Comments (215)

• Richard

  http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/ - searchable CRU email database

  Published: November 21, 2009 6:15 PM

• Gil

  So the whole Global Warming Scam has finally come crashing down?

  Published: November 21, 2009 6:28 PM

• Climate Change

  Global warming? What's that?

  Published: November 21, 2009 6:33 PM

• Walt D.

  Don't hold your breath. People are so brainwashed that they need to believe that Anthropological Global Warming is real. People tend to hang on to irrational beliefs no matter what evidence is presented to the contrary. (Keynesian Economics is a good example). It will take a massive deprogramming effort for anything to change.
  
  PS. People are still looking for the Loch Ness monster and crop circle explanations, even after they were exposed as hoaxes.

  Published: November 21, 2009 7:03 PM

• newson

  nessie exists. she's on film. just very shy.

  Published: November 21, 2009 7:21 PM

• fundamentalist

  Dr. Reisman and others have tried to warn people about the deception involved in the AGW debate. It's good to see him get some support. Like socialism, AGW hysteria can only win with deception.

  Published: November 21, 2009 7:42 PM

• DD

  Not a word in mainstream media

  Published: November 21, 2009 7:59 PM

• Pömmelhorse Pümmelfister

  This is just too funny; I love it!

  Published: November 21, 2009 8:00 PM

• Richard

  There was a recent British opinion poll that showed the majority of people weren't convinced by AGW. The battle is far from over.

  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916648.ece

  Published: November 21, 2009 8:06 PM

• Fourier

  Yeah, I hear that this ACTUALLY refutes AGW.

  Published: November 21, 2009 8:16 PM

• J. Grayson Lilburne

  DD, besides the mainstream coverage in the links provided by NewLiberty, it's now been covered by...
  The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?_r=1&ref=science
  The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
  The Associated Press: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ikaqlFpp9jCRHWN0zNuamKXfyeMgD9C441LG0

  Published: November 21, 2009 8:53 PM

• Walt D.

  "Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution"
  
  http://www.gmanews.tv/story/177346/climate-change-pushes-poor-women-to-prostitution-dangerous-work
  
  And now there is no global warming? Another ACORN business opportunity down the drain!

  Published: November 21, 2009 9:27 PM

• Matt C.

  Kevin Trenberth's response to Paul Hudson's BBC article:
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm

  "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

  See the data from the Met Office here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/policymakers/policy/slowdown.html

  When I saw that they are trying to say the change is due to "internal climate variability," I thought the same thing as Trenberth:

  "Saying it is natural variability is not an explanation. What are the physical processes?"

  Apparently, the climate models didn't predict the current cooling period and Mann didn't exactly want to admit it:

  "Kevin, that's an interesting point. As the plot from Gavin I sent shows, we can easily account for the observed surface cooling in terms of the natural variability seen in the CMIP3 ensemble (i.e. the observed cold dip falls well within it). So in that sense, we can "explain" it. But this raises the interesting question, is there something going on here w/ the energy & radiation budget which is inconsistent with the modes of internal variability that leads to similar temporary cooling periods within the models. I'm not sure that this has been addressed--has it?"

  Trenberth to Tom Wigley:

  "How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!"

  Mann essentially says:

  "there is always the danger of falling a bit into the 'we don't know everything, so we know nothing' fallacy."

  In other words, the important thing is what we happen to make up.

  See:
  http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=1054&filename=1255532032.txt

  They certainly don’t know everything:
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2009/11/cloud-forecasting-and-cosmic-r.shtml

  Published: November 21, 2009 9:37 PM

• Calculation Argument

  No central planner can calculate the needs of the planet. No central planner can calculate the most rational green activity. No supercomputer can predict the climate since there are too many variables: it would have to be so big that it affects the climate in the process of predicting it.

  Published: November 21, 2009 9:45 PM

• Gil

  No one can calculate the needs of the planet therefore everyone can treat it like trash? Who knows, maybe you could be become a good defence lawyer 'Calculation Argument'.

  Published: November 21, 2009 10:19 PM

• Gil

  No one can calculate the needs of the planet therefore everyone can treat it like trash? Who knows, maybe you could be become a good defence lawyer 'Calculation Argument'.

  Published: November 21, 2009 10:19 PM

• Walt D.

  Listen to the ultimate ranter on the subject. (Warning - some people may consider this offensive).
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTGLpqFGyYM

  Published: November 21, 2009 10:53 PM

• Rick

  Climate change was a lie then, it is a lie now, and it will always be a lie! Tax money distribution is the root cause of the lie. RLS

  Published: November 21, 2009 11:07 PM

• filc

  -Gil "No one can calculate the needs of the planet therefore everyone can treat it like trash? Who knows, maybe you could be become a good defence lawyer 'Calculation Argument'."

  How does not knowing the needs of the planet equate to pollution? Explain yourself, your post seems awfully non-sequitur.

  Published: November 22, 2009 1:38 AM

• Mike

  Here an excellent blog that summarizes parts of the e-mails:

  http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html

  He he has been through only part of the data but it looks very bad already.

  Published: November 22, 2009 4:31 AM

• Lord Buzungulus, Bringer of the Purple Light

  What does TokyoTom have to say about all this? (It's a serious question, I'd like to see a contrary opinion on this.)

  Published: November 22, 2009 8:53 AM

• Jesper Brodersen

  Walt D.: While I have enjoyed several versions of the The Downfall on youtube, I am cursed by having learned German, and always hear the correct wording :(

  From what I have read about the topic, the uploaded file is only a random sample of what the hackers have gathered. It could be interesting if there is some high places to take down with further data.

  Published: November 22, 2009 9:50 AM

• Russ

  Gil wrote:

  "No one can calculate the needs of the planet therefore everyone can treat it like trash?"

  Nobody can calculate the needs of the planet because the planet doesn't have any freaking needs! People do!

  Published: November 22, 2009 10:26 AM

• Artisan

  ... I wonder if the following statement refers to that vegetarian in the (great) video?

  "RealClimate felt that what was not contained in the e-mails was more interesting: "There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to 'get rid of the MWP' [Medieval Warm Period], no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no 'marching orders' from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords."

  
  My first reaction to the statement anyways was: these people obviously believe that arbitrary State rule is a hoax.
  

  Published: November 22, 2009 10:44 AM

• Bruce Koerber

  "Green Week" And Al Gore And Environmental Embezzlement.
  
  Reaction to this must be what is behind the propaganda push, with emphasis on 'Green Week' on prime time TV shows and also with the appearance of Al Gore on Saturday Night Live.

  The poster boy, Al Gore, was treated like a great man (afterall he did get awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his expertise in environmental embezzlement) and was given sly little opportunities to promote his book and to spout his platitudinous pleas to protect the environment. Meanwhile his true statist intentions are to squash the property rights that are absolutely essential to protect the environment and to protect human dignity.

  Published: November 22, 2009 11:35 AM

• Walt D.

  Lord Buzungulus, Bringer of the Purple Light
  
  The fact that the scientific data was falsified accounts for why the predicted effect of CO2 emissions was 6 or 7 times the actual warming obtained by direct measurements. The question for TokyoTom is whether the carbon tax should be reduced by a factor of 6 and 7. It also raises the question that a very small increase in temperature may have more beneficial than harmful effects. How do you measure the effect of a 3cm rise in ocean levels on Al Gore's St Regis Residence apartment?

  Published: November 22, 2009 11:36 AM

• Rocco

  A must read by Charlie Martin at Pajamas Media

  Published: November 22, 2009 11:54 AM

• Kakugo

  This is just the proof of what has been well known for a decade. People branded as "climate change skeptics" (a phrase that put you in the same league as the Japanese killing dolphins or those dastardly Canadians clubbing seals) were often guilty of nothing more than wanting to see the original unadulterated data for themselves to come to their own conclusions. It was well known that the best way for a researcher to carry himself/herself was to keep his/her mouth shut and his/her head down while the big names were busy pushing their own conclusions with full back up from such respected journals as Nature and Scientific American. I must confess I didn't renew my subscription once I started smelling a huge scandal brewing two years ago.
  Us people with a scientific instruction fear the damage done to the credibility of the scientific establishment by the connivance between climatologists, politicians, mass medias and publishers may be one of the most severe blows ever dealt to scientific research. Sure, there have always been scandals inside the scientific community, but they were kept "in the family" as to speak of. Moreover what were the consequences for the public at large if someone falsified evidence about an obscure fossil hominid? Here we are talking about scientists willingly acting to back up what would be a significant increase in taxation and legislation at the very least and a downright catastrophe at the very worst. These men and women should be tried in front of a jury and, if found guilty, stripped of their cushy jobs and banned from ever taking up any academic position again.
  I can assure you for those colossal egos it would be far worse than the death penalty.
  

  Published: November 22, 2009 12:17 PM

• Ribald

  Until the e-mails and documents have been confirmed to be genuine, I don't think it's a good idea to draw conclusions from them. If they turn out to be a hoax (or otherwise not indicative of a scandal), the very fact that so many people were willing to take the description of the e-mails at face value would highlight an unscientific mentality (drawing conclusions from unverified data rather than established fact) among AGW skeptics.

  The worst-case scenario is, of course, that a scientific scandal is proven by the e-mails. The second-to-worst-case scenario, in my mind, is that the e-mails turn out to be completely innocuous, and are then sold as proof of a scandal by those with a vested interest in the matter (oil, coal, and natural gas companies).

  As of now, though, I'm just surprised that so many "skeptics" appear to be taking the description of the e-mails, as provided by the entity that procured them, at face value. Skeptics aren't supposed to assume a conclusion and find facts to fit it.

  Obvious response: "it's the climate scientists that are doing that! We're just telling the facts."

  Obvious reply: "Whether they are or aren't doesn't change the fact that you're assuming that they are, searching for evidence that comports with it, and then using that evidence to validate the assumption."

  We should keep the rules of scientific inquiry in mind, especially when making positive claims.

  Published: November 22, 2009 3:55 PM

• Abhinandan Mallick

  I think people are wrong to be skeptical, I mean it's historically proven that state sponsorship of science always yields the correct results:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

  Sarcasm aside, I'm really glad this came out.

  Published: November 22, 2009 4:16 PM

• Philemon

  Ribald writes: "The worst-case scenario is, of course, that a scientific scandal is proven by the e-mails."

  Why would that be a worst-case scenario?

  You can rest easy about whether the emails will turn out to be completely innocuous. They are not completely innocuous. There is just no way to spin some of these emails.

  Published: November 22, 2009 4:35 PM

• Mike D.

  Walt D. asked
  
  "How do you measure the effect of a 3cm rise in ocean levels on Al Gore's St Regis Residence apartment?"
  
  A micrometer?

  Published: November 22, 2009 5:04 PM

• Fourier

  Now, you've deleted my posts and that makes you just as bad as these AGW folk.

  What a bizarre paradox results,

  Published: November 22, 2009 7:52 PM

• Russ

  fundamentalist wrote:

  "Dr. Reisman and others have tried to warn people about the deception involved in the AGW debate. It's good to see him get some support."

  I don't know if Dr. Reisman is the best spokesman for sane science. I quote from page 35 of "Capitalism":

  "In other fields, renowned authorities proclaim that parallel lines meet, that electrons can travel from one orbit of an atom to another without traversing the interval in between, that an empty canvas or smears made by monkeys is a work of art, and that the clatter of falling garbage pails or a moment of silence is a work of music."

  In other words, he finds non-Euclidean geometry and quantum physics to be just as *invalid* as non-objective art and noise "music", even though non-Euclidean geometry is logically consistent and quantum physics is a falsifiable scientific theory that has not been falsified in its domain and has worked wonderfully in predicting quantum behavior.

  Published: November 22, 2009 8:23 PM

• N. Joseph Potts

  About a year ago, the cover of Time Magazine proclaimed ethanol a hoax.

  It rolls on, and on, and on . . .

  Global warming, you might say, is a fact of reality. Political and economic reality, it is, and THAT, rather than scientific reality, is where we all live.

  Published: November 22, 2009 9:54 PM

• Matt C.

  Russ,

  I agree about Dr. Reisman. Those statements are very revealing about the extremely erroneous philosophical doctrines some Austrians hold. Reisman should be ashamed of making such an outrageous statement. Many of the observations the Austrians make are very useful (predictive) and they reveal some intelligent insights, but they also fall into embarrassing dogmatism. Take this Rothbard character:

  “The absolutist believes that man’s mind, employing reason . . . is capable of discovering and knowing truth: including the truth about reality, and the truth about what is best for man and best for himself as an individual. The relativist denies this, denies that man’s reason is capable of knowing truth, and does so by claiming that rather than being absolute, truth is relative to something else. . . . Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism—and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part—must rest on absolutism and deny relativism.”

  Richard Rorty would have fun with this. It’s like saying that my axioms are right, because they are true. And they’re true because they are True (with a big "T"). Get a real argument Plato. Foundationalism is over.

  Published: November 22, 2009 10:36 PM

• fundamentalist

  Russ: "he finds non-Euclidean geometry and quantum physics to be just as *invalid* as non-objective art and noise "music"..."

  That's a very dishonest interpretation of what Dr Reisman wrote. He is commenting on the attack on reason and logic. Here is the Reisman quote in context:

  Economics vs Irrationalism

  "The previous discussion points to the most fundamental and serious difficulty economics encounters, which is a growing antipathy to reason and logic as such....

  "A leading consequence and manifestation of this attack [on reason] has been the appearance of a series of irrationalist writers, who have come to the fore in field after field and who have taken a positive delight in establishing the appearance of paradox and in seeming to overturn all that reason and logic had previously been thought to prove beyond reasonable doubt. The most prominent figure of this type in economics is Keynes who held that "Pyramid building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of economics stands in the way of anything better. In other fields, renowned authorities proclaim that parallel lines meet, that electrons can travel from one orbit of an atom to another without traversing the interval in between, that an empty canvas or smears made by monkeys is a work of art, and that the clatter of falling garbage pails or a moment of silence is a work of music."

  Published: November 22, 2009 11:28 PM

• fundamentalist

  Matt C. "It’s like saying that my axioms are right, because they are true. And they’re true because they are True (with a big "T")."

