Fake News
#1
Laughing

So the Washington Post publishes a story about how Russian hackers "fake news" stories swayed the election.....  And it turns out that the "Fake News" story is itself, FAKE NEWS....

THE MSM is dying..... Smiling

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-07/
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#2
Thank you! This helped me remember to take my supplement this morning! Smiling
Reply
#3
Quote:“Fake news” is a problem on the right—but not only on the right. “Real” journalists, most of whom lean left, ought to look in the mirror. Or perhaps they are looking into their own distorted mirror and don’t recognize what they see.
An obvious example is “climate change.” News organizations have internalized alarmist orthodoxy, leading them to be dismissive of facts that call it into question, such as the predictive failures of climate models and the abuses of scientific process revealed seven years ago by the “Climategate” emails.
“You probably are not a scientist, and that means you can’t independently evaluate any of the climate science claims,” observes Scott Adams. “You could try to assess the credibility of the scientists using your common sense and experience, but let’s face it—you aren’t good at that. So what do you do? You probably default to trusting whatever the majority of scientists tell you.”
That’s what most journalists do, but readers may notice the disjunction between facts and “science” and conclude that the latter is bunk. Journalists react by digging in and becoming more dogmatic, and the result is tendentious headlines like this one: “Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A.” That’s from a “news” story in the New York Times, the same paper that’s complaining about “the proliferation of raw opinion that passes for news.”
Other examples are legion. In an interview published last week, President Obama raised the problem: “One of the challenges that we’ve been talking about now is the way social media and the Internet have changed what people receive as news.” High school friends of the president’s political director were “passing around crazy stuff about, you know, Obama has banned the Pledge of Allegiance.”
The interviewer suggests that maybe the free press needs a free lunch: “Maybe the news business and the newspaper industry, which is being destroyed by Facebook, needs a subsidy so we can maintain a free press?”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fake-news-fun-house-1481220798

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/15408241605...ge-science
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#4
(12-08-2016, 11:55 AM)Big Rock Wrote:
Quote:“Fake news” is a problem on the right—but not only on the right. “Real” journalists, most of whom lean left, ought to look in the mirror. Or perhaps they are looking into their own distorted mirror and don’t recognize what they see.
An obvious example is “climate change.” News organizations have internalized alarmist orthodoxy, leading them to be dismissive of facts that call it into question, such as the predictive failures of climate models and the abuses of scientific process revealed seven years ago by the “Climategate” emails.
“You probably are not a scientist, and that means you can’t independently evaluate any of the climate science claims,” observes Scott Adams. “You could try to assess the credibility of the scientists using your common sense and experience, but let’s face it—you aren’t good at that. So what do you do? You probably default to trusting whatever the majority of scientists tell you.”
That’s what most journalists do, but readers may notice the disjunction between facts and “science” and conclude that the latter is bunk. Journalists react by digging in and becoming more dogmatic, and the result is tendentious headlines like this one: “Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A.” That’s from a “news” story in the New York Times, the same paper that’s complaining about “the proliferation of raw opinion that passes for news.”
Other examples are legion. In an interview published last week, President Obama raised the problem: “One of the challenges that we’ve been talking about now is the way social media and the Internet have changed what people receive as news.” High school friends of the president’s political director were “passing around crazy stuff about, you know, Obama has banned the Pledge of Allegiance.”
The interviewer suggests that maybe the free press needs a free lunch: “Maybe the news business and the newspaper industry, which is being destroyed by Facebook, needs a subsidy so we can maintain a free press?”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fake-news-fun-house-1481220798

