drnickbone

• drnickboneJul 7, 2014, 11:52 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: VipulNaik’s comment on: Cli­mate sci­ence: how it mat­ters for un­der­stand­ing fore­cast­ing, ma­te­ri­als I’ve read or plan to read, sources of po­ten­tial bias

  On funding, it can be difficult to trace: see this article in Scientific American and the original paper plus the list of at least 91 climate counter-movement organisations, page 4, which have an annual income of over $900 million. A number of these organisations are known to have received funding by companies like Exxon and Koch Industries, though the recent trend appears to be more opaque funding through foundations and trusts.

  On your particular sources, Climate Audit is on that list; also, from his Wikipedia bio it appears that Steve McIntyre was the founder and president of Northwest Explorations inc until it was taken over by CGX Resources to form the oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy Inc. He was a “strategic advisor” to CGX Energy at the time of his critique of the “hockey stick” in 2003.

  Anthony Watts has received funding from the Heartland Institute#Affiliation_with_Heartland_Institute) which is also on the list. He claims it was not for the WUWT blog, and he approached them rather than the other way round.

  Judith Curry has admitted to receiving “some funding from the fossil fuel industry” DeSmogBlog quoting Scientific American though again she claims no correlation with her views.

• drnickboneJul 7, 2014, 10:05 PM

  1 point

  on: Cli­mate sci­ence: how it mat­ters for un­der­stand­ing fore­cast­ing, ma­te­ri­als I’ve read or plan to read, sources of po­ten­tial bias

  I’ve noticed that you’ve listed a lot of secondary sources (books, blogs, IPCC summaries) but not primary sources (published papers by scientists in peer-reviewed journals). Is there a reason for this e.g. that you do not have access to the primary sources, or find them indigestible?

  If you do need to rely on secondary sources, I’d suggest to focus on books and blogs whose authors are also producing the primary sources. Of the blogs you mention, I believe that Real Climate and Skeptical Science are largely authored by working climate scientists, whereas the others are not.

  Of course a number of the blogs convey the message that climate science as a whole is utterly partisan and biased, so any output of climate scientists through secondary sources and summaries is untrustworthy. If you can’t analyse the underlying primary evidence, and do not assign negligible prior probability to such a mass scientific conspiracy (or mass scientific error) then it is hard to refute that mindset. But you still have to ask who has the greater incentives here: is it really poorly paid scientists pushing a conspiracy or collective fantasy to get a bit more funding, or is it highly paid lobbyists, firms and commentators defending a trillion dollar industry, one which would be doomed by serious action on climate change?

• drnickboneJul 7, 2014, 9:37 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Luke_A_Somers’s comment on: Quickly pass­ing through the great filter

  This sort of scenario might work if Stage 1 takes a minimum of 12 billion years, so that life has to first evolve slowly in an early solar system, then hop to another solar system by panspermia, then continue to evolve for billions of years more until it reaches multicellularity and intelligence. In that case, almost all civilisations will be emerging about now (give or take a few hundred million years), and we are either the very first to emerge, or others have emerged too far away to have reached us yet. This seems contrived, but gets round the need for a late filter.

• drnickboneJul 7, 2014, 9:10 PM

  1 point

  on: Proper value learn­ing through indifference

  This all looks clever, apart from the fact that the AI becomes completely indifferent to arbitrary changes in its value system. The way you describe it, the AI will happily and uncomplainingly accept a switch from a friendly v (such as promoting human survival, welfare and settlement of Galaxy) to an almost arbitrary w (such as making paperclips), just by pushing the right “update” buttons. An immediate worry is about who will be in charge of the update routine, and what happens if they are corrupt or make a mistake: if the AI is friendly, then it had better worry about this as well.

  Interestingly, the examples you started with suggested that the AI should be rewarded somehow in its current utility v as a compensation for accepting a change to a different utility w. That does sound more natural, and more stable against rogue updates.

• drnickboneJul 1, 2014, 4:55 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  Thanks.… Upvoted for honest admission of error.

• drnickboneJun 30, 2014, 6:31 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  Or moving from conspiracy land, big budget cuts to climate research starting in 2009 might have something to do with it.

  P.S. Since you started this sub-thread and are clearly still following it, are you going to retract your claims that CRU predicted “no more snow in Britain” or that Hansen predicted Manhattan would be underwater by now? Or are you just going to re-introduce those snippets in a future conversation, and hope no-one checks?

• drnickboneJun 29, 2014, 11:43 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  Seems like a bad proxy to me. Is snowfall really that hard a metric to find...?

  Presumably not, though since I’m not making up Met Office evidence (and don’t have time to do my own analysis) I can only comment on the graphs which they themselves chose to plot in 2009. Snowfall was not one of those graphs (whereas it was in 2006).

  However, the graphs of mean winter temperature, maximum winter temperature, and minimum winter temperature all point to the same trend as the air frost and heating-degree-day graphs. It would be surprising if numbers of days of snowfall were moving against that trend.

