The Gaming Den

Ok, my dad loves this Climategate argument that there is a massive global conspiracy (that the UN is to blame for, obviously) and that humans being a risk to the environmental balance can't be proven because there obviously are no unbiased scientists.

Can someone please give me a way to explain that there isn't some massive global conspiracy?

More than one is presented, including a few good links. But the honest answer is, like everything right wing, it's a religion. You have to ask specifically why he believes that's true, then show him why his reason is total bullshit.

So basically, conversation goes like this:

Him: Scientists are all biased.
You: Why do you believe that?
Him: All those emails!
You: And what about those emails, specifically, makes you believe that any scientists, much less all, are in on a conspiracy.
[here is where he goes and looks up some story that will talk about them, because he doesn't actually know what they say.]

Then you either specifically contradict that email because you already know the real context or can see through whatever bullshit fox news has, or you go look it up, or ask here, and we tell you.

And just like a religion, he'll still believe it at the end, no matter what, even if he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Also, because it's his religion, he'll object to you using actual definitions for actual terms.

If he thinks that "trick" means "Haha, I'm going to deceive you!" then it's blasphemy for you to turn around and try to use the actual definition used by scientists in scientific literature, ie "a technique or method."

I have never understood all this bullshit about “conspiracy” especially from the global warming side itself. It’s like saying, “Politicians and pork; it’s a conspiracy.” No it’s not a conspiracy; it’s human nature.

So let’s go back to square one; have you ever written a grant application? Have you ever written a grant application when it is you job and the jobs of your co-workers all of whom are your friends are on the line? I know people who do this for a living (unfortunately his mission is for a team that works on a very unsexy electron microscope which as far as I can tell cannot in any way use global warming as a hook to get funding). Even he is the first to admit that sometimes in writing these grants you have to make little white lies because part of research is that you can never guarantee what you will find.

I’m sorry, a trick is what it means; getting your data to look just like you want it to look so that people who want to disagree with you can’t use it against you. These people got caught with their pants down; they did sloppy research and sloppy analysis and melted all the smoking guns in the blast furnace.

tzor wrote:I’m sorry, a trick is what it means; getting your data to look just like you want it to look so that people who want to disagree with you can’t use it against you.

See like this Uber.

It doesn't matter what trick actually means to scientists. It doesn't matter that many published peer reviewed articles refer to the "tricks" they used, and that no one ever complained. It doesn't matter that the actual trick in question is to use the actual temperatures recorded by actual thermometers all over the world to determine the temperature of the world.

Tzor has his Divine Revelation that they are wrong and cheating, and so it must be true.

tzor wrote:I have never understood all this bullshit about “conspiracy” especially from the global warming side itself. It’s like saying, “Politicians and pork; it’s a conspiracy.” No it’s not a conspiracy; it’s human nature.

So let’s go back to square one; have you ever written a grant application? Have you ever written a grant application when it is you job and the jobs of your co-workers all of whom are your friends are on the line? I know people who do this for a living (unfortunately his mission is for a team that works on a very unsexy electron microscope which as far as I can tell cannot in any way use global warming as a hook to get funding). Even he is the first to admit that sometimes in writing these grants you have to make little white lies because part of research is that you can never guarantee what you will find.

I’m sorry, a trick is what it means; getting your data to look just like you want it to look so that people who want to disagree with you can’t use it against you. These people got caught with their pants down; they did sloppy research and sloppy analysis and melted all the smoking guns in the blast furnace.

So, can you cite for me exactly what amount of research is directly under the influence of the people behind climategate? I seriously glaze over on most of this stuff, so I'd like something concise, but with imbedded links to sources to check for reliability preferably.

Well, by "under the control of Climategate" do you mean the Russian spies who manufactured it, or do you mean the East Anglia Climate Research Unit whose emails were stolen in order to manufacture it?

The CRU is about 30 guys. The IPCC Author List is 5 pages long. Being one of the most respected and largest climate research departments in Europe is not enough to make one the lion's share of, well, anything.

It's a totally manufactured scandal, where nothing untoward seems to have actually been done by anyone in the scientific field.

-Username17

That's Frank's answer for everything; blame the Russians.

The East Anglia Climate Research Unit got caught with their scientific pants down, living the life of eazy grant money.

Between the crazies like Frank who practically worships anyone who throws out numbers to support Global Warming and the crazies on the other side who thinks that there is some vast global conspiracy I almost feel like laughing my ass off. (Frankly I could use to shead a few pounds.)

