tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post5321436702596470163..comments2024-03-18T22:21:33.261-07:00Comments on The Debate Link: Reinventing CharlemagneDavid Schraubhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04946653376744012423noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321349.post-25372711865235300272012-07-24T17:00:44.838-07:002012-07-24T17:00:44.838-07:00I'm pro setting up "no 101" spaces, ...I'm pro setting up "no 101" spaces, where people who have achieved a certain level of understanding/ consensus on an issue can then discuss more complex aspects of it. (E.g. "we all agree Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, now we can discuss where the boundaries should be set without fending off people who don't agree with that premise.") I thought the sort of things they'd do on Alas A Blog were good efforts in that direction, like the posts that were set for only feminist-identified commenters to discuss upon.<br /><br />But I find the frustration with dealing with 101 when one hasn't explicitly set up that space kind of annoying in itself. It's indicative of people who almost can't believe that there's still disagreement on something -- when often that disagreement will be on a matter of American policy and is held by a good 50% of the U.S. population!<br /><br />TNC is himself evincing this in his comparison of climate science to the existence of Charlemagne. By definition, people who think there is human-activity-caused climate change that will become catastrophic are engaging in <i>predictive</i> claims. Moreover, their claims mostly are based on noting how <i>different</i> things today are from things in the past, and forecasting that this will cause the planet to be less hospitable to human life than it was in the past few millennia. I think they're probably right and therefore both take action in my daily life and take action politically to try to ameliorate these problems. But it's something I'm basically betting money on (in the form of voluntary increased costs and voting for people who would mandate increased costs), not that I'm so sure about that I would bet my or others' lives on it.<br /><br />It demonstrates just how incredulous TNC's attitude toward those who disagree with him on this issue is, that he would compare them to people who deny a past historical fact. (I suppose we should be grateful he didn't go for "Holocaust denier.")<br /><br />Also, I'm pretty sure 99% of people who are concerned about catastrophic climate change are as incapable as I am of explaining it well for the people who need a 101 education. It's very much something where one relies on experts, and neither the people who believe nor the people who disbelieve are science literate enough to communicate about it in a way that would be non-laughable to an actual expert. Long term evolution from entire kingdoms to another -- i.e. that we came not only from monkeys but from single-celled life forms -- is almost as bad in terms of requiring better-than-average science literacy to discuss. (Maybe it is worse, but I'm personally better at biology than I am at understanding the subspecialties involved in climate science.)<br /><br />In contrast, for things that happened in the we-had-writing-and-stuff past, I can make a pretty clear case for people who need 101. Eg if I were the kind of person to harass ignorant old women, I could have explained to the senior citizen at the next table last weekend that Article II's "natural born citizen" requirement for the presidency <i>never</i> has been interpreted to mean that both of the candidate's parents have to have been citizens at the time of his birth, and if it had been interpreted that way, Andrew Jackson wouldn't have qualified. <br /><br />Some beliefs are so dumb that they can't stand up to a 30 second explanation. They're not 101, they're the remedial class before you can take 101. And a lot of history is at that remedial/ 101 level. But I'm more skeptical that publicly-debated aspects of either natural or social sciences (I'd consider racism to fit under sociology) are generally at that level.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com