  So what are you saying, that no truth exists so logic and reason are a waste of time? Or do you accept the full Marxist stance that reason is nothing but a reflection of class preferences?

  Published: November 22, 2009 11:31 PM

• Matt C.

  Let me quote what came after the Rothbard quote:

  “This represents a clear—and apparently definitive—division within the Austrian School of economics, with Hayek and the Hayekians on one side and many of the American disciples of the School (among whom are libertarians à la Rothbard) on the other. The concept of natural law is in some ways extraneous to the Austrian School of economics,
  which favors an evolutionary conception of institutions and law following the approach of Menger and Hayek.”

  The book then goes on to present Rothbard’s attack on Mises. Mises was not so extreme.
  http://mises.org/books/rothbard_vs_philosophers.pdf

  Well, you probably have never encountered the details about the ridiculous attempts at the axiomization of mathematics, for instance. Deduction (high certainty induction) in logic (human conceptual method of abstract, general causal arrangements) is based on axioms. Many different people say they have the truth but differ from each other. How can this be if we are talking Platonic truth?

  You talk in terms of "truth" and "logic" and other terms of a “final vocabulary.” You want to get away from justification and into certainty. Yeah, it's much easier to simply state that you are right, but it doesn't convince anyone of your beliefs. I think free-markets are a "good" thing because they bring us prosperity. Marxism (religious eschatology) has been a failure.

  There is nothing wrong with having helpful, logical theoretical models that work (predict), but you can’t simply invoke the “causal nexus” to spin things out of your head, when they don’t fit with experience. We know the neo-classical people fall into this error, as Robert Murphy recently pointed out. The Austrians shouldn’t fall into this trap either.

  For starters:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBcOGa671QA
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzynRPP9XkY
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyx0rNyxFrk

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyx0rNyxFrk
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8gD4r2p6KY
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j01DBipYh5A

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0cN_bpLrxk
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIhl9rVg6mM
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILlvG78ZldQ

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nfQ2mWEEMw
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8IC7hEjkyM
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBCaztJGnEY
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0zx5xipxj8

  Published: November 23, 2009 12:45 AM

• Matt C.

  Didn't want to forget this one oh assertive one:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKzyPIafp64

  Published: November 23, 2009 1:09 AM

• Matt C.

  Here is “logic”:

  All organisms with wings can fly.
  Penguins have wings.
  Therefore, penguins can fly.

  So the hollowness of it is obvious. If we can't ascertain the truth (that is, absolutely) of all the premises, then a logical system could possibly just represent a retarded set of arguments but in a consistent way. Consistency tells us nothing about usefulness, or truth for that matter.

  Furthermore, to attack non-Euclidian geometry as illogical is confused. Take the parallel postulate problem. You can describe it logically. All you have to do is set up a few premises to say that it is valid when you are working with spherical elliptic geometry, for instance. The context does matter, but there are no problems concerning logic. People like Reisman don’t have the faintest idea what they are talking about.

  Published: November 23, 2009 1:52 AM

• Walt D.

  "Furthermore, to attack non-Euclidian geometry as illogical is confused."
  
  Matt - you're on the wrong thread- don't you know that all Global Warming deniers believe that the Earth is flat - Euclid reigns supreme! :-)

  Published: November 23, 2009 2:02 AM

• Bala

  Matt C.,

  " All organisms with wings can fly. "

  If you decide to take arbitrary premises with no connection whatsoever to reality, it is definitely probable that you come up with consistent but nonsensical conclusions.

  A sensible logical framework needs to have its premises taken axiomatically from Reality. To blame "logic" for your failing is a little dishonest.

  Published: November 23, 2009 2:10 AM

• J. Grayson Lilburne

  Matt C.,

  The Pythagorean Theorem was spun out of somebody's head. What if you went around measuring triangular objects and found that the theorem didn't "fit with experience". Would that invalidate it?

  Austrian Economics is logically deduced from the concept of action. If you're going to doubt the premise that the humans on the planet today exhibit purposive behavior, then you can write off the purely formal character of AE. Otherwise, without it, as an analyst of the real economy, you'll be about as competent as a bridge inspector who denounces the purely formal character of geometry.

  I recommend Mises' Theory and History.

  Published: November 23, 2009 2:38 AM

• Artisan

  @ Matt C.
  "empty canvas or smears made by monkeys is a work of art, and that the clatter of falling garbage pails or a moment of silence is a work of music"

  Actually, the context of these assertions can make them an objective truth as well (People tend to confuse the quality of a scientific discovery or an art work and its objectivity). So there's not necessarily a problem with Mr Reismann's assertion.

  Some scientifically yet not culturally educated people certainly tend to believe that "art only lies in the eye of the beholder" and therefore it has nothing to do with science ... but - like you said - this belief shows that these people don't have the faintest idea what they are talking about.

  Published: November 23, 2009 3:01 AM

• ktibuk

  Matt C.

  You were a figment of my imagination. But I decided not to keep you around any more. Therefore I erased you. Now be gone. You do not exist anymore.

  And quantum physics is unfalsifiable, therefore not a science according to some people, who believe Popper was right.

  Falsifiability presupposes the idea of "the absolute". Quantum physics deny "the fact that there are absolutes".

  Published: November 23, 2009 3:40 AM

• fundamentalist

  Mike C: “Many different people say they have the truth but differ from each other. How can this be if we are talking Platonic truth?”

  No one said determining truth would be easy, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Prejudices cause people to make serious errors in reasoning. Certain truths, like the fact that the sun is bright and rises in the east, are also trivial and not very useful. The more important the truth, the more prejudices blind people to it.

  Mike C: “Yeah, it's much easier to simply state that you are right, but it doesn't convince anyone of your beliefs.”

  Convincing people of truth requires that they want to know the truth. It has nothing to do with truth. You can’t convince anyone who doesn’t want to know the truth but wants to hang on to their prejudices.

  Mike C: “you can’t simply invoke the “causal nexus” to spin things out of your head, when they don’t fit with experience.”

  Exactly. But I don’t know any Austrian economists who do that. Austrian economics is far more empirical than mainstream econ, which someone spun out of another part of their anatomy than the head. Menger and his followers all began with observation of what people do, how they act. Mainstream econ relies almost exclusively on government data, which is very limited in scope.

  Mike C: “If we can't ascertain the truth (that is, absolutely) of all the premises, then a logical system could possibly just represent a retarded set of arguments but in a consistent way.”

  That’s why you need to be certain your premises are correct. If you can show me any Austrian premises that you think are incorrect, I would be willing to consider them.

  As for non-Euclidean geometry, I’m no expert but it seems that the field achieves its magic by changing the definitions of words. In Euclidean geometry, straight lines that are parallel never meet because they are always equidistant from each other. Non-Euclidean geometry talks about curved lines being parallel, but curved lines can’t be straight lines at the same time. That’s like saying A in the same as non-A, its opposite. How is it possible for two lines curving away from each other to be equal distances apart at every point? You might answer that space is curving with them, but if so, that would mean that distance doesn’t mean anything that humans can comprehend in non-Euclidean geometry.

  Nevertheless, it seems really strange to trash one of the more brilliant economists of this century because he doesn’t agree with you on something as obscure as non-Euclidean geometry.
  

  Published: November 23, 2009 6:36 AM

• Abhinandan Mallick

  "Non-Euclidean geometry talks about curved lines being parallel, but curved lines can’t be straight lines at the same time. That’s like saying A in the same as non-A, its opposite. How is it possible for two lines curving away from each other to be equal distances apart at every point?"

  If I may I'd like to add my own limited level of understanding on the subject, having studied relativity theory.

  The case of non-Euclidean geometry in physics essentially arises from General relativity, although Special relativity maintains a pseudo-Euclidean geometry, and it is important to note this has to be interpreted in terms of a 4 dimensional space, of the space dimensions and time.

  Essentially, the point is that when you're on a curved space, from your perspective it appears flat and Euclidean rules may follow, obeying Lorentz invariance.

  However, this may not concur with observations from another frame of events occuring in your frame and this takes into account relativistic effects. It is in this way that our observations of strict Euclidean geometry in observational reality are violated.

  No doubt a more competent physicist will be able to correct my errors...

  Published: November 23, 2009 7:17 AM

• fundamentalist

  Abhinandan Mallick, sounds right to me. The key is "appearance." parallel lines may appear to converge in 4-D space. We get a hint of that in our own 3-D when looking at railroad tracks which appear to converge in the distance.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:06 AM

• TylerCowensBiggestFan

  It's a good thing Tyler Cowen and Robin Hanson have refuted all this nonsense going around.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:43 AM

• Beefcake the Mighty

  I've just started looking at all this, but even a fraction of it is true, it's not funny, it's shocking.

  Many people who have posted here in support of AGW have questioned the motives of skeptics; I wonder what they're saying now.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:44 AM

• Beefcake the Mighty

  Tyler Cowen's view on this (that it's not really a big deal and that the real issue is that even scientists are confronted with incentives) confirms (once again) that his goal in life is to be the NY Times court libertarian.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:51 AM

• TylerCowensSecondBiggestFan

  Beefcake the Mighty's view on this confirms once again that his goal in life is to be Hans Hop's best disciple.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:57 AM

• Beefcake the Mighty

  Tyler's fans:

  Who's Hans Hop?

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:06 AM

• TylerCowensThirdBiggestFan

  You know, Hands Hermen Hop?

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:36 AM

• TylerCowensFourthBiggestFan

  Unknown fact: Tyler Cowen is the smartest man in history.

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:54 AM

• Silas Barta

  @fundamentalist: I agree with those who were disappointed in that Reisman quote, and the added context doesn't change things. It's an excellent example of how the a priori methodology causes one to fail to notice subtle assumptions.

  In the point about electrons, Reisman is making an empirical assumption so deep he doesn't realize it's an empirical assumption. Specifically, that "electrons" are independently real particles, constrained to obey the rules that particles in a billiard-ball world must. In reality, what we recognize as electrons are actually factorizable terms in a more fundamental entity, the wavefunction over configurations. See here on this confusion. (The link talks about a different but similar mistake.)

  Because electrons arise from the amplitude flows specified by the wavefunction then an electron can seem to disappear and reappear somewhere else. (Of course, there is no fact of the matter as to which electron is which -- they're all the same.)

  But you would never know this from your a priori deduction from apodictically true premises.

  (Yes, I know, this is getting far off the original topic, but it's an important point.)

  Published: November 23, 2009 11:14 AM

• Mike D.

  Somebody needs to tell fundamentalist and George Riesman about lines of longitude!

  Published: November 23, 2009 11:18 AM

• Matt C.

  Cloud Arithmetic: 1 + 1 = 1
  
  You guys don’t understand what mathematics is (generalization and abstraction). Non-Euclidean geometry can apply to spheres. There is no problem visualizing it (see Nagel and Newman, Godel’s Proof, p. 18), but that shouldn’t be the test anyway. The test is whether using these assumptions helps us predict for useful purposes.
  
  I already showed the weakness in logical argument if you can’t be absolute concerning soundness. This also goes for logical implications (post hoc or cum hoc fallacies):
  
  The bigger a child's shoe size, the better the child's handwriting.
  Therefore, having big feet makes it easier to write.
  
  The causal realists can’t perceive any direct causes. All they can see is one thing happening after something else or at the same time.
  
  Bala,
  
  I am using a case where it is obvious. That is not always the case. Your use of Reality with a capital R is revealing.
  
  What I blame people like you for is not understanding what logic can do. If your Misesian theories were that airtight, then a computer could replace the economist.
  
  Lilburne,
  
  “What if you went around measuring triangular objects and found that the theorem didn't ‘fit with experience’. Would that invalidate it?”
  
  See, this shows how absurd the Platonists are. Of course it would invalidate it! You could still call it “True,” but that pretty much tells all you need to know about Truth. It’s not relative to anything, and precisely because of this fact, there is nothing to be said about it. Since Einstein, triangles can add up to a number of degrees different from 180. As we studied the universe more closely, we found out that some of our simpler abstractions were no longer accurate.
  
  I could go further than Mises and start at “action” itself. “purposive behavior” is not a very well defined or clear concept. I mean, how am I supposed to know when a person’s behavior is purposeful or not? Who said that stubbing my toe was purposeful? I don’t think it was and I’m me.
  
  The point about the geometry that a bridge inspector uses goes to my first point. It seems odd that you make such a contradiction in the same post.
  
  Artisan,
  
  “Actually, the context of these assertions can make them an objective truth as well”
  
  It seems that you are only the culturally educated and not the scientifically educated. lol
  
  And you just displayed another great example of strange causality:
  
  “‘art only lies in the eye of the beholder’ and therefore it has nothing to do with science”
  
  As if cognitive science has nothing to say on the subject:
  http://www.imprint.co.uk/rama/art.pdf
  
  Ktibuk,
  
  If you never happen to run into me then fine. It just might not be useful to continue thinking that, when I do run into you. Maybe you still think we have ether in physics.
  
  See: Popper versus Wittgenstein on Truth, Necessity, and Scientific Hypotheses Author(s): Victor Rodych Source: Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2003), pp. 323-336
  
  This whole notion that Quantum physics will be different than Newtonian physics is absurd. When people start observing results that don’t fit, they will change the theory. If part of the theory is making predictions that have not been experimentally verified, then no eminent scientist is willing to assume them. No dogmatism there. No ether. (And did you notice that they stopped talking about primary forces and secondary forces because it was irrelevant?)
  
  fundamentalist,
  
  I’m being a little modest here. The philosophy goes back for thousands of years. The attempts to define or discover truth have failed up to the present. The introduction of these Platonic dualisms (Truth and Reality, Body and Mind, Reality and Appearance, etc.) are redundant, in my eyes. What matters is practice and what achieves our particular goals. I don’t think we can get outside of space and time. We’re stuck here.
  
  Convincing someone of “the truth” and providing justifications concerning a belief are sometimes indistinguishable. The difference is that justifications have to have useful or persuasive arguments. Most claims to truth simply start and end at “this is the truth.” I have NO respect for that type of reasoning.

  You say: “The key is ‘appearance.’”

