A scientist is upset at climate change predictions. Turns out the scientist's field of study was economics. Drama ensues.

100  2019-04-26 by employee10038080

208 comments

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This guy is giving even engineers a run for their money in how confident someone can sound talking about subjects out of their depth

STEM majors in general are the best at pretending to know things they know nothing about and acting smugly superior to any other major.

That's because we are superior to other majors

👆🦖

The dinosaurs will consume all majors. But they will start with those that cannot meaningfully contribute to the reterraforming of Earth into a cretaceous paradise.

Geologists will tell you we take students to the American southwest every summer for weeks to teach students, but really it's to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of the Cretaceous interior seaway and shoreline for the return of the dinos to power.

Preach brother

Stemcels are the autistic plebeians of the university world.

Patricians receive a classical liberal education in philosophy, literature, and mathematics.

Lmao @ stemcel downsnoozling you for telling the truth.

They're weirdos with poor social skills, of course they'll angrily hit the down arrow

I could learn your entire major by reading 20 articles on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Stemcels embarrass themselves when they try to talk about philosophy.

There is no essential difference between you and the high school dropout who fixes my car, except he doesn’t have debt and makes more than you will.

The common point between both of them is they aren't living off mommy and daddy's money you rancid waste of carbon.

Yeah you’re totally going to be the next Tesla being pumped out of your low quality institution along with a hundred thousand plebs each year.

Unless you’re coming out of MIT you’re a grunt.

I know in your fantasies you get appointed commissary after the leaders of the glorious revolution recognize your greatness but here in reality your studies degree from a no name school will have you mooching off mommy and daddy until your mid 30s just like u/snallygaster and the rest of the basket weaving larpers here.

“N-no u commie”

Peak stemcel rhetoric 😂😂😂😂

It's funny because you're incapable of meaningful employment! Ha ha!

The last bastion of stemcel c😂pe.

Just wait till you graduate community college buddy.

Lmao okay, crying_face_behind-mask.png

It is always pretty funny when Dawkins tries to talk about history

He says, talking via the phone/computer designed by stem majors, via an internet designed by stem majors. Sounds like someones a wittle bit insecure about their money being wasted on philosophy 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😋😂😂😋

The Stemcel is immunized against all dangers: one may call him a virgin, autist, loser, retard, it all runs off him like water off a raincoat. But call him useless and you will be astonished at how he recoils, how injured he is, how he suddenly shrinks back: “I’ve been found out.”

Solicitor

Yeah, sounds about right

Lets be real, philosophy is for neckbeards and personalitycels

Stemcels embarrass themselves when they try to talk about philosophy.

Well yeah, they haven't been reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyTM

but you wouldn't learn the corresponding habitus and mannerisms.

that's what liberal arts is mostly about: like a finishing school

habitus

Must not have been a very good finishing school.

this joke went over my head. (no wonder, given that I'm a dirty STEMcel)

The stuff that liberal arts students learn for grades, is stuff that STEMcels learn for fun.

Liberal arts students read Foucault (well... cliffsnotes of it) for school and YA fiction on the beach.

STEMcels read Ricci flow papers for school and Foucault on the beach.

Low quality.

Do better. Be better.

:'(

Take the classicalpill

STEMcel read based Cicero on the beach instead of that sniveling pedo bastard Foucault?

The fuck do you think the M in steM stands for? Mockery?

Marvel comics

M'lady tips fedora

Science Technology Engineering and Minority studies.
Truly a match made in heaven.

Ha ha ha. I laugh at you; look how I laugh. REAL patricians learn a degree that begins with some obscure non-western country and ends with the word "studies".

Stem is objectively superior to other majors and here is ultimative proof:

  • You never see a chemistry major say: "Well, paint is made of chemical components. So actually, chemistry is a liberal art."

    You never see a physicist say: "You know, acoustic is very important for music. We are not actually a STEM field, but liberal arts."

  • However, every psychologist will tell you that they are a STEM field, because they do science and know basic math.

    Hell, even some sociologists claim they are STEM because they do research about humans which is anthropology which is biology which is science and therefore STEM.

You see, every major that has the slightest chance to be considered STEM goes for it. The majors that don't have the chance are left with COPE.

Philosophy can be practiced by anyone with two brain cells to rub together. It’s literally asking questions about shit. Most scientists engage in philosophy, but then take those extra steps to actually look for the answer. Modern day “philosophers” are basically people that come up with posts for r/Showerthoughts, piggybacking off the much smarter philosophers of history.

Literature? Anyone can read a book. Imagine paying thousands to get a recommended reading list from some school. Try being literate.

