Anonymous Opinion “Not Worth Bucket Of Warm Spit”
By Collin Maessen on commentIn my opinion anonymity has no bearing whatsoever on someone’s argument being valid or not; it’s completely irrelevant to making that assessment.
So I’m not quoting myself in the title, it’s Anthony Watts:
For those that might not know this, @wottsupwiththat is the person who runs the WordPress blog WottsUpWithThat. A blog that has as goal to “address climate science claims made on Anthony Watts’s Watts Up With That (WUWT) site.” And so far Wotts has been very critical towards some of the nonsense that’s published on WUWT.
Which is probably part of the reason Wotts has garnered some attention from Watts. Attention in the form of a fishing expedition for his identity.
But like I said this is irrelevant for determining if someone has a valid point. Like Wotts has pointed out someone can have valid reasons for staying anonymous (emphasis mine):
Unless you haven’t been paying attention, you’ll be aware that I’m writing this blog anonymously. There are a number of reasons why I’ve chosen to do so. I don’t enjoy some of the unpleasant exchanges that appear quite common when discussing climate change/global warming, so feel much more comfortable being anonymous (I don’t want to have to deal with unpleasant emails coming to my work address for example). You may think that sounds cowardly, but I believe that it is my right to remain anonymous if I wish to do so. I do try very hard, however, not to use my anonymity to attack those who are not and also try very hard not to say anything that I wouldn’t have said were I not anonymous. I may not have always succeeded, but I do try.
Another reason is that I’m not doing this to promote myself. I’d rather what was judged was what I said, rather than who I am.
He’s right that discussions and exchanges surrounding these subjects are often very nasty. It’s something I do not approve off, and certainly do not condone on my website or my YouTube channel. Not being civil towards opponents is something I block people for, no matter who does it.
So I don’t blame people for wanting to stay anonymous so they can get away from that if they need to.
Through history anonymity was used to enable someone to speak freely and to let people only judge their arguments. Nowadays we know that several of the founding fathers did this with the Federalist Papers.
The reason behaviour like this from Watts annoys me so much is because he isn’t consistent with this anonymity criticism.
He for example allows anonymous comments on his blog and interacts with some of those users. Sometimes agreeing with what they say. Same goes for his activities via his Twitter profile (assuming it’s Watts).
He also allows anonymous contributions to his blog. There are guest posts from for example Steven Goddard, Just The Facts, The Hockey Schtick, and a ‘mole‘. As far as I can tell the real identities of these people aren’t publicly known.
Are their opinions also “not worth [a] bucket of warm spit”? Or doesn’t it matter in this case because they happen to agree with you or support your activities?
To me this looks like a blatant double standard. It’s also often indicative of someone who has more interest in going after the person than dealing with their arguments.
Collin Maessen is the founder and editor of Real Skeptic and a proponent of scientific skepticism. For his content he uses the most up to date and best research as possible. Where necessary consulting or collaborating with scientists.
Thanks Collin. Assuming that it is Anthony Watts who’s running the WUWT twitter feed, the terms ironic and hypocritical appears to be terms that he doesn’t understand particularly well.
It just annoys me that he has several of these double standards and expects to be taken seriously.
That Anthony Watts complains about anonymity is pure hypocrisy. By now I would not expect anything else from this person.
However, while anonymity does not influence the arguments, it does hurt someones credibility. This may lead to less willingness to study the arguments; life is short, you cannot read/study everything. This should no longer be the case for Wotts, by now he has build himself a reputation of doing good science.
If you are anonymous, errors do not influence your real life. As errors have less consequences, they are more likely present. If I were anonymous, I might write about a wider range of topics for which I am now not sure if I understand them sufficiently well.
These disadvantages should be weight against the advantages.
I partially agree.
When you’re not anonymous you can give your words weight by showing that you have the expertise to talk about a certain subject. But that again doesn’t mean what someone says is correct or not. It just means you need to taker a better look at what is being said and why this person is saying it. As it wouldn’t be the first time that someone who should be an expert on a certain scientific field gets it wrong what the science says.
Now it’s true that not everyone has time to judge if what is being said is correct. As looking up and reading everything that is referenced is a lot of work. That’s why scientific organisations have weight in these matters. And that is something people do tend to pick up on, no matter how much time you have available.
The other thing is that errors might not have any real life consequences for you when you’re anonymous, they do have consequences for that particular identity you have. So the credibility of that particular pseudonym will eventually be completely demolished.
But indeed people who aren’t anonymous you can generally take a bit more seriously. But that’s the starting point. In the end the only thing that will matter is how valid your arguments are.
Fully agree.
Agreement. \o/
Someone’s identity is by itself meaningless. It is used to connect pieces of information about a person together.
So when Watt’s is asking for his ‘identity’ he is really asking for additional information about that person. The question then is what information is Mr Watt’s after? And how is it relevant to the debate?
Do you think there is anything you might want to know about something that would be useful to know in the climate change debate?
I’m not quite following what you’re asking with “Do you think there is anything you might want to know about something that would be useful to know in the climate change debate?”
Guess it helps to use the right words sorry.
Asking who someone really is is a way to find out more about them. So they question was is there something you might want to know about the other person that would help the debate.
I was thinking about how security online sometimes works. I sure you’ve seen websites where you login through Facebook. In this case it is Facebook that knows who you are. You then allow Facebook to pass on useful pieces of information to that website, like your e-mail address.
I was thinking of something similar for the online climate change debate. I won’t tell you who I really am, because I don’t want to risk disclosing to much information about myself, but I am willing to say I have a PhD in Chemical engineering and work in computer modelling.
James, our comments must have crossed.
Not really. The only information that I need is something to call someone by and a means to hold the exchange with. In the case of an actual debate I would like to see what they’ve published before. But as I don’t do live debates that’s a question I don’t ask.
The only reason I’ve ever asked someone who they were was when they were making claims about themselves and they were basing a part of their argument on it.
Maybe the subtlety that James is getting at is that there is no obvious reason why a person would want to know more about someone who has chosen to be anonymous. That can’t really influence what they’ve already written, so you don’t need to know who they are to judge what they’ve already said. Maybe their reasons are benign but it would seem much more likely that their reason for wanting this knowledge is not because they’re simply interested in the information.
Sorry, managed to make 2 incoherent posts.
Yes, I have no doubt Watt’s wants to know who you are to use it against you.
I think this post by him just about sums up the sort of person he is
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/13/friday-funny-dr-michael-mann-keeps-interesting-company/