[MD] Global Warming: Science or Politics?

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting ian glendinning <psybertron at gmail.com>:

> No formula Platt,
> 
> Beyond the numbers games, it involves recognising "chaotic" type
> unpredictability and uncertainty, and "emergent" effects beyond simple
> causation in complex interconnected systems.

I assume this includes unintended consequences?

> So, for example, whilst we're calculating the value of a space mission
> to intercept a meteor, evaluate it's chances of success, and the
> chances of escape to an extraterrestrial biosphere if it doesn't
> (school-boy maths), the success of the mission may in fact depend on
> ... let me think ... 20th Century cinema culture maybe ?
> 
> .... the outcome may have as much to do with 20th Century cinema
> culture as science or maths.
> 
> And it would be a very strange use of the word "cause" to say the
> failure of the mission was caused by the fact that Joe Crew Member
> never saw the film Apollo 13 and didn't happen to have a roll of Duct
> Tape in his kit bag.
> 
> "A butterfly flies through the forest rain
> And turns the wind into a hurricane.
> A schooboy yawns, sits back, and hits "return"
> And round the world computers crash and burn.

Like you and Arlo and perhaps others, I am intrigued by self-contradictions,
paradoxes, infinite regresses and the like. It almost seems as if we live
in two different worlds, one of classical physics where you can be pretty
damn sure if a safe falls on your head from ten stories up, you are going
to get hurt, the other in quantum weirdness where the home run hit by Bobby
Thompson in 1951 against the Dodgers to give the Giants the pennant was an
easy fly ball out in a parallel universe. This leaves up in the air the question
as to which world the MOQ describes, or whether it is the long sought after
crossover metaphysics that joins these apparent two worlds into one. If that's
the case, I certainly need to be educated as to how the MOQ accomplishes that
feat because I've always applied it to the familiar, classical world where rational
axioms work well enough to keep us thinking esoteric thoughts you like those
you eloquently express above. An ideas you have along this line would be of
interest.

Thanks,
Platt
        


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