US presidential election

[Oldjim]

So how would you define a "climate change denier"

I class myself as a sceptic as the various and multitudinous forecasts have been proved completely inaccurate.

Yes the climate is changing and it is getting warmer and the seas are rising but the rate is still way below the alarmist forecasts and, in the case of sea level shows no significant change in the rate

In the specific case of the UK the forecasts from the Met Office were a load of rubbish - Mediterranean Climate with droughts in the summer - as they were based on their computer model and completely ignored the fact that the temperatures and rainfall in summer are largely controlled by the high pressure over the Azores which either gave us south westerly winds (rain and warm) or a high pressure spreading up from Europe (dry and hot)

One thing to look at is the Central England temperature record which is one of the longest in the world and the temperature changes in Summer are almost non existent with the biggest change being Autumn and Winter where we don't get the cold we used to

[lowenz]

For me, Hillary's biggest problem was the Color Revolutions - in islamic countries - "seeding". Kind of intoxicating behaviour it you ask me, done by a foreign power.

And I'm totally against theocracy, totally.

Edited December 5, 2016 by lowenz

[lowenz]

Melan please, can you post?

 

You're clearly a brilliant mind and it seems you're the most "trump-friendly" among us So your opinion is precious.

Edited December 5, 2016 by lowenz

[nbohr1more]

 

 

So how would you define a "climate change denier"

 

 

Anyone who believes it's utterly impossible that carbon emissions could cause the greenhouse effect.

If you disagree about the severity of the issue, that's fine but to say that it's completely bogus altogether is what I categorize as a denier.

I'm sure the definition varies depending on how urgent the person is about this.

 

My stance is that we know the general physics of it in a simple simulated system so it can "eventually" be extrapolated to the complex "real world".

Whether the real world conditions slows down the problem by 100 or 1000 years, we shouldn't gamble on the time-table.

[Anderson]

 

Anyone who believes it's utterly impossible that carbon emissions could cause the greenhouse effect.

If you disagree about the severity of the issue, that's fine but to say that it's completely bogus altogether is what I categorize as a denier.

I'm sure the definition varies depending on how urgent the person is about this.

 

My stance is that we know the general physics of it in a simple simulated system so it can "eventually" be extrapolated to the complex "real world".

Whether the real world conditions slows down the problem by 100 or 1000 years, we shouldn't gamble on the time-table.

If anything the developed world did a lot for ecology.

The problem is about developing countries as Russia, China, India who've got great pollution. It's not even about carbon emissions, it's about the general pollution of the cities and the health effects upon their citizens. The metallurgic industry is horrible and... that's why you've got such a large percentage of people still sticking to the rural areas.

 

There's just a couple of really bad cases like the Caspian Sea dying due to of the ignorance of the government. But it is solely the fault of those governments. The US can't be held responsible for the rest of the world having people that aren't held accountable for their faults.

 

Ecology regulations and standards are almost impossible to enforce internationally. Even in light of the recent conference.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Anderson

[demagogue]

Climate change is a tough problem because it's really 1000s of different policy problems being crammed into one package. It's also a "tragedy of the commons" collective action/free rider problem in game theory. The Nash equilibrium is always pushed to more climate emission unless you can tie the major emitters down first. I studied international environmental law in lawschool, so I could say a lot about it.

 

But I think what's fair to say is there's an important gap in the debates, and that's economic conservatives that grant climate change is a real and serious problem, but want to be rational and solve it by conservative principles and be careful that it doesn't become a movement for social re-engineering. That position isn't getting well represented in the US because it'd be vulnerable to being called "Republican in Name Only" and both parties would reject them.

 

Incidently it's the position of the professor I researched under, Dick Stewart, who was one of the architects of the US Clean Air Act, where companies could buy/sell credits to emit pollution, using market mechanisms to make sure the cuts did the least economic damage, which was the model for the cap and tradeable permits system in the Kyoto Protocal for climate change. He's my ideal of a liberal Republican and what the US needs most, but are the guys that just got chased out of town and told to not come back.

[Sotha]

I just read a newpaper item about a pizza restaurant that was attacked by a person who believed false news about Clinton-pedophile ring working in the basement and that future US president's security advisor had to resign because of it.

 

I mean c'mon. This is starting to look like a surreal tragi-comedy. But I do not know whether to cry or laugh. World politics go slapstick? Western civilization flushes itself down the toilet while you hear the studio audience applaud?

[Goldwell]

I just read a newpaper item about a pizza restaurant that was attacked by a person who believed false news about Clinton-pedophile ring working in the basement and that future US president's security advisor had to resign because of it.

 

I mean c'mon. This is starting to look like a surreal tragi-comedy. But I do not know whether to cry or laugh. World politics go slapstick? Western civilization flushes itself down the toilet while you hear the studio audience applaud?

