“A Headline That Will Make Global-Warming Activists Apoplectic”
&gt; Cute contrarian takes and “repugnant ideas” can be Freakonomically fun, but they don’t always have much to do with reality.<p>This has been on my mind a lot. Everyone wants to be the contrarian who ends up being right and hailed as a genius. It’s the intellectual equivalent of nailing the game winning 3 pointer.<p>But it is very dangerous to pursue being a contrarian on purpose. Being contrary to popular opinion is an <i>awful</i> heuristic for correctness, and quite often it leads towards you just being a crank and not being correct.