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Comment by rndmize | Hacker News Reader

> Now Congress is considering another way to legislate how science is used. The Honest Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, is another example of what Levy calls a “Trojan horse” law that uses the language of transparency as a cover to achieve other political goals.

Master of darkness, we meet again.

> He sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act (PCIP).

> As the Head of the House Science Committee, Smith has been criticized for promoting climate change denial, baselessly attacking scientific outlets and researchers, and receiving funding from oil and gas companies.[2][3][4][5][6][7] He was formerly a contributor to Breitbart News.[8]

I can only hope that next year after he retires, his district manages to pick someone who isn't even worse.

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Unfortunately this is a losing battle because no matter what is said a laymen will latch on to any uncertainty presented to them regarding scientific discussion(s), be that evolution or climate change.

They don't understand that scientist by nature prefer to never say something is 100% one way or another. This is because we all know over a long enough timeline just about every conceivable outcome will occur and so scientists, rightly, try to be accurate when they talk about this stuff.

Politics isn't about presenting honest clear facts but rather wordplay meant to serve their donors.

Or GMO's... or Colony Collapse... beliefs unsupported by science exist everywhere...

To add to your point, one way to view this is that it reflects the immense difficulty of deeply understanding and discerning the difference between 90%, 99%, 99.9%, 99.99%, and so on.

These inherent difficulties make it very easy to spread confusion and mislead the layman.

Esp. if you are actually trying to spread confusion.

It's a depression ass state of affairs no matter how you slice it.

I sometimes wonder if a truly impartial AI 'judge' can solve this; but even if we achieve some form of advanced AI that could act as that judge I can imagine some people would still fighting tooth and nail because, of course, the creators of the Ai have somehow influenced it's 'thinking' and therefor it is invalid to them.

I don't think it will ever be solved. It will be a continual effort.

Some of the best tools I can think of:

* cultivating a culture of critical thinking and strong opinions weakly held

* increased awareness of cognitive biases and how to reduce them

* educating people how to evaluate evidence and understand how theories develop [1]

* open and honest discussion

* shaming intellectual dishonesty

* constant vigilance

[1] I've been watching the Ring of Truth on YouTube. It's fantastic. We need more content like this. Link: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6MvlS2uHDjhadiMNqqTtZN...

They should apply the same rigor to the economic forecasts for their tax cuts. That would be interesting.

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