> a real, current problem. Those are always more important than future problems.
You mean like addressing climate change, vs spending trillions trying to terraform a planet to make it barely habitable.
You mean like addressing climate change, vs spending trillions trying to terraform a planet to make it barely habitable.
Needed for Mars, useful for Earth.
[0] and, indeed, have used that argument against his critics when Musk was just a plucky upstart spending mere hundreds of millions on making the prototype that led to the Falcon
[1] https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/11/investigative-reports/u...
There is evidence both for and against more free speech on Twitter. If someone can't admit that, chances are they are plagued with cognitive dissonance and highly partisan in their reasoning. For example, there is evidence that Twitter has granted amnesty to accounts that were previously censored and according to stated motivations this was done for the sake of freedom of speech.
I happen to suspect that you are right and that currently some rulings are made with input outside the policy team and that this is currently happening more frequently than it used to. One thing that convinces me of this is that I frequently see people reaching out to Elon Musk directly and reporting that they have been censored in some way or the other. Then these cases seem to be resolved, with the other person praising him for ending the censoring of their political thoughts, which implies that he intervened in a policy decision.
However, I'm not sure I could call this proof that banning decisions are made more arbitrarily than before since these are blacklist removing interventions rather than bans.
So basically, when you claim that is now more arbitrary than it was before, that comes across to me more as your own speculation than anything definitive. We don't have proof of that. In sharp contrast, anyone who claims that the previous ownership did make arbitrary decisions does have proof. It is now a matter of public record that in some high profile cases (I happen to agree with some of them, but that is beside the point) Twitter did make arbitrary decisions rather than policy rooted decisions. In fact they did this often enough in decisions that weren't as high profile that there was a category label in the moderation reason, being called a one off.
It seems the current Twitter wants to be much more transparent than the former. So it might be that at some point in the future we will be able to see the moderation metrics: if we could, then we could answer your implication with with actual data. Filter by moderation justification field and get a count both positive and negative and we would have a much better sense of whether decisions were being made arbitrarily.
But as you said it's early days with not much evidence. Perhaps it will work itself out.
For example: climate change is heavily used by people who know how to gain power by fighting it. It doesn't disprove the issue itself.
All effective strategies includes natural forces, because it is very difficult to fight against them. So no wonder why climate change (as being a massive natural force) is used by people in power for their benefit.
It does when you consider that the very people who are promoting that severity are doing what I linked above behind the scenes and their own behavior hasn't changed at all (e.g., all of them flying private jets to Egypt for COP, having multiple pieces of real estate, etc).
The harsh truth is that the very people who are responsible for telling people to panic are, in fact, not panicked at all and are using fear as a smokescreen to take absolute control over the entire world (zero hyperbole in that statement). It's classic sleight of hand, just on a global scale.
Because many people in the West lack any spiritual grounding, they've latched on to climate change (think about the term alone; of course the climate changes—it always has) as a pseudo-religion and defend it to absolutely irrational ends. This is why anyone who even remotely questons it gets labeled as a heretic ("climate change denier"). You may as well be saying "you're denying my god" which explains the often-hysterical backlash you get.
True. Or, at a minimum, they aren't doing anything concrete that you would expect if they actually believed what they're saying.
> ... and are using fear as a smokescreen to take absolute control over the entire world (zero hyperbole in that statement).
Zero? Really? I'm calling baloney on your claim here.
Yes. They're surprisingly overt about their end goals. I think the gullibility of "the masses" even surprises them. They want to flip the world economic system to be "stakeholder" based, meaning, they own everything (literally, down to the land itself) and you own nothing. It's neo-feudalism.
The whole climate change brew-ha-ha is simple psychological manipulation, i.e., "we'll tell you the sky is falling with our models, reinforce it via the media co's we control, and repeat it until you accept it as truth." People who are terrified will listen to anyone who appears to have an answer or is operating from a position of authority (the last 2-3 years being a beta test that was successful). It's just the Milgram Experiment/Agentic State thing on a massive scale.
These people believe they're the rightful rulers of this world and all other people are, for all intents and purposes: assets on Earth's balance sheet.
In my own life I know I consume way too much sugar. No doubt it is bad for my health, yet I do it. Does that have any bearing on the notion that consuming 1000+ calories a day of refined sugar is bad for me?
Secondly, you are creating a strawman argument. Show me the scientist who is saying what we need to do is to panic? What they are saying is we need to take corrective actions ASAP. Those two things aren't remotely the same.