Conspiracies; don't talk to me about conspiracies. You want to hear what the real conspiracy theorists are saying? Check the back door grumbling from the conference (not the front door "we want mo' money" from the third world). Check out the text within the latest IPPF financial statements. The emperor of all global warming conspiracies is that "Global warming is a cover excuse for global population control and an implementation of the China policy through forced abortions and sterilizations."

Now that's wacko bullshit.

See, this is the kind of golden mean fallacy bullshit you are dealing with.

Exxon is the number one company on Earth. It makes a lot of money off of the status quo and pays out actual cash money to people who falsify research to make their points for them. And they give big cash prizes to lobbying groups that publish those falsified results all over the world. And their own paid spokespeople make truly outlandish accusations at the CRU that don't hold up to even cursory examination.

But somehow Tzor assures us that the reasonable position must be in between what Exxon is saying through their sock puppets and what, well, every reputable scientist on the planet is saying. Because after all, massive corporations with billions of dollars at stake must be at least half right, right? I mean, just because every single fact we ever bother to look up from their side is completely bogus doesn't mean that they are completely full of shit, right?

Except of course, it totally does mean that. The accusations of fraud against the CRU are totally baseless. The people who stole the emails and the people who made the accusations have a very large financial interest in supporting inaction on Climate Change, and a very long history of fraud, and very deep pockets. In this instance it's not even complicated. There aren't two sides with a point, there's the little guy scientist with facts on his side, and there's gigantic evil corporations that are willing and eager to destroy the planet o make a buck. It really is that simple.

-Username17

Golden mean fallacy? So the idea is, if you're off the the right and your opponent is to the left, you only need to throw out the idea of something super-right to make your stance seem more reasonable and your opponent's extreme?

I've seen people do this. It's usually pretty obvious. I'd just never seen that name for it before. I like it (the name, not the technique ).

RobbyPants wrote:Golden mean fallacy? So the idea is, if you're off the the right and your opponent is to the left, you only need to throw out the idea of something super-right to make your stance seem more reasonable and your opponent's extreme?

I've seen people do this. It's usually pretty obvious. I'd just never seen that name for it before. I like it (the name, not the technique ).

Pretty much, Yeah.

Golden Mean Fallacy is often taken by observers, where two positions are stated and observers pick some middle ground between them. This is not good reasoning, since in many arguments one person is right and the other person is wrong.

What Tzor, and indeed the entire Right Wing Denialsphere are doing is playing on peoples' natural tendency to do that. He isn't intending for anyone to actually believe that Michal Mann is trying to use the specter of renewable resources to wipe out billions of people. He's trying to put that position into the debate so that the position of "The CRU are liars and other people are extremists, so do nothing" can claim the "middle ground."

Of course, "do nothing" is not the middle ground, it's an extremely dangerous and extreme position. The only way it could ever look like a middle ground is to have people like Tzor and Exxon quietly create bogus more extreme positions so that they can claim that their own extreme position is actually a compromise between themselves and their sock puppets.

Once you follow the money and watch the lips moving, it's actually pretty sad.

-Username17

Frank, that is more or less exactly the kind of straightforward language and linkage I was looking for. Thanks.

Yeah, I had that same thing happen to me ten years ago when I was in college. A roommate (or one of his friends) deliberately scratched one of my CDs. I talked to the RA and she'd suggested him paying half. Now, I understand why she takes that stance, because she really doesn't know which of us is lying. Still, it seems logically stupid to take a stance that you know if half wrong, guaranteed. [/offtopic]

tzor wrote: So let’s go back to square one; have you ever written a grant application? Have you ever written a grant application when it is you job and the jobs of your co-workers all of whom are your friends are on the line?

Just curious, are you aware that you argument goes off the rails right here? You are arguing that the financial backing for people who do research into global warming that prove that it is in fact legitimate is anywhere near the amount of money they'd be paid to falsify the result and claim it isn't. The money strongly backs the deniers in this case, not the ones who show it's true.

FrankTrollman wrote:It's a totally manufactured scandal, where nothing untoward seems to have actually been done by anyone in the scientific field.

I'd regard the attempts to get around an FOI request by arranging certain emails to be deleted as wrong. That shit isn't cool.

Draco_Argentum wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:It's a totally manufactured scandal, where nothing untoward seems to have actually been done by anyone in the scientific field.

I'd regard the attempts to get around an FOI request by arranging certain emails to be deleted as wrong. That shit isn't cool.

...until you realize that the people in question were being subjected to nuisance FOI requests. Literally dozens of them a week for the same shit, stuff that had already been surrendered or denied by a court. Requests by the same people.

And someone said "Why don't we just delete all the records, and then we could just surrender an empty set every day instead of fucking with it?" And people laughed, and they did not actually do that. That's the best the denialsphere has, and that's still nothing at all.

