Global warming – where there is and is not a consensus to deny | Ordinary Times
14 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, climate change, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, Karl Popper, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: climate alarmism, expressive voting, global warming
The motte for climate change activists are the following:
- Global temperatures are rising.
- Greenhouse gases lead to increased temperatures.
- Greenhouse gases emitted by humans have led to measurable increases in temperature beyond what would have occurred without any humans.
The above points are highly defensible because Science. I believe they are true (though I do so only via trust in others rather than having evaluated any of the research involved personally).
Activists, however, do not sit in this motte for long. They often go on to make a lot of other claims in the bailey:
- Long-term projections of the Earth’s climate are accurate.
- Catastrophe will result in a few decades due to human carbon emissions.
- Nuclear energy is not a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
- Carbon capture is not viable.
- Geoengineering is not viable.
- Unilateral subsidization of renewables by Western industrialized nations is an effective way to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases.
- Subsidies of energy-efficient products are a better use of resources rather than research and development.
- Subsidizing vehicles that pollute less than other vehicles will provide a net reduction in greenhouse emissions.
- LEED-certified buildings are more energy-efficient than old buildings.
- Building new LEED-certified buildings reduces net greenhouse emissions relative to not building them.
- Sending oil by railcar will result in less net emissions than sending oil through a pipeline (e.g. the Keystone pipeline).
Not all activists make all of these claims, but I think most make at least some claims that are less defensible than those in the motte.
The end result is that anyone who opposes any of the views, even questionable ones sitting in the bailey, can be branded an anti-science denialist. Strictly speaking, this is unfair since there certainly isn’t a scientific consensus on questions like whether it makes sense to spend thousands of dollars subsidizing Chevy Volts while taxing bicycles and safety helmets at 8%.
via An Example of the Motte and Bailey Doctrine | Ordinary Times.
Karl Popper on consensus versus fertilisation and growth of ideas
05 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in Karl Popper Tags: conjecture and refutation
What is television for – facts, confirmation or infotainment?
12 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, Karl Popper, liberalism Tags: conjecture and reputation, The Age of Enlightenment, the growth of knowledge
The power and self-discipline of parsimonious analysis
30 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in Alfred Marshall, David Friedman, economics, George Stigler, Karl Popper Tags: methodology of economics
Some bristle over the small size of the basic analytical tool kit of economists and the leanness of the behavioural assumptions therein (Stigler 1987).
Simpler explanations and more parsimonious abstractions are better ‘engines for the discovery of concrete truth’ about how people will respond to changes in their economic and social environments.
A limited set of causes or postulates in a theory reduces the chances that one or more of the assumptions on a more extensive list inadvertently explains away in an ad hoc manner every possible anomaly, or allows for a deft reinterpretation and/or adaptation to temporise and escape refutation. An every growing number of auxiliary hypotheses and ah hoc assumptions to co-op inconvenient facts may forever immunise the basic theory under scrutiny against testing and falsification (Olson 1982; Popper 1963). More parsimonious abstractions are less likely to found theories that seem to have successfully explained a particular social phenomenon spuriously by chance.
Complex human objectives are not assumed in economic analysis because everything could be explained and nothing could be falsified. Every empirical anomaly could be covered in advance by assuming human objectives that are sufficiently complex and large enough in number that are pursued with a high frequency of error and inertia (Friedman 1990; Popper 1963).
Subsequent ad hoc reinterpretations that add new objectives or additional sources of human frailty can finesse major anomalies to make the basic theory compatible with the facts to side-step refutation. Heavily qualified theories and intricate explanations of narrow application rarely come in the open for long enough to be found wanting.
A good theory is a prohibition: the theory forbids certain things to happen. The more that a theory forbids, the better the theory is. Bold, novel and chancy predictions are even better still.
These predictions are less likely to explain social and economic behaviour spuriously by chance. If incorrect or incomplete, bold and novel predictions are more likely to be quickly found at odds with experience and the basic theory is either revised or is discarded (Popper 1963).
Measurement and theory – can the facts just speak for themselves?
16 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises Tags: Koopmans, Kyle Popper, methodology of economics, Thomas Kuhn
Measurement without theory is a futile and self-deceiving exercise. Our observations of the world are always selective and theory-laden (Popper 1963).
The number of factors which predate and lead to any event, past, present, or future, is indefinitely large, and knowledge of all of these factors is impossible, even in principle (Popper 1963).
In the social sciences, there is no laboratory where facts can be isolated and controlled and manipulated one-by-one. The facts of history are complex – the result of many causes including changing human motives and ideas, changes in relative prices and expanding technological possibilities. This rich tapestry of causes can be only isolated by theory, theory that is necessarily developed prior to these historical (including statistical) facts.
Every analyst must come prepared with a theory to tell them ‘what to look for’ (Koopmans 1947).
Our experiences and past knowledge selects, shapes, influences, organised, classifies and measures any phenomena we seek to understand (Popper 1963).
A theory allows us to think deeply and to figure out how to attain and verify knowledge about the world. The purpose of theory is to aid in the interpretation of experience and history. A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs about what the world is like. These beliefs create avenues of inquiry, formulate questions, select methods to examine questions and define areas of relevance (Kuhn 1962).
The questions asked in any research and which data is to be reviewed or reconsidered are not random choices. The variables to be defined, and the specific data to be collated and interrogated are all chosen in light of past research findings. Empirical and theoretical anomalies and prior theoretical beliefs also decide what is relevant or not, where to start and when to stop, and how new findings are to be melded with and even justify overturning existing understandings (Koopmans 1947; Popper 1963).
Empiricists are able to believe that facts can be understood without any theory only because they failed to recognise a theory is already contained in the very linguistic terms involved in every act of thought.
To apply language, with its words and concepts to anything is at the same time to approach it with a theory. The choice is never between theory and no theory. The choice is between articulated and defended theory and unarticulated and non-defended theory.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments