Climate models are exercises in curve fitting. They're programmed to fit the data. They are adjusted to fit actual reality, not predict it in advance. This is the pea under the thimble.

I don't think so, no. You can only get so far by ignoring qualia and denying they exist (as people like Dennett do). Consciousness does not supervene on the physical, though obviously it is associated with brains and (who knows) might be a property of the universe as a whole. I like the panpsychist approach and do not believe our current understanding of nature is anywhere near close to correct. There's something to explain, much like there was something to explain about the nature of cavity radiation at the turn of the 20th century. An anomaly, so to speak. And I have no doubt that if it's discoverable by science, it will be the next scientific revolution. A complete paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe.

Al Gore is not a scientist.

Neither are the vast majority of politicians, activists, laymen, personalities, intellectuals and academics who lecture us on this issue. Still, he claims to represent the paradigm and if he does not, it's a real shame that none of these "scientists" (I use the term in its broadest possible sense) speak out against him. That they do not is indicative, don't you think?

Well given that 5 years ago Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free and it's completely covered in ice still, I would say they have a point. Back to the drawing board with the models at least. If there is one. Which I doubt.

It's what Cairns-Smith called the bomb in the basement of modern physics.

...that qualia must belong to the physical world while at the same time physics and chemistry, which supposedly can in principle give us a complete account of this world, have no place for them

I interpret it as suggesting that even after you've described all particles, forces, fields and laws, there will still be something left to explain. Also known as "some things transcend Human understanding". You can be an atheist and believe this, by the way.

I don't think it's got anything to do with it actually.

Of course. I read about this quite a few years ago in a book called Global Warming and Other Bollocks. It has a chapter on salt. I'm still recovering from being told that egg yolks are as bad for me as smoking, though I don't eat 20 eggs a day (or smoke any more), it turns out that actually they're probably only bad for people with heart disease or diabetes.

Anyone losing the will to live yet? I could go on...

You're right but isn't all this just extremely banal? To say that entropy is a statistical measure of disorder and that between certain bounds, life is more or less likely is simply to say that a body at equilibrium (like Mars) is much less likely to harbour life than one that isn't (like the Earth). It's a "no-shit Sherlock" moment.

Constructing rational biases, which is what a prior effectively is ("objective prior") isn't all that easy though, is it. There's no universal method for constructing a prior. It's a big source of potential error.

I don't think that's what it means, no. It means there are difficult to discover sources of bias in the design, implementation and interpretation of studies. Over time they change and so (remarkably) do the results.

Bayesians need priors don't they? Where do they come from and what affect does the choice of prior have on the final outcome? I don't think Bayesian analysis is any more of a silver bullet than any other technique.

Isn't this generally know as The Decline Effect? It's not just clinical trials, it applies to almost everything (to varying degrees). It's also been interpreted as The Half-Life of Knowledge.

In the UK the standard metric is units of London double-decker buses.

Yes. When I was a child, which was quite a while ago now, pictures of Diplodocus or "diplo - dokus" as I used to call it, showed them mooching around in lakes with predators like Tyrannosaurs looking on wistfully from the shoreline.

You aren't aware of the term "cognitive burden", with respect to user interfaces?

The basic idea is this: You want people to use your software, not throw their phone at the wall.