Back to episode — Episode 1224 Scott Adams - When to Disagree With the Experts Because That is an Essential Skill
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and things seem to be fine so it's all a hoax, right? Here's the problem with that. Every climate scientist knows CO2 was higher in the past. Do you see where I'm going? All the experts who say climate change is a problem, they know what you know. That CO2 was much higher in the past. That's not a reason to argue against them. What that proves is you don't know why they have, you don't understand…
← Previous segment →nable for me to disagree in that case?
Well if that's all the variables that were involved the answer is no. If there were no other variables it wouldn't really be reasonable for me to disagree. I don't have anything to add to it. But when you're predicting what's going to happen financially you're now in my ballpark because I worked as a person who made financial predictions for big corporations. Did it for years and I have expertise in it. So when I'm criticizing climate change the part I don't criticize is the science part. The science part is that if you add CO2 to the atmosphere no matter how it gets there, human or other, no matter how it gets there, all things being equal would that warm up the earth? Probably. I'm not disagreeing with experts because I don't have any extra data. What extra data do I have? What extra science do I have? None.
So when they make a claim that CO2 should warm the atmosphere all things being equal I say I don't have anything to add to that. I'm not going to doubt it and I'm not going to confirm it. I'm just going to say well you're experts. You know I don't know. But when you get to the second part which is they make a financial, not a scientific but a financial estimate of what it's going to do with the world economy, you're in my expertise. So if I criticize you from my expertise and you're a scientist you should listen to me. Literally if a scientist tells you to believe a financial estimate or a financial prediction and a financial expert who makes these predictions or has for a living says no, who are you going to believe? The person who knows the most about financial predictions or a scientist? Because scientists are not financia
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l predictors. So when I disagree with climate change I'm not disagreeing with scientists on science. I'm disagreeing with scientists on my expertise not theirs. My expertise. I have another expertise too which is again persuasion. And so I have a theory of why maybe scientists could be fooled or biased or subject to confirmation bias at least on the financial part, financial predictions. And it i…
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