Politics is marginally useful. History > Politics tho.

Finally, math is the M in STEM.

In conclusion, you are a dumbfuck who couldn’t pass a gender studies class even if you ate out the professor’s fat, hairy, and neglected cunt daily.

Stemcels seething in incoherent longposts

Maybe if you were taught something besides rote memorization you could have thought of something smarter to write.

I must have forgotten that making macaroni art of your favorite author is an activity for the real intellectuals.

Did you do your senior thesis on how “The Hungry Caterpillar” made you feel?

When will philosophycells learn that smugness dont pay the bills?

Upon graduation.

Maybe back when only rich white mayos were allowed into liberal. Then foids and affirmative action made it shit.

REMINDER: Biology and EE should not be included in chad STEM majors, they are just as useless as a “queen of social sciences” major like economics .

Well that's the most retarded take I've heard today

Do I know One person who has used biology or EE in their jobs wo getting a master first... yup, that’s what I though 😏

yes to biology

Those fishing boats in Alaska don’t count

Imagine being so ignorant that you flex on people with Masters and Doctorates in other STEM fields with your shitty engineering bachelors.

Lol im economics bachelors I’m shitting on myself just dragging EE and w me.

This is bait

Hmmm, what about us archaeologists?

Lol learn to code

Well, I don't know that coding would help me read a soil pedon, or infer the importance of only finding tertiary debitage at a site. Bit, I'll keep that in mind cptn, thanks.

Imagine being happy about finding 500 yo septic tank, lmao. 😂😂😂😂

Ummm, those are called privies sweaty.

But yeah, not a big fan of those. Once recovered stillborn remains. Kind of sucked.

Ummm, those are called privies sweaty.

I don't care what mud scratchers call their scats expeditions, buddy.

mud scratchers

lmao, I'm putting this on my CV

Ugh, now I can't bully you anymore.

Serious talk, archeoligists are cool. I wanted to do archeology but then I heard they only took the best people on the sites, and thus it was over before it even started for error404braincels.

Nah, you would (still could?) have been fine. The two most basic concepts I try to explain to people starting off in this field is 1. don't bitch about the work, and 2. stfu and listen for your first few years.

  1. don't bitch about the work

  2. stfu and listen for your first few years.

As I said :

it was over before it even started for error404braincels.

Someone has already named all the spiders.

Shhh, I'm still out here getting paid.

Stay getting that money. Just keep looking.

This is unironically true, but not because of the major, but because the standards universities set for these majors.

If you do not fulfill some totally attainable, but also not easy standards, you will drop out of STEM majors. In the liberal arts majors however, the last idiot can at least still pass with like a C.

Non-stem cope

Nope. I'm a chemical engineering major.

>chemistry AND engineering

might as well do a social "science"

Got me there tbh

As a STEMcel, it's true. But it's particularly true of engineers. Fuck me dead, the amount of times I've heard the line 'climate has always changed since the formation of earth' from various engineers as a geologist.

Physicists, bro...

But economics isn't even in stem, they're just a bunch of wannabes

Economics majors wish they were STEM. Economics is a liberal art no matter how much they insist it's a "science."

It's tricky to conduct controlled experiments with whole societies, so obviously they can't achieve the same level of falsifiability. Econ faces another problem that any new insight changes the system, because the big players make use of all available insights. Say you find out that X today predicts next year's Z, so everyone starts using X when trading Z futures, until all X-information is priced in and it doesn't predict Z anymore.

But at least economics tries to be scientific.

Political science and sociology try to do the same shit and nobody ever pretends that they are real sciences on par with STEM. Econ majors need to get of their high horse and realize that they are no better than the other liberal arts just because they can do math.

Political science and sociology try to do the same shit

I have plenty complaints about economists, but econ is definitely better formalized, partly because the issues are easier to quantify than in sociology or polisci.

Mathematical sociology is a tiny subfield, and the work in computational sociology (that I know) seems very arbitrary.

There are all kinds of criticisms of the models in economics, but the discussion is on a high level -- at least there is something that can be criticized.

Economics models are still closer to polisci/sociology models than anything in STEM. They're a bunch of uppity social scientists who periodically need to be put in their place and reminded that they are still a liberal art in the end.

haha sure

I mean, I don't think economics could possibly have the standards of accuracy expected of proper science, after all they're working with people, and people are yucky as far as being predictable and logical goes, let alone when working with data that is never complete.

Problem is, that doesn't cancel out the fact economics doesn't have those standards. A+ for effort all they want, if it doesn't cut it, it doesn't cut it, period.