The part that is not cool is having people file nuisance FOI requests over and over again to harass scientists while they are trying to get some fucking work done.

-Username17

Kaelik wrote:But the honest answer is, like everything right wing, it's a religion.

That's a pretty fucking retarded statement right there... kinda like a religious statement, right ?

The Vigilante wrote:

Kaelik wrote:But the honest answer is, like everything right wing, it's a religion.

That's a pretty fucking retarded statement right there... kinda like a religious statement, right ?

I'll tell you what: let's have the Right Wing in the US present us with one suggested policy that is based on evidence and observable reality instead of gut feelings and emotional pleas, and we can take down the moniker that everything they support is on religious grounds.

Just one.

We're waiting.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I'll tell you what: let's have the Right Wing in the US present us with one suggested policy that is based on evidence and observable reality instead of gut feelings and emotional pleas, and we can take down the moniker that everything they support is on religious grounds.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Can you show any policy of the Progressive Wing in the US that is hased "evidence and observable reality instead of gut feelings and emotional pleas?"

Not that it matters; I'm sick of this fucking government of the Vulcans, by the Vulcans and for the Vulcans anyway. Logic and evidence didn't free the slaves; it didn't give us the separation of church and state; it didn't give us any of the fundamental rights in the Bill of Rights. Stop pretending that your emotional arguments are somehow logical while theirs is not.

tzor wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:I'll tell you what: let's have the Right Wing in the US present us with one suggested policy that is based on evidence and observable reality instead of gut feelings and emotional pleas, and we can take down the moniker that everything they support is on religious grounds.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Can you show any policy of the Progressive Wing in the US that is hased "evidence and observable reality instead of gut feelings and emotional pleas?"

Not that it matters; I'm sick of this fucking government of the Vulcans, by the Vulcans and for the Vulcans anyway. Logic and evidence didn't free the slaves; it didn't give us the separation of church and state; it didn't give us any of the fundamental rights in the Bill of Rights. Stop pretending that your emotional arguments are somehow logical while theirs is not.

Actually, all of those things were based on logic, in whole or in part. I'll give you some of the parts of the Bill of Rights were based on fears, but slaves were freed because of logical arguments. Church and state were separated because of logical arguments.

But you seriously want to name a single progressive policy based on logical argument? How about three? Would that be a good start?

• Public Education - educated people are more productive than uneducated people. That's a measurable and repeatable fact. So while educating the entire public has a cost that is measurable, it also produces wealth. The wealth produced by having a literate populace exceeds the cost of teaching the populace how to read. Therefore, public education is the logical thing to do.
• Conservationism - natural resources are not of equal utility when used in any manner. There is a utility curve, where using more resources has diminishing returns as the economy's ability to absorb them efficiently is overwhelmed. As time progresses, technology advances, and the return we can expect from any resources increases. So even before we get to potentially renewable resources like timber and cod, slowing down the use of resources below the point of maximum current profit allows us to use the resources we have more efficiently and increase total wealth. Thus, conservationism is logical.
• Welfare - corporations can only sell things to people who have money. Economically this is called "Demand." And when Demand drops very low, we have bad economic times, like this one right now. If you keep the welfare state going, you don't have critical economic failures like the one we are having. The current crisis has cost us trillions of dollars, which is more than the Keynesian strategies to keep it from happening would have cost. So welfare is logical.

But the take home message is not that Liberals and Communists can have arguments with each other that involve actual numbers and genuine give and take back and forth based on reason and evidence, while apparently American Conservatism cannot. The point is that when Vigilante and Tzor came in to defend American Conservatism, they didn't even dispute the total lack of logic in their positions - they simply went for the "I'm rubber, you're glue" or the "everyone's guilty" or whatever you want to label the False Equivalence argument today.

That's the take home message. When people accused the conservatives of having nothing substantial in their arguments and a position founded entirely upon emotional appeals, insults, and religious aspersions - they responded with emotional appeals, insults, and religious aspersions. Because that seriously is the entirety of the American Conservative Movement. There is no intellectual core there.

-Username17

tzor wrote:Logic and evidence didn't free the slaves; it didn't give us the separation of church and state; it didn't give us any of the fundamental rights in the Bill of Rights. Stop pretending that your emotional arguments are somehow logical while theirs is not.

Tzor, you are fucking hilarious.

Logic didn't get us the fundamental protections? Let me show you:

1) I Like being free to do X.
2) Right now, I'm in the majority.
3) I might not always be in the majority.
4) If I make free speech dependent on being in the majority, MP 1 and 3, I might not have what I like.
5) If I make it so that everyone gets free speech, then other people can't take it away when I am not majority.
6) Implement Free Speech for everyone.