  That’s revealing. As if we can actually get below the appearance and get to reality or dig down below interpretations and get to facts. All of the people of the past who had said they could do this turned out to be wrong, even Newton.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKzyPIafp64
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8gD4r2p6KY
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j01DBipYh5A

  Published: November 23, 2009 11:20 AM

• fundamentalist

  Silas: "an electron can seem to disappear and reappear somewhere else."

  The key word there is "appear". Rather than chunk logic and reason, there may be other explanations that explain what appears to be a contradiction to logic.

  Silas: "But you would never know this from your a priori deduction from apodictically true premises."

  The principle you want to abandon states that an entity can't exist in two places at the same time. If that principle isn't broken in the real world, it's very doubtful that it's broken in the sub-atomic world either, appearances to the contrary.

  Matt C. "As if we can actually get below the appearance and get to reality or dig down below interpretations and get to facts. All of the people of the past who had said they could do this turned out to be wrong, even Newton."

  Before Newton, people had firm ideas about reality because of the way things appeared at the time. Are you saying we have made no progress whatsoever in refining those appearances in the past 300 years?

  Here's Hayek examing the role of science in overcoming appearances (from Counter-Revolution in Science page 19, 20):

  "While the naive mind tends to assume that external events which our senses register in the same or in a different manner must be similar or different in more respects than merely in the way in which they affect our senses, the systematic testing of Science shows that this is frequently not true. It constantly shows that the "facts" are different from "appearances." We learn to regard as alike or unlike not simply what by itself looks, feels, smells, etc., alike or unlike, but what regularly appears in the same spatial and temporal context. And we learn that the same constellation of simultaneous sense perceptions may prove to proceed from different "facts," or that different combinations of sense qualities may stand for the same "fact." A white powder with a certain weight and "feel" and without taste or smell may prove to be any one of a number of different things according as it appears in different circumstances or after different
  combinations of other phenomena, or as it produces different results if combined in certain ways with other things. The systematic testing of behavior in different circumstances will thus often show that things which to our senses appear different behave in the same or at least a very similar manner. We may not only find that, e.g., a blue thing which we see in a certain light or after eating a certain drug is the same thing as the green thing which we see in different circumstances, or that what appears to have an elliptical shape may
  prove to be identical with what at a different angle appears to be circular, but we may also find that phenomena which appear as different as ice and water are "really" the same "thing.""

  Progress in science has mainly been the replacement of appearance with more solid grounding in truth through experimentation. But scientists have been guided by the logical principles of cause/effect, A is not non-A, etc. Had they not been guided by those principles, they would have stopped examining things and accepted appearances a long time ago. Quantum physics is an infant field. To stop the process at this point in time and claim that appearance are the only reality seems a little premature.

  Published: November 23, 2009 11:59 AM

• fundamentalist

  PS, I thought the next paragraph from Hayek was equally good:

  "This process of re-classifying "objects" which our senses have already classified in one way, of substituting for the "secondary" qualities in which our senses arrange external stimuli a new classification based on consciously established relations between classes of events is, perhaps, the most characteristic aspect of the procedure of the natural sciences. The whole history of modern Science proves to be a process of progressive emancipation from our innate classification of the external stimuli till in the end they completely disappear so that "physical science has now reached a stage of development that renders it impossible to express observable occurrences in language appropriate to what is perceived by our senses. The only appropriate language is that of mathematics," i.e., the discipline developed to describe complexes of relationships between elements which have no attributes except these relations. While at first the new elements into which the physical world was "analyzed" were still endowed with "qualities," i.e., conceived as in principle visible or touchable, neither electrons nor waves, neither the atomic structure nor electromagnetic fields can be adequately represented by mechanical models."

  Published: November 23, 2009 12:02 PM

• fundamentalist

  Mike D. :"Somebody needs to tell fundamentalist and George Riesman about lines of longitude!"

  Are you claiming that lines of longitude are straight lines? Isn't that flat earth science? Last I looked, the earth was round and the lines curved with it. Curved lines are not straight lines.
  

  Published: November 23, 2009 12:19 PM

• ktibuk

  Matt C

  "If you never happen to run into me then fine. It just might not be useful to continue thinking that, when I do run into you. Maybe you still think we have ether in physics."

  Are you claiming you exist beyond my perception? That is kind of invoking the absolute isnt it? Kind of what the Rothbard guy was talking about.

  Abstraction is a tool that is used by humans to understand reality. But sometimes people fall prey to abstractions. They get overwhelmed by it. Especially mathematics. They even go to the point where they deny there is an objective reality beyond their perceptions. Like in the movie Matrix where humans fall prey to the machines.

  Sad really.

  Published: November 23, 2009 12:22 PM

• Walt D.

  Fundamentalist
  
  "In other fields, renowned authorities proclaim that parallel lines meet"
  
  It said parallel lines, not straight lines. Euclid's 6th axiom refers to parallel lines. The key question was was Euclid's 6th axiom "an obvious truth". Euclid's geometry applies to the plane. In spherical geometry, you can have parallel lines that meet. Since Hilbert, axiomatic systems have been formal. There is no meaning to the statement "are the axioms of group theory obvious". In the same way, Godel's theorem does not say anything about truth in the absolute sense, only that in any formal system that includes arithmetic, there will exist true statements that can not be proved using the rules of the formal system.
  
  If you have not read it, I think you would enjoy Ian Stewart's book "Concepts in Modern Mathematics"
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Ian-Stewart/dp/0486284247
  
  Mises Axiom of Action is the old style "obvious truth".
  You will find many posts on this site claiming that disputing the Axiom of Action is like disputing 1 + 1 +2. 1+1 =2 is not an axiom in Peano's Axioms or in Set Theory, nor is it obvious. (Google search Betrand Russel's proof that 1+1 =2).
  Cheers,
  -Walt

  
  

  Published: November 23, 2009 12:49 PM

• J. Grayson Lilburne

  Lilburne: “What if you went around measuring triangular objects and found that the theorem didn't ‘fit with experience’. Would that invalidate it?”

  Matt C: "See, this shows how absurd the Platonists are. Of course it would invalidate it!"

  Let it be known that this "Matt C" fellow is such an complete positivist that he regards the Pythagorean Theorem as provisional. Thus he is probably utterly incapable of understanding Misesian Economics, and not really worth our time.

  Published: November 23, 2009 12:56 PM

• fundamentalist

  Walt D: "In spherical geometry, you can have parallel lines that meet."

  From Wikipedia:

  "Parallelism is a term in geometry and in everyday life that refers to a property in Euclidean space of two or more lines or planes, or a combination of these. Two lines in a plane that do not intersect or meet are called parallel lines."

  "Elliptic geometry is a non-Euclidean geometry, in which, given a line L and a point p outside L, there exists no line parallel to L passing through p. Elliptic geometry, like hyperbolic geometry, violates Euclid's parallel postulate, which can be interpreted as asserting that there is exactly one line parallel to L passing through p. In elliptic geometry, there are no parallel lines at all."

  Unless Wikipedia is wrong, then parallel lines don't exist in non-Euclidean geometry, so they can't intersect, either.
  

  Published: November 23, 2009 1:25 PM

• Matt C.

  "If that principle isn't broken in the real world, it's very doubtful that it's broken in the sub-atomic world either"

  That says all that needs to be said about your ignorance on this topic. If you have access to this Reality, please send me all the laws of physics by Friday. I would love to publish them.

  Progress has happened because we have increased our predictive knowledge towards practical ends. "Reality" has nothing to do with it.

  Hayek is just using another final vocabulary. He's trying to go from induction to Truth or Reality. I just don't think these terms are meaningful, in my view. They are redundant. The statement about mathematics is extremely ignorant. Mathematics is just a human conceptual scheme. To talk (infer)about languages of Reality is so confused I don’t have the time or energy to explain how stupid that is.

  "Progress in science has mainly been the replacement of appearance with more solid grounding in truth through experimentation."

  No. Not at all. Progress in science resulted from the improvement in predictive power towards our human ends. History shows us that scientific theories can be replaced with different ones that are more predictive. Truth has nothing to do with it. In other words, we have no idea what the Truth is to compare. We only can judge a theory by its predictive power.

  Ktibuk,

  “Are you claiming you exist beyond my perception?”

  Explain what you mean by “exist.” I don’t find these terms meaningful or needed.

  “That is kind of invoking the absolute isnt it?”

  No. I didn’t invoke it. You did.

  “They even go to the point where they deny there is an objective reality beyond their perceptions.”

  You can’t define “objective reality” but you love to use the term.

  Look guys, you play with these different Philosophical words and don’t understand how they are used. The meaning of a word is how it is used.

  Old Bob undertands it a little better:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEZtw1yt8Kc

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKzyPIafp64
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8gD4r2p6KY
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j01DBipYh5A
  

  Published: November 23, 2009 1:45 PM

• Mark

  The sheeple only believe what they seeing the MSM, and the rest of us already knew the fix was in, so not sure this will have much impact. The cold weather and recession is probably taking a greater toll on this religion.

  Published: November 23, 2009 1:50 PM

• Walt D.

  fundamentalist
  
  "Unless Wikipedia is wrong, then parallel lines don't exist in non-Euclidean geometry, so they can't intersect, either."
  
  So what is the 49th Parallel? Where did Canada go?
  Two lines are parallel if they are both perpendicular to a third line. Let me see if I can find you a good online geometry textbook or course notes form a good university.

  Published: November 23, 2009 2:22 PM

• Walt D.

  fundamentalist
  
  BTW you are correct that there are no parallel geodesics on a sphere. A line of latitude is not a geodesic (apart from the equator).

  Published: November 23, 2009 2:40 PM

• GregHouse

  "Let it be known that this "Matt C" fellow is such an complete positivist that he regards the Pythagorean Theorem as provisional. Thus he is probably utterly incapable of understanding Misesian Economics, and not really worth our time."

  Wait, a positivist who posts links to Rorty and says there's no such thing as Truth?

  Published: November 23, 2009 2:51 PM

• Silas Barta

  @fundamentalist:

  The key word there is "appear". Rather than chunk logic and reason,

  You wouldn't be chunking logic and reason, just ontological assumptions incorrectly believed to be strictly necessary.

  there may be other explanations that explain what appears to be a contradiction to logic.

  Sure, there are other explanations; they just require you to break *more* of (what you believe to be) the rules of logic.

  Silas: "But you would never know this from your a priori deduction from apodictically true premises."

  The principle you want to abandon states that an entity can't exist in two places at the same time.

  No, for an electron to teleport wouldn't violate that principle, just the one I gave (about electrons having to obey billiard balls rules and being independently real), which is NOT a requirement of logic in anyway, just a requirement of assumptions we didn't know we were making.

  If that principle isn't broken in the real world, it's very doubtful that it's broken in the sub-atomic world either, appearances to the contrary.

  Fallacy of composition much? In any case, you can do actual experiments that show that in certain cases, there is no fact of the matter as to where the electron is.

  Published: November 23, 2009 3:02 PM

• Fallon

  Matt C.,

  Do you think it is more or less right to see you more a postmodernist vs. an ideological descendant of the positivist Augustus Comte? Do you define yourself that way?

  Published: November 23, 2009 3:18 PM

• Matt C.

  Fallon,

  I don't like labels, but I think of myself as a type of neo-pragmatist like Rorty. Let's stop talking about Truth, Reality, the correspondence theory of Truth, the various dualisms, etc. Practice and results should be our concern. Even if Truth and Reality "exist," there isn't much we can say about them. It is basically a rejection of Philosophy with a capital T. Watch the lectures that I linked to on Rorty.

  fundamentalist,

  There are no parallel lines in non-Euclidean geometry. I don't know what the hell Reisman is talking about there. I think the ignorance of Reisman is more on display about Bohr's fixing of Rutherford's model of the atom.

  Published: November 23, 2009 3:27 PM

• Matt C.

  Correction: I mean Philosophy with a capital P.

  I'm post-analytic.

  Published: November 23, 2009 3:29 PM

• fundamentalist

  Matt C: "There are no parallel lines in non-Euclidean geometry. I don't know what the hell Reisman is talking about there."

  That line was from the Wikipedia article on elliptical geometry, not from Reisman.

  Silas: "You wouldn't be chunking logic and reason, just ontological assumptions incorrectly believed to be strictly necessary."

  Cause/effect, A is not non-A, and are not ontological assumptions. They are the very foundation of logic. Chunk them and you chunk logic.

  Silas: "Because electrons arise from the amplitude flows specified by the wavefunction then an electron can seem to disappear and reappear somewhere else."

  Again the key word here is "appear". As Hayek wrote, science is about converting appearances into knowledge. The fact that an electron appears to disappear and then reappear doesn't mean that it actually does so. An electron has mass, and as such cannot exist in two different places at the same time. Neither can it exist and not exist at the same time. If it appears to do so, that merely indicates limits to our powers of observation and testing.

  You wrote above that "for an electron to teleport wouldn't violate that principle, just the one I gave (about electrons having to obey billiard balls rules and being independently real), which is NOT a requirement of logic in anyway, just a requirement of assumptions we didn't know we were making."

  Doesn't teleportation take time, and the object being teleported doesn't exist at any moment in both the origination and destination. The fact that teleportation is very fast doesn't mean it's instantaneous. It is a requirement of logic that an entity with mass cannot exist in two places at the same time nor can it exist and not exist at the same time. Postulating a world in which that happens means that we can't discuss it because humans can't comprehend it. It's like the sound of one hand clapping; very clever mental device but also absurd.

  Published: November 23, 2009 4:07 PM

• Matt C.

  fundamentalist,

  I would just like to add that "lines" are something seen through human eyes. There are nuerons in the brain that respond when seeing lines or edges. Just look at some of the work done by Semir Zeki.

  And just to elaborate,

  The non-Euclidean geometry of the "elliptic plane" can be represented by a Euclidean model. The elliptic plane becomes the surface of a Euclidean sphere, points on the plane become pairs of antipodal points on this surface, straight lines in the plane become great circles. Thus, a portion of the elliptic plane bounded by segemnents of straight lines is depicted as a portion of the sphere bounded by parts of great circles. Two line segments in the elliptic plane are two segments of great circles on the Euclidean sphere, and these, if extended, indeed intersect, thus contradicting the Euclidean parallel postulate.

