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The case against crisis-mongering

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Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#121

Post by dahart »

blagie wrote: post #106
dahart wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you’re suggesting we should prepare for unlikely events, seems reasonable as a general thought. And at the same time armchair questioning the best science we have on climate change without any specific evidence, contributing to the very doubt that has already fueled our inaction and inability to prepare to date. How are we to be resilient and prioritize preparedness when we can’t agree on the priorities? Certainl…

The best science, in climate change, in COVID, and in many other areas, just isn't very good science. That doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare. We make decisions on limited evidence all the time -- in business, investments, and in war, there is a certain fog. I think where scientists went wrong -- and what contributed to doubt and fueled our inaction and inability to prepare to date -- was exactly from the type of mani…

You didn’t answer the question. How can we prioritize funding and actions? What are you going to fund, exactly, and how will you get enough people to agree to it, vote for it, etc.? A lot of people already agree with you that we should prepare, and still we haven’t prepared. Why?

The reason everything went wrong is that scientists haven’t used confidence intervals? Hehehe, I don’t think that has anything to do with it. Please be more specific, which papers, which predictions are you talking about? Who made them, and when exactly? Right-wing media has a tendency to misquote people and frame truth as failures too, and has been systematically trying to erode public trust in science and truth. I don’t think right-wing media’s political claims have any bearing on what we should do. Adding confidence intervals wouldn’t help anything; they’re opposed to regulation and to change of entrenched big business, it doesn’t matter what the science says, they’re against it because it affects somebody’s profit.

One big mistake you’re making here is suggesting that all science is making predictions, which is false. Most science, and much of the best science, doesn’t make any predictions at all, and doesn’t need confidence intervals, because it’s identifying and explaining past history, not the future. We don’t need science to predict that the temperature will go up, because we can see the trend over the last 10 or 50 years. Scientists aren’t telling us the climate is going to change, they’re telling us it already has changed. Adding a confidence interval won’t make that any more convincing to climate change deniers.

Hard disagree that the best science isn’t good, and that’s another hell of an armchair claim to make. I’m sure, like everything, some of it isn’t very good. See Sturgeon’s Law. But some of it is great. Watching Fox News will not help you identify the good stuff.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#122

Post by Animats »

atemerev wrote: post #27
Guthur wrote: post #8

Honestly it seems no one really understands what fascism actually is. What fascism used to be was ultra nationalistic, non democratic, centralised control of people's lives and the economy for the greater good of the state. And I means these to the most extreme you can possibly take these ideas, that's fascism. The word has no meaning when you throw it around against anyone with slightly conservative view points.

To learn what fascism is, I highly recommend reading the book of its founder: “The Doctrine of Fascism” by Mussolini. It is short, up to the point, and clearly defines the subject. Basically it is an ideology centered on subjugating the needs of an individual to the needs of the (national) government. “Strong nation through collective action”.

“Strong nation through collective action”.

Oh, like "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" - Kennedy.

Fascism goes beyond that. "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value." - Mussolini. The core concept is a single all-encompassing authority. Not just a dictatorship or ruling party, but no other centers of power at all. It's top down military organization of the non-military parts of society.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#123

Post by blagie »

dahart wrote: post #121
blagie wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best science, in climate change, in COVID, and in many other areas, just isn't very good science. That doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare. We make decisions on limited evidence all the time -- in business, investments, and in war, there is a certain fog. I think where scientists went wrong -- and what contributed to doubt and fueled our inaction and inability to prepare to date -- was exactly from the type of mani…

You didn’t answer the question. How can we prioritize funding and actions? What are you going to fund, exactly, and how will you get enough people to agree to it, vote for it, etc.? A lot of people already agree with you that we should prepare, and still we haven’t prepared. Why? The reason everything went wrong is that scientists haven’t used confidence intervals? Hehehe, I don’t think that has anything to do with i…

> Please be more specific, which papers, which predictions are you talking about?

What gets cited most is Al Gore's summary of science in Inconvenient Truth. He quoted a bunch of predictions. He streamed those off. Within 15 years, there will be no more glaciers in Glacier National Park. Etc. Many of those didn't come to pass. Fox News is pretty honest when it quotes those. Selective, but honest.

He expressed complete confidence throughout: "There's not a single fact, or date, or number that's been used to make this up that's in any controversy"

Well, guess what? It's a chaotic system. We knew the predictions weren't great; we missed most of the effects of ocean acidification. Every number was in controversy. We missed a bunch of effects, underestimated some, and overestimated others. It's easy to point to place where people were untruthful. Fox News rarely lies, but it often quotes the places where things didn't come to pass. Liberal media quotes the places where things did, or where things were worse than predicted. Neither side is particularly truthful.