That's literally exactly how we came up with the fundamental protections, through logic. Which is why people who base their decisions on emotion, ie the right wing, are always upset when other people who they disagree with start saying things they don't want to hear. See, sedition laws.

Freedom of Religion even more so.

There is no emotional reason to want other people to be able to practice a different religion that is damning them to hell, and make laws that prevent you from doing everything i your power to save them and their children from eternal hellfire.

The logical reason to do so is because you recognize that the law protects your religion as well, if it should become a minority.

Public Education: “Think of the Children.” Most if not all progressive initiatives on public education has been based on emotional and not logical arguments. Our nation’s push towards science was in response to the USSR launching a satellite. Our nation’s push towards “no child left behind” was in response to embarrassing test scores. Most of the progressive policy involves how to best appease the teacher’s unions. There is no logic driving the process; only raw emotions.

Conservatism: Has always been driven by raw appeals to emotion and moral reasoning. Never mind that logic demands that species come and go, we have to go in extraordinary lengths to save every single fucking species that someone finds “cute” (again an appeal to emotion). There is no cost/benefit analysis for the snail darter, no study of the usefulness of snail darters in the future, just an appeal to raw emotions.

Welfare is also driven by emotion and moral guilt. (Of course progressives rarely give their own money; they give someone else’s money.

But as Frank said this is not the real issue; the real issue is that Frank is allowed to hand wave and I am not. Frank can make an assertion and it must be true and I need to present a Master’s Thesis or else I’m not using facts and figures. He views the world through red colored polarized glasses; no wonder he can’t see half of what is out there!

P.S. Kaelik, please don’t back seat quarterback history; it’s not becoming.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Uh, tzor, I don't know how to tell you this, but "Think of the Children" is a Conservative scare tactic. Like, almost exclusively. You guys invented that shit.

Progressive initiatives toward education include "hey, what we're doing is like, giving us embarrassingly low scores. Why don't we try something else, maybe something that's been proven to work?"

But we can't do that, because of personal responsibility and the homosexual agenda.

And there you have it. Tzor asked for a progressive issue for which there is a logical argument, and promised to give a logical argument for at least one American Conservative position. I gave three and a logical argument for each one. Tzor's response of course is to make a straw man out of an emotional argument that a progressive might use for the same thing. And zero logical arguments for any of his positions.

This kind of blatant goalpost shifting is completely standard practice within the Right Wing. That's how they operate.

Note: at no time did I say "show me a position that conservatives don't make emotional arguments for" because of course, that would be impossible. And patently ridiculous, since it is entirely possible and even reasonable to make an emotional argument for any position provided that you have some logical argument somewhere to show people actually interested in the numbers behind the policy being advocated. And yet, Tzor's "refutation" to both my logical arguments and Kaelik's was simply to provide a supplemental emotional plea for each one. That's... not actually a refutation, since of course the challenge was to show a logical argument, not to show a position for which no emotional argument exists.

---

And in case anyone is wondering: no, Tzor is not a liberal sock puppet who comes in here to demonstrate all of the bad argumentation that Conservatives use after I explain what kind of bad argumentation that Conservatives use. While that would be totally awesome, the fact is that mouth pieces for the second estate are seriously just that predictable.

The reason that I am able to call their fallacies before they happen and dissect them afterwards is because the American Conservative wing ha no coherent arguments, and relies on a series of stock rhetorical techniques that are actually quite small in number and shallow of focus.

-Username17

tzor wrote:P.S. Kaelik, please don’t back seat quarterback history; it’s not becoming.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Wow, that looks a lot like the Constitution written in 1776.

Or... No wait.

That's the Declaration of Independence. And it was 11 years later that they realized that the Articles of Confederation were shit, and they resorted to a new system because the evidence was clear that it was not working.

So then they realized that logically, they would have to include practical limitations on the government that are not even remotely close to Life, Liberty, or the Pursuit of Happiness.

Instead, they decided to impose a bunch of rights that were not granted by any creator, but instead by majority consensus.

Because, see, that emotional appeal to god doesn't do shit to prevent Christians from discriminating against Jews, as we learned from evidence of every Christian Nation. So we made a Nation that is not christian, because we used some logical deduction to figure out that if you can't discriminate against Jews, you sure as hell won't decide to start burning Lutherans next.

FrankTrollman wrote:And there you have it. Tzor asked for a progressive issue for which there is a logical argument, and promised to give a logical argument for at least one American Conservative position.

I'm sorry, some people have to work for a living. I'll have a logical argument for something in a short time, right after I investigate this RIC/FILE CODE change in December that didn't get reported correctly.