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/15408241605...ge-science

the “Climategate” emails was in itself fake news.
They latched onto a statement, didn't understand what was being said and like a bunch of peacocks, when one yells the other repeat the alarm.
I suggest people do a snoop.com on the climate gate.
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#5
(12-08-2016, 11:55 AM)Big Rock Wrote:
Quote:“Fake news” is a problem on the right—but not only on the right. “Real” journalists, most of whom lean left, ought to look in the mirror. Or perhaps they are looking into their own distorted mirror and don’t recognize what they see.
An obvious example is “climate change.” News organizations have internalized alarmist orthodoxy, leading them to be dismissive of facts that call it into question, such as the predictive failures of climate models and the abuses of scientific process revealed seven years ago by the “Climategate” emails.
“You probably are not a scientist, and that means you can’t independently evaluate any of the climate science claims,” observes Scott Adams. “You could try to assess the credibility of the scientists using your common sense and experience, but let’s face it—you aren’t good at that. So what do you do? You probably default to trusting whatever the majority of scientists tell you.”
That’s what most journalists do, but readers may notice the disjunction between facts and “science” and conclude that the latter is bunk. Journalists react by digging in and becoming more dogmatic, and the result is tendentious headlines like this one: “Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A.” That’s from a “news” story in the New York Times, the same paper that’s complaining about “the proliferation of raw opinion that passes for news.”
Other examples are legion. In an interview published last week, President Obama raised the problem: “One of the challenges that we’ve been talking about now is the way social media and the Internet have changed what people receive as news.” High school friends of the president’s political director were “passing around crazy stuff about, you know, Obama has banned the Pledge of Allegiance.”
The interviewer suggests that maybe the free press needs a free lunch: “Maybe the news business and the newspaper industry, which is being destroyed by Facebook, needs a subsidy so we can maintain a free press?”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fake-news-fun-house-1481220798

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/15408241605...ge-science

Because I don't subscribe to the WSJ the link doesn't work for me. 

But this, from the article above:
"News organizations have internalized alarmist orthodoxy, leading them to be dismissive of facts that call it into question, such as the predictive failures of climate models and the abuses of scientific process revealed seven years ago by the “Climategate” emails."

Well: From http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/sol...EnDZnfMww0
(The Union of Concerned Scientists)

We find this: There was no "Climatgate". 
The manufactured controversy over emails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit has generated a lot more heat than light. The email content being quoted does not indicate that climate data and research have been compromised. Most importantly, nothing in the content of these stolen emails has any impact on our overall understanding that human activities are driving dangerous levels of global warming. Media reports and contrarian claims that they do are inaccurate.
Investigations Clear Scientists of Wrongdoing
Six official investigations have cleared scientists of accusations of wrongdoing.
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#6
Quote:Peer Pressure
The global-warming scandal and the "Big Cutoff."

BY JAMES TARANTO
The American Spectator, Feburary 2010

How urgent is the threat of global warming? Listen to an editorial that the Guardian, England's leading left-wing daily, published early in December, as the Copenhagen climate summit was opening:

Quote:Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security.
Global warming is so urgent that editorial writers at 55 other newspapers around the world (including one in the U.S., the Miami Herald) cannot be troubled to do their jobs and write their own editorials about it. Decisive action indeed.
A few weeks earlier, the world of global warmism had been rocked by a whistle-blower's release of thousands of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia, which showed widespread corruption of the scientific process. The mass editorial devoted just one sentence to the scandal widely if unimaginatively dubbed "Climategate":

Quote:The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.
It muddied the waters without denting the mass. If the Guardian's editorialists are less than graceful in their use of metaphor, the editorial itself was a splendid metaphor for the groupthink that has characterized climate science, policy, and journalism. Just a few days later, the Times of London reported that the Met Office, Britain's national weather service, had "spent four days collecting signatures" on a petition "to bolster the reputation of climate-change science":