 

Conspiracy theorists doing stupid shit has been happening since forever. How about all of those people who believe 9/11 was an inside job? or those who think the moon landing was faked? or that JFK was assassinated because he was going to reveal area 51 secrets? or chemtrails, or vaccines give autism, or us based concentration camps (fema camps I think they're called), the list goes on and on.. The point is there have always been people believing some really crazy shit, this pizza-gate thing is just another to add onto the ever growing list and yes sometimes people have a strong enough conviction in those theories to act on it, I remember reading a news article about a moon-landing denier who verbally attacked an astronaut who had been to the moon and the astronaut punched him in the face. The confrontational nature of this has been happening for a long time so I see no change there.

 

The real threat to western civilization are greedy bankers, corporate elites who roam above the law and buy their power, having money in politics, privatised prisons and immigrating people from countries incompatible with the west, those are all things that could contribute together to the fall of the west. These conspiracy nutjobs have always been around and while yes they need to be addressed I think there are much bigger & more serious problems to be dealt with.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Goldwell

[demagogue]

What I thought was most crazy about that story, aside from being buried under the mountain of Trump conspiritorial insanity like everything else these days, was how the most common reaction was like "Well that was bound to happen", as if nutjobism has become so mainstreamed it's not surprising. Still a tragedy of course, but not surprising. Sad days.

[New Horizon]

So how would you define a "climate change denier"

I class myself as a sceptic as the various and multitudinous forecasts have been proved completely inaccurate.

Yes the climate is changing and it is getting warmer and the seas are rising but the rate is still way below the alarmist forecasts and, in the case of sea level shows no significant change in the rate

In the specific case of the UK the forecasts from the Met Office were a load of rubbish - Mediterranean Climate with droughts in the summer - as they were based on their computer model and completely ignored the fact that the temperatures and rainfall in summer are largely controlled by the high pressure over the Azores which either gave us south westerly winds (rain and warm) or a high pressure spreading up from Europe (dry and hot)

One thing to look at is the Central England temperature record which is one of the longest in the world and the temperature changes in Summer are almost non existent with the biggest change being Autumn and Winter where we don't get the cold we used to

 

Lots of people look at the amount of snow outside their window and say, "pfff, climate change. Look at that stuff. We've never had snow like that". What they don't understand is the wreckage going on above us in the arctic with the warm air pushing the arctic jet stream lower and lower. We just had a drastic storm here in Atlantic Canada. The last decade has seen some pretty drastic changes, the likes of which even the old timers have never seen. We had tons of snow as a kid, but it's the forces behind it that are changing. Most of our Island was without power for a full week after the storm. There wasn't even a large amount of snow, but the severity of the winds snapped over 100 electric poles from one end of the Island to the other. We're currently at a stage where the weather patterns are wobbling like a spinning top. In my opinion sitting on our hands and waiting to see what happens is reckless. All we have to do is look to the planet venus to see what happens when a planet reaches the point of no return in a green house effect. It will be our descendants that suffer if we don't start working now. The technology exists to do it. It's just a matter of pushing the greedy oil bastards holding up progress out of the way.

[Springheel]

I mean c'mon. This is starting to look like a surreal tragi-comedy.

 

 

 

And to add insult to injury, Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes uttered this jaw-dropping line last week on The Diane Rehm Show:

“One thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts; they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way, it’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true.” She continued: “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/trumps-agents-of-idiocracy.html

 

 

 

 

Additionally, and not specifically related to Trump: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-news-from-real

From the article:

Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected.

In exercise after exercise, the researchers were "shocked" — their word, not ours — by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information.

The students displayed a "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again.

 

 

 

That's what I find most chilling about all this, is this idea that facts are just subjective. This is what happens in a society when you give faith and "personal truth" equal footing to reason and evidence.

[nbohr1more]

The reason why the Pizzagate theory gained so much traction is that the Mainstream Media did NOT properly report on

the ACTUAL CRIMES such as discovered in the wikileaks sources.

 

When you fail to do your duty as a news organization, you erode the public confidence in your credibility and now rather than

apologizing for their own dalliances they are conscripting Congress to write new Orwellian laws to "prevent FAKE NEWS"

(eg censor bloggers, leakers, and online discussions).

 

Pizzagate itself was never properly discussed and debunked. None of the Mainstream Media showed the disturbing images

hosted on Comet Pizza's Instagram or discussed the relationships between known pedophile Dennis Haestert and John Podesta.

