One of the most popular ideas in science back in the eighties concerned an explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs. They were wiped out, it was said, when some massive object (a meteor or asteroid) crashed into the earth. The plausibility of this explanation was thought to be confirmed by the fact that it was dramatically depicted in every single animated film about dinosaurs, and there were more of those than there ever were dinosaurs. I was always skeptical of this story line, and I think that science has swung around to my view. Current explanations involve volcanic activity, bubbling frozen methane on the ocean floor, and too much fast food in the dinosaur's diets. If indeed I proved to be right, it was not, I assure you, because of any expertise on my part. It was because I applied Blanchard's First Law of Explanations. Drum roll please.
Excitement is inversely proportional to probability.
This is how one speaks if one wishes to appear more learned than one is. It just means that the more exciting a story is, the less likely that it will turn out to be true. Its converse, of course, is
Boring is proportional to probability.
So, applying this law to the assassination of JFK, it is more probable that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy than the CIA, or Castro, or the Illuminati. Likewise, any explanation of the dinosaur's demise that allows a cartoonist to draw fireballs scorching the sky, the earth cracking and flowing with molten rock, all resulting in an near-instantaneous apocalypse, well, that's just too sexy to be real. This leads to corollary one, which may be usefully applied to The Day After.
The better an explanation looks when Hollywood does it, the more suspect it is.
But something interesting was attached to the arguments in the eighties: politics. Some of those who criticized the celestial impact argument were accused of being militarists. How so? Because the dinosaur story line cross bred with the "nuclear winter" argument. According to the latter, a nuclear war would be followed by a nuclear winter, as the clouds of dust produced by the detonation of doomsday weapons blocked the sun's rays. Anyone who dismissed the asteroid theory weakened the nuclear winter argument, at least rhetorically, and so that person was a closet Reagan voter. Hence corollary two:
The more that an explanation flatters the political opinions of the explainer, the more suspect the explanation is.
I really don't care for that one. I can see it being used against myself. So let me add the following first teleological suspension of the logical:
Neither the first law nor any of its implications applies to any conclusions favored by Dr. Blanchard
For everyone else, logic is logic.
Currently global warming has become the ersatz religion of the left, and nothing cries out for application of corollary two than this. This does not mean that global warming is not happening just because it flatters the political opinions of Al Gore. It just means that one ought to be suspicious to the degree that the interpretation of scientific theory is presented in a politically significant way.
For a solid critique of Al Gore's recent bid for an academy award, this piece by Dr. Robert C. Balling, Jr., kindly sent to us by the folks at Tech Central Station. Of course you may note that Balling's interpretation of the issue rather flatters the political opinions of the folks at TCS. That's one of the advantages of my first law and its corollaries: it makes it hard to trust anyone, especially oneself.
The trick is to watch how each side uses the science. Critics of global warming politics do not challenge the general validity of the science itself. They challenge its selective use. And the best of them have been much better at distinguishing scientific from political arguments than ever Al Gore was.
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