Quote:More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the "professional integrity" of global warming research. . . .
One scientist told The Times he felt under pressure to sign. "The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming," he said.
The concept of scientists--or journalists--signing a petition is ludicrous. The idea is that they are lending their authority to whatever cause the petition represents. In fact they are undermining that authority, which is based on the presumption that they think for themselves.
The problem with the petition as a form is also a problem with the Met Office petition's substance. Its purpose is to shore up scientists' authority by vouching for their integrity. But signing a loyalty oath under pressure from the government is itself a corrupt act. And once again, the question arises: Why should any layman regard global warmism as credible when the "consensus" rests on political machinations, statistical deceptions, and efforts to suppress alternative hypotheses?
The Climategate e-mails provide a splendid example of how scientists and journalists worked together to promote this phony consensus. In September 2009, Andrew Revkin, then warming correspondent for the New York Times (he accepted an early-retirement buyout just before Christmas), asked this puffball question of Michael Mann, the Pennsylvania State University scientist whose "trick" was famously employed to "hide the decline" in observed temperatures (quoting verbatim):

Quote:I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre [a global-warming skeptic] et al attacks.
peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?
Here is Mann's response:

Quote:Re, your point at the end--you've taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.
The e-mails, however, showed how corrupt the peer review process had become. In one, Mann suggested a boycott of a journal that had published an article questioning the global-warmist hypothesis: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal." In another, Phil Jones, the director of the Climate Research Unit, wrote to Mann promising to prevent skeptics' papers from being cited by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change: "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Yet the week after these e-mails were revealed, Revkin posted an entry on his NYTimes.com blog reporting that the "latest peer-reviewed science" shows that "the case for climate change as a serious risk to human affairs" is "clear, despite recent firestorms over some data sets and scientists' actions."
Even so, it turned out that Revkin wasn't nearly slavish enough for some climate scientists. The conservative scholar Steven Hayward was copied on an e-mail Revkin received in early December from Michael Schlesinger, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois. Schlesinger took exception with one of Revkin's blog posts:

Quote:Andy: Copenhagen prostitutes? Climate prostitutes? Shame on you for this gutter reportage. . . . The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists. Of course, your blog is your blog. But, I sense that you are about to experience the 'Big Cutoff' from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included. Copenhagen prostitutes? Unbelievable and unacceptable. What are you doing and why? Michael
Did Revkin really accuse climate scientists of prostituting themselves for a political agenda? No, he did not. The blog made a passing mention of actual prostitutes. Revkin picked up an amusing report that Danish hookers were offering services free of charge to Copenhagen delegates.
Revkin was a fairer reporter than his credulousness about "peer review" would lead you to expect. Even before Climategate, he came under fire from global warmists for failing to suppress inconvenient information. Last September Joe Romm of the left-liberal Center for American Progress issued a tirade against him for an article noting that recent years have been relatively cool: "That litany of misinformation and confusion is what you expect from the Swift boat smearer's website, not the paper of record."
After Climategate broke, Revkin reported that Romm's center had "organized a telephone conference call, including two of the scientists embroiled in the fracas over the disclosed e-mails, that it said was aimed at 'setting the record straight on global warming.'" The irony of a political advocacy group purporting to set the record straight on a scientific matter was not lost on Revkin.
His colleagues on the Times editorial page, however, continue to march in lockstep. When they finally weighed in on Climategate, more than two weeks after Revkin reported on it, it was only to pronounce the scandal unworthy of attention: "It is . . . important not to let one set of purloined e-mail messages undermine the science and the clear case for action, in Washington and in Copenhagen." The Times editorialists need not worry about being subjected to the Big Cutoff.
Then again, at least, unlike their counterparts at the Miami Herald, they managed to produce their own editorial on the subject.

http://www.jamestaranto.com/spec0210.htm
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#7
(12-08-2016, 06:57 AM)Hugo Wrote: Laughing

So the Washington Post publishes a story about how Russian hackers "fake news" stories swayed the election.....  And it turns out that the "Fake News" story is itself, FAKE NEWS....

THE MSM is dying..... Smiling

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-07/

Can you help me out with this please. This link takes me to crazy sites having no content suggesting the Washington Post story was fake. Or if so, I could not find the text. 

