re: The mass freakout over Bret Stephen's climate change article on NYT

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People are freaking out because climate change is real and potentially destructive, and employing a crank denialist is not the best way to get diversity of opinion on the NYT editorial board. There are plenty of other viewpoints they could include that would be different from what they have.

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Know how I know you did not read his op-ed?

quote:

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People are freaking out because climate change is real and potentially destructive, and employing a crank denialist is not the best way to get diversity of opinion on the NYT editorial board. There are plenty of other viewpoints they could include that would be different from what they have.

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I might be a bit more amiable to this if Stephen's hadn't basically adjusted to a position within the bounds of that consensus view.

My personal issue is he basically makes a very shitty and incomplete argument. If this is real, is an issue, then why is inaction justifiable? It is basically an argument built not on coherently constructed arguments but just trying to pick apart others.

Which I think would be well addressed with a follow up piece that deconstructs that. And in allowing that process to play out, because even the echo chamber seekers end up better informed because they learned the full scope of an argument strain and what the counter-points are. Or just clarifies the fallacy of the tactics Stephens is using. Which would serve to better inform the reader.

There is this weird projection that everyone but themselves are these child like impressionable people that if we just expose them to inappropriate viewpoints it will corrupt them entirely. So you get shite like this or enormous catastrophizing of things like Anne Coulter speaking.