26 October 2011

Things it's not possible to both understand and disagree with

Scientific ideas are sometimes a little hard to understand.  But quite a few ideas are so compelling, that once you do understand them, it's basically not possible to disagree.  Here's a short list.  In each case, if you disagree, it's not because you have a legitimate argument with the idea, it's because you don't understand the idea.


The earth is approximately spherical.  Prior to Magellan's first circumnavigation, and more recently, spaceships from which you can actually look and see,  you had to do some slightly sophisticated reasoning to understand this.   Despite the overwhelming evidence, there are still flat-earthers.   In ancient Greece most educated people understood that it was round, and the mathematician Eratosthenes actually figured out how big it is using remarkably simple and primitive tools, and got it right within a few percent.  He also measured the distance to the sun and was pretty close on that too.

Universal gravitation.  Prior to the middle of the 17 century, apparently nobody connected the fact that things fell to earth and the motion of the planets.  Once Newton came up with a formula that predicted everything exactly, nobody was able to disagree.   A little over 200 years later Einstein realized that there were some adjustments that needed to be made at near the speed of light, and that those changes had some profound ramifications, but they didn't change the basic math.

Evolution by natural selection.  A lot of people find this controversial, but if you actually grasp the underlying statistics, the power of even very tiny advantages or disadvantages to change species over many generations is undeniable.   If you don't believe in Darwinian evolution, it's because there's something you're not understanding.   Like understanding the spherical nature of the earth without direct evidence, the math and the biological mechanisms involved are a little hard to get your head around.  But once you do, it's undeniable.   Nobody's thought of a demonstration as compelling as a circumnavigation, but MRSA, MRTB and all those experiments with fruit flies and E Coli sure work for me: These are all clear examples of evolution in action.  Over and over, purported examples of non-evolution have been debunked.  The fossil record, the eye, flagella and more, are all clearly evolutionary developments, and in fact attempts to prove that they are not have generally resulted in strengthening evolution's case. As with Newton and Einstein, there have been some refinements made over the years, but the essential concept remains undeniable.

Keynesian economics.  Even before Keynes published his great book in 1936, his ideas were becoming difficult to argue with.  He'd accurately predicted German hyperinflation, the Great Depression and its recovery during WWII and much more.  But there was a faction that disagreed, and had strong financial support from a few people who had a lot of money.  They mounted an almost completely political campaign to undermine Keynesian thought and managed to create a sizable but closed circle of economists, centered around the University of Chicago, who listened only to each other and ignored uncomfortable facts.  They got little traction until the late 70s, when one of the popular and most compelling Keynesian models, the "Philips Curve", seemed to be wrong.  In fact, there was just a parameter had previously been ignored, or more accurately, misapplied.  The basic idea was still right.  But the politics of that single failure were blown up into what looked to outsiders like a complete repudiation.  More recently, Keynesians predicted the various bubbles and crashes, Japan's lost decade, calculated that the Obama stimulus wouldn't be sufficient, and more.   If you get it, all the evidence supports Keynes' model.

Anthropogenic global climate change.  There were people worried about human-caused climate change from fairly early in the industrial revolution.  Many of these were Luddites, but the horrible working conditions and pervasive soot were serious problems that didn't really get addressed until well into the 20th century.  The solutions found were generally effective and relatively low cost.  The new boogieman is rapidly climbing CO2 emissions, which cause warming and acidification of the oceans, with widespread consequences throughout the climate. The evidence is overwhelming.  Even a little climate change will be enormously costly, in the hundreds of $trillions, and millions or even billions of deaths, while returning fossil fuel consumption to the levels of the first half of the 20th century through alternative energy sources and uses will cost only one or two $trillion.  (the famous "hockey stick" doesn't really get going until the 1970s).   But the beneficiaries of existing modes have enormous money to spend on disinformation and lobbying, and so far, it's working.

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