I mean, I don't think economics could possibly have the standards of accuracy expected of proper science, after all they're working with people, and people are yucky as far as being predictable and logical goes, let alone when working with data that is never complete.

Climate is also not very predictable yet here we are.

This sort of rhetoric is on the same level of the boomer who sneers about how scientists can predict the climate in 40 years when they can't even give a decent weather report for 4 days from now.

Economics has exactly the same status among the humanities as it does among STEM. It's looked up to only by working-classcels.

NO, U

Most people who get a post-graduate degree in economics majored in some sort of Math.

LMAO, basket weaving majors love to tell themselves shit like this, it's true.

We call our degrees "BS" for a reason

Isn't this like the reddit default? I wish I had the link to the argument where a 19 year old was arguing with an ophthalmologist about eye care. The kid was upvoted because he was saying what the other 12-25 year olds of reddit wanted to hear, the FUCKING EYE DOCTOR was downvoted lmao

Link plz

don't tease me like this. If you don't have a link at least try to describe what he was saying and what he was arguing against

Also use a sexy voice.

Something about contacts or something. I hope you ejaculated just now.

):

You would be amazed at the amount of free energy bullshit and 9-11 conspiracy crap that has to get deleted from /r/Engineering

The law of thermodynamics really triggers tards...

engineers of all people should understand that you do not need to absolutely liquify steel beams for their structural integrity to be compromised

I apologize, my comment was not clear. Its usually not engineers posting this shit. Its random idiots from /r/conspiracy or shit head first year students that have no idea what they are talking about.

Enjoy continuing to run around screaming like chicken little while the sky resolutely continues not to fall.

I'm not sure if you're responding to the wrong comment or not since it seems like a non-sequiter.

Or maybe you're an engineer? Hard to tell

Maybe you're too stupid to understand basic sentences in simple English?

Hmmmmm yeah, gonna upgrade that to a "Definitely".

I understand the grammar, but it's like you're having a conversation with someone you believe is there but isn't. Are you too stupid to understand conversational context and continuity of thought?

it's like you're having a conversation with someone you believe is there but isn't.

Yes, a person who can understand simple sentences in basic English.

So go find me one, and I can talk to him instead of wasting any more of my time on you.

-t. brainlet

I'm a engineer-in-training and can attest to this. I immediately disregard the opinions of anyone on Reddit with "engineer" in their username

This is true, but what the douche in question was saying was true, too. I'm probably the second oldest guy here after Grampa Tick Tock. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and I've been hearing "the world will in ten/twelve/twenty years because global warming/climate change" since I was a little kid. I'm pretty happy those predictions have been wrong, but that's at least 35-40 years of bad predictions.

People act like we haven't done anything to prevent or slow down human influence on the environment. In my lifetime alone we've slowed or stopped burning trash and started recycling. The average MPG cars/trucks get have increased by a significant factor, too. We've made all sorts of advancements that have been good for the environment.

wow he's going all in! plus, look at the posts on his profile, 90% of his posts are long ass rants that longpostbot would have a field day with

And, yeah, I do know more about what climatologists do than they do themselves.

As an actual scientist,

1) The Earth is warming as a result of natural phenomena (warming Sun). 2) This warming is beneficial. [answering to why it is beneficial:]A) Longer growing seasons. B) Less land covered by glaciers. C) Fewer deaths due to cold weather.

That's a pretty retarded take even for a climate denier tbh. He managed to weave every bullshit climate denier talking point in 1 comment.

He missed the quintessential boomer talking point 'volcanoes, checkmate'

He managed to weave every bullshit climate denier talking point in 1 comment.

He missed all the fun ones like it's purposely caused by the government as population control.

Climate Change is easily preventable and treatable as proven by the hole in the ozone layer that was all going to kill us in the 90's that we had to take Asthma medication away from the cripples for just we aren't doing it for X reason is a fun talking point.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/weather/refreezing-arctic-ice-study-trnd/index.html

The ozone layer was fixed by the Montreal protocall. Stop making me serious post, dammit.

lol Leaf Propaganda

How dumb are you that you try and talk about this topic and don't even know that because of Montreal protocol they had to change Asthma Inhalers.

What do you think was used in Inhalers that we don't have anymore and now inhalers are shitty?

Can't hear you, I'm too busy walking around outside without a spacesuit on because I have this sweet ozone layer to protect me from the sun.

Ah right I remember the 90's when we all burnt alive as soon as we went outside.

Good thing Al gore's predicted Ocean Raising happened and all that melted Ice cooled down the earth enough to bring back the ozone.

I hope I'll be able to survive AOC's 12year disaster, the Great Ice Age of the 70's took a lot of years off of my life span but luckily those Scientists who said there were rivers on Mars are in charge of saving the earth now.