Third, you make claims about people's motivations being tied to lacking spiritual grounding. That seems like a testable claim: I would bet there are tens of millions of self-described religious people who believe in AGW and that it is an urgent problem. In my own, US-centric experience, the main correlating factor is political identity, not religious identity.
Not "rich people," people who are going to climate conferences whose primary purpose is to figure out how to lower carbon emissions and meet C02 goals. It's a perfectly logical conclusion.
> Secondly, you are creating a strawman argument. Show me the scientist who is saying what we need to do is to panic?
Scientists do not (precisely how I know the fervor is a lie), but there's plenty of "crisis" and "red alert" language which lead to people panicking (see: idiots blocking traffic or gluing their hands to art) [1].
> Third, you make claims about people's motivations being tied to lacking spiritual grounding.
Yes.
"they want to flip the economic system..." https://www.butajape.com/comic/conspiracies/
And "of course the climate changes--it always has" https://m.xkcd.com/1732/
What you fail to recognize, or refuse to recognize, is that global conspiracies to take over the world are completely unnecessary to explain everything you mention. Just pretend for a moment that human behavior really is warming the planet and, if continued, will have devastating effect. Some people would freak out. Some would not care because they'll be dead before they feel the impact. And some people would tell others what to do but hypocritically continue to act in their own self-interest.
The harsh truth is that conspiracies rarely pass Occam's Razor.
On the CO2 side, even your comic is incorrect (it has to draw dotted lines to force its "joke") as CO2 has been decreasing: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide... and with proper application of regulation, carbon capture [2], and nuclear energy, will continue to decline.
> Just pretend for a moment that human behavior really is warming the planet and, if continued, will have devastating effect.
I have. For a long time. The effects it's having (per scientists, not news outlets) are immediately manageable and if people quit being ignorant about energy policy (wasting money on windmills, solar panels, and batteries and instead invest in nuclear safety and redesigning regulation), can be outright solved and made a non-issue long before grandma melts in the backyard.
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What you fail to recognize is that you've been programmed, intentionally, to dismiss anything you disagree with as a "conspiracy theory." A term that was coined by the CIA to discourage people from questioning the JFK assassination. [3]
[1] https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/11/investigative-reports/u....
[2] https://carbonengineering.com/
[3] https://archive.org/details/CIADOC1035960/page/n1/mode/2up
You're looking at the wrong statistic, my friend. Climate is a global issue, so global emissions matter more than US emissions. Try this graph, from your same source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...
(Of course CO2 declined in 2020-2021 due to the pandemic shutdown. Unfortunately, 2023 global CO2 emissions will likely continue the prior growth trend.)
Your comment that the proper application of regulation, carbon capture, and nuclear energy would fuel declines is fine and I support all of the above. However, climate deniers and opportunists cherry-pick data and stall needed regulation in the name of politics and economics.
Carbon Engineering-type solutions and generalized R&D into massive climate capture is absolutely necessary, but has little to no business model behind it without a carbon tax or other market-driven incentive. Again, climate deniers lambaste government-funded climate R&D and free-market incentives (i.e., accurately pricing carbon) as either pork-barrel politics or unnecessary and broad overreach. I'm being kind, because people at the extremes use much more dire language.
Carbon Engineering is a fascinating case study and odd place to hang your hat. They are a startup, with 142 employees on LinkedIn and their flagship plant "is expected to capture one million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually when complete."[1] Humans emit approximately 35 billion metric tons of carbon annually, so it would take 35,000 Carbon Engineering plants in production to get us to carbon neutrality. And even then, our atmospheric CO2 is still 100 ppm higher than it was in 1960[2]. Who pays for building those plants? At best-case cost of $94/ton, who pays the $94M/year operating cost per plant, or $3.3 trillion per year?
Actually reversing the carbon impact requires us to massively reduce emissions and massively invest in carbon capture. We're not doing either.
Nuclear is a phenomenal technology, but a political and regulatory nightmare. Thankfully it's being re-thought, but that will take time - as will the process of building them. Significant additional nuclear power won't be connected to the grid for a minimum of 7 years, maybe 10. It's just not enough.
This is why "all of the above" is such an important concept. We need to invest in research, revise regulations, create market incentives, and use wind and solar that are available today to feed our growing need for power instead of building new coal and gas fired plants.
But there will never be the political will to do all of that when people delude themselves to believe carbon is declining (it's not), solutions will appear on their own (they won't), we aren't affecting the climate (we are), and the drive to shift to a lower carbon footprint is because a cabal of elites want to take over the world (they probably are, but that's always been the case and that doesn't mean climate change isn't real).
[1] https://carbonengineering.com/ [2] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Engineering#Pilot_plant...