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Paper On Conspiratorial Thinking Invokes Conspiratorial Thinking
Layzej writes "Last summer a paper investigating the link between conspiratorial thinking and the rejection of climate science provoked a response on blogs skeptical of the scientific consensus that appeared to illustrate the very cognitive processes at the center of the research. This generated data for a new paper titled 'Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation (PDF).' The researchers reviewed the reactions for evidence of conspiratorial thinking, including the presumption of nefarious intent, perception of persecution, the tendency to detect meaning in random events, and the ability to interpret contrary evidence as evidence that the conspiracy is even greater in scope that was originally believed. Some of the hypotheses promoted to dismiss the findings of the original paper ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors, such as university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. It is not clear whether the response to this paper will itself provide data for further research, or how far down this recursion could progress. I fear the answer may be 'all the way.'"
all the way down.
The turtles are behind it all in the end.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I herd you like conspiration theories
Real life is overrated.
"from the elvis-lives-on-the-moon-with-hitler dept." - from the strapline of the title...
I was convinced beyond all doubt that Elvis was living with Diana in a guest house in Blackpool, but then again, I am a Brit, so I would think that...
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
In 3... 2... 1...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
In the late '60s, it was predicted that ecology, as the study of the environment was then called, would be latched onto by the far left who, being denied more and more detailed economic control, would readily jump on an alternate rationale for control.
Well, look at that. There is a difference between science and what politics wants to use it for, even if the science is accurate.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It took them less than a month to put a paper out. I'm in the wrong field. I could have graduated in half a year.
You wouldn't take people's freely written statements as being evidence of what they think?
Evidence does not have to be perfect to make an objective study. The brain may be an inaccessable black box as far as psychology is concerned, but if there are identifiable patterns in its output, you can still work from that.
Are we to presume, then, from the analytical model in TFA that the LIBOR affair, Watergate, and the 1919 Black Sox scandal are all just paranoid hysteria?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
People believe in conspiracies because they don't have anyone in authority they can trust. It doesn't help when authority lies to them about virtually everything.
"Cheese Makes you Fat!"
"Shows what you know! I'm in the CHEESEMAKING PARTY! Cheese will just give me a healthy glow!"
"I'm sorry Mr Ridebacher, you have lung cancer"
"No, that's unacceptable. You're interfering with my rights! Tell you what, why don't we compromise and say that I have a bad cold?"
Isn't it obvious? The researchers paid dozens of bloggers to come up with these conspiracy theories. The blogs were used as evidence to support the hypotheses in the follow-up paper, which will earn the researchers enough cash to pay more bloggers. And so on.
It's kinda like the way McAfee and Symantec have secret programmers who strategically release new viruses when business is slow.
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY, KING RICHARD III, FOUND MURDERED IN PARKING LOT, POLICE DECLINE TO INVESTIGATE!! CONSPIRACY??!! - Leave out one key piece of information and it takes on a life of it's own, but there is nothing untrue about the above. Conspiracies seem to live on the interpretation that those who believe them have a better understanding of the issue at hand than those in charge, or that they have all the relevant information, when they don't.
Yes sure, but there's a lot of room for how you interpret what they say.
The original paper says "conspirators" are defined as making a "secret plot by powerful individuals or organizations", and then the paper gives an example and says that the tobacco industry had a view that it was being attacked by powerful conspirators, ie. the tobacco industry had a conspiratorial mindset. But today people often say there is a conspiracy by big oil, just like the tobacco industry had a conspiracy. It seems all sides are conspirators, and conspiracy crackpots, depending on how you interpret them. So it goes nowhere fast.
There are just lots of people out there in society who by their millions, have different ideas about what is the good life and what they want. An environmentalist told me, it doesn't matter if CO2 isn't a problem, because by forcing people to reduce emissions, you force them to reduce production and consumption ––and then with a thoughtful pause she added, "It is about reducing greed." And I see that kind of view a lot, just like the free enterprise competitive types like Burt Rutan says the data doesn't add up and it is verging on fraud.
It saddens me as I used to vote for the Green party but it just seems to fracture into left vs right wing ideologies. It fails their own stated goals of making a just world –– "climate justice" ––when a shack in Kenya that's supposed to store medicines and have a bed for the sick, has to choose between either keeping the fridge on, or the fan and lights, because the solar panel they have can't do both. And that's "climate justice" ???? So just so say before someone interprets me as some USA type right wing neo con yahoo.
Now if only the study used anything remotely resembling "people's freely written statements" about what they believe.
JOIN US FOR PONG!
The paper was put forward in a slanted way. The report apparently concluded that: "those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from climate science as well as other sciences."
What it the report SHOULD have concluded is: "those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from science" which is exactly as valid, is a far more neutral observation, and does not single out a specific group.
By including the "climate science" as a specific category the researchers make themselves suspect and people may (perhaps not entirely without cause) assume that this report was not unbiased and perhaps targeting "climate sceptists" rather than being an honest report on the behaviour of conspiracists in general. And of course this fuels a discussion. The authors could have known this and probably did. Therefore the article's title should be renamed to: "Those who play at bowls, must look out for rubs".
Flamebait "study" provokes flames. News at eleven. I'm waiting for the next study showing the correlation climate alarmism and being a poo-poo head.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The horse crap in this one is so deep I can barely see the light. Does anybody else remember that paper on sociology that turned out to be a joke composed of mostly made-up words, but the sociology community accepted it and praised it in some journal? It was the Sokal Affair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair) and the article was "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," an article that sounds about as interesting as this one.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
The very mention of thumb awareness makes you immediately more aware of your thumbs. That is unless you don't have any in which case you are increasingly aware of that fact.
How does it not? It references posts people made on blogs whilst sat at home scratching their balls. Where is the pressure being put on them to write something not true to themselves in that situation?
In this day and age when citations and publications determine your funding and job prospects as a researcher, it is a gold mine to stumble on a process like this. It recursively generates new articles, and so research funding will flow her way almost automatically.
Not true, they explicitly state that they are not investigating the validity or not of any of the criticisms of the first paper. They are measuring psychological indicators of conspiracy thinking. Even the most out there obsessed conspirac theorist could be right, and this paper doesn't deny that.
Wow someone writes a paper on conspiracy theory and targets it slap bang at climate sceptics and then complains when they cry fowl! It's like calling someone paranoid when people really are out to get them!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
It's not a question of what they set out to measure. It was the methodology they used to measure it that was flawed.
I think I have irony poisoning.
The sixties would be a late time to come with that prediction/accusation. Keep America Beautiful, arguably the first corporate environmental front group, was founded in order to preempt and oppose laws restricting disposable products - in 1953.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Being paranoid does not mean they're not after you
I've come to the suspicion that it's not so much lack of understanding of grammar or inability to spell that's at the root of the than/then problem, but rather the inablity to hear/speak the difference. The English sounds represented by "e" and "a" are not very far apart. Many of the people might be conflating the two sounds into one. If this is the case, you can correct them until you're blue in the face and they'll never understand because they can't hear the difference. Proof reading their own work won't help because they won't hear the mistake.
I started thinking this way for two reasons: too many people saying "I could care less" when they really mean "I couldn't care less" (understandable, that t can be difficult to hear) and having Japanese students think I said "pet" when I said "pat" (I've taught English in Japan).
However, for this particular case, I've got a slightly different theory, based on my own mistakes: the writer sub-vocalizes while touch-typing and something between tongue, brain and fingers short circuited and instead of N, T was hit. The tongue is in the same place for both sounds, and when touch typing, the index finger on opposite hands is used for both letters (and the movement is rotationally symmetrical). The vast majority of my typos follow a similar pattern (and swapping N and T is very common for me). Heck, I sometimes make the same mistakes with pen and paper!