And, "Main Stream Media" is not dying. Major newspapers who depended on "The Classifieds" were killed by Craig's List and lost LOTS of revenue. After a lot of restructuring they are holding their own. Investigative journalism is expensive: Asking reporters to follow a story for a long period can't be done on the cheap. "Think Watergate". Go to Netflix and watch "Spotlight". 

Longform journalism by traditional institutions provide important and trusted information. Almost all the time. True, mistakes are sometimes made. Humans involved, after all.
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#8
This is great: a Washington Post article about fake news, containing fake news.

Quote:"Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...story.html
 
"So the Post published fake news about 'fake news.' Welcome to journalism’s hall of mirrors." - James Taranto - WSJ
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#9
(12-08-2016, 02:38 PM)Big Rock Wrote: This is great: a Washington Post article about fake news, containing fake news.

Quote:"Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...story.html
 
"So the Post published fake news about 'fake news.' Welcome to journalism’s hall of mirrors." - James Taranto - WSJ

That's the topic headline story, but thanks for posting it.  Maybe Wonky will get it now?
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#10
(12-08-2016, 03:07 PM)Hugo Wrote: Maybe Wonky will get it now?

Laughing
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#11
(12-08-2016, 02:38 PM)Big Rock Wrote: This is great: a Washington Post article about fake news, containing fake news.

Quote:"Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...story.html
 
"So the Post published fake news about 'fake news.' Welcome to journalism’s hall of mirrors." - James Taranto - WSJ

I'm curious if you read the article? And what do you consider fake news about it?
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#12
I know that "some people" struggle with the concept of clicking links and then reading content (especially if the content is in opposition to one or more of their cherished beliefs), so I've posted some content below to help you out and make it a little easier to digest. This is a blog post written by Scott Adams, and I think its highly entertaining, amusing, and interesting.

