"It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition."
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Grand words, but not much content and brazen attempts to sneak in ad-hominens under the radar:
"The climate change legions are recruited mainly from the Western left-intelligentsia, their kitbags stuffed with all the sub-Marxist and ethno-masochist flapdoodle of the modern Academy. They hate capitalism, they hate Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors. The kind of dramatic social engineering implicit in the phrase "combatting climate change" is emotionally appealing to them."
With all the nice words around you would hardly notice.
It would be an ad hominem if he said "And thus they are wrong." But he doesn't even say they're wrong! He just says that they happen to reach the conclusion that lets them act in their ideological interests.
Was there any language in the article that you found particularly wasteful? Did you have any criticisms besides the misplaced accusation of ad hominem?
Your criterion for distinguishing an ad hominem argument is not at all valid.
It's enough for someone to say "that theory is the darling of every cannibalistic child-molesting moron in Sweden". If they said "that theory was created by a cannibalistic child-molesting moron and thus it's wrong", all they would be doing is giving away the irrationality of the implied ad hominem argument. It's much more effective and much more common for an arguer to toss insults and let the reader's emotional reactions create the conclusion.
Your criterion for distinguishing an ad hominem argument is not at all valid.
...
An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument toward the person" or "argument against the person") is an argument which links the validity of a premise to an irrelevant characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.
There is a difference between saying "cannibalistic child-molesting morons agree with that" and saying "thus it is false." That's why we have the term ad hominem: to distinguish between valid statements (i.e. "child molesters believe that the sky is blue and that encryption technology should be legal,") and invalid statements ("Thus, the sky is red and PGP should be banned.").
You are complaining about something legitimate, but what you're complaining about is not ad hominem. The closest term is probably "rhetoric."
If you read the definition you posted, you'll notice it says "linking". The link can be explicit or implicit. The original article certainly established an implicit link between the beliefs of the left and the belief in global warming.
This would be a valid critism of the article if you weren't taking that quote out of context. The author was pointing out how heavily politicized the argument it is and why that should make us carefull about picking sides. He's very explicit in pointing out that motives of a scientist does not necessarily make him right or wrong. He also mentions that climate-change skeptics have their ulterior motives as well.
I should mention that I don't necessarily agree that the original article only sneaks in ad hominem attacks but I would say that gratuitous insults towards "Marxists" on the left in certainly mar the conclusions it aims for.
In generally, I actually think the article tries to make the valid point that science shouldn't be manipulated by anyone. On the other hand, I think the point that since massively increasing emissions of all variety of pollutants could very plausibly be causing irreparable harm to the environment, we should cut them back seriously. I don't think that line of reasoning makes me a Marxist. I won't pretend this is a scientific argument however. But they are many situations where people have to make decisions where the science isn't settled (and waiting till the science is settled is just the decision to do nothing).
The unfortunate thing is that the level of national dialog has kind-of degenerated to the point where you get traction by clothing yourself in the authority of science and belittling your opponents. Some part of the article might serve as an effort to improve this dialog. The part where the author talks about the "Western left-intelligentsia, their kitbags stuffed with all the sub-Marxist and ethno-masochist flapdoodle of the modern Academy. They hate capitalism, they hate Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors."
Yes, this is Digg material at best. Brazen, obvious trolling and over-the-top insulting of the establishment. All he does is stick something at the top of the article that almost all his readers will agree with and then relies on everyone who doesn't read the rest to reflex-upvote it.
Your average Digg politics thread is more civil.
I mean, seriously, "They hate capitalism, they hate Western civilization, and they hate their own ancestors.". What color is the sky in a world where this isn't flamebait?
No. Science, like democracy, is based on the very principle of distrust. Instead, simply accept it. Accept that scientists are humans. Accept that the process if often flawed. Accept that peer-review doesn't really mean that much. Accept that most theories aren't fully supported by the data. Accept that we have such a diversity in science that experiments are rarely repeated. Accept that it's hard to tell the good science from the bad. but most of all, accept that it is the best thing we've got.
I didn't RTA, but I find it interesting you compare science and democracy.
In a good democracy, the politicians are assumed to be gaining the system for personal power. That is, the political system is built up to make it extremely difficult for power to centralize in any one spot for a long period of time. There are lots of ways to do this, checks and balances, term limits, parliamentary systems, etc.
However in the current "scientific" system -- the system that allocates political and monetary power to scientists -- none of this seems to be in place. It's much at the same place democracies were in the 1600s or so; there is a lot of reliance on the "right" people being in power.
I'm not at all trying to slam science -- it is truly the best thing we have -- but I found your metaphor very enlightening, perhaps in ways you didn't realize? Thanks for sharing it.
Actually, the allocation of money has nothing to do with the idea of science, but is rather a simple necessity brought on by, ironically, politics. That allocation process also has many of the same safe-guards you mention.
The part of the metaphor that is completely incorrect, is that democracy is a truth finding system at all! You can not vote the law of gravity out of existence, for example. As a truth finding tool, democracy is only as strong as the education of its members, and even then, it provides no strict framework for judging quality or correctness of results.
In that sense, democracy has little at all to do with science. It is merely a tool for managing and controlling human actions.
I think his intended audience are right-wing people who use incidents like Climategate to justify their beliefs in ideas such as creationism. I don't think many people here are part of that audience.
If you consider the denial of anthropogenic global warming to be an "idea such as creationism", there's ample recent evidence that many people here are part of that audience.
(FWIW, (1) I think it's clearly less crazy than creationism, (2) I think it's somewhat crazy none the less, (3) I think the overblown rhetoric from the anti-AGW camp around "Climategate" is an indication of the weakness of their actual arguments, and (4) I've now said all I'm going to in this thread on that subject.)
I love John Derbyshire! Whenever I lament the current stock of presidential candidates, I always say, "We need someone like John Derbyshire running"; somebody who can employ logic and think on their feet.
Really, he's homophobic? Well I didn't know that. I like hearing him talk. I like his dry British wit.
Anyway, isn't homophobia defined as a strong disdain or dislike for homosexuals? And if so, must homophobia be logical or illogical? I think discrimination or malice toward homosexuals is immoral and unethical, but mere dislike when not called to coincide with a value system, does not provide enough information, by itself, to be considered illogical.
I think discrimination or malice toward homosexuals is immoral and unethical, but mere dislike when not called to coincide with a value system, does not provide enough information, by itself, to be considered illogical.
Yes it does. Discrimination against any group based on their sexual preferences is illogical. Sexual preference cannot logically correlate with any logical mistreatment.
"I have to cop out on that."
This is the kind of intellectual laziness that almost let the nonsense of AGW succeed. Fortunately there are people like Watt (check out surfacestations.org) and McKintyre (Climate Audit) who have the skills and put in the time and effort to reveal the horrible corruption in 'Climatology'. The emails and code have now made it obvious, but their release might never had happened without the FOI requests. Here is the latest for those who haven't seen it - One man has been controlling all the Wikipedia climate articles to support the AGW view
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/blog.html?b=fullcomment&e=...
Bertrand Russell