  Published: November 23, 2009 4:14 PM

• Matt C.

  fundamentalist,

  "Doesn't teleportation take time"

  I guess you haven't heard of recent experiments:

  "Entanglement is a strange feature of quantum physics, the science of the very small. It’s possible to link together two quantum particles — photons of light or atoms, for example — in a special way that makes them effectively two parts of the same entity. You can then separate them as far as you like, and a change in one is instantly reflected in the other. This odd, faster than light link, is a fundamental aspect of quantum science. Erwin Schrödinger, who came up with the name 'entanglement” called it “the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics.'"

  http://calitreview.com/51

  "It is a requirement of logic"

  Nothing is a requirment of logic. Logic is a way of doing things.

  "Postulating a world in which that happens means that we can't discuss it because humans can't comprehend it."

  Define what you mean by comprehend. We can use the results. If we can use a theory to predict and use the phenomena, then what does it matter?

  By the way, "cause/effect" supposes a "causal nexus." It is ontological.

  Published: November 23, 2009 4:27 PM

• Silas Barta

  @fundamentalist: I guess we're not getting through to each other. Can you explain how it's *logically* necessary that (the phenomenon we label as) an electron *must* at some point in time, have existed at a definite place between two locations if it moved from one to the other? That is, show how merely by using logic you have implied things about "electrons" (which are entities posited by a specific model), without introducing any specific assumptions about empirical facts about nature.

  Or how about the more fundamental assumption there: that it is possible to distinguish individual electrons such that you can talk about "the" one that jumped between two points rather than another one. (Quantum physics says that you can no more speak of distinguishable electrons than you can speak of distinguishable 3's in the prime factorization of 18.)

  Published: November 23, 2009 4:37 PM

• Silas Barta

  Hm, didn't seem to take ... reposting comment.

  @fundamentalist: I guess we're not getting through to each other. Can you explain how it's *logically* necessary that (the phenomenon we label as) an electron *must* at some point in time, have existed at a definite place between two locations if it moved from one to the other? That is, show how merely by using logic you have implied things about "electrons" (which are entities posited by a specific model), without introducing any specific assumptions about empirical facts about nature.

  Or how about the more fundamental assumption there: that it is possible to distinguish individual electrons such that you can talk about "the" one that jumped between two points rather than another one. (Quantum physics says that you can no more speak of distinguishable electrons than you can speak of distinguishable 3's in the prime factorization of 18.)

  (Incidentally, if fundametnalist's remarks are typical of a prior deductivists, I'm that much more certain of the fundamental flaws of the methodology. You can't get knowledge for free folks. To learn about the universe, you have to interact with it.)

  Published: November 23, 2009 4:40 PM

• Russ

  Wow. I really stirred up a hornet's nest this time. I can rest easy as a contented gadfly tonight. Hehe....

  fundamentalist wrote:

  "Russ: "he finds non-Euclidean geometry and quantum physics to be just as *invalid* as non-objective art and noise "music"..."

  That's a very dishonest interpretation of what Dr Reisman wrote. He is commenting on the attack on reason and logic"

  No, it's not dishonest. I was trying to point out that Dr. Reisman considers quantum physics and non-Euclidean geometry to be "irrationalist" simply because they don't fit into his neat little prejudices. He was criticizing non-Euclidean geometers and quantum physicists as irrationalists. This is patently absurd, and shows the lack of depth of Dr. Reisman's scientific qualifications. It also makes him an easy target for environmentalists who want to accuse him of being anti-science and thus irrationalist himself. Thus he's not exactly the best anti-waternelon standard-bearer.

  Published: November 23, 2009 4:53 PM

• Matt C.

  Silas,

  Their arguments are basically that something is true because it is True. I associate "a prior" with pure prejudice.

  Published: November 23, 2009 4:55 PM

• Russ

  Make that "anti-waterMelon".

  Published: November 23, 2009 4:57 PM

• Lord Buzungulus, Bringer of the Purple Light

  Silas,

  Never mind all this stuff. Tell us what you think about the shenanigans of these climate scientists. (You're an AGW kind of guy, right?)

  Published: November 23, 2009 5:04 PM

• Silas Barta

  Yeah, I disagree with the statements libertarians make conditional on AGW being true; therefore, I must condone and be excusing the behavior revealed in the emails. Sounds like the kind of logical leap only Stephan_Kinsella would make.

  Published: November 23, 2009 5:59 PM

• Fourier

  Matt C.

  "Their arguments are basically that something is true because it is True."

  Their argument is that something is a priori true because we define it as such (and then forget how much we must consult the empirical world to get anywhere).

  Published: November 23, 2009 6:00 PM

• K Ackermann

  So where is the mainstream libertarian opinion on global warming?

  Have most people come to grips with the thermodynamics, and now see the main line of attack as one against anthropogenic causes?

  I.E. Do they hold open the possibility of man-made contribution to rising CO2 levels?

  If not, is it a scope thing? Bear in mind, we had a dust bowl in the 1930's that was man-made, and man-solved. We also had an ozone depletion problem, that was man-made, and man-solved.

  There is a relation between elevated CO2 levels, and temp, and the thermodynamics makes sense.

  To me, the question is, have we accounted for all the natural regulators? For instance, does a warmer atmosphere expand its outer surface area? I would think that could play a very helpful role in reducing the equilibrium temp, assuming the heat can convect to the upper atmosphere. Not radiate, but convect.

  Published: November 23, 2009 6:36 PM

• GuidoHulsmannsBiggestFan

  It's true. I also think Hands Hope deserves a noble prize for refutation every who disagrees with him a priori.

  Published: November 23, 2009 6:45 PM

• Shay

  "So where is the mainstream libertarian opinion on global warming?"

  What does global warming have to do with libertarianism? It's a question for science, both as to the trend and the causes.
  

  Published: November 23, 2009 6:53 PM

• K Ackermann

  Shay, don't... just don't.

  Published: November 23, 2009 6:57 PM

• Fourier

  Lord Buzungles thinks Huelsmann has anything on Hayek and Thomsen.

  HA HA HA.

  Published: November 23, 2009 7:21 PM

• Matt C.

  "Their argument is that something is a priori true because we define it as such (and then forget how much we must consult the empirical world to get anywhere)."

  Exactly. It is a priori because it is True!

  fundamentalist,

  You can have arguments over logic when people say they are following the rules but aren't. That's what happened with Cantor and his "mytho-logic." I use logic all the time for this purpose in order to point out people who are not being consistent. The meta-mathematicians hate it when you do that.

  See: A. A. Zenkin. Logic of Actual Infinity and G. Cantor's Diagonal Proof of the Uncountability of the Continuum.
  
  http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.rml/1203431978

  A.G.D. Watson:
  "Following up this kind of argument, we can, I think, convince ourselves that all the remarkable problems and discoveries of the Foundations of Mathematics, the paradoxes of the theory of aggregates, Russell's theory of types, with its axiom of reducibility, Cantor's arithmetic of transfinite numbers, with its insoluble problems such as the "continuum problem", the problems connected with functions in extension and the multiplicative axiom all these merely express in one way or another the well-known difficulties which arise when we attempt to treat an infinite process as completed."
  http://www.jstor.org/pss/2250384

  By the way, this would also kill the conclusions of the halting problem and even Godel's theorem.

  I agree that when you use logic, you better get it right. But I also understand that logic is basically a way to organize thought.

  Published: November 23, 2009 7:30 PM

• newson

  add me to hülsmann's fan-base.

  Published: November 23, 2009 7:35 PM

• Lagrange

  Fourier's thymology is, of course, correct -- Bzengles is an idiot.

  Buzungles is also homophobic, he appears to be Hands Her Man Hope's true disciple!

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:25 PM

• Lord Buzungulus, Bringer of the Purple Light

  Lagrange is clearly suffering from AIDS-related dementia.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:29 PM

• Hyperbolic

  "In elliptic geometry, there are no parallel lines at all."

  "Unless Wikipedia is wrong, then parallel lines don't exist in non-Euclidean geometry"

  What about me? I have plenty of parallel lines. I have too many parallel lines. If you give me a point and a line, I have an infinite number of lines parallel to the given line which pass through the given point.

  Non-Euclidean doesn't mean elliptic.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:32 PM

• Legendre

  My transform is also better than Fourier's.

  Fourier, what's up with all this "harmonic" gobbledygook. Can't you come up with something original for once.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:37 PM

• Cantor

  "I agree that when you use logic, you better get it right. But I also understand that logic is basically a way to organize thought."

  So you have found the logic of all logics?

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:50 PM

• Gauss

  After careful analysis, I have determined that the signal-to-noise ratio of this thread is asympotically approaching 0.

  Published: November 23, 2009 8:51 PM

• Euler

  "After careful analysis, I have determined that the signal-to-noise ratio of this thread is asympotically approaching 0."

  And I suppose you figured out the so-called "signal-to-noise ratio" with Fourier's pseudo-mathematics.

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:04 PM

• Elliptic

  Hyperbolic is an idiot. If I have a straight line and a point outside, it's obvious there is only one parallel line to that. Go back to school Hyperbolic. Matter can't warp space enough for what Hyperbolic says to be possible.

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:11 PM

• Euclid

  Both Elliptic AND Hyperbolic are idiots. My 5th Postulate is universal truth. If you deny my 5th Postulate, that would be like denying that you can take two spheres, cut them up, rearrange the pieces, and put them back together to end up with two spheres each the same size as the original. Everyone knows you can do that no problem.

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:16 PM

• Euclid

  Of course starting with two spheres is too easy. That's for wimps like Elliptic and Hyperbolic. But I, Mr. Euclidean, can do it starting with only one.

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:23 PM

• Banach Tarski

  How many Poles does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

  Four. Banach and Tarski for the first lightbulb and Banach and Tarski for the second lightbulb.

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:27 PM

• Lobachevsky

  Elliptic,

  The term "straight line" in hyperbolic geometry has a somewhat different meaning than in Euclidean geometry; a straight line in hyperbolic geometry is more like a geodesic. Besides that, as part of pure mathematics, hyperbolic geometry exists independently of any theory of physics. You can't disprove a mathematical statement by using physics; only by using mathematics. This is similar to the Austrian conception of praxeological statements; they can't be disproved using empirical evidence, only by using logic.

  До свида́ния,

  Nikolai Ivanovich

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:29 PM

• Gauss

  Euler wrote:

  "And I suppose you figured out the so-called "signal-to-noise ratio" with Fourier's pseudo-mathematics."

  I can't divulge that yet. I need to polish my derivation a bit more before I publish.

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:34 PM

• Zeno

  Will we never get to the end of this thread?

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:37 PM

• Keynes

  And that's where Austrians go wrong. Physics is a model of reality. Economics is a model of reality. Theorems in math/logic depend on what is taken as an axiom/premise. Math/logic is nothing but mental masturbation, since one can take pretty much anything as an axiom/premise.

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:37 PM

• Schwarzschild

  "Will we never get to the end of this thread?"

  There is no "beginning" and there is no "end".

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:43 PM

• Lobachevsky

  госпо̀дин Keynes,

  I do not disagree. This is why I said "The Austrian CONCEPTION of praxeological statements", because it is not a conception that I share.

  However, having said that, mathematics and logic, even though they are "mental masturbation" (as you so charmingly put it) and as such need no utilitarian justification, can be quite useful when applied correctly.

  До свида́ния,

  Nikolai Ivanovich
  

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:50 PM

• Subrahmanyan C.

  Schwarzschild wrote:

  "There is no "beginning" and there is no "end"."

  That is correct, sir. The weight of the BS in this thread has caused it to exceed the Chrandrasekhar limit, thus sucking us all into a singularity, a never-ending black hole of nonsense!

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:56 PM

• Subrahmanyan C.

  Oh my golly gosh, I meant "Chandrasekhar", not "ChRandrasekhar".

  Published: November 23, 2009 9:59 PM

• Keynes

  Yes, mathematics is very useful for my General Unfalsifiable Theory-of-Nothing of Unemployment, GDP, Government Non-Stimulus, Squandering Multipliers, Paradox of Too Much Wealth To Go Around, Non-Permanent Quasi-Bubbles, Fractional Reserve Banking, Zero Reserve Banking, Negative Reserve Banking, Complex Reserve Banking, Quaternion Reserve Banking, and Superduperhypercomplex Reserve Banking.

  Published: November 23, 2009 10:01 PM

• Lobachevsky

  госпо̀дин Keynes,

  Haha! Yes, and I can see how imaginary numbers could come in quite handy for calculating the number of jobs saved by the Stimulus, and for counting the number of congressional districts in certain states.

  Published: November 23, 2009 10:06 PM

• Keynes

  You can find the amount of Complex reserves a bank needs by taking the Fourier transform of the interest rate times the squandering multiplier. That also gives you a convolution of the unemployment rate and the GDP.

  Published: November 23, 2009 10:10 PM

• Lobachevsky

  Of course, Keynes. BTW, did you know the squandering multiplier was invented in Russia? It was, by the famous Russian Marxist economics expert Maxim Squander.

  Published: November 23, 2009 10:15 PM

• Keynes

  This stimulus isn't working because banks don't have enough imaginary reserves for the squandering multiplier to be greater than 1. It's just a freakin computer entry, why is it so hard to increase the imaginary reserves? Imaginary reserves make it easy because we don't need a physical printing press any more.

  Published: November 23, 2009 10:24 PM

• Keynes

  Deficient Squandering is always good for the economy because it increases the GDP. The government should increase Deficient Squandering as much as possible. Deficient Squandering is the only way to pay for things when you run out of imaginary reserves and the permanent quasi-boom turns out not to be so permanent.

  Published: November 23, 2009 10:47 PM

• filc

  Does this mean Al Gore will give his Nobel Prize back?

  Published: November 23, 2009 11:20 PM

• Matt C.

  Cantor,

  "So you have found the logic of all logics?"

  No. You don't understand what I said. The point is that if someone is using logic, then if they don't follow the rules ("you" don't), they can be called out using their own reasoning. Cantor assumed infinte sets in extension and actually added new premises that were not there before. He didn't even mention his strange assumptions.