Quote:The Non-Expert Problem and Climate Change Science
Before I start, let me say as clearly as possible that I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change. If science says something is true – according to most scientists, and consistent with the scientific method – I accept their verdict. 
I realize that science can change its mind, of course. Saying something is “true” in a scientific sense always leaves open the option of later reassessing that view if new evidence comes to light. Something can be “true” according to science while simultaneously being completely wrong. Science allows that odd situation to exist, at least temporarily, while we crawl toward truth.
So when I say I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change, I’m endorsing the scientific consensus for the same reason I endorsed Hillary Clinton for the first part of the election – as a strategy to protect myself. I endorse the scientific consensus on climate change to protect my career and reputation. To do otherwise would be dumb, at least in my situation.
As regular readers of this blog already know, human brains did not evolve to understand reality in any deep way. If some of us survive and procreate, that’s good enough for evolution. It doesn’t matter that you live in a movie that says you will reincarnate after you die, while I live in a movie that says reality is a software simulation, and perhaps our mutual friend lives in a movie in which his prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse. Those are very different realities, but it doesn’t stop any of us from procreating.  This lesson about the subjective nature of reality is one we learned from watching Trump’s march to the election. As the world looked on, everything they thought they understood about Trump’s chances dissolved in front of them. And yet the world still worked fine.
This perceptual change in humanity is happening as I predicted it would a year before Trump won. I told you he would change more than politics. I said he would open a crack in reality so you could view it through a new filter. That transformation is well underway. I’ll widen the crack a bit more today.
If you have been involved in any climate change debates online or in person, you know they always take the following trajectory: Climate science believers state that all the evidence, and 98% of scientists, are on the same side. Then skeptics provide links to credible-sounding articles that say the science is bunk, and why. How the heck can you – a non-expert – judge who is right?
You probably are not a scientist, and that means you can’t independently evaluate any of the climate science claims. You didn’t do the data collection or the experiments yourself. You could try to assess the credibility of the scientists using your common sense and experience, but let’s face it – you aren’t good at that. So what do you do?
You probably default to trusting whatever the majority of scientists tell you. And the majority says climate science is real and we need to do something about it. But how reliable are experts, even when they are mostly on the same side?
Ask the majority of polling experts who said Trump had only a 2% chance of becoming president. Ask the experts who said the government’s historical “food pyramid” was good science. Ask the experts who used to say marijuana was a gateway drug. Ask the experts who used to say sexual orientation is just a choice. Ask the experts who said alcoholism is a moral failure and not a matter of genetics.
There are plenty of examples where the majority of experts were wrong. What you really want to know is whether climate change looks more like the sort of thing that turns out to be right or the sort of thing that turns out to be wrong. Let’s dig into that question.
It seems to me that a majority of experts could be wrong whenever you have a pattern that looks like this:
1. A theory has been “adjusted” in the past to maintain the conclusion even though the data has changed. For example, “Global warming” evolved to “climate change” because the models didn’t show universal warming.
2. Prediction models are complicated. When things are complicated you have more room for error. Climate science models are complicated.
3. The models require human judgement to decide how variables should be treated. This allows humans to “tune” the output to a desired end. This is the case with climate science models.
4. There is a severe social or economic penalty for having the “wrong” opinion in the field. As I already said, I agree with the consensus of climate scientists because saying otherwise in public would be social and career suicide for me even as a cartoonist. Imagine how much worse the pressure would be if science was my career. 
5. There are so many variables that can be measured – and so many that can be ignored – that you can produce any result you want by choosing what to measure and what to ignore. Our measurement sensors do not cover all locations on earth, from the upper atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean, so we have the option to use the measurements that fit our predictions while discounting the rest.
6. The argument from the other side looks disturbingly credible.
One of the things that always fascinated me about jury trials is that attorneys from both sides can sound so convincing even though the evidence points in only one direction. A defendant is either guilty or innocent, but good lawyers can make you see it either way. Climate science is similar. I’ve seen airtight arguments that say climate science is solid and true, and I’ve seen equally credible-looking arguments that say it is bunk. From my non-scientist perspective, I can’t tell the difference. Both sides look convincing to me.
As I have described in this blog before, I’m a trained hypnotist and I have studied the methods of persuasion for years. That gives me a bit of context that is different from the norm. In my experience, and based on my training, it is normal and routine for the “majority of experts” to be completely wrong about important stuff. But in the two-dimensional world where persuasion isn’t much of a thing, it probably looks to most of you that experts are usually right, especially when they are overwhelmingly on the same side and there is a mountain of confirming evidence.
We like to think we arrived at our decisions about climate science by using our common sense and good judgement to evaluate the credibility of experts. Some of you think you have superior sources of information as well. But both sides are wrong. No one is using reason, facts, or common sense to arrive at a decision about climate science. Here’s what you are using to arrive at your decision:
1. Fear
2. Unwarranted trust in experts
3. Pattern recognition
On the question of fear, if you believe that experts are good at predicting future doom, you are probably scared to death by climate change. But in my experience, any danger we humans see coming far in the future we always find a way to fix. We didn’t run out of food because of population growth. We didn’t run out of oil as predicted. We didn’t have a problem with the Year 2000 bug, and so on. I refer to this phenomenon as the Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters. When we see a disaster coming – as we do with climate science – we have an unbroken track record of avoiding doom. In the case of climate change danger, there are a number of technologies under development that can directly scrub the atmosphere if needed.
On the question of trusting experts, my frame of reference is the field of influence and persuasion. From my point of view – and given the examples of mass delusion that I have personally witnessed (including Trump’s election), I see experts as far less credible than most people assume.
And when it comes to pattern recognition, I see the climate science skeptics within the scientific community as being similar to Shy Trump Supporters. The fact that a majority of scientists agree with climate science either means the evidence is one-sided or the social/economic pressures are high. And as we can plainly see, the cost of disagreeing with climate science is unreasonably high if you are a scientist.
While it is true that a scientist can become famous and make a big difference by bucking conventional wisdom and proving a new theory, anything short of total certainty would make that a suicide mission. And climate science doesn’t provide the option of total certainty.
To put it another way, it would be easy for a physicist to buck the majority by showing that her math worked. Math is math. But if your science depends on human judgement to decide which measurements to include and which ones to “tune,” you don’t have that option. Being a rebel theoretical physicist is relatively easy if your numbers add up. But being a rebel climate scientist is just plain stupid. So don’t expect to see many of the latter. Scientists can often be wrong, but rarely are they stupid.
To strengthen my point today, and in celebration of my reopening of the blog commenting section, please provide your links to pro and con arguments about climate science. This might be the only place in the world you will see links to both sides. If you want to be amazed, see how persuasive BOTH sides of this debate are.
As I said above, I accept the consensus of climate science experts when they say that climate science is real and accurate. But I do that to protect my reputation and my income. I have no way to evaluate the work of scientists.
If you ask me how scared I am of climate changes ruining the planet, I have to say it is near the bottom of my worries. If science is right, and the danger is real, we’ll find ways to scrub the atmosphere as needed. We always find ways to avoid slow-moving dangers. And if the risk of climate change isn’t real, I will say I knew it all along because climate science matches all of the criteria for a mass hallucination by experts. 