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Yes the politics comes in when people with different outlooks or values, try to decide what to agree to do.
Say your dog keeps relieving itself in my garden. Should I spend the money to improve the fence, or should you keep the dog under control?
Now take that simple example and multiple the complexity up to, if the climate shifts, and rain belts move, glaciers feeding rivers retreat, some forested areas increase, some storms reduce, some farmland becomes too cold, some warms up for better crops, etc. etc. how do you decide who is responsible and who should pay to act?
Some people say, it doesn't matter if China is emitting more CO2 than anyone else, it is the moral responsibility of the West to set the good example. Or even Germany, people say Germany should do the right thing, even if it'll make a negligible impact. And that is also weighed up against all the other problems, like disease in Africa, and so on. There's a value judgement that doing something about the climate is more important. Or not. Depends on you.
I think it's part of a plot.
rewriting history since 2109
Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation
of course you're right, environmentalists aren't really interested in keeping the land, water, sea and air free of poisonous substances, its all just a big power play. (nice trolling)
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
If you make a habit of reading polls on a a variety of political and social issues, you'll learn a lot about Americans and specifically you might come to the conclusion that about 25-35% of Americans are basically so disconnected from scientific and social reality they're functionally insane and their opinion should ALWAYS and AUTOMATICALLY be classified as "non-truth related".
For instance, and famously, about 46% of Americans don't believe in evolution
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism_n_1571127.html
But also 10% think that prosecutors who send innocent people to jail should not be prosecuted:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-texas-exoneree-testifies-20130204,0,3950542.story?page=2
25% think Obama is not an American citizen:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20056061-503544.html
30%^ think God decides the outcome of sporting events: http://rt.com/usa/news/super-bowl-result-god-337/
And on and on and on. Watching polls what you'll discover is about 10% of Americans are just outright fascists who wouldn't hesitate to do whatever any right wing authority told them to do, and think it should have been started yesterday. This is also the finding of Bob Altemeyer in his seminal work on authoritarianism :
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/.
right.
About 25-30% believe that events on Earth are assiduously overseen by an all knowing God who "sees them when they're sleeping / and knows if they're awake / and knows if they've been bad of good..." and what happens in everything from their personal life to world events is really of no consequence except to the extent that it is a reflection of an eternal, ongoing battle between good and evil being fought on an unseen cosmic plane. This is something they have this is common with every Muslim extremist who ever strapped a suicide bomb onto himself.
Americans have a deficit of rationality, a deep and persistent belief that something other than outcome based, welfare of humans is the proper measure of human morality, are scientifically illiterate and constitutionally incapable of perceiving in their thinking just the kinds of bugs that the referenced article details.
There's not enough time to reform the American character before we have to take radical and decisive action on global warming. The fact is, democracy stops where science begins. This isn't going to lead to anything good.
The least divisive, least disrupting course of action is for the government to internally and secretly set up an Executive Action team within one the intelligence agencies whose purpose is to discredit, attack and dismantle and neutralize the leaders of the denier terrorist movement. We all know who they are. These *thought leaders* need to be attacked the same way we'd attack any group of terrorists building a bomb named which would have the same long term destructive power as global warming. Denialism is a bomb with the capacity to permanently destroy civilization and the people assembling that bomb are not working in secret. They need to be neutralized and their sources of funding and societal legitimacy attacked through and and all means necessary. They have forfeited their civil rights and constitutional protections. We simply need to deal with them like the world destroying terrorists they are.
You can come to this conclusion now when there's still time to do something about global warming or you can come to this conclusion later, when there's no possibility of doing anything about it and the starvation, the concomitant societal breakdown and mass, uncontrolled immigration, the tidal wave of anti-Western (Big Oil / Big Coal ) terrorism and collapsing centralized governments take not just the denier's civil liberties and Con
It seems all sides are conspirators, and conspiracy crackpots, depending on how you interpret them. So it goes nowhere fast.
Any time two people get together to bone a third person it is a conspiracy. The only overarching conspiracy of which I am aware is the conspiracy to deprecate the word conspiracy, and you're assisting with it.
An environmentalist told me, it doesn't matter if CO2 isn't a problem, because by forcing people to reduce emissions, you force them to reduce production and consumption â"â"and then with a thoughtful pause she added, "It is about reducing greed." And I see that kind of view a lot, just like the free enterprise competitive types like Burt Rutan says the data doesn't add up and it is verging on fraud.
It is about reducing greed. Where do the emissions come from? Making stuff. How much of that stuff do we need? HTH, HAND.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Say your dog keeps relieving itself in my garden. Should I spend the money to improve the fence, or should you keep the dog under control?
False dichotomy: You're assuming it's the neighbor's dog, and not the neighbor.
One thing that many who believe that climate change is a "scam" or a "conspiracy" have in common is a political outlook that says that lefties, socialists, hippies, greenies etc. are just plain WRONG about everything, that their entire world view is basically incorrect.
So it really is hard for them to accept that the lefties and the greenies might be RIGHT about something - which seems to lead to ever more bizarre denials.
The corollary of this is that people with this kind of viewpoint tend to believe that climate change is a stalking horse of the left, to de-industrialise the economy, to promote their "business-hating" ideals, etc.
In Soviet Russia, all our base are belong to YOU!
> to cover up your own goal here ...
In other words, YOU believe that there is a conspiracy (even if only de facto) amongst those who question the conclusions of those who believe in anthropogenic climate change? We have indeed fallen into infinite recursion.
Me personally? I have no use for conspiracy theories. As a friend who used to work for CIA (vigorously) explained it to me, the more complex the conspiracy, the more impossible it is. SOMEONE will blab, or will forget a laptop with all the secret codes and handshakes in the men's room at the airport. Someone will invariably sell out the conspirators to the opposition. Hey, he can get rich AND become a hero in one fell swoop!
The purpose of this article is just as offensive as the Slashdot story from a few months ago, that those who question climate change theory are no different from those who reject evolution. That's patently offensive. Like many people, I am agnostic toward AGW theory. I haven't seen enough evidence to convince me either way ... so yes, I AM going to wait and see before I support drastic action that destroys the economy.
In the meantime, I *will* agitate for cleaner, greener energy, simply because it makes sense for the future. Whether we (meaning us hoomin' beans) are causing global warming is irrelevant to me. If I can reduce the gunk that I spew into the atmosphere, I want to do it. That's just common sense, and MOST people support that.
Has absolutely, utterly NOTHING to do with conspiracies, or a belief in a New World Order or anything like that.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
"the presumption of nefarious intent"
There is more than enough evidence to demonstrate that our contemporary institutions of government, media, academia, finance, etc. and the unholy alliances thereof have nothing BUT nefarious intent. It's only logical to assume that these people and groups are going to lie, cheat and obfuscate to fulfill their agenda at the expense of the vast majority of the population.
The label "conspiracy theorist" is simply their dismissive label for anyone who dares question the official narrative and a convenient excuse to avoid countering evidence with facts.
The odd thing is that a "conspiracy" is generally some sort of secret plot. Many of the so-called "conspiracy theorists" are simply highlighting evidence which isn't even in dispute.
Every time somebody tells me that, I have to give myself a time out in the bunker until I calm down.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Conspiratorial Thinking is clear example of the Dunning Kruger effect at work.
They overestimate their own intelligence or skill, and ignore contrary feedback. They disavow the intelligence or skill of others. These people are simply too stupid to invalidate their own hypothesis and recognise the validity of the alternative.
I remember that time... The irony is that your post illustrates the most infuriating thing about the way Communists like to argue: "I can explain X in terms of Y, so therefore Y caused X!"