  Logic is a way of doing things. You can arrange our concepts of abstract cause and effect with it. Logic is not a "thing."

  And to clear up the non-Euclidean geometry stuff:

  I accidently said that non-Euclidean (meant elliptic) geometry doesn't have parallel lines. Hyperbolic geometry does (as many as you want) and elliptic doesn't.

  Euclidean geometry is modelled by our notion of a "flat plane."

  The non-Euclidean geometry of the "elliptic plane" can be represented by a Euclidean model. The elliptic plane becomes the surface of a Euclidean sphere, points on the plane become pairs of antipodal points on this surface, straight lines in the plane become great circles. Thus, a portion of the elliptic plane bounded by segments of straight lines is depicted as a portion of the sphere bounded by parts of great circles. Two line segments in the elliptic plane are two segments of great circles on the Euclidean sphere, and these, if extended, indeed intersect, thus contradicting the Euclidean parallel postulate.

  So Reisman is plain wrong.

  As for someone talking about the 5th postulate being universal Truth, they would have to assume that. You can't even logically derive it from the others, as we know from the work of Gauss, Bolyai, Lobachevsky, and Riemann.

  Published: November 24, 2009 12:39 AM

• K Ackermann

  "What's your point," asked Lobachevsky.

  "ζ = x + iy" replied Riemann.

  "Have you met rick?"

  "Yes, he seems... tense or..."

  "Just Lie, Algebra. Don't mention the killing fields."

  Published: November 24, 2009 3:53 AM

• ktibuk

  Matt C.

  "You can’t define “objective reality” but you love to use the term.

  Look guys, you play with these different Philosophical words and don’t understand how they are used. The meaning of a word is how it is used."

  Objective reality is that reference point that separates a scientist from a babbling idiot.

  Objective reality is the consequence, the one that comes and bites your ass when you disregard it.

  Objective reality is the anchor where even if it didn't exist you would need to invent it.

  Even if you suspect what you experience is just a dream, you do not have the luxury of treating as a dream.

  Published: November 24, 2009 6:27 AM

• Fallon

  Matt C.,
  Rorty the pragmatist, denier, or, at least, harsh skeptic of the idea that exogenous reality can be known to man, sure exudes high confidence in his personal humanistic advocacy. For example, he holds up unions- as historical phenomena too- for high praise. How could Rorty know this with such certainty while simultaneously defining (condemning?) human potentiality with epistemological confinement?

  Published: November 24, 2009 7:43 AM

• Matt C

  Fallon,
  
  I don't think Rorty is a "skeptic" about "exogenous reality" (redundant jargon), but thinks that controversy or talk about things like "Reality" isn't very helpful. The same goes for many different philosophical dualisms and concepts. He wants to quote "change the conversation," and in a pragmatic direction. I'm all for that.
  
  These lectures and videos give a good overview:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKzyPIafp64
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8gD4r2p6KY
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j01DBipYh5A
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyx0rNyxFrk
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBcOGa671QA
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp73xE_AoVc
  
  I didn't say that I agreed with all of his political viewpoints. Your point about "epistemological confinement" misses the point. One can hold desires to see things a certain way.
  
  ktibuk,
  
  "Objective reality is that reference point that separates a scientist from a babbling idiot."
  
  Exactly. Everything is made of earth, wind, fire and water. You would be a "babbling idiot" to say otherwise! "Objective reality" has some usefulness in everyday use, but not when we are being extra careful, in issues of philosophy or Philosophy.

  "Objective reality is the anchor where even if it didn't exist you would need to invent it."

  That's just funny! I think the same thing is true of God for religious people. Without having an exact answer, they couldn't continue on. The worst part is that God isn't even there.

  "Even if you suspect what you experience is just a dream, you do not have the luxury of treating as a dream."

  No. The choice is your own. But this brain in the vat exercise has not relieved your burden, and it misses the point in regard to talk about Reality. Furthermore, you have not told me what "Objective reality" is. All you did was talk in metaphor and assert yourself.

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:26 AM

• ktibuk

  Matt C,

  ""Objective reality is that reference point that separates a scientist from a babbling idiot."

  Exactly. Everything is made of earth, wind, fire and water. You would be a "babbling idiot" to say otherwise! "Objective reality" has some usefulness in everyday use, but not when we are being extra careful, in issues of philosophy or Philosophy."

  Are you kidding me? Do you really think when people talk about "objective reality" they mean consensus? Or "objective reality" means infallibility of senses and reason?

  When people thought four elements was at the core of everything they were wrong preciesly because they failed to grasp reality. The fact that you ridicule those people actually proves you actually concede to the fact there is objective reality. Otherwise how are you going to ridicule people? Relative to what?

  As I said, abstraction is a very powerful tool to cope with reality but sometimes it overwhelms people. This has been the case from Plato to Descartes. Dont get me wrong I don't think you are that smart. You seem to be like a groupie, not quite having the tools but fascinated by the phenomenon never the less.

  Published: November 24, 2009 11:19 AM

• Matt C.

  ktibuk,

  You’re clearly not able to follow the argument. You’re in over your head here.

  "Do you really think when people talk about 'objective reality' they mean consensus?"

  You are the one using the term. You implied that it’s a scientific consensus. I think the term is used in lots of different ways. It’s hardly a clear concept. People like you use the term almost like you use the term God. God is dead, yet his shadow lingers on. I’m still awaiting your exact "definition" besides it having “existence” or “essence.” I’m not fooled by windbagery.

  I think that “concepts” like Reality (capital R), are generally meaningless and not very useful. The term we use in ordinary conversation is the small r variety. 'R'eality redundant in practice. Just get on with it. We probably aren’t capable of certainty, if there is such a thing, anyway. If you believe in such things “existing” somewhere, we still aren’t likely to ever get to know them, anyway. It’s like the problem of going from trial to Truth; we simply keep running into the walls of our own cage.

  Your response is revealing; you simply try to change the subject.

  I think you're kidding me. You want to say that there is one standard perspective on everything, yet fail to tell us how to access it or know exactly what "it" is. And if you can't have access to it, how do you know if it even "exists"? Scientists don't have an instrument that measures Reality. They have instruments that measure "things" like light, weight, etc... If they did have such a tool, then we would have figured everything out by now. If you say that these "things" are part of Reality, then how do you know that?

  I think this is all a bunch of twaddle.

  I think, therefore I am... Uh, I think. lol

  Published: November 24, 2009 1:37 PM

• Matt C.

  BTW,

  "Otherwise how are you going to ridicule people?"

  "Objective reality" has nothing to do with my preferences.
  

  Published: November 24, 2009 1:53 PM

• Fallon

  Matt C.,

  Arrogance and condescension do not make your position stronger. How does it add to the "Conversation"? heh heh. I am trying to understand your position as best I can without any training.

  At any rate, Mises never made the claim to know "R"eality anyway-unless you include his stance on uncertainty and certainty in the universe. He does say that humans are hardwired for reason and logic- and that these tools are what make humans unique and successful in the Darwinian sense.

  But you are also making a priori claims even if they are more aptly labelled anti-axiomatic presuppositions. That you are even engaging in Conversation, attempting to refute Mises, and claiming preferences, proves Mises right. Humans act purposively.

  Of course, I assume you will counter with more deconstruction but your bottom line is nihilist. It's a dead end that allows for Rorty to backup historicism, and from which, to advocate, ironically, definite political processes. In some sense, you could say that "Democracy" is Rorty's "God".

  Published: November 24, 2009 2:26 PM

• Matt C.

  If you read what I wrote you wouldn’t be asking these questions. I said Mises wasn't as extreme as Rothbard who does hold those types of positions. Furthermore, the person I was addressing held those beliefs.

  You are so confused over my position that I'm not sure I want to type that much. I can say something is right or wrong or true or false; these are primitive terms that we use to complement statements or methods that are working for us. I don’t claim any type certainty and I don’t ground my arguments by saying they are True (capital T).

  a priori is pure prejudice, in my eyes. An axiom can be questioned like anything else. I could say that the universe being made from earth, water, wind and fire is an a priori axiom. That is pure dogmatism because it assumes that no one can question it and no justification is needed.

  “He does say that humans are hardwired for reason and logic- and that these tools are what make humans unique and successful in the Darwinian sense.”

  We don’t know that yet but it is probably correct in some sense. These observations are purely speculative. I would like it if he said people thought with logic some of the time. To say that all of their action is logical is strange and confused. You might be able to describe it logically, but that’s because logic is an extremely abstract conceptual tool that can orrganize any cause/effect in relation with any type of atomic statements. Reason is a whole other matter.

  "Humans act purposively."
  Truisms are rarely useful. That is such a broad statement and psychology is so speculative at this stage that it is embarrassing to claim any simple and clear “deductions” from some simplistic theory. By the way, I still say that stubbing my toe isn't purposeful. People have goals, but their behavior isn’t always getting closer to them. Pragmatists are very aware of that!

  Look, I think Mises was better than most. He realized the subjective viewpoint, but he could have made his the arguments without reference to simplistic foundationalism. I think that stuff is anachronistic in his work and partly a reflection of the historical period it came from. The useful and predictive observations are what are important in his work and they are the reason people read his work.

  Pragmatism is not “nihilist.” In fact, it is the oppsite in mant ways.

  “In some sense, you could say that ‘Democracy’ is Rorty's ‘God’.”

  Which he made clear was not founded on his philisophical views.

  Published: November 24, 2009 3:10 PM

• Matt C.

  "the man of prejudice is, a fortiori, a man of limited mental vision"

  Looking at meta-mathematics, we can see what a useless exercise it was to try to base mathematics on logic. I'm simplifying here, but what they basically tried to do was explain one set of symbols with a much larger set of symbols. It was a foolish and pointless exercise.

  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=umhistmath;cc=umhistmath;rgn=full%20text;idno=AAT3201.0002.001;didno=AAT3201.0002.001;view=pdf;seq=00000126

  Published: November 24, 2009 3:37 PM

• Lord Buzungulus, Bringer of the Purple Light

  "I could say that the universe being made from earth, water, wind and fire is an a priori axiom."

  I'd suspected that Matt C didn't really understand the position he was critiquing, and this seals the deal.

  Published: November 24, 2009 3:40 PM

• Russ

  Matt C. wrote:

  "Looking at meta-mathematics, we can see what a useless exercise it was to try to base mathematics on logic. I'm simplifying here, but what they basically tried to do was explain one set of symbols with a much larger set of symbols. It was a foolish and pointless exercise"

  So are you a mathematical Platonist? Do you think that numbers are a part of "reality"? BTW, this was what Kurt Gödel himself believed. He was a Platonist, and considered his undecidability theorems to be a reductio ad absurdem proof of logical formalism.

  On reality: I don't think that it is a useless concept, as long as you merely define it as "that which is". If you rigidly adhere to something more than that, instead of listening to reality and letting it falsify your preconceptions, then I think it is problematic.

  Published: November 24, 2009 4:39 PM

• Russell

  The person who shaves all and only all people who don't shave themselves was shot by the person who shoots all and only all people who don't shoot themselves.

  Published: November 24, 2009 4:44 PM

• Russ

  I meant "disproof", not "proof". Oops.

  Published: November 24, 2009 4:47 PM

• Russell

  Who made god? The god who made god.
  Who made the god who made god? The god who made the god who made god.

  Who made all and only all the gods who didn't make themselves? The god who made all and only all gods who didn't make themselves.

  Did the god who made all and only all gods who didn't make themselves, make himself? If he made himself, then he was was one of the gods who didn't make himself, so he didn't make himself. If he didn't make himself, then he was one of the gods who he made, so he made himself.

  Published: November 24, 2009 4:59 PM

• Matt C.

  Russ,

  Can God create an immovable stone?

  Published: November 24, 2009 5:34 PM

• Russ

  Matt C. wrote:

  "Read A.G.D Watson's article in mind that I linked to JSTOR to see a sensible perspective."

  I don't use sites that force me to give personal information to read articles.

  Published: November 24, 2009 5:46 PM

• Russ

  Matt C. wrote:

  "Can God create an immovable stone?"

  I don't think so, because I don't believe in God. Try again.

  Let's take something simple like Cantor's idea that there are more real numbers than integers. That seems straightforward enough to me. Why do you object to it? Do you not believe in real numbers? After all, to fully generate the digits of a real number is an infinite process. Or do you only believe in computable real numbers, that can be generated by a program (i.e. an integer) in a Turing machine? Or what?
  

  Published: November 24, 2009 5:59 PM

• Matt C.

  Russ,

  It's not straightforward. There are no numbers in the sky. Mathematical symbols get their meaning from the rule-governed activates that employ them.

  Cantor didn't mention in his diagonal argument the new assumption of “completed infinity.” That's an argument that goes back a long way. You have to read Zenkin on that. Wittgenstein also explains it. I can't explain it all here.

  I have no problem with non-standard analysis and the hyperreal number line, but that’s because the assumptions are stated and the processes and symbols involving "infinitesimals" and "infinities" are defined. It can churn out useful results in calculus, but the tricks and non-sequesters in this and ordinary calculus don't explain "continuity." I could just replace the terminology of the hyperreal number line and a person could learn to use this method without a thought about our Platonic notions of “infinity” and what the behavior of something at the end of endlessness would be. That’s absurd talk.

  Mathematica can pretty much do all of the mathematics we have come up with. If a computer can do it, then there really is no mystery beyond the more basic ones not specific to mathematics.

  But set theory is not useful mathematics. Set theory is redundant. It's not just Cantor's ideas. All I'm saying is that Cantor broke the rules. He just added new assumptions and tried to say they're a result of old ones. Nope.