Like are you dumb enough that you actually think that Sprinkler thing would work, I just want a gauge here.

It never happened, thanks to the Montreal protocall.

I'll make it easier for you: remember all the times you were about to drink poison, then a smart person told you not to do that and you stopped? That's why you're not dead.

how dumb do you have to be to literally read me saying I enjoy baiting people with Global Warming conspiracies than still smugpost like this.

This is just the bottom barrel ones not even my good material I use IRL

I'll make it easier for you: remember all the times you were about to drink poison, then a smart person told you not to do that and you stopped?

Global Warming Science famed for it's hard and fast laws like if you drink this you will die.

No wonder you have to practice with me wow, you must get blown up all the time by nuts how embarrassing.

Maybe it's your lack of punctuation.

Maybe it's because you are retarded and think the world is going to end because water is hotter than normal after it's been measured after passing through a ships engine compartment.

And after that?

What it's a whole spiel about how global warming is real and that's the real conspiracy

It's hilarious laying out something like that than having someone question why you don't think 9/11 was a inside job it's the entire reason people do it to people like you

You're literally complaining about people calling you retarded for pretending to be retarded, except not really.

complaining

Stop projecting on me loser

intelligent person writes at length about things

haha this is bad

Now we have the hot take from the moron constituency.

intelligent

[citation needed]

"Global warming? Bet you haven't heard of a little thing called global cooling, have you, lib?"

At this point I'm confident that you either side with retards for sport, or you're a SJW for rightoid causes.

No one with a working brain sides with someone this retarded so blindly.

Its number 2, this man is incorrigible

At this point I'm confident that you're an active pedophile.

Consider not wanting to fuck children anymore, you rapist.

Who is more retarded, the holocaust climate change denier, or the holocaust climate change believer who thinks it's a good thing??

/u/ikonoqlast is one of a few resident trolls on /r/skeptic who regularly shit up the comments sections with conspiracy theories and junk science. It's weird because they all talk in this phony smug /r/iamverysmart voice that sounds like a rich bully from a kids cartoon.

STEM master race checking in here to dab on all the others

Back in the locker, nerd

You still want to play this game? Because... you will lose.

Why are redditors so dramatic.

He's like a capeshit hero who's power is weaponized dunning-kruger effect

You're like a retard whose only power is knowing hte words "dunning-kruger effect"

Get a new meme you faggot.

Boomers man, boomers...

SIP

Regression monkey thinks all scientists are as crap as modeling as he is.

Here's the thing. You said "deep learning is OLS with constructed regressors."

Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.

As someone who is a scientist who studies machine learning, I am telling you, specifically, in machine learning, no one calls deep learning OLS. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.

If you're saying "OLS family" you're referring to the overall task of supervised learning, which includes things from boosted trees to SVMs to non parametric regression.

So your reasoning for calling deep learning OLS is because random networks "end with a linear layer?" Let's get DSGEs and structural models and random forests yin there, then, too?

Also, calling someone a human or a horse?. It's not one or the other, that's not how economics works. They're both. Deep learning is deep learning and a member of the supervised learning family.1 But that's not what you said. You said deep learning is OLS, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the supervised learning family OLS, which means you'd call SVMs, boosted trees, and other classification and regression frameworks OLS, too. Which you said you don't.

It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?

climate models are built on "primitive fluid equations" on computers. literally primitive like some caveman shit and computers like my worthless g*mer nephew who can't fix the wifi for shit. how the fuck does that even compare to the intellectual magnitude and elegance of economic modelling you climongoloid.

Economics is a social science never forget

Bottom tier too. At least when NPR tells me about the latest social science research proving I'm a bigoted, misogynistic, homophobe they don't even try to pretend any of their listeners didn't know so already.

How many Economics papers were retracted as a result of the Replication Crisis? Right, zero. Because they are all unfalsifiable and therefore a kind of religion rather than science.

Based real scientist calling out the delusional climatards

I have said before and I will say again, like fading a overconfident public in gambling is usually a good move. I am fading reddit on climate change because there isn’t a topic this website is more sure of.

Oh, well... Let me explain it to you- Average temperatures don't affect shit. Local temperatures matter. Southern Pine Beetles don't know what average temperatures are. They're fucking insects. Increase the average temperature 10C and they will neither know nor care. What matters is their local temperature, which is a different thing... . Increase their local temp to 100C and they'll die, even if the average doesn't change at all. The average temperature of Phoenix AZ and Novosibirsk Sibera has increased. What does that mean for Phoenix? Absolutely nothing. Phoenix hasn't changed. Novosibirsk got warmer.

