Saturday, July 22, 2017

Climate idiocy with regard to Google

The idiots over at Watt's Up With That have published an article that might as well be titled "Google Suppresses Climate Idiots".

I'm going to try and cover everything in list form, numbered for reference, as I read the article and come to them.


  1. "Consensus is a decision-making method used outside of science."
    1. No, not really. Part of science is disproving ideas as false, and thus consensus arises.
  2. Every single time they use the term "climate realism" or "climate realists" to mean "we're idiots that don't understand climate at all".
  3. "Classification of news as Your Money or Your Life Pages[...] is obviously intended to suppress political information that differs from the opinions of the leftstream media and Wikipedia, which Google considers the guardians of truth."
    1. Wikipedia has been proven to be accurate moreso than traditional encyclopedias, and since a bias toward facts correlates with a bias toward leftward political beliefs, yes, it's Google wanting truth.
  4. "I anticipate some readers will defend this behavior as an exercise of freedom of speech."
    1. Free speech or not, facts are facts, opinions are opinions.
  5. "But this is a clear case of fraud (or worse), not speech."
    1. No. It has nothing to do with free speech, everything do with facts and truth. Google wouldn't be what it is if it spewed misinformation; it would be the Trump clownhouse.
  6. "It is time for state attorneys to investigate Google. It also seems that every Google user in the U.S. is entitled to sue for damages caused by this fraud."
    1. Wait wait wait, I thought conservatives were all about limited government and letting private-sector corporations have their way?
  7. "Google’s actions have likely violated many other laws."
    1. First of all, you haven't actually claimed they're breaking any laws. Please, list at least one law you think Google is breaking. So far all I see is strawman fallacy. Letting an algorithm do its job isn't breaking a law. That's like saying automakers are frauds because they use machines instead of humans.
  8. Every time they use the word "leftist" or "left" to indicate "factual" or "people that believe in facts"
  9. "Given Google’s opinion in the climate debate, most pages on this website have no content at all."
    1. Not at all true. Google recommended this article to me in it's "Now" feed. Apparently they wanted to infuriate me at other's idiocy. There's plenty of main content, but it is, in fact, very low quality main content, as it's quite false in many areas. (And the areas it's factual in, are irrelevant - like saying Google doesn't provide the same results as specialty falsity-finding search engines.)
  10. Every time they use "climate alarmism" or "climate alarmist" to mean "people with brains that realize we might not be able to inhabit the planet before too long, if we keep treating it this way"
Facts are facts, falsehoods are falsehoods, and opinions are opinions. Just because you don't believe something, doesn't make it false. Just because you do believe something, doesn't make it true. Google doesn't have a problem with listing websites well that spout off opinions or facts, just those that perpetuate falsehoods - like global warming denial websites. Hence, Google ought to be ashamed of recommending that article to me.

Friday, May 26, 2017

Stupid Article: Neo-Fascism

I'm going to start writing about stupid articles: articles with multiple issues, that I don't know where to start debunking them. Often these are extremely biased, to the point of simply being wrong.

Here's the first one:

http://observer.com/2017/05/what-is-neo-fascism-democrats-mussolini/
  1. Since when is Donald Trump "progressive"?
  2. The author likes to use the original definition of fascism: All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Sounds like the perfect summary of Donald Trump's "America First" inauguration speech.
  3. Does this sound more like American traditionalists, with their focus on small government, or the Democrats, who seek to unconstitutionally centralize and aggregate ever more power? This is flawed in so many ways:
    1. Democrats didn't do things like the PATRIOT act that expanded government powers, the Republicans did.
    2. Democrats want corporations to be held accountable, but give humans autonomy and choice.
    3. Republicans want to control facets of human lives, such as who they can marry and what forms of contraception are appropriate, whereas letting the corporations do whatever they want without punishment (the BP "spill", anyone)?
    4. Whistleblower protection act, affordable healthcare: Democrat. Protects individuals.
    5. NSA spying, CPB unconstitutional searches, bans of traveling from other countries: Republican. Harms individuals.
  4. Mussolini also once said, "I declare that henceforth capital and labor shall have equal rights and duties as brothers in the fascist family." Is this reminiscent of American conservatives and their emphasis on economic freedom or the class warfare and regulatory tyranny of our left?
    1. see above on regulations on people vs corporations
  5. The Italian additionally stated in 1924, "God does not exist—religion in science is an absurdity, in practice an immorality and in men a disease." Does this sound more like a party known for its "Christian Right" or one whose standard bearer once derided Middle America for clinging to "religion"?
    1. Religion and science have entirely different purposes, they neither contradict each other nor can be substituted. Anytime you try to use one where you should use the other, you're being ridiculous. The Republicans seem to think the two are interchangeable, while Democrats recognize the difference.
  6. He’d hung up the phone. And that’s what happens when you’re hung up on an ideology that may not be quite as "liberal" as you’d like to fancy.
    1. He probably hung up because he was tired of trying to reason with people that can't; to use logic with those who are incapable of thinking logically.