Cause of Bias?

The Watercooler
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You do realize we are talking about something Vineeto said to Jon “in passing” some years ago? This was not “Vineeto presents her case against Anthropogenic Global Warming”. This was Jon telling us that Vineeto is “biased” because she makes “bad arguments” such as the “earth is too big”, and Vineeto replying that she wasn’t saying that to make an argument at all, she was just pointing out it’s not necessarily a given that humans can affect the climate (which is a “given” in many circles) due to the size of the atmosphere and that it might be hubris to assume so.

Somehow this morphed into an assumption that Vineeto was satisfied with “leaving it there” and wasn’t even curious enough to have ever done a two second Google search on the topic. You do realize Richard spent weeks researching this topic and that they most likely have discussed it at length? How can you give them so little credit to assume they aren’t even aware of the contents of the arguments of the most basic Google searches on the topic while simultaneously being confident in what they say?

Indeed, but there’s a few critical pieces that are missing to complete the picture.

Firstly you left out the next bit:

At typical planetary temperatures, this energy being shed to space is in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. In fact, all objects with a temperature [i.e. including oxygen & nitrogen] emit some form of radiation, and the infrared emission to space results from contributions by the planetary surface and atmosphere.

That is, the warm atmosphere (all 100% of it, not just 0.04% of it) is also emitting IR to space (and therefore contributing to the Earth losing its energy to space), not just the surface of the Earth.

But then, one might ask, could not some extra CO2 trap this IR and heat the entire (surface plus atmosphere) as a whole, more than it otherwise would be, since the IR now cannot escape to space?

The key to resolving this is in understanding the mechanism by which the CO2 is said to ‘trap’ IR, and from there putting the magnitude of this effect into perspective.

The way in which CO2 in the atmosphere is said to ‘trap’ the IR is none other than by being heated up by it:

Carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping [sic(!): radiation-trapping] gases have molecular structures that enable them to absorb infrared radiation. The bonds between atoms in a molecule can vibrate in particular ways, like the pitch of a piano string. When the energy of a photon corresponds to the frequency of the molecule, it is absorbed and its energy transfers to the molecule.

The “energy transfers to the molecule” is a way of saying that it heats up. This link puts it more explicitly:

When photons bump into other atoms, some of their energy can get the electrons in those atoms resonating or moving faster than they were before - that’s what we call heat. The properties of these molecules and their bonds determine if a gas in the atmosphere will absorb infrared radiation or not.
[link]

That is, the claim is that the CO2 that makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere, is being heated up by the IR it absorbs from the surface of the Earth, and afterwards re-radiated (just like anything else that gets hot), some back into space (therefore cooling the planet) and some back towards the surface (therefore warming the planet).

But… no matter the means by which a gas is heated, regardless it will emit IR due to being an object that is hot! This applies to oxygen and nitrogen as well. If the oxygen and nitrogen gets heated – which it does by conduction and convection, and more efficiently than the CO2 does by radiation – then it, too, will thereafter emit IR in the same manner that CO2 is said to do it, some back into space (therefore cooling the planet) and some back towards the surface (therefore warming the planet). Not to mention that the CO2 itself is also being heated up far more by the convection & conduction than it is by the IR!

This is why it was critical to correct the misrepresentation earlier that oxygen and nitrogen “did not absorb heat”. They do, and far more of it than the CO2 does. The only way this claim can appear to be credible is by this conflation of heat and infrared radiation.

To perhaps belabor the point a bit – 100% of the atmosphere contributes to being heated by the surface of the Earth and thereafter re-heating the surface due to IR emissions – not just 0.04% of it. So if we take it as a given that the stated mechanism of the planet being hotter than it would be with no atmosphere is due to the atmosphere being heated up by the surface and re-emitting IR radiation back to the surface — then the magnitude of this effect is far, far greater from the 99.96% of the atmosphere than it is of the 0.04% of the atmosphere.