• drnickboneJun 29, 2014, 11:24 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  I’m sorry, but you are still making inaccurate claims about what CRU predicted and over what timescales.

  The 20 year prediction referred specifically to heavy snow becoming unexpected and causing chaos when it happens. I see no reason at all to believe that will be false, or that it will have only a slim chance of being true.

  The vague “few year” claim referred to snow becoming “rare and exciting”. But arguably, that was already true in 2000 at the time of the article (which was indeed kind of the point of the article). So it’s not necessary to argue about whether snow became even rarer later in the 2000s (or is becoming rarer slower than it used to), when there’s really too little data to know over such a short period.

  There was a totally undated claim referring to future children not seeing snow first-hand. You are clearly assuming that the “few year” time horizon also attached to that strong claim (and is therefore baloney); however, the article doesn’t actually say that, and I rather doubt if CRU themselves ever said that. It does seem very unlikely to me that a climate scientist would ever make such a claim attached to a timescale of less than decades. (Though if they’d really meant hundreds of years, or billions of years, they’d presumably have said that: these guys really aren’t like creationists).

  Finally, the Independent put all of this under a truly lousy and misleading headline, when it is clear from what CRU actually said that snows were not and would not become a thing of the past (just rarer).

  The general problem is that much of the newspaper article includes indirect speech, with only a few direct quotes, and the direct quotes aren’t bound to a timescale (except the specific 20-year quote mentioned above). So it’s hard to know exactly what CRU said.

• drnickboneJun 29, 2014, 7:35 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  P.S. On the more technical points, the 2009 reports do not appear to plot the number of days of snow cover or cold spells (unlike the 2006 report) so I simply referred to the closest proxies which are plotted.

  The “filtering” is indeed a form of local smoothing transform (other parts of the report refer to decadal smoothing) and this would explains why the graphs stop in 2007, rather than 2009: you really need a few years either side of the plotted year to do the smoothing. I can’t see any evidence that the decline in the 80s was somehow factored into the plot in the 2000s.

• drnickboneJun 29, 2014, 7:28 PM

  −2 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize ‘within a few years’ was so vague in English that it could easily embrace decades and I’m being tendentious in thinking that after 14 years we can safely call that prediction failed.

  Got it—so the semantics of “a few years” is what you are basing the “failed prediction” claim on. Fair enough.

  I have to say though that I read the “few years” part as an imprecise period relating to an imprecise qualitative prediction (that snow would become “rare and exciting”). Which as far as my family is concerned has been true. Again in an imprecise and qualitative way. Also, climate scientists do tend to think over a longer term, so a “few years” to a climate scientist could easily mean a few decades.

  And you’re right, no further 5 year period would make snow “a thing of the past” but we already agreed that was the Independent’s headline, and not CRU’s actual prediction. Rare snow in the 2020s is different from no snow in the 2020s.

• drnickboneJun 29, 2014, 6:54 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  Sigh… The only dated prediction in the entire article related to 20 years, not 14 years, and the claim for 20 years was that snow would “probably” cause chaos then. Which you’ve just agreed is very likely to be true (based on some recent winters where some unexpected snow did cause chaos), but perhaps not that surprising (the quote did not in fact claim there would be more chaos than in the 1980s and 1990s).

  All other claims had no specific dates, except to suggest generational changes (alluding to a coming generation of kids who would not have experienced snow themselves).

  Regarding the evidence, I already gave you Met Office statistics, and explained why you can’t get reliable trend info on a shorter timescale. You then asked anecdotal questions (is snow “rare and exciting”, what would kids say if you asked them?) and I gave you anecdotal answers. But apparently that’s not good enough either! Is there any set of evidence that would satisfy you?

  Still if you really want the statistics again, then the very latest published Met Office set runs up to 2009 if you really want to check, and the downward trend lines still continue all the way to the end of that data. See for instance this summary figures 2.32 and 2.35.

  So if you want to claim that the trend in snow has recently stopped/​reversed, then you are looking at a very short period (some cold winters in 2010-14). And over periods that short, it’s entirely possible we’ll have another shift and be back onto the historic trend for the next five year period. So “catch up in six years” doesn’t sound so implausible after all.

• drnickboneJun 29, 2014, 5:02 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  What’s the date?

  By your reaction, and the selective down votes, I have apparently fallen asleep, it is the 2020s already, and a 20-year prediction is already falsified.

  But in answer to your questions:

  A) Heavy snow does indeed already cause chaos in England when it happens (just google the last few years)

  B) My kids do indeed find snow a rare and exciting event (in fact there were zero days of snow here last winter, and only a few days the winter before)

  C) While my kids do have a bit of firsthand knowledge of snow, it is vastly less than my own experience at their age, which in turn was much less than my parents’ experience.

  If you are a resident of England yourself, and have other experiences, then please let me know...

