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Comment by cromwellian | Hacker News Reader

And? The fact that I dislike a politician doesn’t mean I write code to attack him.

For example, if 97% of the worlds leading authorities on climate science have consensus, wouldn’t you agree it is better to rank such consensus higher? The right wing perceives this as an attack because they think their view on climate science deserves equal ranking.

But that’s so, how far do we take it? Is flat earther articles deserving of equal ranking?

Victim mentality breeds conspiracies around search tampering. The more fringe the beliefs, the more victimizAtion is roled out.

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>For example, if 97% of the worlds leading authorities on climate science have consensus

Let me give you a tip. The people who don’t trust climate science aren’t going to give a shit if climate scientists agree on something. It’s like saying “97% of numerologists believe in numerology”.

That’s an appeal to authority. Even ignoring the fallacy, it has even less power when it’s that very authority that’s being distrusted.

No, the equivalent to your example would be "97% of climate scientists believe that climate exists"

It's also not an appeal to authority fallacy to say that the only people who bothered to check something have a certain opinion.

How do you know what's in the box? Well I looked in it and you still haven't.

> 97% of climate scientists believe that climate exists

Perhaps you meant “climate change”?

No. I'm specifically saying that "numerologists believe in numerology" is equivalent to "climate scientists believe climate exists"

I think there’s a fair number of numerologists who believe that numerology doesn’t work.

Flat earthers don’t agree with NASA or ESA or SpaceX either. It’s not an appeal to authority when people are replicating experiments on a wide scale.

Anyone can measure Carbonic Acid concentrations in water to see ocean acidification for example.

What we have is people in denial of reality for ideological reasons, because they don’t like the unpleasant fact that it represents a market failure that may require collective action to fix.

When you refuse to accept reality because of ideology, you are essentially acting on faith, not reason.

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