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Real environmentalists are interested in the keeping things clean. Politicians, corporations and those so vocal in the news, blogs etc are not the same thing as real environmentalists. The sooner you learn the difference between those that use a cause for personal gain and the cause itself the better off you will be.
OK but which things do you say we don't need? 50 pairs of shoes is unnecessary, but what about air travel, central heating, fridges, and TV? Are those non-essential? Which things should be cut?
That is indeed the way it should be. The problem is that the free marketeers won't honestly discuss this choice. Instead they deny the science.
Politics comes into picture when deciding what to do.
Unfortunately, many politicians and other organisations that have a vested interest in certain choices on what to do, have found that when hard science is involved, the easiest option to affect which choices are made is to attack the actual number producing science and scientists in the eyes of the public (i.e. a typical Straw Man strategy) using the techniques of propaganda.
This works because the vast majority of people simply don't have the mental discipline necessary to build an sytematical image of the world, which would filter out this kind of noise - they work through heuristics (i.e. gut feeling), shared memes and are prone to have a belief reinforced by hearing others repeat the same belief (i.e. groupthink). In fact, this same process is often displayed here in /.
It's not exactly a difficult thing to ascertain in a market economy. You simply include the environmental cost of manufacture and a lifetime of usage into the monetary price of the product. Then people choose which things they still need based on a true cost.
Are you suggesting a conspiracy whereby they made these statements up?
I'm utterly confused by the premise here.
Conspiracies are very often extremely real and extremely provable. HSBC was just found guilty at the highest levels of management of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels. LIBOR manipulation involved dozens of banks and hundreds of people and was the largest financial market manipulation in history. During the mortgage crisis we had robosigning and MERS which intentionally broke the chain of ownership (and the law) in the interest of securitization. We also had dozens of investment banks bundling worthless mortgages and assigning positive valuations to them. Bernie Madoff and his partners conspired to rip off countless pension funds and communities. Etc. Etc. Etc. These are all conspiracies involving billions of dollars and hundreds if not thousands of people. That's just the last 4 years. And those are the provable conspiracies.
And then there are the conspiracies we know to be true, but cannot prove: Julian Assange for example, who announced he had an upcoming Wikileak regarding the banking system, and the next thing you know he's wanted on rape charges for consensual sex but supposedly with an aconsensual lack of a condom. A crime supposedly so serious that apparently world governments are willing to abandon 500 years of international law and invade sovereign embassies. Is disbelieving the premise "Conspiratorial thinking" or just "not being an idiot"?
Or let's take an easier one: Jon Corzine and his firm looted private accounts and absconded with over $1 billion dollars. The money was transferred somewhere. But no one knows where. It's a magical mystery of the disappearing $1 Billion. If you believe that are you resisting "conspiratorial thinking", or are you the biggest idiot on Earth? Let's see -- JP Morgan underwrote MF Global's trades. Everyone knows where the money went. But no one can talk about it. Because if you claim that the money went anywhere but to "money heaven", you're engaging in "conspiratorial thinking".
We are surrounded by corruption, plotting, scheming and insane rapes of the public coffers every day of every year.
These schemes are nothing other than "conspiracies".
But somehow this study begins with the entirely "fringe" premise that conspiracies aren't real. That in itself appears to be a conspiracy.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
and when touch typing, the index finger on opposite hands is used for both letters (and the movement is rotationally symmetrical)
I touch type with Dvorak, you insensitive clod!
The continued dominance of the illogical QWERTY keyboard smells like a conspiracy to me!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Dang. Your post was interesting right up until that reference to Venus.
Warming is an issue and a hard problem we need to solve. But why do people always try to go straight for a disaster movie scenario ( OMG the Earth is turning into Venus!!)? That's not what's happening, what's happening is a gradual warming an increasing affects of that warming are impacting the ecosystem. But a fast conversion of the Earth's atmosphere into one like Venus is pure sensationalist hyperbole.
If I assume there's more to a story than what appears in the mainstream media, I must be experiencing "conspiratorial thinking." Or I could be assuming that most journalists are morons who are paid to write *something* whether they know anything about it or not.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
So, in the course of reading the article on ElReg, I noticed that the folks denying climate change are being referred to as "Skeptical".
I get it - being "skeptical" of something means that you are not taking it at face value - that you dispute it.
However, there's also the self-identified "Skeptical Movement" nowadays which consists of a lot of great folks who are trying to introduce science-based thought and skepticism / critical thinking.
I'm talking about folks like Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame), Phil Plait (of "Bad Astronomy"), Brian Duning's Skeptoid, The Skeptic's guide to the Universe, Skepchick.org, the James Randi Educational Foundation, QackCast, and many many more...
Real science-based medicine and thinking... and to see "Skeptical" with a capitol S, I think of these folks and having the word used to refer to conspiracy nuts and climate deniers... well, it just feels like the same kind of co-opting that happened to the "hacker" monicker.
I guess I just wanted to get the word out that while the climate deniers and conspiracy nuts may be "skeptical" of climate change and such, they're not representative of "the Skeptical Movement" which is all about critical thinking and science-based approach to life, the universe, and everything.
The Digital Sorceress
The rub is how that "true cost" gets assessed and who asseses it, because something like global warming is *extremely* hard to put a price on. That is not a free market interaction because the costs for environmental issues, especially the theoretical costs such as with global warming, are anything but easy to guess at. The government would have to do the assessing. As we know with the global warming issue, asking the government to do this job is *extremely* political. Some politicians would not put a single penny of extra cost on something because of global warming concerns, they think it's a load of crap. Others would hike the price up by an order of magnitude because they hang on Al Gore's every word.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
The drone program is the best we can do in terms of precision right now; it leads to the least loss of innocent life that we can manage and still be effective against those who would destroy us.
Sure, if by "us" you mean the House of Saud.
No, that's a slippery slope leading to an imaginary dilemma, in service of your balance fallacy.
That's actually a rather strange scenario for you to create, since solar power is bringing energy to areas of Kenya traditional power doesn't or won't go.
Is it a reference to this? Are they having problems with their equipment? If so, it is rather obnoxious of you to call their hospital a "shack".
Or, is the scenario made-up, but still plausible? So where in Kenya are diesel generators illegal?
Basically, what I'm asking is, is there some reason for us to not believe you are completely full of shit?
We get it, you don't like people politically different from you and you think they're acting in bad faith.
Maybe you could try to objectively measure it and write up a paper on it?
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Old joke:
Q: How can you tell when a Blackpool girl has an orgasm?
A: She drops her chips.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The problem here is that the conspiratorial thinking that was invoked was was on the part of Lewandowsky. Rather than taking the critiques of his abandoned first paper as legitimate, he immediately decided that anyone disagreeing with him must be part of a conspiracy against him.
My prediction - when this second paper is also taken apart as a fraud, he'll write a third one saying everyone who disagreed with his second one is part of a conspiracy of conspiritorial thinking :)
You're making the point that true free markets are poor at dealing with the environment. That's true. They are also poor at dealing with all sorts of other concerns, which is why markets are regulated in all sorts of ways. And taxed at varying rates. All decided on by politicians. This is just one more way.
I'm quite open to non-market ways of dealing with the AGW problem. If you have any suggestions.
Doing nothing, just because the idealised, imaginary, true free market has no way to deal with the issue, is certainly not the answer.
No, the problem is that you are making a caricature out of other people's position and then claim they aren't willing to talk to you reasonably
The real problem is that none of the proposed solutions to climate change come even close to stabilizing CO2 levels; in fact, they don't even try. So there is a fundamental disconnect between what people who propose action on climate change claim to want to accomplish and what they actually propose. The current "protocols" and proposals are ineffective and amount to little more than corporate welfare and increases in foreign aid disguised as climate-related actions.