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/15408241605...ge-science
Reply
#13
(12-08-2016, 06:40 PM)Big Rock Wrote: I know that "some people" struggle with the concept of clicking links and then reading content (especially if the content is in opposition to one or more of their cherished beliefs), so I've posted some content below to help you out and make it a little easier to digest. This is a blog post written by Scott Adams, and I think its highly entertaining, amusing, and interesting.

Quote:The Non-Expert Problem and Climate Change Science
Before I start, let me say as clearly as possible that I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change. If science says something is true – according to most scientists, and consistent with the scientific method – I accept their verdict. 
I realize that science can change its mind, of course. Saying something is “true” in a scientific sense always leaves open the option of later reassessing that view if new evidence comes to light. Something can be “true” according to science while simultaneously being completely wrong. Science allows that odd situation to exist, at least temporarily, while we crawl toward truth.
So when I say I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change, I’m endorsing the scientific consensus for the same reason I endorsed Hillary Clinton for the first part of the election – as a strategy to protect myself. I endorse the scientific consensus on climate change to protect my career and reputation. To do otherwise would be dumb, at least in my situation.
As regular readers of this blog already know, human brains did not evolve to understand reality in any deep way. If some of us survive and procreate, that’s good enough for evolution. It doesn’t matter that you live in a movie that says you will reincarnate after you die, while I live in a movie that says reality is a software simulation, and perhaps our mutual friend lives in a movie in which his prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse. Those are very different realities, but it doesn’t stop any of us from procreating.  This lesson about the subjective nature of reality is one we learned from watching Trump’s march to the election. As the world looked on, everything they thought they understood about Trump’s chances dissolved in front of them. And yet the world still worked fine.
This perceptual change in humanity is happening as I predicted it would a year before Trump won. I told you he would change more than politics. I said he would open a crack in reality so you could view it through a new filter. That transformation is well underway. I’ll widen the crack a bit more today.
If you have been involved in any climate change debates online or in person, you know they always take the following trajectory: Climate science believers state that all the evidence, and 98% of scientists, are on the same side. Then skeptics provide links to credible-sounding articles that say the science is bunk, and why. How the heck can you – a non-expert – judge who is right?
You probably are not a scientist, and that means you can’t independently evaluate any of the climate science claims. You didn’t do the data collection or the experiments yourself. You could try to assess the credibility of the scientists using your common sense and experience, but let’s face it – you aren’t good at that. So what do you do?
You probably default to trusting whatever the majority of scientists tell you. And the majority says climate science is real and we need to do something about it. But how reliable are experts, even when they are mostly on the same side?
Ask the majority of polling experts who said Trump had only a 2% chance of becoming president. Ask the experts who said the government’s historical “food pyramid” was good science. Ask the experts who used to say marijuana was a gateway drug. Ask the experts who used to say sexual orientation is just a choice. Ask the experts who said alcoholism is a moral failure and not a matter of genetics.
There are plenty of examples where the majority of experts were wrong. What you really want to know is whether climate change looks more like the sort of thing that turns out to be right or the sort of thing that turns out to be wrong. Let’s dig into that question.
It seems to me that a majority of experts could be wrong whenever you have a pattern that looks like this:
1. A theory has been “adjusted” in the past to maintain the conclusion even though the data has changed. For example, “Global warming” evolved to “climate change” because the models didn’t show universal warming.
2. Prediction models are complicated. When things are complicated you have more room for error. Climate science models are complicated.
3. The models require human judgement to decide how variables should be treated. This allows humans to “tune” the output to a desired end. This is the case with climate science models.
4. There is a severe social or economic penalty for having the “wrong” opinion in the field. As I already said, I agree with the consensus of climate scientists because saying otherwise in public would be social and career suicide for me even as a cartoonist. Imagine how much worse the pressure would be if science was my career. 