  Published: November 24, 2009 6:22 PM

• Poptech

  All Your Emails Are Belong To Us

  "I've just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline." - Phil Jones, Director Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

  "...it would be nice to try to "contain" the putative "MWP", even if we don't yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back." - Michael Mann, Lead Author IPCC (2001)

  "I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" - Phil Jones, Director Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

  "I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!" - Phil Jones, Director Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

  "The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone." - Phil Jones, Director Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

  "...If the RMS is going to require authors to make ALL data available - raw data PLUS results from all intermediate calculations - I will not submit any further papers to RMS journals." - Ben Santer, Lead Author IPCC (1995)

  "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." - Kevin Trenberth, Lead Author IPCC (2001, 2007)

  Subject: John L. Daly [Skeptic] Dead

  "...this is cheering news!" - Phil Jones, Director Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

  "Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted." - Ben Santer, Lead Author IPCC (1995)

  Published: November 24, 2009 6:27 PM

• Matt C.

  lol I typed non-sequesters. (??)

  "non-sequiturs" of course.

  Published: November 24, 2009 6:29 PM

• Russ

  Matt C.

  I won't read Zenkin unless you have a link to the paper that doesn't force me to jump through hoops. I did look up "completed" or "actual" infinity.

  I could be missing something, because I'm far from an expert on this stuff, but I still don't see a problem. So Cantor implicitly assumed "actually existing sets". So what? Why not just take that implicit assumption as an explicit axiom that you take as a given? Then, Cantor's diagonalization is true. Since it's an axiom, and since in formalistic mathematics, you're allowed to select your axioms without "proving" them (else they wouldn't be axioms!), I see no problem here.

  As far as I can tell, what you're arguing is that "actually infinite sets" don't exist. That seems to be a metaphysical argument based on what sets "truly" are. But sets are whatever you define them to be.

  Published: November 24, 2009 6:59 PM

• Russell

  "But sets are whatever you define them to be."

  But you can't just define whatever set you want. Well you can, but you get in big trouble. Like the set of all sets that aren't members of themselves.

  Published: November 24, 2009 7:48 PM

• Matt C.

  Russ,

  Please, don't put words in my mouth. I'm not making any metaphysical arguments.

  For the third time I will explain:

  Set theory is redundant. The attempts to make a logical foundation for it are also redundant. It is a more roundabout way of doing the same thing. There are no sets or numbers in the sky from what I have seen. If they happen to “exist” somewhere, it doesn’t matter because we can’t talk about them. Metaphysics doesn’t explain the workings of mathematics. The practice of mathematics explains the workings.

  If you are assuming logical argument, then you have to follow the rules. Cantor just introduced new assumptions, but stated that they could be "proved" from the old ones. Furthermore, the introduction of completed infinity can become self-contradictory.

  My position on mathematics is that it is “good” if it demonstrates some usefulness in results. Cantor’s transfinites are not useful, as Zenkin points out. It’s “pure” mathematics. The assuming of the rules that accompany completed infinity has only led to confusion on a mass scale. My point here is a little subtle, but there is no metaphysical argument. It’s about assuming a non-ending set of implications that never resolve. I don’t necessarily think that mathematics needs to be described logically, but the useful parts of it probably could be, since logic is so general as a conceptual framework. The limitations on doing such are a result of the confusions over notions of infinity.

  Published: November 24, 2009 7:55 PM

• Bala

  Matt C,

  " By the way, I still say that stubbing my toe isn't purposeful. "

  That's because "stubbing your toe" is normally not called "human action". It would be one of the consequences of human action that disregards (due to errors of omission or commission) the presence of certain objects that lie in the path of motion that your toe would take in the course of acting as you have chosen to, which are hard, which will not vanish because you have chosen to move your toe along that path and which on collision with your toe, would damage your toe sufficiently enough to give you pain.

  That you have chosen such a stupid example to try to discredit a theory of economics based on human action shows how little you have understood what you are talking of, much less what Mises and Rothbard said.

  Incidentally, Objective Reality is that which EXISTS independent of your being conscious of it.

  Published: November 24, 2009 8:01 PM

• Schrödinger

  "Incidentally, Objective Reality is that which EXISTS independent of your being conscious of it."

  So is my cat dead, alive, or dead and alive at the same time?

  Published: November 24, 2009 8:05 PM

• Bala

  Matt C,

  " I could say that the universe being made from earth, water, wind and fire is an a priori axiom. That is pure dogmatism because it assumes that no one can question it and no justification is needed. "

  That would be utter stupidity, not dogmatism. If you thought axioms are arbitrary choices to be made depending on one's whims and fancies, it only means that you just do not understand the meaning of the term "Axiom". Obviously, as a consequence, neither do you have any idea of the role axiomatic concepts have on what we learn and, most importantly, on how we learn what we learn (also known as epistemology).

  Lord Buzungulus was spot on in identifying this statement of yours as the clincher that shows you as either a babbler who has no clue what he is talking about or a propagandist for "pragmatism". Incidentally, I would be very keen to see you define "pragmatism". A lot of interesting things would, I am sure, flow out of that discussion.

  Published: November 24, 2009 8:16 PM

• Bala

  Schrodinger,

  " So is my cat dead, alive, or dead and alive at the same time? "

  Define
  1. "Alive"
  2. "Dead"
  3. How do you go about determining whether something is dead or alive?

  There is no point in having a discussion if you won't clarify what you are talking of.

  Published: November 24, 2009 8:19 PM

• Keynes

  Axioms of Economics

  Axiom 1: Central planners plan.

  Published: November 24, 2009 8:24 PM

• Marx

  Axioms of Economics

  Axiom 1: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.

  Published: November 24, 2009 8:30 PM

• Matt C.

  "That's because 'stubbing your toe' is normally not called 'human action'. It would be one of the consequences of human action that disregards (due to errors of omission or commission) the presence of certain objects that lie in the path of motion that your toe would take in the course of acting as you have chosen to, which are hard, which will not vanish because you have chosen to move your toe along that path and which on collision with your toe, would damage your toe sufficiently enough to give you pain."

  Now that’s funny! Human action excludes all mistakes.

  First sentence of Part I of Human Action:
  “Human action is purposeful behavior.”

  I didn't choose purposefully to move my toe into an object. This example is just an immediate one. The point I made was larger. From your viewpoint, we could just back up to action itself and derive all rules of motion in physics by never leaving the room.

  I understand that the definition is more specific, but it just hides the ambiguity in the term “purposeful.” Saying things like “the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness is nonetheless sharp and can be clearly determined,” is plain non-sense. Psychology is a very speculative field. Futhermore, the statement is so general that it doesn’t add much to our understanding. Just say people generally act out of self-interest, preservation, and desire to achieve other goals. That's not very profound.

  “Action is will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego's meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person's conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life. Such paraphrases may clarify the definition given and prevent possible misinterpretations. But the definition itself is adequate and does not need complement or commentary.”

  And then:

  “The field of our science is human action, not the psychological events which result in an action.”

  Huh?

  Published: November 24, 2009 8:45 PM

• Matt C.

  Bala,

  The people that would have chosen those axioms wouldn't have thought they were "arbitrary choices."

  You are missing the point anyways. Saying an axiom is a priori is dogmatism. Pay attention to context.

  Praxeology's "statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori." (p. 32, HA)

  You talk of "definitions." What I mean is something that can clearly prescribe a course of action or use.
  

  Published: November 24, 2009 8:55 PM

• Matt C.

  "Axiom 1: Central planners plan."

  Right, so does that mean we can derive the validity of all socialism from this? This is equivalent to the hollowness of this notion of "human action." You hit the nail on the head Keynes.

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:01 PM

• Russ

  Matt C. wrote:

  "Please, don't put words in my mouth."

  I wasn't trying to do that. I'm trying to understand your position. Unfortunately you keep referring me to papers that are hidden behind web hoops that I would have to jump through to read them, and I refuse to do so on general principles. If you could link to sites where I can access the papers without jumping through hoops, I will read them. (I'm not sure I would understand them, but...)

  "My position on mathematics is that it is “good” if it demonstrates some usefulness in results."

  Well, that's certainly a "pragmatic" definition of "good" math. My definition of "good" math is that it logically follows from the axioms.

  "Cantor’s transfinites are not useful, as Zenkin points out. It’s “pure” mathematics."

  So what's wrong with that? Mathematics *is* pure! You seem to be saying to me that any math that has no use is not good. Hardy would be rolling over in his grave! When "doing math", that is, proving mathematical theorems, it is irrelevant whether the results would have utilitarian value or not.

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:13 PM

• Bala

  Matt C.,

  " Now that’s funny! Human action excludes all mistakes. "

  It does not include the consequences of the action. That you fail, rather refuse, to see this makes it not as funny as you think it is. For clarity, let me make it explicit. Action is undertaken. Consequences occur. Action refers to the effort undertaken by the human being to change the arrangement of his environment, himself and his relationship with it. Consequences refer to the changed arrangement of the environment, the human and his relationship with the environment. If you can't understand this, I have little else to say.

  " I didn't choose purposefully to move my toe into an object "

  Then why the hell do you choose it as an example of purposeful behaviour, i.e., human action? Your duplicity and intellectual dishonesty is stunning, to say the least!!!

  " From your viewpoint, we could just back up to action itself and derive all rules of motion in physics by never leaving the room. "

  Dumb as usual. Firstly, human action is the axiom of the science of ECONOMICS, not PHYSICS. Secondly, that something is an axiom does not mean we need not study the subject of our study, i.e., humans, the environment they act on and the consequences of the actions on the humans and the environment to develop the science. In fact, it is a careful and close examination of the subject of the study that leads one to postulate the axioms of the field of study.

  " but it just hides the ambiguity in the term “purposeful.” "

  The ambiguity results from your persistent refusal to define the terms you are referring to (not surprising considering you are a self-proclaimed pragmatist). To me, the term "purposeful" is completely unambiguous because it denotes "directed at attaining specific ends". The "specific ends" are individual-specific, but the fact that the "specific ends" exist in this minds of the human being engaging in the action is what "purposeful" means.

  " “the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness is nonetheless sharp and can be clearly determined,” is plain non-sense. "

  Consciousness - The condition of being AWARE
  Unconsciousness - The condition of NOT being aware

  Please tell me how you can be aware and not aware at the same time. You really are getting dumber with every additional sentence you type.

  " Huh? "

  You could as well have said "Duh???". That suits your intellectual level better.

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:24 PM

• Matt C.

  Those papers are journal articles. You need be associated with a university or have a subscription. I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do.

  Hardy is a perfect example of a Platonist who says he has access to a Platonic realm of mathematical forms. He thinks the common man does not (in his Apology). He's a common asshole.

  I don't think "pure" math should have any more support than chess. I don't think "pure" mathematics is a good use for intelligence. No one has to listen to me, but it's at their own peril. Where else in society do we give so much support to something that should be a hobby?

  "My definition of 'good' math is that it logically follows from the axioms."

  What a joyful thing to do that has no purpose:

  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=umhistmath;cc=umhistmath;idno=aat3201.0001.001;frm=frameset;view=image;seq=402;page=root;size=s

  I could think of nothing better!

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:24 PM

• Bala

  Matt C.,

  " Saying an axiom is a priori is dogmatism. Pay attention to context. "

  I am an Objectivist and I understand the difference between "a priori" and "axiomatic". My attack was on the absolute nonsense that you were spewing.

  I too do not agree with the notion of a priori and much prefer the phrase axiomatic.

  I also understand that all concept formation originates from our interactions with reality and thus, so do axiomatic concepts.

  I do understand that the Austrians use the word "a priori" a lot. However, what you could do (if you think you understand the difference between a priori and axiomatic) is to replace "a priori" with "axiomatic" (or another grammatically suitable version) in all these places. You will then realise that it all makes sense and that there is little to dispute in the foundations of AE.

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:36 PM

• Matt C.

  Those papers are journal articles. You need be associated with a university or have a subscription. I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do.

  Hardy is a perfect example of a Platonist who says he has access to a Platonic realm of mathematical forms. He thinks the common man does not (in his Apology). He's a common asshole.

  I don't think "pure" math should have any more support than chess. I don't think "pure" mathematics is a good use for intelligence. No one has to listen to me, but it's at their own peril. Where else in society do we give so much support to something that should be a hobby?

  "My definition of 'good' math is that it logically follows from the axioms."

  What a joyful thing to do that has no purpose:

  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=umhistmath;cc=umhistmath;idno=aat3201.0001.001;frm=frameset;view=image;seq=402;page=root;size=s

  I could think of nothing better!

  
  "Then why the hell do you choose it as an example of purposeful behavior"

  Uh, I didn't. Mises told me “Human action is purposeful behavior.”

  "Firstly, human action is the axiom of the science of ECONOMICS, not PHYSICS"

  You don’t have a clue what I said.

  Axiom 1. Particles act
  (What follows are the laws of particle physics with no input from experience.)

  I think in terms of usefulness. I have my own desires. You don't necessarily have to understand what I mean if you can't. My preferences are shaped based on this final vocabulary. I am for ideas or methods that get results.

  "Consciousness - The condition of being AWARE
  Unconsciousness - The condition of NOT being aware"

  Thanks for that clarification Freud. “Aware”. Got it. Everything is clear now. “Huh?” was in response to this:

  “The field of our science is human action, not the psychological events which result in an action.”

  Anyhow, you bandy about truism and claim to derive huge amounts of wisdom.

  "Axiom 1: Central planners plan."
  Now we can derive the validity of all forms of socialism.

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:41 PM

• Matt C.

  Bala,

  From HA: "Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori."

  Replacing words is missing the point.

  "formation originates from our interactions with reality "

  Do you mean Reality? I didn't know formation originates. I thought only gasbags said things like that.

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:46 PM

• Subjectivist

  "I also understand that all concept formation originates from our interactions with reality"

  Interactions with reality vary from person to person. Therefore concept formation varies from person to person. Therefore concepts are subjective.

  Published: November 24, 2009 9:53 PM

• Matt C.

  Bala,

  Objectivist? Old Ayn Rand?

  "basic metaphysical issue that lies at the root of any system of philosophy: the primacy of existence or the primacy of consciousness.”

  http://maverickphilosopher.blogspot.com/2004/05/is-ayn-rand-good-philosopher.html

  I think therefore I am...Uh, I think.

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:01 PM

• Subjectivist

  Does that mean there can be parts of reality that are unknowable if we never interact with them?

  Does that mean there wouldn't be any concepts if nobody was conscious of reality?

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:07 PM

• Subjectivist

  How is concept "formation" consistent with an objective reality, in which concepts are absolutes?