Put a proposal on the table that reduces net human carbon emissions to zero. Then we can talk about its costs and benefits and possibly decide to take action.
But thanks for adding to the evidence that people who deny the existence of climate change are both paranoid and stupid.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you can't live with the fact that in a democracy, people frequently make choices inconsistent with what is believed to be scientific fact, then you don't accept democracy as a form of government
There have been governmentsh that atempted to make government rational and based on scientific principles, protecting the people from their own supposed scientific ignorance; governments applying scientific principles to the allocation and distribution of resources; governments reeducating people who simply refused to believe what was clearly scientifically established. Those were communist governments. Look up what happened to them.
It saddens me as I used to vote for the Green party but it just seems to fracture into left vs right wing ideologies.
Some things can only be expressed by left vs right wing ideology.
If you think (say)that it is legitimate for the US to pursue its economic interests through war, you are taking a right wing position whether you like it or not.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well, you shouldn't always. Some people do act in bad faith.
I remember way, way back, actually right here on Slashdot, I learned about organized bad faith public discourse for the first time.
The occasion was that an organization called "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution" had published a book on Linux, which was widely reported as being a commissioned hit piece. In the ensuing discussion, someone linked to the blog of Tim Lambert, an Australian computer science professor, which was very enlightening.
Finally, Bruce Perens got the occasion to ask Kenneth Brown outright: What would it take to get you to stop attacking Linux and start defending it instead? "We can talk about that" was apparently his reply.
So yes, some people do argue in bad faith. If you keep assuming these people argue in good faith, they win, so sometimes it's necessary to call out. But obviously it shouldn't be done lightly either.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I think I know why we keep building larger and larger particle accelerators !!! Real smart people must be trying to get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination whatever the cost!!!!! I've got pictures and footprints. How do I contact the CERN team??!!
E Proelio Veritas.
Put a proposal on the table that reduces net human carbon emissions to zero. Then we can talk about its costs and benefits and possibly decide to take action.
So until they can come up with a solution that completely solves the problem, we don't have to think about working toward solving the problem?
Are you, by any chance, a mathematician?
re: ..they think it is a load of crap..
I believe that use of the word think is misleading. Technically, think is synonymous with (be of the) opinion; however it implies that the opinion is one garnered by contemplation of connected ideas.
It does not suffice to contemplate what opinion could lead to my greatest personal benefit then present that as what I think. That is contemptible fakery.
And the next rub is that some of the cost can only be determined much later, because only much later we actually see that it really creates costs. When the first roads were built, no one thought about the costs of cutting biotops. When the first iron forges were built, no one thought about the costs of cutting down forests for charcoal. When the first fields were leveled and irrigated, no one thought about the costs of changing ground water levels. When the first towns were build, no one thought about the costs of covering arable land.
Sometimes we already know that there will be costs, but we have no good estimates for them.
So it all boils down to negotiations, and negotiations are inherently political.
Cough!AlgoreCough!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Holy shit Stephen Colbert predicted this not more then a few days ago with pop. It's a conspiracy mobius strip of conspiratorial thinking!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ejgq0r0SEU
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
While you're ad hominem stereotyping is no doubt amusing to you and your fellow neo Nazis
Talk about recursive!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There is no such thing as man made global warming, nor is there any 'global warming' occurring at the moment.
Oh, well that's all right then.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
...I think what they were trying to say was "evokes", even though as written it's probably more accurate :)
invokes 3rd person singular present of invoke (Verb)
Verb
Cite or appeal to (someone or something) as an authority for an action or in support of an argument.
Call on (a deity or spirit) in prayer, as a witness, or for inspiration.
evokes 3rd person singular present of evoke (Verb)
Verb
Bring or recall to the conscious mind.
Elicit (a response).
So, certainly, Lewandowsky's fraud papers both appealed to conspiratorial thinking to support their arguments :)
It is about reducing greed.
That would explain why nuclear power is rejected out of hand by Warmists because it would enable us to continue "making stuff" without the emissions.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
may I gently rib my co-employee and say "well duh Stephan, so the paranoid get paranoid being told that they are paranoid and blame the people that tell them they are paranoid? like we never saw that one coming"
Its turtles wearing tin foil hats all the way down.
Have gnu, will travel.
This human mind is long known to be superb at pattern detection. To the point where it often detects patterns that are not there. Shapes in clouds, patterns in random stock market behavior. Attributions of control of nature by gods.
Why should these false positives not also exist in analysis of behavior by individuals as well?
Conspiratorial thinking is just one of the many examples of human false positive pattern extraction.
Ah, the old "it's the will of the people so it must be right" meme.
Well, the first failure is that Democracy is not about the will of the people, it's about the informed will of the people. Control the information that people get (and their education) and you can shape their will.
The second things is that most countries don't actually have true Democracy: they have electoral circles and other little schemes that mean that 30% of the votes can be made to produce an absolute majority of representatives (with the right shape of electoral circles). True Democracy requires proportional vote.
Lastly but not least, your "will of the people" argument is in no way applicable to my denounciation of the methods which are used to try and subvert said will of the people. I did not made the argument that the will of the people is not valid, I made the argument that it is often subverted through misinformation. Straw man much!?
Not recursive. Just hypocritical.
It's not that we need to assassinate them, it's that we need to turn the power of the government against them and their credibility.
Is that democratic? Is it "fair"? Are we interfering with their Constitutional rights somehow, someway a lawyer could identify ? Probably.
But about anything we have to ask, what are the alternatives and their respective outcomes.? I compare this to the drone program. It's not perfect, but it's what we have now and our hand has been forced into action. We have to use the tools we have, not wait for advent of hypothetical tools which have no unwanted side effects and about which we can all feel good.
That's the justification for the drone program and it's the justification for the government unilaterally acting against the machinery of deniers. I am not saying drone the deniers. I am saying bring the power of the state against them in whatever way is necessary to stop them without reserve. for the purpose of undermining their influence. legitimacy and mind share.
"[a] strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means
-Thomas Jefferson
I would love you see you substantiate the first clause of your first sentence.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
On the nose.
> Where's the evidence that reasonable counter measures will destroy the economy?
Where did I say that I didn't support reasonable measures? :)
I'm not accusing you of this, but debates like this both amuse and annoy me with the binary thinking: either I'm a tobacco-chawin', uninformed redneck who thinks it's fine to drive an old Ford truck that emits a smoke screen, or I completely buy into the fact that Man Is A Pestilence On The Planet(tm)(r)(c)(sm) and should just die and let Gaea have Her planet back.
I agree with you on the CFL bulbs, by the way. Incandescent lights are terribly inefficient and *should* be replaced, but I'm not sure CFL is the way to go.
My other complaint about those who push for *radical* change (again: note the use of the term *radical*, and you may couple that with "unilateral" action on our part) is that, until the Chinese agree to join in, it won't do a lick of good. Thus far, they've barely given the idea lip service. From their point of view, it's fine and dandy for us to point at their smog and smokestacks, because we've *already* built our industry.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
It saddens me as I used to vote for the Green party but it just seems to fracture into left vs right wing ideologies.
Some things can only be expressed by left vs right wing ideology.
If you think (say)that it is legitimate for the US to pursue its economic interests through war, you are taking a right wing position whether you like it or not.
