Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies' • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#31

Post by diego_moita » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

oldwinebottles wrote: post #18

I don't have the time or patience to engage, but for the ones that don't have a side in Brazilian politics, the Amazon should be fine. Bolsonaro is a fool with words, but has shown to be well intended. He'll probably come around on this particular issue (as it has already happened a few times during his government).

> I don't have the time or patience to engage

Then why start?

> Bolsonaro is a fool with words

On politics, I never saw a fool whose problem are just words. He is authentic, the real deal, dumb all through.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#32

Post by defterGoose » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

oldwinebottles wrote: post #26

jkoudys wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"don't pay attention to what he says or does, just have blind faith that he'll be great!"

I actually meant the exact opposite of that. Stop reading headlines and start looking at what is being done.

It's clear that you're unable to "engage" if you think he'll "come around" on the matter. I'm curious, if you're so busy you can't engage with current events, what do you have time for?

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#33

Post by rorykoehler » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:32 PM UTC

scoot wrote: post #25

antsoul wrote: post #11

A cocaine addict, refusing reality. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48787996

Do you have any evidence of that?

Bolsanaro is a coke addict. Anyone who says he isn't is lying. See. Easy isn't it.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#34

Post by pqdbr » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

antsoul wrote: post #11

A cocaine addict, refusing reality. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48787996

If you just read the article you posted, one military that was flying in a different airplane than the president was (it was a stand-by backup aircraft) was arrested with 39kg of cocain.

The president's response? "I just wished the arrest happened in Indonesia", where they have death penalty for such crimes. (source https://g1.globo.com/jornal-nacional/noticia/2019/06/29/pena...)

Just so that you know, when Bolsonaro was a congressman and Indonesia was about to execute some Brazilians due to cocaine trafficking, he sent an official letter to Indonesian government asking them to be killed due to their crimes (source: https://veja.abril.com.br/blog/maquiavel/em-2006-bolsonaro-p...)

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#35

Post by kevingadd » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #20

emn13 wrote: post #2

We really live in the age of head-in-sand. How do you do anything about that? Somehow reality has become not just optional and uncertain in our policies, perceptions and opinions, but downright irrelevant. When there's no merit in even trying to be truthful and accurate, well... you get this.

I think this is one of the costs of democracy. We could always just take power away from all the uneducated who rely on emotion-based decision making. And then somehow punish the educated who do the same despite being equipped with the tools to parse the facts. I'm sure this would work out horribly.

Sadly, history has shown that the educated aren't any better at making decisions - especially now with education being very expensive and college admissions + post-college hiring being heavily biased in favor of elites. If we're going to limit voting based on some criteria (I'm not sure this works), education is not it.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#36

Post by bmurphy1976 » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #22

This is their modus operandi. Deny everything that doesn’t fit their world view or makes them look bad. Not even hard data or science is safe.

I think it's even simpler than that. Deny anything that is a threat to their power/money/hegemony.

Their are plenty of people who will do and say anything (even if they don't believe it) for self gain. It's basic short-term vs long-term thinking. They stand to gain much in the short term and lose nothing in the long term because they'll all be dead when it comes time to collect.

Combine this with loose ethics/morals and we have a serious and intractable problem.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#37

Post by IAmEveryone » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #20

emn13 wrote: post #2

We really live in the age of head-in-sand. How do you do anything about that? Somehow reality has become not just optional and uncertain in our policies, perceptions and opinions, but downright irrelevant. When there's no merit in even trying to be truthful and accurate, well... you get this.

I think this is one of the costs of democracy. We could always just take power away from all the uneducated who rely on emotion-based decision making. And then somehow punish the educated who do the same despite being equipped with the tools to parse the facts. I'm sure this would work out horribly.

I'm not entirely sure of this 1:1 relationship of intelligence/education to bad political ideas such as Bolsonaro's.

There is a lot of ideology involved, which correlates rather poorly with intelligence. There are, for example, quite a few Republican politicians that aren't obviously stupid, who still spent decades denying first the existence of climate change, then the human contribution, followed by the risks and, finally, our ability to act against it.

Other example: when people say "Barack Obama was not born in the United States" it is not intended as a statement of fact, which is why no amount of fact-checking and birth-certificate-producing stopped people from engaging in that particular conspiracy theory. It is an expression of ideology.

And because every comment on such topic must end with George Orwell: In 1984 the highest achievement of ideology is the expression of facts that are obviously wrong.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#38

Post by onion2k » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

wwdhx wrote: post #3

emn13 wrote: post #2

We really live in the age of head-in-sand. How do you do anything about that? Somehow reality has become not just optional and uncertain in our policies, perceptions and opinions, but downright irrelevant. When there's no merit in even trying to be truthful and accurate, well... you get this.

Dismissing facts as lies is just... something to say. Bolsonaro and his followers know this is true but they simply don't care. Which is a reasonable political stance I reckon.

It's much more likely that rather than it being a political stance he profits from deforestation directly through investments in logging companies or indirectly through being paid off, or both. Saying its reasonable means you would have to think a politician using their position for personal gain is reasonable. That would be quite an extreme opinion to hold.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#39

Post by davesmith1983 » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

mda wrote: post #9

hobs wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dismissing facts as lies is just lying. It should not be brushed off as an acceptable position.

Yeah, this is the norm now, scientific truths are lies and conspiracy theories are the ultimate truth. All populist politicians are doing this and their followers love it.

Well a lot of this is due to how this has been presented to by the media beforehand.

e.g. There is a scare story at least once a week that is plastered over newspapers/news sites such as "Having a bacon sandwich could lead to bum cancer!!!!", when the headline is clearly salacious. The actual research probably had a sensible conclusion of "Those who have had consistently more red meat, have an increased chance of cancer". If you hear see the same story hundreds of times, you are likely to ignore it or even despise it.

The same happens with the populist politicians. Take someone that isn't as controversial as Bolsonaro such as Nigel Farage in my home country.

A fair description of his political stance is a Patriotic Thatcherite that is anti-mass-immigration. When he was first becoming well known (back in the mid-2000s) he was constantly branded a racist and a fascist (there was no evidence of this) in an attempt to conflate his position with the likes of actual fascists of old like Oswald Mosley.

Now Whether or not you agree with his politics isn't important. In these attempts to constantly smear him he has become one of the most effective UK politicians in recent memory. To many he can simply do no wrong because they will dismiss any criticism of immediately, disregarding its validity.

Re: Amazon deforestation: Brazil's Bolsonaro dismisses data as 'lies'

#40

Post by ChrisSD » Sat, Jul 20, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #16

avip wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general lack of ability to engage in logical facts-based discussion is an existential threat to humanity. Even in this civilized forum reasoning not always wins. Things are definitely dire.

The problem with facts, though, is that your opponent would nonetheless disagree on what set of facts is actually a good outcome.

And that's fine. A productive discussion can be had along those lines. However if someone refuses to even acknowledge that there are facts then there's no discussion to be had.

It almost feels like we're in an age with a kind of new post-modernism. Everyone can have their own reality and make up their own "facts" to fit. This makes science and philosophy irrelevant because there is no shared reality that can be investigated and no "fact" that can be disproven.