Earth's 'average' climate? Literally no creature on the planet is affected by it one way or another. They don't know what it is and have no way of detecting it. So long as their "local" conditions are good it doesn't matter one iota how the 'climate' changes.

From someone who thinks that insects know what an average is... You can know a tree by its fruit, and you are the fruit of the AGW movement. And you are not something that gives them credibility.

Ignoring the rest of his nonsense, what the actual fuck is he arguing here? That somehow the average temperature on earth can change without local temperatures changing? What does he think the average temp is?

Is pinging currently allowed, I can't keep up but I want him to try and justify this.

Have you owned the libs yet?

I am a bot. Contact for questions

Fuck off bot, picking up choice quotes of his rant to sum up his stupidity would have been more effort than pasting the whole section.

Ping your heart out

I think he means that you can have changes in temperature "patterns" that don't change the average yearly temperature but have catastrophic consequences, while you can also have changes in temperature "patterns" that up the yearly average a few degrees yet don't have nearly as bad an impact.

As in, 0°C the whole year and -200°C during winter and fall, +200°C during spring and summer both average to the same yearly temperature, but one is tolerable for a lot of the world's fauna, the other would kill virtually all animals on Earth save a few microscopic stuff and humans. On the other hand, adding 5°C to the temperature the whole year will realistically not be nearly that cataclysmic, despite moving the average.

Of course, this is a r-slur-ed argument because how much worse or better his hypothetical, i.e completely irrelevant to what is going to happen, local changes are is irrelevant to how bad the actual, real temperature - and climactic - changes we face are.

Well obviously, global warming is beneficial to chad southern pine beetles you fucking neet.

My talking point is even if g l o b a l w a r m I n g isn't "real", you still think its a good idea to pollute? Wanna end up like India? Fuckin poopin in the streets

If that's what I wanted I'd just get a job at Reddit and move to San Francisco.

You still want to play this game? Because... you will lose.

Nothing personnel, kid hehe

Coldfacts the Smughog

I don't want to talk to a scientist, those mother fuckers lien and getting me pissed

I do feel for the climate scientists out there. It’s gotta be a hard life when your points are either slapped away by boomers who don’t know how to read simply made charts or regurgitated poorly to advance other agendas by literature students with Harry Potter signs making up 85% of the March for Science.

Ya it really sucks for them. On one hand you got the retards who can't understand the science so they say it's fake news. On the other hand you got the retards who can't under the science and say the world is going to end in 12 years.

We need centrism more than ever.

They are wrong because its already over and we are heading towards full on "everywhere is india slums" because we passed the tipping point long ago and are still not doing nearly enough and the president of the US take on global warming at one point was "chinese conspiracy".

Try thinking longer term than capeshit movie release schedules.

The only thing realer than climate change is the need for researchers to come up with the most dire circumstances in the shortest time frame to get funding.

Be honest, climate change comes and it wipes out the coasts and the flatlanders. Did we really lose anyone important?

all the climate scientists of the world not hired by rightwing thinktanks in the US are making it up to get funding

nice boomer talking point, you forgot to mention the clean energy cartel.

Did you really take that seriously?

I always serious post on global warming its almost as important as gamergate.

It's harder for economists, who have to constantly here illiterates argue with them over why rent control or minimum wages or trade protections or whatever garbage is great. At least the consensus of climate science aligns with the current cultural elite. But when an economist comes in and says "global warming is happening but humans will probably adapt fine and it's not as big a problem as unfunded social security liabilities" the knives come out.

Yeah, I can see why the guy chimed in there, considering any kind of action towards combating climate change leads to economic impact of some kind. Econ on reddit is a shitshow for discussion outside of /r/badeconomics.

The guy should have phrased his points a bit more eloquently though. That, or realize that reddit is full of fearmongering retards who think the population will be wiped out in a decade and accept the fact that his points won't go anywhere.

Nah, "the average temperatures are rising because the sun is getting hotter" is the point where you recognize that you don't want /u/ikonoqlast on your side because he's a big liability and a big idiot, and mock him mercilessly.

Based

I hope you saw my edit btw

I'm just sitting back as a Political Economy major while the STEMcels and English majors start gunning each other down.

I'm an economics phd. Fite me irl.

The dude's arguments are a bit strong for my liking but he weaken them a bit and he's basically right. Climate scientists are qualified to talk about climate change but not qualified to talk about the economic impacts of climate change. When you start doing that, you need to consult economists and use their methodological tools.