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:10 PM

• Russ

  Matt C. wrote:

  "I don't think "pure" math should have any more support than chess. I don't think "pure" mathematics is a good use for intelligence. No one has to listen to me, but it's at their own peril. Where else in society do we give so much support to something that should be a hobby?"

  I don't think that math, pure or otherwise, should be supported by society. But if a man is able to pursue pure math (or chess, for that matter) without violating the rights of others, who am I to tell him that he should not? That wouldn't be very libertarian!

  Art is useless, too. Does that mean it is not a worthwhile pursuit? I believe that art and pure math are forms of play; doing something for its own sake, for the pure enjoyment of it. I also believe that play is the highest use of the human mind. After all, if we can't enjoy things for their own sake, what is the point of life at all?
  

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:19 PM

• Matt C.

  "Art is useless, too. Does that mean it is not a worthwhile pursuit?"

  Great taste in "art":

  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=umhistmath;cc=umhistmath;idno=aat3201.0001.001;frm=frameset;view=image;seq=402;page=root;size=s

  Such enjoyment there.

  I call my code art too:

  bool SolveMaze(pointT pt, int depth)
  {
  directionT dir;
  
  if(depth if (OutsideMaze(pt)) return (TRUE);
  if (IsMarked(pt)) return (FALSE);
  MarkSquare(pt);
  for (dir = North; dir if (!WallExists(pt, dir)) {
  if (SolveMaze(AdjacentPoint(pt, dir), depth - 1)) {
  return (TRUE);
  }
  }
  }
  UnmarkSquare(pt);
  return (FALSE);
  }

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:35 PM

• Matt C.

  Let's try this again:

  Is this art?

  bool SolveMaze(pointT pt, int depth)
  {
  directionT dir;
  
  if(depth (less than) 0) return (FALSE);
  if (OutsideMaze(pt)) return (TRUE);
  if (IsMarked(pt)) return (FALSE);
  MarkSquare(pt);
  for (dir = North; dir (less than)= West; dir++) {
  if (!WallExists(pt, dir)) {
  if (SolveMaze(AdjacentPoint(pt, dir), depth - 1)) {
  return (TRUE);
  }
  }
  }
  UnmarkSquare(pt);
  return (FALSE);
  }

  Well, if it doesn't post right, you get the idea.

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:41 PM

• Matt C.

  I'm being sarcastic in case you didn't pick up on it.

  Published: November 24, 2009 10:49 PM

• Matt C.

  Is this art?

  http://www.asciiworld.com/-Mens-.html

  Published: November 24, 2009 11:34 PM

• Bala

  Matt C.,

  " Axiom 1. Particles act "

  Wow!!! Brilliance personified. What wonderful use of the word "act"! The particles you are referring to have a rational mind capable of directing their actions, right??

  " Now we can derive the validity of all forms of socialism. "

  Poorly chosen axioms lead to stupid conclusions.

  " Thanks for that clarification Freud. “Aware”. Got it. Everything is clear now. "

  So you agree that your statement about the distinctions between consciousness and unconsciousness being unclear is nothing short of stupid?

  " Anyhow, you bandy about truism and claim to derive huge amounts of wisdom "

  Since you seem intent on proving that you are a numbskull, let me try to explain the statement you have quoted. That statement defines the SCOPE of the science. It says "This science shall and can go thus far and no further". In simple terms, it means that the science of economics takes the concept "human action" axiomatically. It does not claim to explain why specific human beings act in specific ways in specific circumstances. Rather, it takes the fact that they act and the axiom that "all human action is purposeful behaviour" and goes on to derive other principles based on observed reality and logic.

  Too much for you, huh?

  Published: November 25, 2009 12:18 AM

• Bala

  Subjectivist,

  " Therefore concept formation varies from person to person. Therefore concepts are subjective. "

  This confuses the meaning of the word "subjective".

  Secondly, it is because different people have different sets of concepts depending on their sensory and cognitive apparatus that some people are more successful at handling reality than some others. It is also the reason why some people excel at certain things while being miserable at a lot of other things that others excel in.

  Published: November 25, 2009 12:28 AM

• Bala

  Subjectivist,

  " How is concept "formation" consistent with an objective reality, in which concepts are absolutes? "

  I think you are mixing up the terms "concept" and "definition". Concepts are what we form in our respective minds. Reality being whatever it is, we perceive it with our sensory apparatus and concert these percepts into concepts using our cognitive apparatus. Thus, there is no inconsistency between "objective reality" and "concept formation".

  Incidentally, even "definitions" are open-ended. So, I am not sure if I would call them "absolute".

  Published: November 25, 2009 12:35 AM

• Bala

  Matt C.,

  I read the link. If you want an answer, it is utter, unadulterated garbage filled with peurile, self-contradictory arguments.

  If this is what you take to seek support, nothing or no one can help you figure out what AE is all about.

  Published: November 25, 2009 12:42 AM

• K Ackermann

  Plato is correct about math.

  God used it as scaffolding to construct Her universe.

  We alone, among all animals, wipe our asses. We need accessories, and are therefore less pet-worthy.

  God is not a person, or else He would need toilet paper.

  God is the unexplained. A lot of people can't handle the unexplained. They need lists to iterate the possibilities. It's one of the reasons I hate lists.

  Not everything deserves an answer. Use what works. I still use N,E,S,W, even though the system is completely useless at two points on the planet. Godel liked to break things. He never asked us to stop using what works.

  Science still hasn't explained why I can sense when someone is looking at me.

  I don't know why I shiver when my girlfriend scratches my head. I can mimic her exact touch, and never put myself to sleep by scratching my own head.

  All I know is that I have pattern-matching circuitry that is constantly seeking patterns, and patterns of patterns to abstract. The trick is to not let it find what I want it to find. It works best on its own. It's more reliable that way.
  

  Published: November 25, 2009 7:13 AM

• Free Will Theorem

  "The particles you are referring to have a rational mind capable of directing their actions, right??"

  As long as you do, they do.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem

  Published: November 25, 2009 8:38 AM

• Matt C.

  Free Will Theorem,

  You catch on quick.

  Bala,

  Don't even try to defend Objectivism. I will destroy you. All you do is go around embarrassing yourself by calling something axiomatic and then claiming it to be profound or have more legitimacy. Logic is just a way of doing things. Logic doesn't "exist" somewhere "out there." Objectivists are just confused metaphysicians.

  As far as your comments go, they show a great deal of built up rage. Nothing in the social sciences is a science in the strict definition. There are no controlled experiments, and, in Mises’ case, no empirical observation to establish the basic axioms either. You are making a fool out of yourself.

  “It does not claim to explain why specific human beings act in specific ways in specific circumstances. Rather, it takes the fact that they act and the axiom that "all human action is purposeful behaviour" and goes on to derive other principles based on observed reality and logic.”

  Then why talk about ego, consciousness and psychology? You really aren’t making much sense.

  Praxeology's "statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori." (p. 32, HA)

  You can’t observe “purposeful behaviour” from the outside. How would you know it’s purposeful?

  
  How about a demonstration of good old fashion Kant:

  http://maverickphilosopher.blogspot.com/2004/06/rands-misunderstanding-of-kant.html

  Or a little retortion:

  http://www.anthonyflood.com/randretortion.htm

  
  K Ackermann,

  “Plato is correct about math.”

  You can’t “prove” that. You have to provide some kind of evidence of a redundant platonic realm of forms before I jump on. Given the type of math created on the basis of this assumption, I can’t agree. At least your honest about believing in God. In Philosophy, most people believe in God but don’t know it.

  People have goals, but their behavior isn’t always getting closer to them.

  Published: November 25, 2009 12:01 PM

• Matt C.

  IF A was really A, it would have been back where A was. lol

  Published: November 25, 2009 12:23 PM

• Matt C.

  Bala,

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism

  Published: November 25, 2009 1:05 PM

• troll food

  @Bala

  Hasn't anyone ever warned you about feeding the trolls?

  P.S. I would of come to your aid on a number of those posts but I figured I'd be giving Matt C exactly what he wanted.

  Published: November 25, 2009 1:36 PM

• Bala

  troll food,

  Thanks for the warning. Thanks to this "conversation", I have learnt my lesson - that the trolls will never stop and that they are best ignored.

  p.s. You may have noticed how late in the discussion with Matt C I entered. Saw it getting really obnoxious and thought I could step in. Guess that was a bad move :)

  Published: November 25, 2009 2:15 PM

• Subjectivist

  "Incidentally, even "definitions" are open-ended."

  Perceptions of reality are open-ended.

  Published: November 25, 2009 2:20 PM

• Matt C.

  Bala,

  What is "action"? I'm having trouble with that. How would I know what an "action" is from the outside? If my purpose was not to hit my toe on an object, then how do you know that? Maybe, I did want to hit my toe and then claim I didn't want to. If you can't get the theory in observation, then you can only be a speculative psychologist.

  Published: November 25, 2009 2:46 PM

• K Ackermann

  "People have goals, but their behavior isn’t always getting closer to them."

  And sometimes that is a great thing. It keeps us occupied. When we are not occupied, we always seem to be drawn to the cliff's edge.

  Some of our goals are not our own. The biosphere sets our ultimate agenda, as it does for all living things. Surviving is just a strategy used to serve the overarching goal of thriving.

  It's a damn good thing sex feels so good. No effort was spared when it comes to helping us serve that ultimate goal.

  Published: November 25, 2009 7:32 PM

• ehmoran

  This is not new. This has been going on for quite some time. Just nobody was paying attention until it happened to the Big Nutjobs:

  Amazing!

  The data (e-mails) are right in their faces and they still refuse to see the evidence.

  These same scientists threatened my job as a scientist with the US Geological Survey because I tried to publish a study showing with higher confidence that global temperature changes were completely natural caused solely by Earth's physical processes. Additionally, these same scientists would not even discuss or refute the science and facts presented. Instead, they took two days to personally attack me and my family.

  I always knew that when man-made global climate change was showed to be insignificant that people would lose faith, note the word "FAITH", in science. But this event and exposure is way worse for the science community as a whole. Remember: "Truth is the daughter of Time (Francis Bacon)".

  Several USGS scientists got fired for the same thing when discussing data manipulation for models developed for the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. But no outcry and defense for those scientists?

  IF you can't see any problem with this and you don't wonder if there's been some misleading of the public by these scientists, then you definitely are not scientists, you're in denial and would buy any bill of goods sold, and you have no moral principles to stand on.

  On 25 November 2009 at 12:15 PM, I tried to post comments on RealClimate.org concerning this matter. That website obviously refused to post my comments because they know me, which is another attempt to silence objective parties on this subject and since they were the ones that threatened my job.....

  Now, think about this. Al Gore PUBLICLY states that the Earth’s Mantle temperatures are MILLIONS of DEGREES. The man doesn't even have the morality, decency, and/or courage to publicly admit he was WRONG. WHY SHOULD these scientists admit they are wrong? They can't, because if they do, the gig is up.......

  Published: November 26, 2009 2:17 PM

• SailDog

  This is manner from heaven for the whacko brigade that have come out is force here. Lapse of judgement maybe, but the data doesn't lie. Neither does nature negotiate. Nothing will happen in Copenhagen, or anywhere else that will make one jot of difference in the gathering storm precisely because of events such as this. The dishonesty, ignorance and delusion of climate skeptics is matched only by the deep mediocrity of our leadership.

  Show me one peer reviewed scientific article refuting AGW. Just one.

  Published: November 26, 2009 3:13 PM

• ehmoran

  Saildog

  "The dishonesty, ignorance and delusion of climate skeptics is matched only by the deep mediocrity of our leadership."

  You must first understand the definition of Climate. Do you? And if you're saying Climate change is a significantly Man-Made phenomenon, then: So, I take it you're one of the expert researchers who don't listen to the SO-CALLED experts to get all you indepth knowledge of Climate Science

  Published: November 26, 2009 3:22 PM

• SailDog

  ehmoron (apt)

  Actually I do. Climate Science was one of my majors in my Masters.

  Published: November 26, 2009 3:29 PM

• ehmoran

  saildog,

  Well????

  Published: November 26, 2009 3:32 PM

• SailDog

  ehmoron

  "You must first understand the definition of Climate. Do you? And if you're saying Climate change is a significantly Man-Made phenomenon, then: So, I take it you're one of the expert researchers who don't listen to the SO-CALLED experts to get all you indepth knowledge of Climate Science"

  I understand the first bit of this and answered it. Not sure about the rest of it though, even though I read it a few times. Try normal English. I am not a researcher, but I have read quite a lot of peer reviewed science on the subject.

  BTW, most climate data is publicly available on the web. You just need to find it, know how to use it; and have sufficient computing power to analyse it. Interpretation is up to you.

  Published: November 26, 2009 3:51 PM

• ehmoran

  Saildog,

  Didn't see your definition of climate:

  "Climate is the long term average of weather observations."

  Just wanted to know where to start this Climate Change discussion?

  Published: November 26, 2009 3:56 PM

• ehmoran

  Well, Saildog,

  After you performed your little personal insults and disrespect on me with the way you responded with my name, you don't want to discuss the facts.

  Just like RealClimate.org and other Elitists feeling intimidation and don't want want their fiefdoms disturbed and/or confronted.

  It seems you're one of those Left-Wing Loons that rely on personal attacks to get your points across. But, likely, you'll respond with more if you live up to your principles!

  But, I hope I'm wrong.......

  Published: November 26, 2009 4:37 PM

• SailDog

  ehmoran

  So let me get this straight:

  1. Even though I have Masters degree with a major in Climate science you think I don't know the difference between climate and the weather; and

  2. Because I have a Masters degree I am an elitist leftist loon.

  Can I suggest to you that I know just a little bit more about Climate Science than you. If you had studied the subject; and been exposed to the data, knowledge; and logic you would understand AGW. Clearly you don't, so you haven't.

  Having deliberately misspelt your name in my previous posts, I deserve some sort of epithet, but I am not sure you have enough information about me to make those particular accusations. At this point all you know is that I majored in Climate Science, have a Masters degree; and accept the science lying behind AGW. In fact it seems to me that those qualifications are irrelevant to being elitist, leftist or a loon.

