Home > AGW, Bret Stephens, carbon pricing, climate change, Lubos Motl, markets, preferences > [Update] Mind Games/Luboš Motl: how an absence of functioning markets means that I’m right, but you’re a delusional, neurotic "zealot"

[Update] Mind Games/Luboš Motl: how an absence of functioning markets means that I’m right, but you’re a delusional, neurotic "zealot"

[Update below]

My last piece (on Bret Stephen‘s straight-faced but ridiculous dismissal in the WSJ of all concerns about climate change as a “sick-souled religion” and a “nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God”) brought the following piece of mail, from Luboš Motl, a theoretical physicist who blogs frequently from a contrarian view on climate change.

With Luboš’ kind permission, I offer his email and my response as a further illustration of the common dynamics of misperception and tribal side-taking (as I have noted recently in the context of remarks by Nick Kristof) that feed into conflicts over unowned or unprotected resources (and abound here, where it is difficult to “see” the climate and what influences, if any, we have on it over the course of decades and centuries).

My interlocutor writes:

Dear Tom,

did you write the mises.org text? It’s just terrible. I find it extremely zealous, insulting, and avoiding the essence of all the discussions here – scientific, sociological, and others. Why the hell do you think that “scientists” have concerns? Scientists are not there to have concerns. Scientists are there to understand and predict phenomena. It is green activists and politicians who have or may have “concerns”. I didn’t find anything insulting in the WSJ piece. It was a nice text. The very fact about the frequent and completely irrational usage of words like “concern” is a *proof* of a mass neurosis, as far as I am “concerned”.

Best, Lubos

My response:

Dear Lubos:

Thanks for your comment.  Yes, of course I wrote it.  I’m not entirely surprised that you found my piece insulting, as I meant it as a put down – but of Stephens, not you.  In any case, if you did find it insulting, it’s curious that you don’t find Stephen’s piece also insulting: the most offensive aspects of my remarks did nothing but hold the mirror of psychobabble to it, which is entirely fair.  But of course most my remarks were analytical and showed how it is Stephens who is trying to dismiss all debate by ignoring all rational disagreement and attacking a broad-brush strawman that all who worry about anything are irrational.  If I failed to address science arguments for or against global warming it is because of Stephen’s failure to raise them.

It looks to me that it is Stephen’s argument that is zealous; is mine?  Sure, I care enough about this issue to write about it, but does that make me different from him – or you, who troubled to respond to me?

You say I “avoid the essence of all the discussions here – scientific, social and others”, but I’m not sure what you mean.  Is it not rather Stephens who has avoided discussing anything but the psychological, and I who have tried to point it out?

Your thoughts on scientists are interesting, too.  Are they supposed to be emotionless and amoral automatons, with no reason to actually care about their research or its implications?  Sorry, but you can’t take human nature out of the human, nor the scientist out of society – nor should we.  (If you have an opposite ideal, are you suggesting that you yourself out to stop blogging?)  Perhaps what we could consider is to stop the public funding of science and technology research, as it tends to reinforce government power and the political football of struggles over resources  – where do you stand on that?

You say that it is “only green activists and politicians” who do have concerns, but obviously that’s wrong – you have concerns, so does Stephens and Chris Horner; we all do, and we are all entitled to our own preferences, and it is natural for us to express them when the absence of markets and property rights make words the only currency by which we can express our preferences.  This a very basic observation of libertarian economics, Lubos.  So far from “concern” being a “‘proof’ of mass neurosis”, all that it shows us is that an issue is a politicized one, whereby different interest groups are fighting over the wheel of government and public opinion, since the absence of markets makes it otherwise impossible for them to express their preferences through voluntary transactions.

Regards,

Tom

Check.

[Update:  Here is Lubos’ response; my further responses are in bold:]

Dear Tokyo Tom,

I apologize but I apparently agree with Stephens that those who want to create “global worries” are a priori irrational. It’s the same sentiment that leads Jehovah’s Wittnesses to predict a new coming of the Lord all the time.

TT:  While some aspects of the “Warmers” and the Jehovah’s Witnesses may be linked, the Warmers are descendent’s of those who raised awareness and fought for control of REAL pollution in the 60’s and 70’s.  Warmers also point to REAL phenomena, like increases in GHG levels, acidifying oceans, dramatic warming in the higher latitudes, pronounced climate zone shifts, etc.

They never learn anything from their failures and try to predict things that can’t be predicted and pretend that clearly very unlikely things are likely. The only different aspect of the AGW cult is that they also include a lot of scientific buzzwords but they don’t do proper science because they don’t abandon conjectures that have been falsified. In some sense, bad science is even worse than pure religion because the conclusions are equally crappy and moreover, it contaminates the good name of science.

TT:  Care to elaborate on your complaints?

 

You say I “avoid the essence of all the discussions here – scientific, social and others”, but I’m not sure what you mean.  Is it not rather Stephens who has avoided discussing anything but the psychological, and I who have tried to point it out?

 

I don’t see anything wrong with him discussing the psychological aspect. But he is doing this thing rationally, too. This AGW thing is such a big mass movement that psychology – or psychiatry – is indeed among the most relevant disciplines to study the phenomenon. You didn’t even discuss psychology, at least not rationally. Besides psychology, there are hundreds of science questions involved. But the AGW proponents tend to avoid all these “detailed” science topics, referring to “consensus” and all this irrelevant psychological crap instead – which is why psychology is so important to study them scientifically.
TT:  Stephens’ discussion of the psychology of belief in and of itself is fine.  It’s his pretense that EVERYONE who takes a different view than himself is either masking an ideology or is irrational (or both) that offends, and is obviously unsupportable.  If Stephens is “rationally” engaged in logical fallacies, then he’s being deliberately deceptive; otherwise, he’s engaged in self-deception of the type he accuses others of.