And guess what? If you set the catastrophic "the Earth will become Venus" scenarios aside, then the projected economic impacts of warming are much smaller than most people on the left would believe, tantamount to shaving a few percentage points off of gdp last I checked. You'd think this is good news, but in fact the people who say the climate change means we have to get rid of capitalism or whatever do not take this sort of analysis kindly. It's the classic "I'm pro-science as long as the expert consensus confirms my ideological priors" bullshit.

Citation needed.

idk, quick Google yields a report that says that says that GDP will be about 10% lower at the end of the century than if there's no warming. That's about the equivalent of having .01% less economic growth per year for the next 80 years. Doesn't sound that catastrophic in those terms, does it?

Heat-related deaths, coastal property losses, deaths related to bad air quality. So, basically a few 9/11's worth of disaster for the US alone.

Not mentioned is the massive deaths and damage worldwide. If you think America sucked at coping with hurricanes in New Orleans and Costa Rica, you should see poorer countries like India.

Yes. Those are the particular forms of costs that will be imposed. I'm not saying inaction is the optimal policy, just that it's not like civilization is going to collapse over this.

If climate change could be averted at the cost of a "few 9/11s" it would be a no-brainer. Oh but of course according to progressives geoengineering and nuclear power aren't allowed as cheap solutions. No, we have to stop using air conditioning and shit.

I used to think that of the big three ethical theories, Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics, the last one doesn't belong because no one reasonable seriously subscribes to it.

After looking at the plastic straw bans in the US I realized that I was half-wrong, I was right about "no one reasonable" but it's definitely a thing that must be reckoned with.

Anyways, I see a problem with the GDP predictions by economists: they implicitly assign a moral worth to people weighted by their productivity. When you say, oh, it's only 5% of GDP lost by 2100, that could very well translate to like half a billion dead Africans.

they implicitly assign a moral worth to people weighted by their productivity.

They don't. GDP predictions just tell you what sort of wealth you'll have to realize whatever outcomes... the actual allocation of those resources is up to whatever individuals and moral systems. But if you even remotely ascribe to consequentialism, how do you avoid the conclusion that a person who is highly productive, earns a good wage, and uses it to benefit good more than someone else does not have a higher moral worth than someone who doesn't? Assuming they didn't make their money off of blood diamonds or whatever.

Usually when I hear people bitterly say that being rich and donating to charity doesn't make you good I just see it as raw cope.

But if you even remotely ascribe to consequentialism, how do you avoid the conclusion that a person who is highly productive, earns a good wage, and uses it to benefit good more than someone else does not have a higher moral worth than someone who doesn't?

They are having higher instrumental moral worth, but not higher terminal moral worth.

They are having higher instrumental moral worth, but not higher terminal moral worth.

It's been a while since I took an ethics course but this sounds like a fancier version of raw cope to me. What sort of thought experiment would motivate someone to distinguish between the two?

if you kill a billionaire who'd buy mosquito nets that'd save 10,000 African children, you kill 10,001 people. The instrumental worth of the billionaire is grounded in the terminal worth of himself and the people he saves from death.

Isn't this just semantics then? "Being a good person" in consequentialism is all about trying to maximize your instrumental value. Not your terminal value by being some sort of metaphysical saint or utility monster.

In consequentialism you can't maximize or change your terminal value at all, as a person who perceives and suffers. Because everyone perceives and suffers.

But yeah, you are supposed to assign higher instrumental value to the people who can and do help the less fortunate.

So let's retrace back to the argument that started it: the economists who predicted the 5% GDP hit by 2100 (on average), and the way you and everyone who uses that prediction to say that AGW is not that bad, sort of miss the point. The implication is that everyone loses 5% in income, with a sort of non-discriminating bell curve. The real prediction is that Canadians and Russians get a big benefit, and a lot of Africans just fucking die, but that doesn't affect the global GDP much because those Africans subsist on like $1/day, so.

And I'm pointing out that looking at the effects of AGW on global GDP implicitly means that it's OK to kill a thousand of $1/day producing Africans if that results in a $100,000 Canadian earning $101,000 afterwards.

I don't think that that is moral or fair under any morality or fairness system.

and the way you and everyone who uses that prediction to say that AGW is not that bad, sort of miss the point.

What economists are saying is the equivalent of saying "it's better for society to collectively have the capacity to produce 2000 calories of food every day per individual than 1800 calories of food every day per individual." Yes there might be possible distributions of those 2000 calories that are worse than the possible distributions of those 1800 calories across all individuals but the idea is that barring some special reason we should assume that for pretty much any value system, it's better to have 2000 calories than 1800 calories.

