Monday, May 07, 2007
Important and important: different scales
Small-scale important: One of my hens (a lovely-but-easily-spooked Welsumer variously know as 'red' or 'the chicken chicken' or 'spaz') went broody on us in a 'stolen' (hidden) nest outside the henyard (she carefully laid every day at lunch when Bill let them out). We tracked her down and retrieved hen+eggs, which we moved to the henhouse. We did this last night; this morning she ignored the eggs she woke up on top of and started throwing herself at the netting trying to get back to her (now empty) nest. Dedicated, but irrational. *sigh* I was sort of getting used to the idea of little chicks running around, though god knows what I would have done with the males. I need work on this suburban farming thing :-/
Large-scale important: This piece by Robert Higgs on Scientific Consenseus and why it's not all it's cracked up to be. A quote:
Finally, we need to develop a much keener sense of what a scientist is qualified to talk about and what he is not qualified to talk about. Climatologists, for example, are qualified to talk about the science of climatology (though subject to all the intrusions upon pure science I have already mentioned). They are not qualified to say, however, that "we must act now" by imposing government "solutions" of some imagined sort. They are not professionally knowledgeable about what risk is better or worse for people to take; only the individuals who bear the risk can make that decision, because it's a matter of personal preference, not a matter of science. Climatologists know nothing about cost/benefit considerations; indeed, most mainstream economists themselves are fundamentally misguided about such matters (adopting, for example, procedures and assumptions about the aggregation of individual valuations that lack a genuine scientific basis). Climate scientists are the best qualified people to talk about climate science, but they have no qualifications to talk about public policy, law, or individual values, rates of time preference, and degrees of risk aversion. In talking about desirable government action, they give the impression that they are either fools or charlatans, but they keep talking?worst of all, talking to doomsday-seeking journalists? nevertheless. ¶ 3:55 PM
Large-scale important: This piece by Robert Higgs on Scientific Consenseus and why it's not all it's cracked up to be. A quote:
Finally, we need to develop a much keener sense of what a scientist is qualified to talk about and what he is not qualified to talk about. Climatologists, for example, are qualified to talk about the science of climatology (though subject to all the intrusions upon pure science I have already mentioned). They are not qualified to say, however, that "we must act now" by imposing government "solutions" of some imagined sort. They are not professionally knowledgeable about what risk is better or worse for people to take; only the individuals who bear the risk can make that decision, because it's a matter of personal preference, not a matter of science. Climatologists know nothing about cost/benefit considerations; indeed, most mainstream economists themselves are fundamentally misguided about such matters (adopting, for example, procedures and assumptions about the aggregation of individual valuations that lack a genuine scientific basis). Climate scientists are the best qualified people to talk about climate science, but they have no qualifications to talk about public policy, law, or individual values, rates of time preference, and degrees of risk aversion. In talking about desirable government action, they give the impression that they are either fools or charlatans, but they keep talking?worst of all, talking to doomsday-seeking journalists? nevertheless. ¶ 3:55 PM
