Re: Michael Crichton dies

[Michiel Pillet <blackalpha195@gmail.com>]

> Not in the least. He only criticizes what he lets Jeff Goldblum put into
> words: "You only ever asked whether you _could_ do it. Whether you _should_
> do it -- that question was never asked." It's an ordinary "beware the mad
> scientists" story: enough scientists are careless and/or evil that if you
> don't constantly watch what they're doing, they'll end up killing us all,
> even if they don't want to rule the world like a Bond villain -- so better
> watch them and restrict what they can do. Biotechnology was just the latest
> newsworthy discipline that Crichton could have used.

How do you make the jump from the Goldblum line to the "mad scientist
story" here?

> (And on top of that, it's a painfully obvious Greek tragedy: every single
> person in the book who burdens guilt upon their shoulders is killed by the
> dinosaurs.)

Two examples from the first book: Robert Muldoon and Donald Gennaro.
Two examples from the movie: Henry Wu and John Hammond.

>> In State of Fear Crichton criticizes a blind belief in anthropogenic
>> global warming (NOT climate change). In Congo he criticizes scientific
>> accuracy as a tool for predicting future events. Let's take State of
>> Fear as an example. Unlike a vast majority of the public, he engages
>> in constructive criticism, including his sources. Of course, this does
>> not make him a climatologist, but it certainly does not make his
>> arguments less valuable and he definitely put more thought into it
>> than most people.
>
> It is _unethical_ to believe, and act as if, you understand a subject when
> you don't have the slightest idea how much knowledge on it exists. It is
> _unethical_ to believe, and act as if, everyone is just as ignorant as you.
> And that's _exactly_ what Crichton did. His list of references is completely
> selective -- I don't think that's deliberate; I think that's because he
> simply didn't know any better. He confused ignorance with knowledge. He made
> arguments from ignorance.

Yes, Crichton's list is definitely selective, and obviously he did
that on purpose. There are tons of references to articles making a
stand for global warming, whereas his point is against global warming.
Why would he include references to studies that he did not mention in
his book? Also, do you need to know about every single study to engage
in your own (not research in this case) writing/discussion about a
topic? That is like saying that Darwin should have tested his theory
of evolution on every single species known to science back in the days
before publishing On the Origin of Species. He made arguments based on
studies.

>He brought up points that had been disproven years
> before. And that you call "constructive criticism"???

Please do reference to specific points he brought up that have been
disproven. Science is an approximation to truth that needs constant
refining.

> Crichton's attitude has recently got a name. Google for "egnorance" (that's
> the correct spelling).

Egnorance=egomania+ignorance. Now what do you base the egomania part
on? Isn't _this_ ad hominem?

> Oh no. What people get angry about is what I've explained above. You might
> like to spend a few hours at http://realclimate.org for a start -- and so
> should have Crichton. Or maybe you'd like to start here
> http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/rahmstorf_etal_eos_2004.html
> (that's about cosmic rays and their lack of influence on the climate).

Please read http://www.petitionproject.org/. Certainly one cannot
simply dismiss the denial of global warming. Citing IPCC (Climate
Change 2001): "The Earth's atmosphere-ocean dynamics is chaotic: its
evolution is sensitive to small perturbations in initial conditions.
This sensitivity limits our ability to predict the detailed evolution
of weather; inevitable errors and uncertainties in the starting
conditions of a weather forecast amplify through the forecast. As well
as uncertainty in initial conditions, such predictions are also
degraded by errors and uncertainties in our ability to represent
accurately the significant climate processes." There is no such thing
as scientific consensus about global warming as being caused by
humans, and predicting the future of our climate is simply guessing.
We can't even predict next month's weather accurately.

Anyway, I am starting to get the feeling that this is going beyond the
DML's scope.