So when economists say we should maximize GDP, that's not because GDP maximization is a terminal good and rich people have millions times more terminal value, it's because for pretty much any reasonable moral system you will be able to achieve a better long-term outcome if you have more GDP. If maximizing GDP comes at the expense of greater inequality, then find ways to do minimally-distortionary transfers. So for example:

And I'm pointing out that looking at the effects of AGW on global GDP implicitly means that it's OK to kill a thousand of $1/day producing Africans if that results in a single $100,000 earning Canadian earning $101,000 afterwards.

Under a regime where this Canadian faces a 99% marginal tax rate that is used to benefit poor Africans then yes this would be better. Obviously there would be frictions here but GDP maximization provides a first-order approximiation for the idea that we should maximize the size of the pie, then squabble over distribution.

😴😴😴

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What economists are saying is the equivalent of saying "it's better for society to collectively have the capacity to produce 2000 calories of food every day per individual than 1800 calories of food every day per individual." Yes there might be possible distributions of those 2000 calories that are worse than the possible distributions of those 1800 calories across all individuals but the idea is that barring some special reason we should assume that for pretty much any value system, it's better to have 2000 calories than 1800 calories.

The argument is not about ceteris paribus, we are discussing a particular class of distributions where you appear to find acceptable to go from 1500 to 1200 calories a day for some guy in Africa if it allows some guy in Sweden to go from 500,000 to 500,300 calories per day. Because, you say, if we didn't know that this is the distribution we are facing, then the larger pie would be better.

Normal people exponentially discount marginal utility of money and then pay attention to the actual distribution in order to properly calculate utility of this or that outcome, precisely to avoid complete insanity like that. Economists don't.

Btw I suspect that this is because economists don't like to think about people at all, because walking around and destroying value by turning food into literal shit is not a reasonable economic activity. A reasonable economic activity is investing value to produce even more value, and for that my dollar is exactly as good as M'Pemba's, and then you have various fascinating results like the Coase theorem etc. While ensuring that M'Pemba has enough money to turn some food into shit is much less exciting.

This is why Kaldor-Hicks efficiency is very difficult to morally condemn

I find the idea that it's OK for M'Pemba to starve to death if that provides me with a monetary equivalent of one extra cup of coffee per day (that I don't even spend on coffee, I have that need saturated, but on a slightly more posh car) extremely easy to morally condemn. Vague handwaving about long term outcomes is vague.

If maximizing GDP comes at the expense of greater inequality, then find ways to do minimally-distortionary transfers.

In case of AGW this implies a transfer of M'Pemba and all his relatives to your suburb, just saying. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course!

All them words won't bring your pa back.

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The argument is not about ceteris paribus, we are discussing a particular class of distributions where you appear to find acceptable to go from 1500 to 1200 calories a day for some guy in Africa if it allows some guy in Sweden to go from 500,000 to 500,400 calories per day.

No, it is about ceteris peribus. Maximize the size of the pie and assume that distributional issues are second-order. If they're not, explain why not.

Normal people exponentially discount marginal utility of money and then pay attention to the actual distribution in order to properly calculate utility of this or that outcome, precisely to avoid complete insanity like that. Economists don't.

Very few economists would endorse the position you describe here. That doesn't indicate confusion on their end, it indicates confusion on yours. This is as naive as saying that economists believe that seriously believe people are 100% rational all the time. It's confusing an assumption used for methodological convenience with an actual empirical assertion.

I find the idea that it's OK for M'Pemba to starve to death if that provides me with a monetary equivalent of one extra cup of coffee per day (that I don't even spend on coffee, I have that need saturated, but on a slightly more posh car) extremely easy to morally condemn. Vague handwaving about long term outcomes is vague.

How about a scenario where you both have posh cars and don't starve? Or a scenario where you both starve? The former is clearly better and the latter is clearly worse, right? Okay, that's Kaldor-Hicks efficiency. Again, saying that there are better distributions of wealth given an aggregate resource amount is a second-order issue that isn't usually addressed by economists not because it's considered morally irrelevant but because it's seen as an issue whose resolution can be addressed after wealth maximization.

In case of AGW this implies a transfer of M'Pemba and all his relatives to your suburb, just saying.

I'm fine with this. Open the borders.

You can type 10,000 characters and you decided that these were the one's that you wanted.

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No, it is about ceteris peribus. Maximize the size of the pie and assume that distributional issues are second-order. If they're not, explain why not.

We are discussing the effects of AGW on GDP and if the projected 3-5% drop by 2100 is a big deal.

I have read some stuff about that analysis, and I know that this drop is not uniform, in fact it predicted a tiny positive effect for most OECD countries.