  I am also a CPA. CPA's are dull conservative men in grey suits who shun leftism in all its forms. They may want to be elitist, but I am not sure that accountants can be elitist. They are plodders, by and large. On the other hand some would argue that anybody who chooses this boring profession must be a loon. I might just agree with you there!

  Published: November 26, 2009 8:41 PM

• ehmoran

  Saildog,

  From the beginning, I just wanted us both to learn and grow by sharing our mutual knowledge with logical discussion. You didn't provide the definition, just wondering if you agree with mine?

  I've been a professional Scientists for nearly 11 years and am now a professor on the subject.

  Also, I'm well published in many fields of Science.

  Should we now begin our PROFESSIONAL debate on Man-Made Climate Change?

  Thanks

  Published: November 26, 2009 8:49 PM

• SailDog

  ehmoran

  OK - fair enough.

  Are you qualified in Climate Science?

  Published: November 26, 2009 11:32 PM

• ehmoran

  Well,

  As a practicing Environmental Scientists and University Professor, I'll let you make the decision?

  Have you checked out my PUBS?

  Published: November 26, 2009 11:40 PM

• ehmoran

  Saildog, First of all, here's a proposal I just read:

  "I think it is time to take the environmental movement back by focusing on real pollutants. I've been warning the Rocky Mountain Institute for years about this. I am now afraid that the resource (not just energy) efficiency revolution that they have done such great work on will be sacrificed at the alter of AWG. People will throw out the baby with the bathwater.

  Given the CRU event and the damage it has done please consider the following.

  1) Just plainly state that there should be an investigation into data manipulation and that all scientists should be forced to release all data and source code like REAL SCIENTISTS DO. Stop defending criminals by talking about peer review when they were reviewing each other's papers. You didn't rig data, collude to prevent others from being published, sabotage other scientists careers. You have to distance yourself immediately from the MBH et al ilk!

  2) No longer talk about CO2. It's dead, proven to be rigged data and continuing to talk about it will only discredit the whole environmental movement.

  3) Talk about mercury pollution. 40 tons a year from coal, 35 tons a year from garbage incineration and that is just from North America (and we are not that bad compared to Asia and Africa, scary but true!). Talk about the watershed destruction in coal mining.

  4) Offer up a straight forward alternative. Shale gas for the short term renewables for short, medium and long term. The best thing for the environment in the last 50 years is the shale gas technology! Not pretty or renewable but it gives us 50 to 60 years if we decommission all coal & nuke plants and double that if we just phase them out.

  So bring the shale gas online as fast as possible and convert/shutdown the coal plants first. With a lot less than 50 years of research and development renewables will be working and cost competitive.

  Point out that we are also running out of uranium so nuclear fission plants may not have fuel in the future.

  If we allow stupid LIES and pseudo science like that practiced by the AWG crowd (MBH et al) to be used to tax us then yes we will all be a lot poorer. If we just push the resource efficiency like rmi.org then we will save money.

  If we actually force scientists like Mann, Bradley, Hughes, Jones and the rest of the AWG crowd to make all the data and code publicly available LIKE REAL SCIENTISTS do then we will progress.

  From: A real environmentalist!
  Cheers "

  Published: November 27, 2009 12:08 AM

• CPA

  "I am also a CPA. CPA's are dull conservative men in grey suits who shun leftism in all its forms."

  CPA training is nothing but memorizing government regulations. Accounting would be a piece of cake without government regulations, but then there would be no need for CPAs. If you're a CPA, then you're an expert in forcing people to follow government regulations. You're an expert in finding out how much money the government should be able to steal.

  Published: November 27, 2009 12:47 AM

• Poptech

  "Show me one peer reviewed scientific article refuting AGW. Just one."

  NO PROBLEM! Here are over 450!!!

  450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming

  Published: November 27, 2009 8:50 AM

• Beefcake the Mighty

  Poptech,

  That's a good link, but unfortunately Saildog is asking for a "refutation." In other words, he's dishonestly setting the bar higher than any scientific study (by the nature of such studies) could possibly deliver. He knows there's no study "refuting" AGW, just studies casting doubt. That the same point applies to the pro-AGW position is irrelevant to his ilk, he's just posturing here.

  Published: November 27, 2009 9:37 AM

• Walt D.

  SaiDog:
  
  "At this point all you know is that I majored in Climate Science, have a Masters degree; and accept the science lying behind AGW."
  
  I assume what you meant to say was:
  
  At this point all you know is that I majored in Climate Science, have a Masters degree; and accept the lying science behind AGW.

  Published: November 27, 2009 10:56 AM

• N. Joseph Potts

  @CPA:
  I hope people will pardon the brief digression, but I have been a CPA since 1973, and @CPA is BANG ON with his/her definition of what a CPA does and, indeed, what most accounting is for, unfortunately. This could be of interest to non-CPAs.

  In parallel, I believe it was Murray Rothbard who noted that, absent government interference in the economy, there would be virtually no need for economists.

  And continuing all the way back to the subject of this thread: if there were no prospect of government intervention into our private lives in the name of climate "control," climate "science" would receive less than 10% of the funding that staffing that it now consumes.

  Published: November 27, 2009 11:44 AM

• ehmoran

  After a good nights sleep, I thought about Saildog.

  Here's a Certified Public Accountant who apparently is an expert in Climate Science but instead of becoming what he was trained for became a CPA.

  Just wondering if he ever had a job in the Science industry or published scientific papers?

  But he has the audacity to ask me for and question my qualifications?

  That's what's going on Climate Science. Everyone is an expert that probably should not be opening their mouths about the subject. But Lord help the poor little nutjob that is a well-established Scientist, does unbiased research looking for what he discovers to be the truth, then disagrees with the lamestream Science consensus.

  Seems to me, that most major Scientific breakthroughs are found by "the Little Nutjobs".

  I mean, look at the Swiss Patent Clerk who was ostracized from the Physics Fiefdoms.......

  Published: November 27, 2009 11:58 AM

• Brainwashing

  Same goes for lawyers, doctors, stock brokers, real estate agents, tax preparers (obviously), anybody with a license. A license is nothing but making sure you know what the "rules" are so the government can keep track of what everybody's doing and stop things it doesn't like. Can't represent someone else unless you're a state-recognized lawyer (it's easy for the government to convict you when it picks who can defend you). Can't treat someone else unless youre a state-recognized doctor doing things the way the government says you can. Etc.

  It used to be that anybody who could pass the bar exam could become a lawyer. But now you need brainwashing in how the government is great and how we need government laws to stop bad people, although I guess the bar exam itself pretty much covers all of that to begin with. Medical school is brainwashing in how the government is great and how we need the government to approve certain medical treatments. Business school is brainwashing in how the government is great and how we need government intervention to save the free market.

  Published: November 27, 2009 12:19 PM

• Poptech

  This is funny because there are no studies proving AGW. The ones that explicitly endorse it are all based on worthless climate models, something I am more qualified than Saildog to understand since my education is in computer science. But if he wants "climate" qualifications, no problem,

  Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D. Ecological Climatology, Research Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Former State Climatologist for Virginia, Contributing Author and Reviewer, IPCC

  Patrick J. Michaels: Climate of Extremes (Video) (60min)

  Published: November 27, 2009 7:06 PM

• Daniel

  Matt C

  Did you purposefully stub your toe just to try to disprove the epistemological foundation of Austrian Economics?

  =(

  Published: November 27, 2009 10:51 PM

• Janus Daniels

  Pat Michaels:
  http://logicalscience.com/skeptics/patMichaels.html
  Go back to the Glenn Beck show.
  This is too easy; I'm leaving.

  Published: November 28, 2009 2:22 PM

• Matt C.

  Daniel,

  If there only was such a thing. You know, starting from Mises' axiom, you could invoke the benefits of government intervention. Since human action doesn't always resolve in a quick manner, people who know how to reach a particular goal better and faster can help you.

  I don't really think an epistemological foundationalism is very useful, especially when one claims infallibility. The fact of the matter is that his work did incorporate his observations and some common sense, but it isn't perfect. Just because there are no controlled experiments (sometimes situations can create these though) doesn’t mean our interaction and observation of the market can’t get us a good amount of understanding and guidance to create a theory and see if makes sense.

  “It is true, Mises was an extreme apriorist and he did caution against the use of econometrics. But the architecture of his system is actually radically empirical…”

  http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FHET%2FHET31_01%2FS1053837209090142a.pdf&code=4095ce36fec007d081bc6fe8a66d382c

  If you can't make useful predictions, then you're just another blowhard. The mathematical models that try to model economic phenomena don’t work very well, and that’s the ONLY reason why we should reject them. Mises is generally right about many things but partly for the wrong reasons. Some models do work reasonably well.

  Much of his theory does make useful predictions, but the theory needs work in other areas. The focus on foundationalism (a product of his era) and the epistemological aspects of his theory is focusing on all the wrongs things. In other words, it focuses on the anachronistic.

  You might think the joke is on me, but you guys are the ones that suffer from such backwardness. Only fan boys fail to improve upon their teacher’s work and make it more generally acceptable.

  Published: November 28, 2009 8:20 PM

• Bala

  Matt C,

  " people who know how to reach a particular goal better and faster can help you "

  To go from this to justifying Government intervention, you are going to have to prove that those in Government know how to reach the particular goal better and faster. I wonder how you are going to prove that.

  As usual, you do not think 1 step beyond your own post.

  By the way, how's the stubbed toe doing? Hope you have acted to relieve the pain caused by the accident... oops.... action of deliberately stubbing your toe.

  Published: November 29, 2009 11:06 AM

• Matt C

  Bala,

  As usual, you cannot understand the argument. The point was that government interventionists do think this. The axiom is hollow.

  "By the way, how's the stubbed toe doing? Hope you have acted to relieve the pain caused by the accident... oops.... action of deliberately stubbing your toe."

  I did stub my toe the other day, but not on purpose. But then again, how would know? lol

  Published: November 29, 2009 12:26 PM

• ehmoran

  The current state of Scientists Elite have built themselves as GODS and the Makers and Breakers of Careers and it's all about the MONEY now, no truth needed.......

  The phenomenon I discuss in my research has been studied for nearly 50 years and accepted as highly plausible by the Royal Society (I have the Publication) but the process and connection were unexplainable; the only drawback of all Magnetic Intensity and Ambient Temperature studies, in their WORDS, up till now. We explained the Process in our paper along with the data analysis. Unfortunately, we used the Hadley Global Temperature Datasets. The data used were yearly averages, which was well explained both in the original paper and the 2008 AGU presentation. Just didn't see any RealClimate people at the presentation. But they knew about it. I informed them.

  The following is what I perceived as personal intimidation and a threat to call my USGS supervisor for doing this study. The only reason someone uses words like "Does your boss know what your doing" in the context of this event is a threat to get you FIRED if you don't cease and desists. Now if the study and theory were not plausible and a potential explanation of global temperature variability, then why would RealClimate.org do what they did in their posts? Not very professional for PhDs. Additionally, there are many other areas on that website where conversations took place.

  QUOTE
  "264
  John Mashey says:
  30 June 2007 at 1:04 AM
  re: #261: Chuck: you can stop worrying. Tindall has been at USGS for while,............................................
  Mr. Moran, if you’re still watching:
  I have read USGS 370.735.5 and I hope you (and James Tindall) have.
  Do managers SAF and LE HB know about this? Any constructive comments?"
  UNQUOTE
  From: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200...

  Published: November 29, 2009 1:26 PM

• Bala

  Matt C.,

  " I did stub my toe the other day, but not on purpose. But then again, how would know? lol "

  From the phrase "stub my toe", you know. A lot of words and phrases have fairly definite meanings, you know. "Stub my toe" means that I accidentally bumped my toe into something and hurt it. But then, for someone like you, how is that to ever be clear?

  " The point was that government interventionists do think this. The axiom is hollow. "

  Actually, it is the minds of people who come up with this conclusion that are hollow or rather bereft of rationality (given the impossibility of ever proving their conclusion starting from the axiom of human action). That they can make such conclusions that they can never justify shows the level of their thinking (if you could call it that). Your post indicates that you are operating very much at that level.

  Incidentally, if a person buys a knife for the purpose of cutting vegetables and then ends up slitting his throat with it, are you in the habit of blaming the knife for it? Your statements indicate that you are.

  Published: November 29, 2009 11:41 PM

• Matt C.

  Bala,

  The only person "bereft of rationality" is you. If you want to spin everything out of your head, then that's your business. No serious person will listen to you. Foundationalism is over. It's a foolish, young man's game.

  Furthermore, you talk as if there are definitive "proofs" in the social "sciences." That type of confusion takes a great deal of time to reverse.

  I have a theory that most Objectivists have asperger's syndrome. Thanks for helping me verify it!

  "A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits." -- Edith Sitwell

  Holy Kant
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CliGdmHB9pY
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ8OpVAWHMc

  Published: November 30, 2009 11:35 AM

• Matt C.

  Bala,

  You are confused. We were talking about "purposive behavior." Blame has nothing to do with it. But now that you mention it, we don't have control over all aspects of nature. You should accept the free will theorem (but I never said I did); it's proved with axioms. LOL! It looks like you're the one in the pickle.

  Published: November 30, 2009 12:32 PM

• ehmoran

  Free Will:

  If a doctor gave you 1 minute to live, would you decide to die with hate and contempt in your heart or love for all humanity? This would be you free-will choice.

  Do you think at this time you thoughts could be persuaded while someone held a gun to your head?

  Published: November 30, 2009 12:39 PM

• Matt C.

  Free will vs. determinism isn't a very productive debate. It's useful to assume that people do have free will, but I'm not so sure we could every "prove" it. I'm not even sure if it's a sensible question, given the lack of understand what free will is, beyond basic generalization.

  Published: November 30, 2009 3:28 PM

• TokyoTom

  Lord Buzungulus, Bringer of the Purple Light:

  Sorry to be late to this party.

  I posted a few thoughts here:

  http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/12/04/my-climate-confession-quot-climate-change-emails-stop-glaciers-from-melting-quot.aspx

  Published: December 7, 2009 4:11 AM