> You didn’t answer the question. How can we prioritize funding and actions?

Well, there are two hypotheses:

1) We're going to lie and convince everyone.

2) We'll be honest and count on people to be reasonable.

We tried #1. It didn't work. How about trying #2? It's painfully hard, calling people on lying when we agree with them, but it's critical, on both sides of the isle. Right now, we have a race to the bottom. Republicans lie. Democrats lie harder. Republicans lie harder. And so on.

> A lot of people already agree with you that we should prepare, and still we haven’t prepared. Why?

A lot of people disagree, and can point to good evidence that the side advocating for change was lying. The conclusion was correct, but when the logic along the way is dishonest, that's not how it's received.

> The reason everything went wrong is that scientists haven’t used confidence intervals?

I don't think that's quite what I said. I said the political left -- including and especially the scientific establishment -- expressed 100% certainty in predictions which (1) didn't come to pass (2) clearly had enough assumptions that a sane scientist could have predicted that (and many, in private conversations, did).

> Right-wing media...

Do you read right-wing media, or merely read about right-wing media? I haven't found media on either side of the isle to be more or less truthful. I read both.

> One big mistake you’re making here is suggesting that all science is making predictions, which is false.

No, I'm suggesting that this is the part of "science" which has the greatest problems with truthiness, and makes it hard to trust the best science.

> Most science, and much of the best science, doesn’t make any predictions at all, and doesn’t need confidence intervals, because it’s identifying and explaining past history, not the future. We don’t need science to predict that the temperature will go up, because we can see the trend over the last 10 or 50 years. Scientists aren’t telling us the climate is going to change, they’re telling us it already has changed.

And if this is all that was being presented, I think we'd have acted sooner.

> Adding a confidence interval won’t make that any more convincing to climate change deniers.

It's not about adding, it's about taking out.

> Watching Fox News will not help you identify the good stuff.

It actually will. Try it. Treat it (and all other media) as a primary source. You'd be surprised at how often an outsider perspective will do that. Mostly, it will help identify a blind spot around bad science you agree with. Chinese media too, actually. It's pretty easy to read critically past the propaganda. Does NY Times have better scientific coverage? Indubitably. But it comes with the same blindspot. In science, you're trying to make a good faith effort to disprove the hypothesis, and people who disagree with you do that much better than people who agree.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#124

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

roenxi wrote: post #15
Guthur wrote: post #8

Honestly it seems no one really understands what fascism actually is. What fascism used to be was ultra nationalistic, non democratic, centralised control of people's lives and the economy for the greater good of the state. And I means these to the most extreme you can possibly take these ideas, that's fascism. The word has no meaning when you throw it around against anyone with slightly conservative view points.

I'm not sure people care. The median pundit seems to have an unshakeable belief that they aren't going to bear the big-picture consequences for bringing back failed 1900s political ideologies. Given the absolutely absurd number of real-world experiments run over the last 2,000 years the ultra-short-term view people have of political history is a bit silly. Eg, I don't even know what the whipping boy was before facism…

There's a throwaway line somewhere in Kenneth Clark's Civilization, where he says that railing against "tyranny" (sort of gesturing back to the Roman Republic) was the rhetorical go-to of the pre-Marxist revolutionary.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#125

Post by OrvalWintermute »

tqi wrote: post #56
zzyzxxz wrote: post #52

The abusive tactic known as DARVO begins with downplaying, denying or deflecting. I sure read a lot of those things in this article. I hope the author learns more rhetorical techniques, the one they used here made them come across as abusive.

Please list some examples.

Here [1] is an example of DARVO according to the Chicago Tribune, and one [2] from NewsweekPakistan both involving sexual assaults.

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/sc-fam-kelly-inter...

[2] https://www.newsweekpakistan.com/reversing-blame/

Didn't know what DARVO meant so had to look it up and find good examples

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#126

Post by Barrin92 »

There's two claims in this piece I think.

1. We're not in a 'special' point of history, crises happens all the time

2. this is validation for some sort of liberal technocratic, moderate program, systematic critique is misplaced.

The first one is true. Crises do indeed happen all the time. The entire problem is just that this is not an argument for the second claim. Nations collapse, people go to wars, the WW I trenches were certainly worse than Donald Trump's presidency, what have you.