This is deeply concerning, because there are good reasons to suspect that the world's poorest areas will be hit disproportionately hard but that wouldn't show up as anything terrible in the global GDP statistic because they are poor. For example, Africa accounts for 2.7% of the global GDP, so the situation could be as bad as literally 1.2 billion people straight up dying with less effect on the global GDP than predicted.

We also know that this is the default outcome, we know the default ceteris and how nonparibus they are. It's not like that 3-5% drop might go any way, we have no way to know so by default assume that it's no big deal, no, we know that by default it will be quite a disaster and a lot of coordinated effort will be required to mitigate it.

Like, I'm not proclaiming that we are all going to die, I'm reminding everyone that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and this looks very much like the case with that GDP statistic, it's very misleading.

I'm fine with this. Open the borders.

1.2 billion people my dude. Maybe more.

I don't have enough spoons to read this shit

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Like, I'm not proclaiming that we are all going to die, I'm reminding everyone that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and this looks very much like the case with that GDP statistic, it's very misleading.

It's fair to say that given no other policies that yes it's not like we'll all take 3% hits to our paychecks and life will go on. Some people will be impacted more than others, as is the case with basically any policy change. However, the distributional impacts can be addressed through transfers and I'm totally fine with a discussion along with "how do we compensate people for being negatively impacted by climate change". The 3-5% figure is still relevant because that tells us something about the upper bound of the magnitude of transfers, which ultimately tend to be lower than a lot of people like to act is the case.

1.2 billion people my dude. Maybe more.

Okay. If there are concerns about externalities on political economy that's fine by me - maybe we'll just take 10% of that. Who knows. Surely a lot more than we currently do, however.

The 3-5% figure is still relevant because that tells us something about the upper bound of the magnitude of transfers, which ultimately tend to be lower than a lot of people like to act is the case.

Fair point.

Okay. If there are concerns about externalities on political economy that's fine by me - maybe we'll just take 10% of that. Who knows. Surely a lot more than we currently do, however.

Why not export our superior institutions instead? ;)

Why not export our superior institutions instead? ;)

What, through invasions? I think that's been tried..

And large scale immigration from poor to rich countries has not been tried, do you think that it's a point in its favor?

I'm fine with opening the gates gradually and seeing what happens.

Well, certain European countries took it upon themselves to provide a natural experiment, let's wait and see how it works out for them.

Heat-related deaths

Which will be kids and old people, neither of which this sub likes.

coastal property losses

So we're wiping out the blue state voters, too. This is good for dramacoin.

deaths related to bad air quality

This is basically just eugenics in action separating the weak from the strong.

basically a few 9/11's worth of disaster for the US alone.

It really only compares to 9/11 if we get to scapegoat the Muslims/Jews/Mormons for it.

You've just convinced me that we need climate change now more than ever.

You are so wacky! In fack, you sir are very similar to The Joker from the Batman franchuse.

Capeshit insults are beneath your dignity, good xir. You should be ashamed.

Sure, you're probably right. But his position on climate change is:

1) The Earth is warming as a result of natural phenomena (warming Sun).

2) This warming is beneficial.

So I'm not going to listen to anything he has to say on the economic level.

Yeah, I'm not going to defend that. But it is noteworthy that the warming will undoubtedly be beneficial to many people and even acting like this is true makes people angry.

The amount of people that will benefit from climate change is a fraction of the amount of people it will hurt. That's probably why people get angry if you say climate change is beneficial to some people, it's misleading.

The amount of people that will benefit from climate change is a fraction of the amount of people it will hurt.

A much larger fraction than most people would think.

And it's not misleading because people already underestimate this. Denying that it will benefit many people is misleading.

Sure, it's probably a much larger fraction than people realize. But that's like saying the Nazi party did a lot of good for Germany, probably a much larger fraction than most people would think.

That doesn't change the fact that the negitively out weigh the positives.

"economist=scientist" Fuck right off XD

See, problem is, I'm a scientist. And the 'science' the AGW movement is predicated on is bullshit. Take Mann's 'Hockey Stick'. First problem- it's absolutely the wrong statistical tool. Second problem- it refutes the AGW hypothesis. Sorry, if your theory is that human industrial activity is changing the environment, the fact that your model bends in 1900 disproves your theory. 1800ish? OK. 1900? Far too late. Industrialization was already well underway by then.

HAHAHA

Its amazing how easy it is to find a climate change denier when the shit is so simple even bus drivers can understand it, pollution is bad mmk.

"No you dont get it pollution and completely upending ecosystems average temperatures are good because 1 american thinktank funded by the oil companies said so"