Breaking News #19: Number Go Up For November
April 11, 2024·14 comments·In Brief
In this episode we discuss how the upcoming November election is shaping the current political and economic landscape. We discuss why inflation, the stock market and the war in the Middle East are all being viewed through a political lens as the election approaches and those with a vested interest seek to influence its outcome . We also discuss the prevalence of conspiracy theories, the erosion of trust in institutions, and the importance of curiosity in a left brain focused world.
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Comments
I laughed out loud on that comic.
Just love Gary Larsen
Good point - i’ll post!
Never, ever, ever, discount this possibility.
I don’t know what the correct % is, but it could be increasing.
My experience has been that most “rational people” have some discrete areas where they are somewhat irrational. It’s very common, and I include myself within that description.
The lizardman constant appears to be creeping up from its 5% baseline a little more every year.
I’m glad you clarified, I definitely stand partly corrected in that I had no idea cloud seeding was so relatively common in the Rockies. If I understand the conspiracy theory I think the causality question is about contrails and ‘chemtrails’. Contrails just being water…essentially the conspiracy theory rests on people not understanding this. In your case if you are seeing aircraft that are known to be releasing silver iodide then this is not really the conspiracy theory.
Now that I understand what you are saying better you could post your question to the Sustainable Energy TM thread. The cloud seeding is not energy related obviously but the general idea that environmentalism has been badly corrupted by narrative and nudging forces is well represented there so cloud seeding narratives would fit right in.
i’m pretty sure this is what i’ve witnessed over the years. I don’t believe that it’s some sort of conspiracy or planting chips in our heads.
https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/support/states/CO/products/cloud-seeding/
I have read that military forces have experimented with ways to change the weather as an offensive/defensive tool. Great idea in theory think it was proven too difficult to implement…
To toss back to a meme, depends on what the definition of “believing” and “story” is.
I struggle with that percentage as well.
Cloud seeding is a real thing. At scale, though, the idea that either a.) aircraft are designed and deployed with tanks that dispense silver iodide or some similar concoction, or b.) seeding chemicals are mixed into jet fuel are both either beyond credibility or not in the Bayesian priors for more than 2/3 of to poplulation. Hence -
The upshot being if you had no prior belief, then the question only triggers your attempt to integrate the concept. (The above was an enjoyable way to spend 15 minutes, by the way.)
Probably a day with conditions ideal for both the formation of contrails and cirrus clouds. https://www.weather.gov/fgz/CloudsContrails
Sorry to expand on the tangent.
Well to be perfectly frank I think that Ben’s point on this issue is that you are seeing causality where none exists. This is one of the things our brains are absolutely fantastic at doing to us.
I really have not looked into the conspiracy theory at all. I’m generally with Ben’s mentality that the complexity and cost of doing such a thing makes it inherently very unlikely.
If you wanted to cloud seed I think there are much better ways to do it then aircraft. Neal Stephenson recently wrote a modestly interesting take on political, economic, and climate repercussions of an eccentric billionaire taking it upon themselves to begin cloud seeding (Termination Shock). I thought this was a much more likely scenario than government coordination (exempting China).
Of course climate activists conform to a narrative. We all do! Literally this is what our cognition is designed to do.
Throwing in a tangent here on the Contrails…or cloud seeding as i understand it. I ski Telluride for 10 days almost every year. I’ve watched many a beautiful sunny day turn to haze after the Seeding Aircraft criss cross the sky.
My only question is - do the climate activists understand/account for the impact of directly influencing the atmosphere?
Any chance for unintended consequences for tossing a bunch of stuff (silver dioxide, i believe) into the sky in order for it to rain somewhere else?
Or do climate activists conform to a narrative?
I dunno, i just think it’s sadly comical that we are led to be concerned about so many “existential” threats when putting stuff into the atmosphere could be making one of the “threats” even more existential to humans, animals, birds, insects…
You captured it here - if we know everything shows up this way, if we always ask “why am I reading this now,” and we try to remember we’re all just humans trying to be/do stuff, we can hopefully have better conversations about it.
ps. David McRaney has written and spoken a lot about this, not just the science but the psychology of it. If you don’t know him, worth a google.
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