I think you just dis-proved the point you were trying to make using that example, because it's actually a bi-partisan statist position, not a right wing one. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and François Hollande being clear left-wing examples of thinking it is legitimate for the US (and France) to pursue economic interests through war.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
What pro-climate-change version of slashdot do you get? And how can I switch over to it? This one seems to be wall to wall arguments.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I don't think you understand what the research is about.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
No, the problem is that you are making a caricature out of other people's position and then claim they aren't willing to talk to you reasonably
You're claiming that there isn't a large number of free marketers that are denying AGW exists?
If yes, you are clearly wrong, and exhibiting another form of denialism.
If no, then it wasn't a caricature.
?STACK OVERFLOW
More Twoson than Cupertino
Most of the environmentalists I've known were just interesting in their own smug sense of self-righteousness.
I have relatives like that. The grief I get from them because I drive older vehicles that are kept in proper running order while they drive new vehicles replaced every couple of year but are of the environmentally friendly type. They also frown upon hunting while at the same time preaching about the necessity to only eat meat that is organic, free range, fair trade, locally produced, etc. The disconnect they have is rather shocking at times.
Time to offend someone
"But today people often say there is a conspiracy by big oil": yes, and by their definition that would be an example of a conspiratorial mindset on the part of the person holding the belief. What is your problem with that?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If only it were the case that people were simply arguing over the correct course of action. Your nation actually has elected representatives who think that all of the scientists behind climate research are part of some secret scheme to make millions of dollars and the data was entirely made up. I mean they have stated these things as though they were facts in the political decision-making process of your country.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The least divisive, least disrupting course of action is for the government to internally and secretly set up an Executive Action team within one the intelligence agencies whose purpose is to discredit, attack and dismantle and neutralize the leaders of the [conspiracy theorists].
A secret Executive Action team to discredit conspiracy theorists? Sounds like something a true conspiracy theorist would have anticipated and taken measures against :-)
The problem is that by calling out the first paper as BS science you're automatically labelled a conspiracy theorist. The second paper went on to do just that.
Well, no.
If yoiu claim that the first paper is total crap using conspirationist reasoning then you get called a conspiracy theorist.
If you have a valid complaint, what is it?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I think you just dis-proved the point you were trying to make using that example, because it's actually a bi-partisan statist position, not a right wing one.
Of course it doesn't disprove the point. It's simply that both Republican and Democrat are right wing. For example, the policies of the Democrat party are to the right of the policies of the UK Conservative party.
Pursuing economic interests through war is most certainly a right wing idea. Pursuing social justice through war would be a left wing one.
> "It is about reducing greed."
Very nice of them.... wait. Who gave them the mandate to mess with other people's feelings? the end, of course, the end that justifies the means.
It seems innocent but it's fascist and machiavellian at once. If you want to reduce greed somebody else with his own ends might want to reduce your passionate stance. The end result: laws constitution and democracy scrapped, may the most powerful win.
What about making goods cost their actual price, included the impact on the environment and health? Only for reversible damage of course. That would be democratic.
What about treating all pollutants as CO2? What about not introducing new substances without long term testing of the substance and all its interactions with existing substances?
Climate change seems a diversion while the planet becomes "proprietary". That is, you need permission to plant things, to keep water, you need therapy to have offspring, to simply live. This is the real battle. Enjoy rivers of ink (well, bytes) about changes in a climate that never stopped changing instead.
I'm sorry that you don't like the big new words. :( It must be hard for you to talk to people about the numbers machine that talks to the other numbers machines through the long thin things carrying electricity or light.
A better simple-English translation would be "Going around and around anger: Tending to think things are caused by groups of secret unseen bad people in the computer talk place because of work looking at people who tend to think things are caused by groups of secret unseen bad people."
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Follow the Money.
Yes, this has always been the strategy of the climate-change-stonewallers:
1. It's not happening.
2. Conclusive evidence is not yet available.
3. The total effect could be small or even beneficial.
3. It's too late and too expensive to do anything about it.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
An "ad hominem" isn't calling someone a name, it is the act of dismissing what someone says because of who they are, not what they say.
I think it's a hilarious mental image that you could have a shack in Kenya that can't even keep the lights on because of rampant energy efficiency measures, yet elsewhere in the world someone is creating mediciations that require a refrigerator. Or for that matter that someone is still making refrigerators, solar panels or light bulbs.
What an amazingly illogical rationing of resources that would be.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
> Because you deny the evidence that would convince someone who is genuinely looking for evidence.
I know you won't believe this, but I'll say it anyway: I've looked at a wide range of evidence, not only from IPCC and related sources, but dissenting points of view (including that of Freeman Dyson, a man whom I admire deeply and who is anything but a "conservative whack-job"). The idea that there is "scientific consensus," for example, depends on how one defines "consensus." If you include other, but related, scientific disciplines, the consensus becomes much weaker: there is good evidence that the Earth is warming, and CO2 emissions *might* play a significant part, but more study is needed to be sure.
Confirmation bias exists on BOTH sides. Pro-AGW and Anti-AGW tend to read things that support their points of view and blow off or ignore other points.
And now I'm wasting my time, because you're going to believe that people like me are uninformed (or worse) no matter what -- that if ONLY I'd read the same things as you, I would be *compelled* to agree.
I *have* read many of them. I am still agnostic. I'm not alone, either. Deal with it. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Where's the evidence that reasonable counter measures will destroy the economy?
In Spain.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I think you just dis-proved the point you were trying to make using that example, because it's actually a bi-partisan statist position, not a right wing one.
Of course it doesn't disprove the point. It's simply that both Republican and Democrat are right wing.
No True Scotsman
For example, the policies of the Democrat party are to the right of the policies of the UK Conservative party.
Pursuing economic interests through war is most certainly a right wing idea. Pursuing social justice through war would be a left wing one.
You ignored France - or are they right wing too? Russia, also right wing? Perhaps you can enlighten me just how far "left" you would have to go for you to consider it not "right wing", nothing in the real world seems to support your idea. Can you provide even one example of a country starting a war for "social justice" purposes?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Definition of AD HOMINEM
1: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
2: marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made
So calling someone a Neo Nazi is not an attack on their character?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Uh, if you're gonna try and correct people on the usage of the term, perhaps you should look it up first?
Or the shorter version:
1. appealing to one's prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one's intellect or reason.
2. attacking an opponent's character rather than answering his argument.
Ad hominem refers to a tactic used in an argument. If you dismiss what someone has to say because of who they are, that is prejudice. If you try to convince other people to dismiss what someone has to say because of who they are, that is an ad hominem attack. The ad hominem attack may attempt to appeal to the prejudices of the people you're trying to convince, but it does not mean that that is why _you_ dismissed what your opponent had to say. Now technically for it to be an ad hominem attack the "negative" trait you're accusing them of must be entirely irrelevant. If what you say would be relevant if it were true, but it's not true, then technically it would be slander/libel instead. However people don't usually bother drawing the distinction that finely.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Wait, the voices in my head aren't real? But, they say you're lying! Who do I believe?
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
I've never believed any conspiracies. There's no such thing. All of the "so-called" conspiracy ideas are just created by some secret government department trying to spread fear and doubt.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Scientific principles like Lysenkoism?
The "open society" argument is that democracy relies on everyone acknowledging their fallibility. Ie. we can never be sure our view is correct because views are by nature self-reinforcing. Maybe it is bias because of lack of education. But it can also be bias because of lots of education (we are the experts, so we are most likely to be right). So no matter how sure you are about the science, about a political idea, or whatever, fallibility says you should't impose it on others just because you think it is right. They need to have the option to think their own thing. So it is actually not about majority rule, it is about allowing minorities a voice just in case the majority got it wrong.
Like I said, I rarely come here any more. Then again, I rarely go to my own site except to troll the people who still cling to it, so who knows!
