Do you Troll?

Bambooza

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Aha, you have got me thinking - Discussing polatics in the pub did used to be a thing which now is not as much, but the subject of discussion, polatics, has changed.

It used to be unifying, asperational, hope.

Modern polatics is more devisionary, tribal, fear.

To change the reaction to the subject, sometimes the subject must be changed... Is trolling then a gurilla reaction from a safe distance to this tribalism on any subject? You know they wont change their minds no matter how much evidence there is so is belligerence and ridicule all that is left in the age of the willful ignorant (on both sides).

I've always viewed true trolling as more just toying with the opponent much like a cat plays with a mouse before killing it, it's not needed beyond the enjoyment of the troll often times with the intended goal to get an overly emotional response.

With that in mind, I feel a lot of public discourse and debating on a subject is often unfairly labeled as trolling when in fact it's just normal debating. But it's not to say with the prevalence of social media that debates have taken on more of a verbal warfare mentality and are no longer about attempting to reason with dissident views or change minds, but utter memorized talking points without any understanding of the subject or attempt to see the other sides view. Often it's done with contempt and rationality that they are beneath reproach in the us vs them often leading to attacks on the individual instead of the topic. IE you are just a climate deniest who never went to college so you can't possibly know anything about anything, or you are just a libtard who only knows how to regurgitate what the professors shoved down your throat.

As for the debate on climate change, I think both sides are idiots as both sides have valid points which means the answer is somewhere between them. That the air quality in cities is terrible and we need to initiate more green technologies in the cities to clean up the air, but as to how it's impacting the global climate it's hard to tell given we have a very difficult time telling what the weather will be like with any degree of acracy tomorrow let alone months or years from now. I am also a huge fan of nuclear energy and think if we were not so scared of it it would be the best source of clean energy we can do at this moment in time and would significantly improve everyone's lives, well besides those that relied on coal mining and oil drilling. It also makes me wonder if high-speed trains over airplanes is a better form of rapid long-distance transportation. And while we can almost eliminate the need for coal (it will still be required in the processing of steel) we will still need oil for all the things batteries suck at due to the low energy density like long haul trucking, tractors, and rural transportation.

Instead, we get solutions like California offering the ability to buy green energy at a premium and saying they are reducing the amount of non green energy produced in the state. When the truth of the matter is they are using more energy and just offsetting the shortfall of energy production of energy by coal and natural gas to other states and thus looking like an increase in green energy contributing to the overall energy creation. As for the buying of green energy is not changing the amount of energy provided by green energy just you paying more for the same energy.
 

ColdDog

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As for the debate on climate change, I think both sides are idiots as both sides have valid points which means the answer is somewhere between them. That the air quality in cities is terrible and we need to initiate more green technologies in the cities to clean up the air, but as to how it's impacting the global climate it's hard to tell given we have a very difficult time telling what the weather will be like with any degree of acracy tomorrow let alone months or years from now. I am also a huge fan of nuclear energy and think if we were not so scared of it it would be the best source of clean energy we can do at this moment in time and would significantly improve everyone's lives, well besides those that relied on coal mining and oil drilling. It also makes me wonder if high-speed trains over airplanes is a better form of rapid long-distance transportation. And while we can almost eliminate the need for coal (it will still be required in the processing of steel) we will still need oil for all the things batteries suck at due to the low energy density like long haul trucking, tractors, and rural transportation.
I really don't want to weigh in on this because it is getting off topic but I have got to say, every lie, is founded in some truth. I fall in @Bambooza camp on this one... because I don't think there is enough data to make a claim that global warming exists. Even worse, people are telling our kids they have 10 years to live... good grief, not that our kids have not been through enough, now people are giving them no hope by telling them they are dead anyway. No wonder they turn to drugs, crime and suicide. The climate movement is like Heavens Gate on steroids, shame on all the people who give our kids no hope. One thing I've learned in life is that we (people) are not in control of anything and tell your kids they are going to die, when society has no control over the situation anyway. Even if the west societies go back to the stone ages, east societies (China, Russia, etc) will continue down the path where they use hydrocarbons for everything.
 

Shadow Reaper

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I think the most you can hope for from a neighbor in a casual face to face is to hope to jar their common sense. Talk about the measures proposed to cope with Climate change.

I personally have yet to have a Climate change advocate explain why the US dropped its sanctions against Nordstream II. Climate change was the explanation for closing Keystone. Force gas prices up and people will use less, is the argument. if that's so, why on Earth would Biden refuse to enforce Bi-Partisan Congressional sanctions voted into law by Congress, and enable Putin to sell oil and gas to Europe?

Further weird in the story was Sen. Cruz's response when Biden refused to enforce the sanctions. He was clear, over a year in advance, that Putin would certainbly attack Ukraine to get their oil fields, and he was completely correct.

Follow the money. Anyone can connect those dots. Simply ask your neighbor why Biden refused to enforce Constitutional Law--the Law he swore to uphold.
 

Bruttle

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Oooh, this is a lovely discussion. It is my opinion that trolling is a result of people not having any real world outlet, compounded by an unlimited lack of consequence, then multiplied again by an inability to have a spirited face to face conversation that is in opposition to theirs. There are a few factors though that you all have brushed up against, but not really fleshed out as I believe they are.

