Cause of Bias?

[claudiu]

@JonnyPitt

@Kub933 Right but it doesn’t explain the bad arguments. Reading your observation has me think back to my example where she said it’s hubris to think humans can change the climate because the Earth is so big. It was and is my impression that she was literal. It’s my opinion she literally believed that. But she’s not right because it’s simple. Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s a quality explanation. I’m sure actual freedom doesn’t incur upon you an innocence that makes you gullible and you suddenly lose your ability to vet information well, spot logical fallacies or use deductive reasoning. But I now think that if your skill set didn’t include those thing before actual freedom then it won’t include them afterwards.

Well I decided to actually ask her about all this in an email, linking her to this thread, and this is what she replied:

VINEETO [2023 Feb 15]: I find it interesting that three or four people have an argument about something Richard and I allegedly said, and I am pleased that you [Claudiu], the only one, is writing to us for clarification of what really took place in the conversation […]
[…] Now to Jon’s argument -

1. The assertion that George Soros is a socialist and George Soros donates to “global warming causes” is a straw-man. Neither Richard nor I have any idea whether or not George Soros is funding climate research, it never occurred to us that he might be. Our understanding is that he is massively funding his “Open Society” projects to the tune of 18 Billion dollars. So we certainly never used George Soros as an argument in the topic of anthropogenic global warming.

   It is a classic straw-man argument where one invents something the other never said and then argues against it.
   […]

2. I happened to mention in passing a cautionary note about the earth’s atmosphere being so big that it could be hubris to automatically assume that human activities can and will change the climate. It was never presented as, let alone intended to be, an argument against the belief in global warming that Jon has turned it into - hence Jon’s insistence on this being an argument is a red herring, he is making a mountain out of a mole-hill.

   As for the cautionary observation I can refer you to the fact that air consists of many components.

   [Richard]: The atmospheric gases of steady concentration (and their proportions in percentage by volume) are as follows:

   • nitrogen (N2): 78. 084
   • oxygen (O2): 20. 946
   • argon (Ar): 0. 934
   • neon (Ne): 0. 0018
   • helium (He): 0. 000524
   • methane (CH4): 0. 0002
   • krypton (Kr): 0. 000114
   • hydrogen (H2): 0. 00005
   • nitrous oxide (N2O): 0. 00005
   • xenon (Xe): 0. 0000087

   Of the gases present in variable concentrations, water vapour, ozone, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide are of principal importance. The typical concentration ranges of these gases (in percentage by volume) are as follows:

   • water vapour (H2O): 0 to 7
   • carbon dioxide (CO2): 0.01 to 0.1
   • ozone (O3): 0 to 0.01
   • sulphur dioxide (SO2): 0 to 0.0001
   • nitrogen dioxide (NO2): 0 to 0.000002 ([www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/listbcorrespondence/listb22a.htm#25Jul98](Mailing List 'B' Respondent No. 22](http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/richard/listbcorrespondence/listb22a.htm%2325Jul98)) )

   That means only 0.01 to 0.1 percent of the atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide.

   It is estimated that 3.6 to 5 percent of that amount can be attributed to human activity, of which 57 percent is reabsorbed by natural processes.

   Hence my cautionary note, the atmosphere being so large, to automatically assume that human activities can change the climate, could be bordering on hubris. In other words, any such proposition needs clear and unequivocal evidence.

So who has the “bias” here - Vineeto, or Jon, who misremembered and made a strawman, a red herring, and a mountain out of a molehill all at once?

@JonnyPitt

I think some people are bad at deductive reasoning. Maybe they’ll never be able to remember the common logical fallacies, identify good argument vs bad arguments, vet information. Whatever the fatal flaw(s) may be.

And it seems some are bad at memory and recollection …

However I’ve found there are certain patterns some people show where they tend to forget/misremember things in a particular way (as opposed to a random way). I’ve observed that some employees at work always misremember conversations and magically they always recall it more like the way they wanted to do something in the first place – i.e. the more interesting and less work-intensive way (as opposed to the most effective/often less-interesting/more rote work way). My business partner observed with his kids that they often forget or “misinterpret” past convos such that they somehow recall that daddy said they could do that thing they wanted to do even when he was actually saying they couldn’t .

If it were really purely a case of faulty memory then there would be an equal distribution of misremembering things in favor of one side or the other. But a pattern emerges… or, a bias, if you will . Perhaps a similar pattern is happening here?