But, most of what I read is pretty liberal here...
And have Slashdot mod that down by 6. Seriously, that's all you can do with spelling/grammar nazis. They are the kind of people who can't actually argue a point, can't admit they are wrong, and can't just stay quiet. So instead they nit pick and go after minor issues with presentation as though that invalidates the actual point made.
Just put them on ignore, and move on. Ends up making Slashdot much more enjoyable.
50 pairs of shoes may seem unreasonable to you, but it's a pretty reasonable number to someone who is trying to match their shoes to their wardrobe.
There were not a lot of people shouting in the desert that "LIBOR are fixing interest rates for their own gain!", nor a lot of people saying "Nixon is using illegal means to keep track of his political opponents. Guaranteed!". Conspiracy theorists tend to miss the real conspiracies, it seems.
Conspiracy theorists were telling people it was happening long before the proof came out in public view. You can go read materials that people had, and see old videos where things were being hinted at by politicians, media people (generally independent), and scholars.
I think the first thing to be brought out into the open is that conspiracies do happen. There is, and has been, an ongoing campaign to associate "conspiracy" with insanity. The media does it all the time, labeling people and cutting clips to make people look crazy where they have valid concerns regarding a conspiracy. Long ago, the media actually had investigative journalists that worked with "conspiracy theorists" to dig out the truth. Like Watergate, LIBOR, REX84, Operation mocking bird, COINTELPRO, etc.. etc... (Yes, this could be an exhaustive list of "known" and "proven" conspiracies).
About 10 years ago, most major news agencies canned every investigative journalist on the payroll. Now all your news comes from the AP and it's well scripted to be entertainment and not news. Fox even won a supreme court ruling that stated their "News" is not news. It is entertainment. They don't have to tell you the truth, and can put anything they want on their "News" programs.
A reality is that our Government has become so large and entrenched with bribery (sorry folks, campaign donations and "gifts" to politicians is bribery) that we can't possibly investigate or know every possible conspiracy. Very few investigative journalists exist when we compare today to 40 years ago (think percentages, not raw numbers. 1 in 10,000 is a much lower percentage than 2 in 100,000). Since media has been monopolized in the US, I believe it's valid to investigate a conspiracy to hide the truth from people.
Conspiracy theorists are not a bad thing. They play an important role in exposing wrong doing. The most popular conspiracy theorists may not be yelling "LIBOR" any more, they are on to other conspiracies. "LIBOR" has been exposed, so they did what they set out to do. What you see portrayed in media is not often the full story, but a cut and edited version to sway emotion and hide truths. The media often ignores known conspiracies to further their own agenda(see note below). Most Americans don't know anything about Fast and Furious because the media ignored the stories. Most American's don't know that Obama's attorneys have appealed the courts ruling twice trying to support indefinite detention of Americans without trial which was buried in the NDAA. They may find it important if they knew, but instead they are inundated with Sports and Celebrities which works to divert attention from real "News".
Note on my use of "agenda" above. The agenda is not intentionally well defined. This could range from "revenue" to a "conspiracy". You can do the research and come to your own conclusions.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This hole is too deep to climb out of. Let's keep digging down till we figure out a way to climb out.
But about anything we have to ask, what are the alternatives and their respective outcomes.? I compare this to the drone program. It's not perfect, but it's what we have now and our hand has been forced into action. We have to use the tools we have, not wait for advent of hypothetical tools which have no unwanted side effects and about which we can all feel good.
Some of us believe that if only certain abhorrent actions can save us from certain death, then we should choose death. After all, what the hell is the point of living if we can't be the people we wish to become? By that reasoning, is it not implied that the type of people who would choose the abhorrent action do not deserve to live?
Sometimes a no-win scenario means you don't win. There's no shame in that, but there is certainly shame in abandoning your principles every time a crisis is looming.
But look at all the countless people in previous generations who suffered things far far worse than the targeted neutralization of a apocalypse-inducing POV. People in the feudal China or under Stalin or in the Middle Ages, people who lived under despots, were tortured, saw their loved ones tortured then killed, people who reside in some 3rd world hell hole prison tonight because, say, one of their neighbors carried a grudge, or was jealous, and had the political savvy and pull to put them there.
None of the people who came before us chose death over those circumstances; they soldiered on, and we are the beneficiaries of that soldiering on. When things get so bad some part of your brain is telling you it's not worth going on, then you start to live not for yourself but for future generations who will get THIS / this pathological hatred of a rational interpretation of reality right the way we moderns got polio right. There's a reason these people are the way they are, but we don't know what it is. One day, we will know. One day soon, we'll decide that knowing is a top priority for humanity.
One thing is sure- conservatism and civilization are incompatible. In the battle between secular humanism which posits that human (and other) welfare and an egalitarian system of governance is the measure of what is Good and exactly what produces that Good is an ongoing journey of discovery and religious conservatism which posits that what is important is to serve an invisible Santa God and what defines Good was written down in texts once and for all by sheepherders who lived in the Bronze Age, there can be only one winner because of just this circumstance and all that will follow it.
From stem cell research to evolution to global warming , the religious conservative mind which seeks to conserve the old way and the old world views cannot by definition deal with the new world science has birthed and is birthing , faster and faster, deeper and deeper into everything we know about ourselves and understand as ourselves. There is no place of the Jesus / Allah people in the genetic revolution except to play the role of "the party of no " and terrorists who would sooner blow up the world and everything in it than see their cherished belief systems be rejected by the bulk of humanity, decay and finally perish from the face of the earth.
And on and on and on. Watching polls what you'll discover is about 10% of Americans are just outright fascists who wouldn't hesitate to do whatever any right wing authority told them to do, and think it should have been started yesterday. This is also the finding of Bob Altemeyer in his seminal work on authoritarianism
This I can believe, because I actually run into this sort of person on a regular basis. Though they don't always follow "right wing" authorities. More on this in a bit. I will say though that I remember your "send the deniers to the glue factory" tough talk from before. I never saw this sort of ruthless stormtrooper attitude in any of my other arguments on Slashdot. Something about AGW seems to bring out the inner Nazi in some people.
There's not enough time to reform the American character before we have to take radical and decisive action on global warming.
And one wouldn't need to, if there was demonstrated evidence that radical and decisive action on AGW was needed. Keep in mind that part of the fuel for conspiracy theory is a frequently repeated betrayal of trust. This is just as much a problem in climatology as any other field of endeavor with a huge political component to it.
The thing I find damning (though your rhetorical call for mass murder is pretty damning on its own) about "climate change" concerns is the ignorance of more pressing environmental issues such as habitat destruction, desertification (and bad farming practices), pollution, and global poverty. While it's probably true that there would be some aggravation of these problems from AGW, it remains that a large group of people are advocating unusually expensive remedies for a problem that isn't near the top of the list of the stuff we have to deal with.
So why should we think it is a character problem of people who happen to disagree with you when no one, including you, has yet to present a case for urgent action on global warming?
One of the things that has happened in history is the most powerful nation on earth is incapable of stopping a pending world wide ecological collapse.
That hasn't been true over the past few decades. The US had a genuine pollution problem and pretty much fixed it. They had genuine problems with habitat destruction, bad farming practices, poor fire prevention practices, and endangered species, and have made concrete improvements in all those genuine environmental needs. Sure, there is more we could do there, but real problems get fixed. All you need to do is show that you have a real problem.
