I don't trust science and I don't trust scientists there I've said it yes it's taking me some courage because after you've watched this video some of you call me a science denier and maybe you're right you know maybe that's what I've become I certainly deny any evidence against the benefits of coffee yes make that triple but seriously I've good reasons to mistrust Science And scientists and so do you I mean look at the stock of a scientist would you trust that guy I wouldn't yes that means you shouldn't trust me either and you shouldn't trust
climate scientists no I don't and that's what I want to talk about today some of you have been following me since approximately the mesoo era and you remember that I've been highly critical of research in the foundations of physics I've literally written an entire book about it back then when people still read books in the Mesozoic Era today we do 10 minutes YouTube videos so to make a long book short most of what physicists do in the foundations of physics today is pseudo science It's Paper production with no scientific Merit that teaches us nothing about
nature it's mathematical fiction multiverses tales about the origin of the universe and invisible particles that no one ever finds but that in and of itself is not the problem wait I'm serious damn it it happen happens every once in a while that some research area drifts off into pseudoscience for example the early studies on extrasensory perception ESP for short that's telepathy telekinesis and so on that was once proper science it was a phenomenon worth investigating I mean who hasn't wished they could use one or the other Magical Force of course scientists were on the case
but as time went on it became clear that there was nothing to find and the people who were still working on it were just pretending to do science with sloppy statistics so pseudo science pretends to be science but isn't this happens because scientists not only make mistakes they sometimes make new mistakes and if that happens the scientific method itself needs to develop to DeMark the new mistake as pseudoscience ESP studies for example led to the development of better statistical methods such as double blind trials the new mistake in physics was that physicists came to believe
that if you can write it in maths and it's falsifiable then it's scientific unfortunately it's the other way round if it's scientific then it's falsifiable now if you make that mistake then suddenly all kinds of nonsense ideas become scientific and that in a nut is what happened in the foundations of physics but the problem isn't that parts of physics drifted into pseudo science per se because this happens every once in a while in the Natural Evolution of the Sciences the problem is that it hasn't had any consequences we've recognized the problem with ESP studies chucked
them out of universities and updated statistical methods to prevent that from happening again but physicists have been inventing unobservable things that no one ever finds for half a century and are still happily doing it believing its proper science and if it can happen in physics it can happen in other disciplines too that's why after I finished writing my book in 2016 I began to worry that climate change was indeed a hoax I can't blame people for looking at the foundations of physics concluding that much of it is obviously and then saying well see you can't
trust scientists they're just making up climate change because I worried about the exact same thing I haven't talked about this because I'm afraid that this will just give some people another justification to question science but I've come to think that not talking about it just makes it worse it makes it look like we've got something to hide if you mistrust scientists you're not alone a recent study by members of the Strategic Council of the US American National Academy of Sciences found that about 80% of those ped say scientists are competent and trustworthy but the remaining
20% and doubt scientists motives they doubt that scientists will stick with science when it goes against the scientist self-interest like assess to Grants or other financial support I think they have good reason for this doubt indeed the pursuit of self-interests mostly Financial stability is what's driving the problem in physics it's baked into the current organization of the research system the vast majority of scientists I know are not doing research to get rich if you're interested in money you do something else like getting born rich but still they need some income to pay rent and feeds
the kids right and this is why they have a strong incentive to inflate the relevance of their research to most of them this comes naturally because they're excited about what they're doing but the scientific Community still has no requirements whatsoever that scientists address their own biases there's no education no training no guidelines nothing that you expect scientists to generally exaggerate the relevance of their research isn't just a problem for the public perception it feeds back into the community you now have all these people telling each other constantly that what they do is super important and
they come to believe it it's a classic example of what's called social reinforcement yes same spirit that keeps Flat Earth as going and is the same thing going going on in climate science of course does that mean that climate change is a hoax no it's worse than that I'm not a climate scientist and I swear I have no aspirations to become one but I've spent a lot of time trying to understand the basics read a lot of papers and textbooks and attended seminars and talked to climate scientists Etc I'm not asking you to trust me
or anyone really but I found no major reason for concern about climate science is the climate changing yes are we causing it yes every other option for what could be causing climate change or the denier arguments that you've heard have long been ruled out it's the sun we're coming out of the little Ice Age cosmic rays and so on it's not like climate scientists ignored these possibilities the deniers are just repeating stuff that was lay to rest decades ago yes climate models have some problems which I've talked about a few times before but their biggest
problem seems to be that they underestimate the pace of warming and the uncertainty and this returns me to the social problem I found that climate scientists clearly do have social problems in their Community but these problems present themselves totally differently than in the foundations of physics in the foundations of physics scientists basically seem to have concluded that they don't need to care about what the public thinks they get paid anyway so now they just ignore all criticism climate scientists in contrast are afraid of the public they're afraid of being hunted by activists on the left
or the right they're afraid of having the Privacy being violated and of being quoted out of context they're afraid of being called alarmist they're afraid of being harassed by climate deniers they're afraid of being dragged into decades long lawsuits because these things have happened and continue to happen and honestly I think that they're afraid isn't entirely a bad thing because it makes their arguments much more careful and watertight but it does create a problem it introduces a bias in their arguments they're afraid of being called alarmist and they're afraid of giving anyone reason to dismiss
their conclusion and that creates incentives to make the situation look less scary and to underestimate uncertainties basically it's right that you should trust climate scientists but the conclusion from that isn't what climate change denies wanted to be it's not that climate change is a hoax is that it's almost certainly worse than the impression they raise so whom can you trust trust no one what you can trust for the most part is data maths and logic at least on the physical sciences and I count climate science as physics it's incredibly rare for data to be wrong
or fraudulent and for that to remain undiscovered it happens but it's rare it's likewise rare that maths or statistical analysis is just wrong and for that not to be criticized or corrected indeed the problem in the foundations of physics is not that the data or math is wrong is that they have no data and the maths isn't about anything in particular and finally there's logic logic is your friend trust arguments not people this video doesn't have a sponsor because I was afraid it might upset some people but since you're here already let me give you
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