 

http://i.sli.mg/6eSq79.jpg

 

https://i.sli.mg/Chk4Af

 

 

This blog explains the stupidity in greater detail:

 

https://extranewsfeed.com/pizzagate-wikileaks-and-msm-14da67f4bd0b?source=linkShare-74621e40a408-1481023267

 

TLDR, if the Mainstream Media did their job, Pizzagate would've remained in the realm of Roswell or 9/11 truthers.

[Springheel]

Pizzagate itself was never properly discussed and debunked.

 

 

Neither was the Roswell crash, or the Reptilian conspiracy, or the D&D satanic rituals of the 80s.

 

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." -- Christopher Hitchens.

[nbohr1more]

All of those things were debunked by the mainstream media or else why would they be part of the pop-culture lexicon?

 

I know I've seen TV specials on the D&D hysteria and Roswell fanatics. Journalists actually deconstructed the problems in

those movements (in detail) and reported on them.

[demagogue]

There's always been a kind of casual voodoo mysticism in rural areas that's wreaked havok on the most basic facts about the world. I've seen it where my parents were from, and even they or my grandparents & extended family have always been suscetible to some of it, probably me if I hadn't gone to the schools I went to and travelled so much.

 

What's new is social media is organizing and fostering it and making a movement out of it. Actually what I think is really new, for the US at least, is that in the past these types were really disgusted with or not interested in politics. But now it's like they breathe politics every waking second and it overtakes everything else, you can hardly get a word in about anything else. That's something new I've seen over the Obama years.

[Anderson]

 

immigrating people from countries incompatible with the west, those are all things that could contribute together to the fall of the west. \

 

Do you mean muslims?

Eastern Europeans have been migrating to Europe for ages ever since the fall of the curtain.

 

The problem isn't as much about the people, as it is about the malfunctioning system that receives them. It's not even as much about the muslim v. western culture confrontation but a sort of an alienation of many people from how badly actually other countries live. We shouldn't ever go neither to the extreme of xenophobia, neither blind acceptance of every stranger. Nobody cancelled self defense, and it doesn't matter that immigrants get on the criminal side. Anyone can get there if a war happens.

 

I have a feeling western countries, including the US are trying to find a way to reorient their official stance and the media to answer to these challenges in a new way, cutting itself off from the Clinton, Bush, Obama heritage. Changes happens much more frequently than before in the same amount of time.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Anderson

[Goldwell]

 

Do you mean muslims?

Eastern Europeans have been migrating to Europe for ages ever since the fall of the curtain.

 

The problem isn't as much about the people, as it is about the malfunctioning system that receives them. It's not even as much about the muslim v. western culture confrontation but a sort of an alienation of many people from how badly actually other countries live. We shouldn't ever go neither to the extreme of xenophobia, neither blind acceptance of every stranger. Nobody cancelled self defense, and it doesn't matter that immigrants get on the criminal side. Anyone can get there if a war happens.

 

Immigrants who come from an Islamic country are definitely incompatible with western ideology and could contribute to problems yes.

 

However that isn't the sole reason (and yes I know bigots use that excuse for fear mongering) but it certainly isn't something that should be ignored either.

[Anderson]

 

Immigrants who come from an Islamic country are definitely incompatible with western ideology and could contribute to problems yes.

 

However that isn't the sole reason (and yes I know bigots use that excuse for fear mongering) but it certainly isn't something that should be ignored either.

I agree, but only to the degree relating to muslims who lived in conservative families, people who live by Sharia law.

Those who are well off in secular countries don't need to migrate usually and that shows. We won't complain about turks when seeing the fellow syrian, afghani refugee.

[Sotha]

That's what I find most chilling about all this, is this idea that facts are just subjective. This is what happens in a society when you give faith and "personal truth" equal footing to reason and evidence.

 

Gotta agree with that. That is happening also in Europe. The western civilization is doomed if we go there. Anyone can say anything, science and measurements do not matter. Those who scream the loudest are right.

 

But all large civilizations have eventually crumbled to make room to something new. Perhaps it is this is the beginning of the end of the dominance of the western civilization? I wonder what will come next? I suppose dictatorships or kleptocracies will beat idiocracies any day and in any way.

 

EDIT: now that I think about it, I guess the only way to avoid democracy turning to idiocracy is to make sure the people is EDUCATED as well as possible.

[Destined]

 

Gotta agree with that. That is happening also in Europe. The western civilization is doomed if we go there. Anyone can say anything, science and measurements do not matter. Those who scream the loudest are right.

I am sure there are flat-earth believers that are greatly offended now and demand that you take back what you said Or creationists or feminazis that feel oppresed, because this statement was given by a man, or some Southafrican, because the statement came from an (assumed) white guy. The great problem with the internet and social media is that anyone can scream as everyone else has to listen.

