistry. Hard science. This doesn't care about how someone (or even everyone) "feels" about it.

Not to say that valuable insights cannot be gained by using data analytics on mass behavior, but they are certainly not the same or comparable.

[NeoGreen]

2. Is he lamenting the failure of Psychohistory?...

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)

Psychohistory
Psychohistory depends on the idea that, while one cannot foresee the actions of a particular individual, the laws of statistics as applied to large groups of people could predict the general flow of future events. Asimov used the analogy of a gas: an observer has great difficulty in predicting the motion of a single molecule in a gas, but can predict the mass action of the gas to a high level of accuracy. (Physicists know this as the Kinetic theory). Asimov applied this concept to the population of his fictional Galactic Empire, which numbered a quintillion.

The character responsible for the science's creation, Hari Seldon, established two axioms:
1) The population whose behavior was modeled should be sufficiently large,
2) The population should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses

There is a third underlying axiom of Psychohistory, which is trivial and thus not stated by Seldon in his Plan:
3) Human Beings are the only sentient intelligence in the Galaxy.

[SolarAdvocate]

3. Bret Stephens is a tool......

.........how the NYT could get snookered by him is beyond me.

[pscot]

4. But, but...Fair and Balanced

[SolarAdvocate]

5. Damn, I Forgot.......

........about that. Well then, Bret Stephens must be right. I sit corrected.