Erik TorenbergGeneral Partner, Andreessen Horowitz

Vivek questions climate science #vivek #vivekramaswamy

30 Aug 2023 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker (identified as Vivek) argues that people living within a 100‑mile radius of Columbus, Ohio, possess a deep, practical understanding of the U.S. Constitution—arguably deeper than many elite‑educated peers from Harvard or Yale Law School. He challenges the stereotype that attendees at MAGA rallies are “dumb” and incapable of grasping climate change, suggesting instead that they may be better informed than assumed. He attributes this misperception to a “distilled knowledge system” that cherry‑picks from mainstream climate science (referred to as “capital S science”). The speaker further claims that climate science suffers from a talent‑pool bias: individuals drawn to the field are often social activists rather than traditional physicists or chemists, resulting in research that is of lower quality compared to work in molecular biology, organic chemistry, or physics.

Chapters

The people who live within a 100-mile radius of where I'm talking to you from, near my home in Columbus, Ohio, most of them understand the Constitution in their bones more deeply than many of the people that I went to Harvard or Yale Law School with. A perceived rube you see, think is showing up at that MAGA rally because they're too dumb to understand climate change. Actually, most of them might be more educated on the topic of climate change than you believe you are, because you're getting your information through a distilled knowledge system that itself selectively cherry-picks from where the actual capital S science is itself derived from. Not to mention, if you want to play the intelligence game, actually ask who goes into climate science as opposed to into, say, somebody who actually majors in old school physics. Well, there's actually a talent pool bias that actually creates social activists who are drawn to the realm of majoring in climate science, that when they produce the capital S science, it's not even higher quality science relative to somebody who studied molecular biology, organic chemistry, or actual physics.