• drnickboneJun 29, 2014, 7:54 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  I think we have agreement that:

  A) The newspaper headline “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past” was incorrect

  B) The Climatic Research Unit never actually made such a prediction

  C) The only quoted statement with a timeline was for a period of 20 years, and spoke of heavy snow becoming rarer (rather than vanishing)

  D) This was an extrapolation of a longer term trend, which continued into the early 2000s (using Met Office data published in 2006, of course after the Independent story)

  E) It is impossible to use short periods (~10 years since 2006) to decide whether such a climatic trend has stopped or reversed.

  I can’t see how that counts as a failed prediction by the CRU (rather than the Independent newspaper). If the CRU had said “there will be less snow in every subsequent year from now, for the next 20 years, in a declining monotonic trend” then that would indeed be a failed prediction. However, the CRU did not make such a prediction… no serious climate researcher would.

• drnickboneJun 28, 2014, 11:39 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  “Over the 2000s” is certainly too short a period to reach significant conclusions. However the longer term trends are pretty clear. See this Met Office Report from 2006.

  Figure 8 shows a big drop in the length of cold spells since the 1960s. Figure 13 shows the drop in annual days of snow cover. The trend looks consistent across the country.

• drnickboneJun 28, 2014, 11:18 PM

  10 points

  in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  Regarding the wine point, it is doubtful if wine grapes ever grew in Newfoundland, as the Norse term “Vinland” may well refer to a larger area. From the Wikipedia article:

  the southernmost limit of the Norse exploration remains a subject of intense speculation. Samuel Eliot Morison (1971) suggested the southern part of Newfoundland; Erik Wahlgren (1986) Miramichi Bay in New Brunswick; and Icelandic climate specialist Pall Bergthorsson (1997) proposed New York City.[26] The insistence in all the main historical sources that grapes were found in Vinland suggests that the explorers ventured at least to the south side of the St. Lawrence River, as Jacques Cartier did 500 years later, finding both wild vines and nut trees.[27] Three butternuts were a further important find at L’Anse Aux Meadows: another species which grows only as far north as the St. Lawrence

  Also, wine grapes certainly do grow in England these days (not just in the Medieval period). There appear to be around 400 vineyards in England currently.

• drnickboneJun 28, 2014, 10:30 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Separat­ing the roles of the­ory and di­rect em­piri­cal ev­i­dence in be­lief for­ma­tion: the ex­am­ples of min­i­mum wage and an­thro­pogenic global warming

  Reading your referenced article (Independent 2000):

  Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.

  Clearly the Climatic Research Unit was not predicting no more snow in Britain by 2014.

  Regarding the alleged “West Side Highway underwater” prediction, see Skeptical Science. It appears Hansen’s original prediction timeframe was 40 years not 20 years, and conditional on a doubling of CO2 by then.

• drnickboneJun 18, 2014, 4:34 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: On Ter­mi­nal Goals and Virtue Ethics

  Note that this also messes up counterfactual accounts of knowledge as in “A is true and I believe A; but if A were not true then I would not believe A”. (If I were not insane, then I would not believe I am Nero, so I would not believe I am insane.)

  We likely need some notion of “reliability” or “reliable processes” in an account of knowledge, like “A is true and I believe A and my belief in A arises through a reliable process”. Believing things through insanity is not a reliable process.

  Gettier problems arise because processes that are usually reliable can become unreliable in some (rare) circumstances, but still (by even rarer chance) get the right answers.

• drnickboneApr 29, 2014, 11:30 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Stuart_Armstrong’s comment on: Siren wor­lds and the per­ils of over-op­ti­mised search

  Except that acting to prevent other AIs from being built would also encroach on human liberty, and probably in a very major way if it was to be effective! The AI might conclude from this that liberty is a lost cause in the long run, but it is still better to have a few extra years of liberty (until the next AI gets built), rather than ending it right now (through its own powerful actions).

  Other provocative questions: how much is liberty really a goal in human values (when taking the CEV for humanity as a whole, not just liberal intellectuals)? How much is it a terminal goal, rather than an instrumental goal? Concretely, would humans actually care about being ruled over by a tyrant, as long as it was a good tyrant? (Many people are attracted to the idea of an all-powerful deity for instance, and many societies have had monarchs who were worshipped as gods.) Aren’t mechanisms like democracy, separation of powers etc mostly defence mechanisms against a bad tyrant? Why shouldn’t a powerful “good” AI just dispense with them?

• drnickboneApr 29, 2014, 10:18 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Stuart_Armstrong’s comment on: Siren wor­lds and the per­ils of over-op­ti­mised search

  This also creates some interesting problems… Suppose a very powerful AI is given human liberty as a goal (or discovers that this is a goal using coherent extrapolated volition). Then it could quickly notice that its own existence is a serious threat to that goal, and promptly destroy itself!

• drnickboneApr 22, 2014, 8:22 AM

  5 points

  on: Siren wor­lds and the per­ils of over-op­ti­mised search

  One issue here is that worlds with an “almost-friendly” AI (one whose friendliness was botched in some respect) may end up looking like siren or marketing worlds.

  In that case, worlds as bad as sirens will be rather too common in the search space (because AIs with botched friendliness are more likely than AIs with true friendliness) and a satisficing approach won’t work.