The least divisive, least disrupting course of action is for the government to internally and secretly set up an Executive Action team within one the intelligence agencies whose purpose is to discredit, attack and dismantle and neutralize the leaders of the denier terrorist movement. We all know who they are. These *thought leaders* need to be attacked the same way we'd attack any group of terrorists building a bomb named which would have the same long term destructive power as global warming. Denialism is a bomb with the capacity to permanently destroy civilization and the people assembling that bomb are not working in secret. They need to be neutralized and their sources of funding and societal legitimacy attacked through and and all means necessary. They have forfeited their civil rights and constitutional protections. We simply need to deal with them like the world destroying terrorists they are.
So until they can come up with a solution that completely solves the problem, we don't have to think about working toward solving the problem?
How about a solution that actually tries to solve the problem to some degree? No solution is going to be perfect, but some are far less perfect than others. For example, it remains that no one has shown that it is better to do these very inadequate attempts at mitigation rather than just doing nothing at all for a few decades.
Can you provide even one example of a country starting a war for "social justice" purposes?
Well, there's Nazi Germany and the USSR during the buildup to the Second World War, Lots of social justice excuses as part of their pretexts for war.
Well technically, to some it might be considered a compliment (like actual neo-Nazis).
I bet you'd get a completely different response on /. from people if the subject of the conspiracy were 9/11 instead of climate change. Climate Change is something that most liberals and libertarians agree on.
Really? In my experience, committed libertarians of the variety usually found in the US ('free-market' libertarians) tend to be among the loudest and most obnoxious climate change deniers. If you've built up a lot of your ego around the notion that you're one the select, enlightened few who understand that the only moral system of government is ultra-minimalist, and that radically-free markets are the one true answer to virtually all economic and social problems, climate change is a bit problematic. If it's real, it's a giant red flag that your belief system might not actually be true, and you might not be quite as clever and special as you think you are. When others attempt to educate such libertarians about the reality of climate change and especially about the inadequacy of markets to respond to it, the result is massive cognitive dissonance and the usual associated coping mechanisms (denial, anger, shoot-the-messenger, etc).
(note: I used to be one of those people, albeit a milder and less (I hope) obnoxious form. I got better! Climate change was one of the issues which helped me painfully come to the realization that libertarianism is nonsense.)
"Of course it doesn't disprove the point. It's simply that both Republican and Democrat are right wing."
No True Scotsman
No it's not an example of "No True Scotsman", as the party is called the Democratic Party, not the Left-Wing party. They don't tend to call themselves a left-wing party, and indeed would take "socialist" as an insult.
You ignored France - or are they right wing too? Russia, also right wing?
I'm familiar with the current politics and policies of America and the UK. Not so much with the other two.
Perhaps you can enlighten me just how far "left" you would have to go for you to consider it not "right wing", nothing in the real world seems to support your idea.
You make the mistake of thinking that it's a scale, and you just pick an arbitrary point on it to divide left and right. That's not it. Individual policies tend to be easy to classify into political ideologies. Policies supporting free markets for example are right wing. Policies promoting social justice are left wing. To judge where a particular party is, you have to assess the sum of their individual policies.
Can you provide even one example of a country starting a war for "social justice" purposes?
Civil and revolutionary wars mainly. For example the Cuban revolution.
Wars between sovereign states are usually instigated by right wing justifications. Because the high const of waging war needs an economic justification. Left wingers tend more towards negotiation and aid.
I used Venus as an example for two reasons: To illustrate exactly what all of this methane can do when we're this close to the sun (along with the other greenhouse gases common to both Venus and Earth), and because Venus has vast amounts of methane in its atmosphere, giving us a pretty accurate picture of what can happen with the current accelerating rates of methane gas release (methane geysers in the sea bed, expanding rice fields, larger cattle herds, hydro-fracking).
Methane is a far worse greenhouse-type gas than CO2
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
That would explain why nuclear power is rejected out of hand by Warmists because it would enable us to continue "making stuff" without the emissions.
There's more than emissions. In any case, nuclear power and industry on earth have been developmentally retarded since we developed space technology. Instead of using it to get industry off Earth and clean it up, we used it to build ICBMs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Per wikapedia, Venus has vast amounts of carbon dioxide, not methane. Its CO2 is measured at over 90%, not in the parts per million we use here.
Earth and Venus are not comparable in terms of atmosphere, they wouldn't even ever be comparable even if the supply of fossil fuels were endless and we burned them at an even faster rate then we do now, we'd still never get to Venus levels.
We're also not sure how long methane lasts in the atmosphere and what its cycle is, heck we're still learning more about the carbon cycle too.
My point is comparing our future atmosphere to Venus makes no sense on timescales that are smaller than millions of years. It would be on the order of time it took originally to turn our atmosphere into one comprised of nearly 20% oxygen.
What a perfect example of a conspiracy theory. To believe that so many climate scientists and politicians around the world can maintain a scientific fallacy in the face of the intense scrutiny it's received over the last 20+ years just boggles the mind. Accolades galore are awaiting the scientist that overturns the current theory yet all we get is nibbling around the edges.
riverat1 posting AC to preserve mods (and no, I didn't mod you).
The simpler explanation is what played out in front of every one eyes. A fuel laden passenger plane slammed into each tower, the resulting massive damage and fire weakened the structure sufficiently to initiate a collapse and the whole lot came down in a manner entirely consistent with that.
Yes, Venus has large amounts of gaseous CO2, but is also has vast amounts of liquid and gaseous methane. Part of the reason Venus is so hot, is because each molecule of methane will retain approximately 40x the heat energy of every CO2 molecule. It also causes negative reinforcement feedback loops, with the interactions it has with solar radiation, oxygen, nitrogen and CO2.
Atmospheric methane is a sink for chlorine, but reacts with CO2 to create volatile and non-volatile organic compounds and with the nitrous oxide in the atmosphere to create ammonia compounds. The ammonia compounds then enter a feedback loop with the chlorine molecules where it creates hydrochloric acid, which tends to interact in non-pleasant ways with the O3 and H2O molecules that are also present.
As far as methane cycles go, there is no more such thing as a normal methane cycle for some of the reasons I've previously mentioned. It was known as far back as 1913 that the "natural" methane cycles would be toast because of ever increasing rice production, let alone in the current period, when we're adding in many metric tons of methane into the atmosphere directly as a byproduct of natural gas extraction. The Alaskan-Canadian-Siberian permafrost areas are also now releasing their stored methane (and CO2) into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates.
It's interesting to note that in the 25 years prior to 1993, rice production had increased 47%, and that the current estimates of production from 1993 onward to 2020, will increase by approximately 156%.
As far as timescales go, it's hard to tell, we've already done more damage in 200 years as a species than anyone could have possibly imagined. One of the earlier climate researchers (about 1989 or so) theorized that in those short 200 years, we had already pushed the human-habitable lifespan of the planet 3/4ths of the way to completion.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Uggghh, yuk... although by all accounts, the Chorley girls are far worse for tackiness than Blackpool ones...
also, I disagree, it would be right up that tacky, plastic, sleazy "King's" street. That's where he is, in a guest house, with Diana. Somebody prove me wrong, and while we're at it, I've yet to see even a sensible argument contradicting my sighting of the Great Teapot!
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
No, it is a "caricature". Caricatures take one small (and often superficial) aspect of a situation and exaggerate it.
That is exactly what people like you are doing, and you just did it again.
I didn't say it was "right". I'm just saying that unless you want to live in a dictatorship, you have to accept the fact that government produces bad outcomes; you don't get special dispensation to subvert government or lie to people just because you believe your cause is righteous or because you believe you have science or the "scientific consensus" on your side.
You can "think" about solutions as much as you want. But you can't impose global regulations on energy markets and add massive new costs to energy production unless you can show that it has a significant benefit. And you certainly shouldn't lie to people and tell them that things like energy savings and carbon taxes are going to lead to a solution when they clearly are not.