The first is echo chambers. People get emboldened by false reinforcement as a result of echo chambers. They tend to think that their viewpoint is shared by thousands of people and if all those people agree, how can it be wrong? Hence, flat earth... The best part of that is our technology, as a function of commerce, tries to place us all in echo chambers. If you do a google search, it tries to decide the results based not on scientific accuracy, but rather which results are more likely to make you click. So if, by result of previous searches or search word choices, google realizes you are a flat earther, it is more likely to produce results that reinforce your belief rather than contradict it. It's not due to any nefarious design or conspiracy, but rather simple commerce. You are more likely to click. The result is both an inability to mentally deal with an opposing belief and a mental misrepresentation of fact.

The second is the production of "fact". I can't count how many times I have been in a discussion and had the opposing side present a "fact" that is merely a regurgitated social media quote. They just read it on a webpage somewhere and since it claimed to be "fact" and "based on a scientific study" it could be nothing other than the truth. Unfortunately, these things are rarely vetted. If you dig deeper, you find that "scientific study" was conducted with 10 people. Their "national survey" was conducted online and there were only 100 participants. We've known about the scientific method for a very long time. It has been responsible for so much of our advancement as a species and yet is so easily discarded in social media just so someone can act like they won a debate.

Well, this is getting kind of... ranty. The first two things speak to people feeling "right" in the most ridiculous situations. It gives justification and builds a stable platform from which to believe anything and do anything they want, but only online. In a face to face discussion, most people wouldn't dare. Which leads me to my last point, no outlet. In the real world, people are constantly told they are wrong. They have the wrong beliefs. They have the wrong morals. They have the wrong thoughts. Their facts are all wrong. They are worthless, oppressed victims while simultaneously being the oppressor, the bad guy, the evil villain, etc. So how does a person deal with this frustration? How does an average human make sense of this constant pressure? They release it out into the internet. They take that twisted, pent up, repressed frustration and send it out in the only place they can without repercussion or consequence.
 

Shadow Reaper

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Which people are telling whose kids that? Do you have a source or reference? First I've heard of it, but happy to be proved wrong, or was that just polemic?
AOC has been stating publicly for the last three years that "the world is going to end" in 2031 unless we enact her marxist policies known as the "Green New Deal".

View: https://youtu.be/WAZgDzB-v4o

I don't want to become embroiled with a debate on this issue, as I have seldom seen that have a fruitful outcome. I will however own my bias and background and make one simple observation.

I'm a life-long Conservative and Environmentalist. I grew up backpacking literally thousands of miles of wilderness and still enjoy this. I was a Greenpeace member for many years, and was a part of the authentic Environmentalist movement in the 60's that brought the US the Clean Water Act, created the toxic cleanup Superfund, swapped out one type of freon refridgerant for a less effective one to save the ozone layer, ended acid rain by inventing catalytic converters, saved the last of the Old Grown redwood trees in California, and a host of other issues. I'm still a member of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation supporting a handful of serious naturalist forms of Conservatism. From 1993-4 I was a teaching assistant at PSU where I taught Environmental Ethics primarily from publications of the World Wildlife Foundation. Note this was back before we had satellites that could accurately measure the Earth's albedo (that percentage of sunlight shining on the Earth that is reflected rather than being absorbed) and the Earth's temperature, so we had really no hard science for any of the claims back then. Finally the Climate Change argument was at that time couched in very different terms, and was called "Anthropogenic Global Warming". This term was later abandoned because early climate scientists could not say how much CO2 warms the Earth, and it is telling that they still cannot answer this question. This was back before Climategate I and Climategate II clearly showed how public officials at places like NASA are willing to lie about the data to everyone, specifically to protect their public funding. In the years since I have become somewhat skeptical of Climate Change claims, though I do believe the Earth is warming.

Analyzing this issue is VERY complex, and indeed scientists who dedicate their lives to nothing else can't really get their arms around it, so I don't think we're going to solve the issue here. Instead, allow I make just one point. All is certainly NOT what it seems. There is a fantastic amount of fraud in the Climate Change sub-discipline, and it has been made obvious many times over the years such as with ClimateGate 1 and 2. Climate Science is 99% pathological science and this will not get better until we start firing scientists indulging in fraud, such as Hanson at NASA. When you tie science to politics, you corrupt science. It is that simple. What attitude should we have about this? I have never seen a better one than this:

View: https://youtu.be/OwqIy8Ikv-c

Edit: okay so nahhhhh, I always have more to say. One last thing.

The only real change I have seen in this debate over the last decade, is one philosopher has openned up a line of inquiry that was previously untouched. That is, he has turned the general attitude most people have--hey less junk in the air is good, gimme solar and wind--on its head by looking at the benefits of fossil fuels more carefully. Instead of just presuming we can pay any outrageous cost for energy without consequences, he looks at the real world costs of high energy and the real world consequences of cheap energy, especially fossil fuel use. His findings are vast and astonishing. I'm talking about Alex Epstein who is to my mind the brightest light in the modern debate.

View: https://youtu.be/ETMAxtVOqHw
 

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Mich Angel

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( I quote myself: )
Our need as humans.
Our need to be individuals and make our own path in life is what makes humans a great investment to profit from.
And we are the only living mammal that we know of that carries this need, and as such it gets exploited by those with greed...
/Mich 2010.


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