5. There are so many variables that can be measured – and so many that can be ignored – that you can produce any result you want by choosing what to measure and what to ignore. Our measurement sensors do not cover all locations on earth, from the upper atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean, so we have the option to use the measurements that fit our predictions while discounting the rest.
6. The argument from the other side looks disturbingly credible.
One of the things that always fascinated me about jury trials is that attorneys from both sides can sound so convincing even though the evidence points in only one direction. A defendant is either guilty or innocent, but good lawyers can make you see it either way. Climate science is similar. I’ve seen airtight arguments that say climate science is solid and true, and I’ve seen equally credible-looking arguments that say it is bunk. From my non-scientist perspective, I can’t tell the difference. Both sides look convincing to me.
As I have described in this blog before, I’m a trained hypnotist and I have studied the methods of persuasion for years. That gives me a bit of context that is different from the norm. In my experience, and based on my training, it is normal and routine for the “majority of experts” to be completely wrong about important stuff. But in the two-dimensional world where persuasion isn’t much of a thing, it probably looks to most of you that experts are usually right, especially when they are overwhelmingly on the same side and there is a mountain of confirming evidence.
We like to think we arrived at our decisions about climate science by using our common sense and good judgement to evaluate the credibility of experts. Some of you think you have superior sources of information as well. But both sides are wrong. No one is using reason, facts, or common sense to arrive at a decision about climate science. Here’s what you are using to arrive at your decision:
1. Fear
2. Unwarranted trust in experts
3. Pattern recognition
On the question of fear, if you believe that experts are good at predicting future doom, you are probably scared to death by climate change. But in my experience, any danger we humans see coming far in the future we always find a way to fix. We didn’t run out of food because of population growth. We didn’t run out of oil as predicted. We didn’t have a problem with the Year 2000 bug, and so on. I refer to this phenomenon as the Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters. When we see a disaster coming – as we do with climate science – we have an unbroken track record of avoiding doom. In the case of climate change danger, there are a number of technologies under development that can directly scrub the atmosphere if needed.
On the question of trusting experts, my frame of reference is the field of influence and persuasion. From my point of view – and given the examples of mass delusion that I have personally witnessed (including Trump’s election), I see experts as far less credible than most people assume.
And when it comes to pattern recognition, I see the climate science skeptics within the scientific community as being similar to Shy Trump Supporters. The fact that a majority of scientists agree with climate science either means the evidence is one-sided or the social/economic pressures are high. And as we can plainly see, the cost of disagreeing with climate science is unreasonably high if you are a scientist.
While it is true that a scientist can become famous and make a big difference by bucking conventional wisdom and proving a new theory, anything short of total certainty would make that a suicide mission. And climate science doesn’t provide the option of total certainty.
To put it another way, it would be easy for a physicist to buck the majority by showing that her math worked. Math is math. But if your science depends on human judgement to decide which measurements to include and which ones to “tune,” you don’t have that option. Being a rebel theoretical physicist is relatively easy if your numbers add up. But being a rebel climate scientist is just plain stupid. So don’t expect to see many of the latter. Scientists can often be wrong, but rarely are they stupid.
To strengthen my point today, and in celebration of my reopening of the blog commenting section, please provide your links to pro and con arguments about climate science. This might be the only place in the world you will see links to both sides. If you want to be amazed, see how persuasive BOTH sides of this debate are.
As I said above, I accept the consensus of climate science experts when they say that climate science is real and accurate. But I do that to protect my reputation and my income. I have no way to evaluate the work of scientists.
If you ask me how scared I am of climate changes ruining the planet, I have to say it is near the bottom of my worries. If science is right, and the danger is real, we’ll find ways to scrub the atmosphere as needed. We always find ways to avoid slow-moving dangers. And if the risk of climate change isn’t real, I will say I knew it all along because climate science matches all of the criteria for a mass hallucination by experts. 