And, unfortunately, the mathematical nature of exponential emissions growth (and that is what we have) is indeed such that unless you solve the problem completely, you might as well not bother at all.
Even "socialism", racial ideologies, and "fascism" themselves have often been couched in scientific terms, and people who disagreed with them have been treated as mentally ill and reeducated.
That's a bad metaphor. But if we stick with that metaphor, then the problem is precisely that Kyoto, Doha, and all the other efforts all propose that we keep digging anyway. Until someone comes up with a plan where we actually stop digging, making the shovel slightly smaller makes little difference.
I am new to the ADA programming language, but If I had to devise a routine for the thought recursion it may look something like this.
.. 100;
with Ada.Text_IO;
with Movie.Reference_IO;
use Ada.Text_IO;
use Movie.Reference_IO;
type Available is new Float range 90
Freetime : Available;
loop
if Freetime >90 then
Form_Consipracy_Theory ("They want us all to drive electric cars!");
Post_Garbage_To_Blog ("Science is an intellectual dead end, you know? It's a lot of little guys in tweed suits cutting up frogs on foundation grants");
elseif Freetime >95 then
Form_Consipracy_Theory ("These potshots are meant to destroy the Amercian refining industry");
Post_Garbage_To_Blog ("They hate these cans! Stay away from the cans!");
elseif Freetime =100 then
Form_Consipracy_Theory ("Their proof is intentional misdirection");
Post_Garbage_To_Blog ("I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders");
else
Post_Garbage_To_Blog ("Science is a load of *$#@*%#@ and climate change is #@&%!* and they should just go *$#@*& themselves and the stacks of *%@#!*#$ data they use to tell lies with");
end if;
end loop;
Yes, it doesn't ever fall through, it just loops infinitely saying the same crap over and over. Secondary and Tertiary recursion is not necessary because the initial cause is the same, though from different sources.
It's neither small nor superficial, as the original report referred to in TFA makes clear.
Abuse of science to provide flimsy justification for outrageous public policy is not the same thing as "atempt[ing] to make government rational and based on scientific principles". Just as a country can have the word "Democratic" in its official name and still not actually be so, a country can claim to be scientific and rational and really not be.
You are right, but, at the same time, you are tremendously, fabulously wrong! Global warming or climate change is a red herring used to distract us from the real issue: the ever increasing real cost of burning fossil fuels as an energy source. By real cost, I do not mean externalities. Externalities are real, but beyond humanities' ability to process. What people can comprehend is the ratio between energy invested vs. energy harvested. Think about oil. Every year we have to go deeper and into more stubborn formations to get the oil out. However despite the ever rising cost resulting from this inexorable trend, oil is now, and still will always be the cheapest. The only way out of this is a huge government program to build thousands of breeder reactors. Breeder reactors are expensive to build, but, once built, are very cheap to operate. Once thousands of them are online, the price of electricity will go so low, that we can, 1. Stop burning natural gas. 2. Develop an alternative transportation infrastructure that runs on electricity instead of oil. Then we stop burning oil. So you see, by abandoning global warming, we can stop burning fossil fuels. That's what you wanted, no? Look at it this way: if you think humans will voluntarily impoverish themselves on the chance that global warming is real, you are living in a fantasy world. On the other hand, if we promise people free electricity, they will support the needed changes. Do you want to be righteous, or do you want to stop burning fossil fuels? Pick one!
Social Credit would solve everything...
You have to decide: do you want a democracy or do you want a government based on rationality and scientific principles.
They are mutually exclusive, because most voters are neither rational nor scientifically inclined, so they will frequently make irrational and unscientific choices (or elect representatives that make irrational and unscientific choices).
Personally, I prefer democracy to rational government.
Maybe a little late to reply, but I'm going to anyway.
The interesting thing to remember is that there aren't a lot of pure democracies out there. Instead, most countries are like the US: democratic republics with built in government constraints such as the US constitution. The idea behind the US, for example, is supposed to be that it is based on rationality and scientific (or at least Enlightenment) principles. Living under a direct democracy would probably be a terrifying experience without some form of voter exclusion that only allowed _informed_ votes (and any such system would be hard to prevent being gamed), and, even then, it could be terrifying if you were a member of any sort of minority. Then there's the fact that it would probably be short-lived since it wouldn't take long for some majority or another to vote in a new system of government.
As I said, people will also vote for irrational representatives; representative democracies don't magically make government rational or scientific.
No, that is incorrect. The idea behind the US is that people should foremost have the freedom to make their own choices, not collectively, but individually. It is an assumption of the Enlightenment that people will tend to make rational and scientifically sound choices, but there is no guarantee that they will.
A direct democracy based on majority rule is indeed incompatible with individual liberties, and that is why the US doesn't have such a system (of course, that doesn't stop either the left or the right from invoking a supposed majority as a justification of their various policies). But any system that attempts to enforce rational and scientifically sound government is likewise incompatible with individual liberties, because if you don't have the option to make "the wrong choice" you don't have a choice at all. And having that choice isn't an idle academic exercise: since nobody knows for certain what the rational and scientific choices actually are, the only way is to let everybody make their own choices and sort out later who was right and who was wrong.
What the US system has traditionally tried to do is to let everybody choose for themselves. If you want to destroy yourself with irrational or bad choices, that's your business; government would only intervene to protect people from causing harm to each other. Unfortunately, that system is falling apart, with both the left and the right trying to protect people from themselves, and to fabricate all sorts of harm and obligations to each other in an attempt to restrict people's ability to choose for themselves.
No, that is incorrect. The idea behind the US is that people should foremost have the freedom to make their own choices, not collectively, but individually
Rationality as compared to concepts like the divine right of kings and infallibility of religious authorities that dominated in an earlier age. Concepts like free speech, trial by jury, search only through due process, all seem rational to me compared to the way those things have been done in the past. I wasn't trying to say that the founders were Vulcans or anything like that.
But any system that attempts to enforce rational and scientifically sound government is likewise incompatible with individual liberties, because if you don't have the option to make "the wrong choice" you don't have a choice at all.
I think you can have rational government without removing choice from the equation. The Establishment Clause of the US Constitution is clearly an example of a system that attempts to enforce rational government and also protects individual liberties. It's by no means a strict either/or situation.
You're mixing up different levels of reasoning. The Enlightenment argued that it was rational and self-evident that people should govern themselves instead of being governed by despots claiming divine rights. The Enlightenment also made rational arguments about how government by the people should work. But doesn't mean that the people who govern themselves will end up making rational choices. Of course you can have a rationally designed system of government. But such a system necessarily gives people the choice to have their rationally designed government making irrational decisions.
And I didn't say that it was a "strict either/or situation". The choice isn't always-rational or always-irrational decision making, it is always-rational or sometimes-irrational government. I claim that that always-rational is incompatible with democracy; you have to live with sometimes-irrational governmental decision making if you want to live in a democracy. That means accepting that people will vote for bank bailouts and creationism and a lot of other stupid ideas.
I'm not sure that I'm mixing anything up so much as we're both drawing our distinctions slightly differently. We seem to be mostly in agreement. You do have to live with people voting for stupid things in a democracy. On the other hand, that doesn't mean you have to like it.
As long as you merely "don't like it", there's no problem. However, if you have been paying attention to US politics, you'll notice that the Obama administration doesn't limit itself to "not liking it", they are saying "this is the rational and scientific thing to do, and if Congress isn't going to do it, we are going to act unilaterally", misusing powers given to it for national emergencies. That crosses a line and becomes a threat to our democracy.
Just like with the Soviet Union, anyone can claim to be doing the "rational and scientific thing" when all they're doing is making up justifications.