Yeah, but life without believing in the extraordinary, would be so boring...
Also - believe in the extraordinary (escapism+) is a sort of coping mechanism for mentally challenging situations as well. You dont just easily separate the two. Its how we work as humans.
And finally - If you read Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper - the first trick of science is to convince you that its more than popular shared opinion - so somehow we need to integrate that as well.
If you just replace god with scientific process and worship that for no reason, without critical distance - sure, its progress, but in the end you did nothing more, than to submit to popular opinion within your own peer group. You then add 'conspiracy theory' to everything other than your peer groups believes, and you also are namecalling, just using fancier words..
Scientific process is important. Exact language. Publishing your work and sources, having it peer reviewed. Falsification based.
Models of something as big as world climate are inductive logic, prone to all sorts of inductive biases and ultimately never to be tested (you dont have a 'control group' earth). So in those cases you are only trusting in scientific paradigm, which is another word for shared opinion.
And ultimately, when you try to make politicians act, or explain stuff to the public - all you mostly do is to rely on inductive logic ("you need to do this, inferring from our testing" = extrapolation), and the image of your social class within society. Nothing else. So in my book - its a strange mix.
Of course there is need for understanding and acting on something as multifaceted as global climate, which can only be expressed either after the fact, or in models, and of course you are operating with probabilities within corridors, and you are hedging your risks, by saying its the overwhelming opinion of everyone within the field.
So thats fine.
But then you should have seen the introduction speeches of some climate scientists, advising governments, advocating the benefits of Greta Thunberg at the Summer Meeting in Lausanne Europe (SMILE), and thats not fine. Thats - if child gives our cause more publicity and staying power, then child is the best thing that happend to climate action in years, and that isnt that swell. And its at that point, that I have massive problems with the advocacy for political action.
Doesnt mean that the world isnt facing climate crisis, but if you are succumbing to your personal Johanna von Orleans and are advocating that as the best thing that happened in your field for years, something went wrong categorically. (PR.)
'To the best of our knowledge' spoken amongst people that trust and rely on each other still is the basis of everything societal.
But sadly - you cant force it. And you cant force political action by scientific means, or through relying on publicity stunts as mentioned. So in the translation process - and if politics, or the finance sector, isnt listening to you, to the extent that you like - you rely on PR to fill in the gaps. Thats not at all science, and there are problems arising from that.
Now maybe smaller problems all around, granted - but at the same time, what you are doing has left the confines of science and has become advocacy. (Spoken to the scientists that engage the public in that capacity.)
(Also conspiracy theories in this day and age have an awful image..
They arent all negative. In the end they also only are a result of people talking. (Lack of information - heck, in prior times, those were called legends, sages, myths... Where are those gone, all of a sudden.
In todays world everything has to either be scientific fact, or a conspiracy theory.
But by doing that, you loose track of the possibility that f.e. social science had a legitimacy crisis recently stemming from lack of reproducibility. And now thats science - meeting conspiracy theory in the worst possible way. And now your own argument (either science, or conspiracy theory) - doesnt work anymore.
Climate science doesnt have the baseline issues of social sciences. But the same inductive logic problem.
And the same inherent risk, of it all ending up as religious babble at the point, where you or your pals think it should more than inform human behavior. If it cant, it cant. Now stop founding new popular religions.
Find different means to translate what you know (science) into action, that arent so close in look and feel to religious doctrine. (My personal, controversial, opinion))))