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/15408241605...ge-science
As for clicking on links, I notice that "some people" only link articles that support their views on the subject, still the issue remains minimally controversial. So is this dilbert dolt suggesting that we don't go with the majority opinion of scientists? Perhaps he is. Why? And why is he bitching that he agrees that climate change is real to conform to the expected response scientists are suposed to have? Still, an interesting article and he appears to be more open minded on the issue than others not convinced by the science.
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#14
[Image: 15400587_1201064443275764_32273093878997...e=58EF7752]
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#15
Fake news is bad, except of course when it's good.

[Image: benghazi-bergdahl-based-the-best-informa...321992.jpg]
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#16
Wonkblog

Why conservatives might be more likely to fall for fake news



This week, a North Carolina man took an AR-15 rifle into DC's Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant to "self-investigate" a fake internet conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and a child sex ring.


It's the latest example of the impact that "fake news" -- untrue or wildly misleading stories masquerading as fact, usually to appeal to a particular worldview -- is having on the real world.

Numerous reports have highlighted how fake news creators began targeting conservative readers after finding them receptive to stories that reinforced their existing worldview. As one fake news creator told NPR, "We've tried to do [fake news with] liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out."

Buzzfeed analysis found that three main conservative Facebook pages were roughly twice as likely as three leading liberal Facebook pages to publish fake or misleading information.
[Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’

There are cases of liberals circulating fake news stories, to be sure. During the presidential campaign, false stories about Tiffany Trump avoiding her father's kiss after a debate and older sister Ivanka saying she would mace Trump if he weren't her father spread quickly across social media. And some studies have shown confirmation bias -- our tendency to manipulate new information to support our existing beliefs -- doesn't have an ideological preference.

Still, while the apparent one-sidedness of the fake news ecosystem is striking, some researchers of partisan psychology say it's not particularly surprising. A robust body of academic research has sprung up in the past decade or so, documenting the different ways conservatives and liberals process the world.
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#17
Brian Williams the KING of fake news and about as left as you guys get, of course he never claimed to land under sniper fire or being dead broke right before buying a multi million dollar mansion
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#18
https://youtu.be/yxqWEnBoJAM
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#19
40 seconds was all I could stand. Same old bullshit. That video proves the point in the opinion piece I posted from the Washington Post. Some conservatives will believe anything that reinforces their already     held views. You believe almost all of the lies even the ones proved to be lies because you like the message.
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#20
(12-09-2016, 09:04 AM)cletus1 Wrote: 40 seconds was all I could stand. Same old bullshit. That video proves the point in the opinion piece I posted from the Washington Post. Some conservatives will believe anything that reinforces their already     held views. You believe almost all of the lies even the ones proved to be lies because you like the message.

The best piece of fake news STILL being run by you guys is trump will never be president, and you guys STILL lap it up like pigs in shit. But pigs are more socially acceptable.
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