[Anderson]

 

Gotta agree with that. That is happening also in Europe. The western civilization is doomed if we go there. Anyone can say anything, science and measurements do not matter. Those who scream the loudest are right.

 

But all large civilizations have eventually crumbled to make room to something new. Perhaps it is this is the beginning of the end of the dominance of the western civilization? I wonder what will come next? I suppose dictatorships or kleptocracies will beat idiocracies any day and in any way.

 

EDIT: now that I think about it, I guess the only way to avoid democracy turning to idiocracy is to make sure the people is EDUCATED as well as possible.

That's why direct democracy is awful. People have no idea what they want and it leads to trouble. Politicians speculate on people's feelings and end up in a stupid situation with meaningless referendums on questions that have no binding power, but have political conjecture that gives ground for amateurs with no fantasy to get popular without any intellectual or logistical effort.

Representative democracy is the future.

[nbohr1more]

 

Gotta agree with that. That is happening also in Europe. The western civilization is doomed if we go there. Anyone can say anything, science and measurements do not matter. Those who scream the loudest are right.

 

But all large civilizations have eventually crumbled to make room to something new. Perhaps it is this is the beginning of the end of the dominance of the western civilization? I wonder what will come next? I suppose dictatorships or kleptocracies will beat idiocracies any day and in any way.

 

EDIT: now that I think about it, I guess the only way to avoid democracy turning to idiocracy is to make sure the people is EDUCATED as well as possible.

 

No argument here but who ensures that factual data is verified?

 

The only verified news source this election season was Wikileaks.

 

You could verify their data via DKIM math.

 

https://support.google.com/a/answer/174124?hl=en

 

The rest was partisan blather, propaganda, etc.

 

Now with CGI, Photoshop, and voice synthesis, we need to use some sort of hashing algorithm to ensure all reports are factual.

Pretty soon we'll probably even need a Captcha or "Turing Test" for article authors.

 

The end result though?

 

State controlled media that gets an official seal of OK with official digital signatures.

 

The problem?

 

Media no longer being a resource for whistle-blowers and being corralled into becoming propaganda

because "all sources must be revealed" to have a robust fact-check.

 

Now as for an Education requirement for voters?

 

That sounds like a Right-wing or Republican stance. The basic concept of having "voter ID" to ensure there is no "election fraud"

is being loading with partisan grief about how "that would be racist". Eg. having even a basic way to check whether people

are voting multiple times (etc) is "an intimidation tactic". Can you imagine what they would say if you made a high-school diploma

the minimum requirement to vote?

 

Of course, if all the shenanigans and hand-wringing about "Putin interfering in our election" stir the Left to go after voter fraud,

then maybe it'll get fixed after over a decade of argument about it. You would think the party that had their vote stolen in 2000

would've been all for voter ID. But it seems that there's some sort of cognitive dissonance about what needs to happen to ensure

voter integrity verses what offends <whatever euphemism you prefer for undocumented non-citizens>.

[Springheel]

All of those things were debunked by the mainstream media or else why would they be part of the pop-culture lexicon?

 

 

Mainstream media has debunked the reptilian conspiracy? I'd love to see that if you can point me to it.

 

EDIT: now that I think about it, I guess the only way to avoid democracy turning to idiocracy is to make sure the people is EDUCATED as well as possible.

 

 

Yes. In particular, critical thinking and media literacy should be promoted far more than it is. Most people don't even understand what cognitive bias is, let alone try to correct for it.

[demagogue]

The latter half of this article was interesting, on the pizzagate case study.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13842258/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-fake-news

 

I was interested to read the economics of fake news and the idea of this tiny town with young Macedonian entrepreneurs being scientific about it and realizing that rightwing conspiracy mongering sells big, but leftwing conspiracy mongering doesn't stick.

[Destined]

Yes. In particular, critical thinking and media literacy should be promoted far more than it is. Most people don't even understand what cognitive bias is, let alone try to correct for it.

But if you keep you do not educate the populace it is easier to manipulate them, exactly because you can use the cognitive bias. I recently read an article in a swiss magazine that was talking about how your likes on social media can pretty accurately predict what type of person you are and that this can be used on the one hand for targeted advertising and further as a tool to influence the general opinion by a strongly filtered newsfeed. In this article it is stated that this was used in Trump's campaign. However, (ironically) I have no other source than this article so far. It is in German, but maybe Google translate is sufficient for people who are intersted:

https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2016/12/03/ich-habe-nur-gezeigt-dass-es-die-bombe-gibt/

The most important keywords you could google are: Big Data, Michal Kosinski (one of the people who developed Big Data) and Cambridge Analytica (the firm employed for Trump's digital campaign). I am not sure myself how legit all this is, but at least it sounds realistic and this makes it very intersting and at the same time frightening.