The big problem is just that the fact that carnage is normal doesn't make the carnage any better. It's not a validation of the system as it is, it's a testament to the constant brutality and chaos and cycle of violence that is normal throughout history, and I don't want to live through anything that's even just a tenth as bad as the second world war. This is what Adam Curtis called hypernormalization, the numbness to complete and utter destruction, rationalized as a sort of ordinary state of affairs. Just look at it this way, this is a blog post warning of crisis mongering, while, in the US as an example where the author is from, over half a million people died of a pandemic. He's right that in two years everyone will have forgotten it. He's wrong in that he doesn't recognize how insane and terrifying that fact is.

Someone made the observation that in the last two thousand years, no empire has lasted more than 300, I'm pretty sure plenty of moderate reformers had the exact same attitude in any of them as the author. It's true that people throughout history have loved doomsday scenarios. The problem is just that most of the time, they were right.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#127

Post by curation »

hiddencache wrote: post #10

Regardless of what Tyler Durden said: > "We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives." The 90s were a pretty fortunate decade. The threat of nuclear war had passed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economy was chugging along fine, and terrorism hadn't yet taken centre stage. Certain…

It was pretty rapey too.

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#128

Post by spamizbad »

bart_spoon wrote: post #91
spamizbad wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist does a fair bit of fearmongering when it comes to China and inflation.

I think one dimension of crisis mongering is how drastic the stakes are portrayed. Its one thing to discuss discerning trends or potential problems, and another to portray every problem as a struggle of between good and evil in which the balance of the universe hangs. The Economist tends to stick to the former side of the spectrum than the latter in my experience.

That’s fair

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#129

Post by chubot »

hiddencache wrote: post #10

Regardless of what Tyler Durden said: > "We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war, our Great Depression is our lives." The 90s were a pretty fortunate decade. The threat of nuclear war had passed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the economy was chugging along fine, and terrorism hadn't yet taken centre stage. Certain…

The internet was also very useful and functional. though I’ll admit it got better in the 2000’s with Google Maps etc. Still I managed to navigate unknown cities with MapQuest printouts haha

Re: The case against crisis-mongering

#130

Post by SavantIdiot »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #110
SavantIdiot wrote: post #67

I had a man in an nazi costume point a gun at me during a Portland protest. How could I possibly be "over-exaggerating"? Do I need to be dead? Would that make the author approve of my experience? OP can stuff his privilege. This is yet another of example of "Well, everything is fine for -ME-, why doesn't everyone else just relax since you're all the same anyway..."

I doubt he would claim you are over-exaggerating your particular experience, nor do I think he is insisting that no terrible things happen at all (which would be an obviously insane thing to say). But is it actually *worse* now than in the past? I think we have a way of remembering the past as much rosier than it actually was which leads us to think the present is much worse than it actually is. We tend to think of l…

> you can't make tradeoffs when EVERYTHING is an emergency.

I agree. You can only have one #1 priority, by definition, but it is possible to address multiple emergencies.

The problem is "clog the channels with shit" people like Bannon obscure the true emergencies. He does it intentionally. I agree there are lots of people out there with lots of valid complaints, but I don't think they are all done intentionally to numb people to real emergencies like Bannon.

> Not to mention the long and sordid history of pervasive racist violence from Reconstruction onward

Sure. Please, please look at in context. Don't you think a few years before the civil war no one probably expected a civil war? To claim that things were worse in the past is to, frankly, be glib because you are ignoring the trajectory where things were headed. That is quite alarmingly similar: congress splitting irreconcilably.

In fact, your claim is almost a tautology: It isn't as bad because it isn't as bad. But once it IS as bad, then you've got a new datapoint to use in the future to say "things aren't so bad". It is circular logic.

IMHO: I think white supremacists storming the capital is a big red flag. If you think I'm being too extreme by calling them white supremacists and saying this is a dire situation, then I'm unreachable. It's a hard limit for me. A huge crowd of Trump supporters stormed the capital to overturn an election with the backing of half of congress. Yet you have Fox News, OANN and Newsmax trying to make Cancel Culture a bigger deal. I can't. I just can't. If in the OP's eyes I'm the problem because I put this in the top-10 emergencies, then I guess we have a insurmountable disconnect in this country.

I won't even argue about whether Tucker Carlson is valid to claim Cancel Culture a valid #1 emergency compared to my list, because they just aren't even on the same page, and if you can't see that, refer to my earlier point: insurmountable disconnect.

Perhaps that is how new countries & societies are formed: when one group wants to be Christian Theocracy with Biblical Law, and the other wants to strive be a liberal, flexible, socially just society. Those two viewpoints cannot by definition be reconciled, and one side is armed to the teeth and taking half of the political system with it, so what do you do?

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