 

Your thoughts on scientists are interesting, too.  Are they supposed to be emotionless and amoral automatons, with no reason to actually care about their research or its implications?

 

Of course that an “ideal scientist” is like that because science is ideally disconnected from emotions. And of course that the “real scientist” is never like that. But a person whose main contributions are “emotions” and “concerns” shouldn’t be labeled as a scientist. He might also be a scientist in his spare time but this particular manifestation of his life is not about science, it is about emotions, politics, and activism, so it is plain dishonest to use the term “scientist”.
TT:  I would agree that a scientist may have little or nothing to add to a discussion of policy – and that others should not assume such expertise – but it is not only impractical to not refer to the credentials of a scientist who chooses to get involved in political analysis, but perhaps dishonest not to.  Moreover, scientists may of course have much to offer in policy discussions.

 

Sorry, but you can’t take human nature out of the human, nor the scientist out of society – nor should we.

 

Sorry but I find it absolutely essential to remove the emotional aspect and politics from science. If it is not taken away, it is not science. We clearly disagree about absolutely fundamental things here. Your formulation indicates that you can’t even imagine how it could be taken away – in other words, you can’t even imagine how a scientist could possibly exist. That’s too bad.

TT:  Of course I can “imagine” removing emotion and politics from science; I just believe that it is naive to assume that it is ever going to happen.  Further, there are probably good arguments to be made that science is driven by emotion and subconscious desires, so that “success” in removing them from “science” would actually yield less scientific progress, not more.  The real issue relates to the (corruptible) role science plays in group decision-making.

 

(If you have an opposite ideal, are you suggesting that you yourself out to stop blogging?)

 

I am blogging and in that role, I am a blogger. In fact, I am a kind of full time blogger, in some sense. 😉 And of course, a part of my motivation is to counteract the “activists” who are using science incorrectly. So I am, in some sense, in a similar position with the opposite sign. Unlike them, I don’t hide it. And unlike them, I think it is extremely wrong if the scientific discourse is driven largely by activists of either sign.

TT:  While your stated aims may be admirable, Lubos, they are inescapably a surface manifestation of your own policy goals and preferences.

 

Perhaps what we could consider is to stop the public funding of science and technology research, as it tends to reinforce government power and the political football of struggles over resources  – where do you stand on that?

 

Of course that I see this as a good point. Climate science is a textbook example where the “concern” written above has already materialized – the government funding has completely destroyed the scientific integrity in a whole scientific discipline. When one builds accelerators, there’s a lot of money to be paid. When one wants to research fundamental physics – string theory – one needs to hire very smart people. The same with DNA research etc. etc. But that doesn’t mean that every penny going to something called “science” is constructive. The money in climate science has been deliberately used to hire a lot of average workers and downright morons whose goal was to confirm predetermined ideological cliches. The community expanded 10-fold and not surprisingly, 90% of them are morons who are hired to promote “global warming” directly or indirectly. That’s very bad and the people who are doing these things even today should be executed as soon as possible, as far as I can say. Again, this opinion of mine is politics – it is politics trying to protect science from dirt and collapse.
TT:  Obviously we have common concerns here, although my view is that the unfortunate role of government in climate science has not so polluted the results as to wholly discredit them.  There are lots of incentives to confirm results and to correct bad work, and many organizations with quite different views and interests involved in the cross-checking.

 

You say that it is “only green activists and politicians” who do have concerns, but obviously that’s wrong – you have concerns, so does Stephens and Chris Horner; we all do, and we are all entitled to our own preferences, and it is natural for us to express them when the absence of markets and property rights make words the only currency by which we can express our preferences.

 

But it is not correct to use the word “science” to advocate concerns that cannot be substantiated by the scientific method, regardless what the proponents of these concerns are doing in their spare time.
TT:  We are currently conducting an uncontrolled experiment on Planet Earth, Lubos.  Isn’t the real question not whether “science” is involved in measuring changes, parsing through paleodata, making hypotheses and reviewing them in the face of new information, but simply how long we should let the experiment continue and accelerate uncontrolled, before we make private and collective decisions to respond to the changes, including modifying the experiment?  Because the experiment involves common resources, inescapably decisions about maintaining and modifying the experiment are unavoidable “political”, about which all have rights to express concerns, even concerns that seem to concern YOU.

 

This a very basic observation of libertarian economics, Lubos.  So far from “concern” being a “‘proof’ of mass neurosis”, all that it shows us is that an issue is a politicized one, whereby different interest groups are fighting over the wheel of government and public opinion, since the absence of markets makes it otherwise impossible for them to express their preferences.

 

That’s completely right. That’s why I fight against this pseudoscientific movement. It is about promoting some people’s interests through government regulation which is already too bad and it is even worse when science enters as a hostage.

 

TT:  It’s helpful to fight against pseudoscience, but that’s a fight that one should wage on all sides, not merely against those whose policy view you disagree with.  The case against pseudoscience (and wishful thinking) from the “skeptics” is quite strong.  Besides the issue of partiality, it is clearly wrong and not forthright (and perhaps deliberately deceptive) to ascribe irrationality to all those who have different preferences over how to manage the global atmospheric commons.
Best
LM