This is the point. The entire claim is predicated upon the 0.04% being responsible for the entire effect of heating the surface – and therefore couldn’t even a simpleton see (:wink:) that increasing that 0.04% to say 0.08% could lead to drastic effects since that’s the only way the Earth ultimately loses heat to space?

But the point is that it’s really the 99.96% that is responsible for the vast majority of the effect of heating the surface. The effect of the 0.04% is much smaller than it’s made out to be. The premise of the magnitude of the effect of the 0.04% is unfounded. So it’s not clear or unequivocal at all that increasing this will net increase the temperature of the planet. Further evidence is required – and models and predictions and evaluations and computer simulations with this false premise as a basis do not constitute further evidence.

[EDIT: Note that the discussion about global warming/climate change continued on another thread.]

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So refreshing to see people having a debate about something someone else said, all of whom without any qualifications in the subject when you could otherwise been out murdering, raping and pillaging.

Let it never be said that Actualism counted for nothing!

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I was too insistent on the AF people can be stubbornly irrational thing. I didn’t really need to establish any examples. I could have just left it open ended and moved on to the meat of the conversation. I tried a few times but by that time the damage was already done. Then again the whole question got derailed right of the bat through no fault of my own. So whatever. Better luck next time I guess.

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It was an interesting question. It got me thinking about a lot of things. I still think being free doesn’t mean you won’t be subject to bias. Though you have the best opportunity to break out of any biases at least.

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Regardless of how the discussion developed, I think that it can be really useful for many people to open up topics like this, and to have a record of this kind of aspects related to actually free people. Of course, the first potential beneficiaries are the present forum members.

In your particular case, @JonnyPitt, to perhaps better analyze the topic itself, to observe your own biases, but also to observe and deal with your emotions during the debate, as it is not easy or pleasant to suddenly find oneself in a terrain one would like to get out of, to be the focus of attention of “the community”, the recipient of opposing and/or convoluted opinions, etc.

For the rest of us it provides an opportunity to observe our own biases, our potential insecurities/discomfort about your points, the way we react emotionally when responding to you, etc.

In the end all of this can be useful and positive. It’s up to us. :slightly_smiling_face:

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B It is all quite risible. And yet, according to ‘JonnyPitt’ on the “Cause of Bias” thread at the Discuss Actualism Online forum – who apart from currently being in a state of denial[](javascript:void(0)) [](javascript:void(0)) and rank absurdity[](javascript:void(0)) also appears to have plugged that hole in his superiority complex[](javascript:void(0)) of 2013 vintage – it is both Richard and Vineeto who have cognitive limitations similar to “tone deafness” or “dyslexia” [](javascript:void(0)) and are (allegedly) on the record with some “verifiably bat-shit crazy” opinions[](javascript:void(0)) as well as, of late, being “stubbornly irrational” to boot[](javascript:void(0)), and not those mathematically abstractive guys-n-gals at Quantumville.

Sheesh. Tx @Claudiu. Maybe next time don’t misrepresent me so poorly. I was merely trying to get to a physical reason for extreme cognitive bias. Only using examples of poor arguments made by Vineeto and others to establish why cause of extreme bias may be physical and not psychological. At other times I noted how even those examples weren’t necessary when I asked how people (AF or not) use poor arguments when good ones are readily available. I don’t recall ever saying no good arguments exist to support their conclusions. I wasn’t even questioning their conclusions.

At any rate, when it comes to global warming - To me it’s a public policy question and I’ve always put policy questions in probability terms. Is GW probably made-made or is it probably not? If the probability of it being made-made are greater than zero than some percentage of GDP should be used to reduce emissions and thus reduce the odds of global warming getting worse. Not being a scientist, I simplified the variables. Is it a coincidence the ice caps are receding during the same geological era of human population explosion and the industrial revolution? My dumb brain says that since 200 years is not a long time at all, geologically speaking, it’s probably not a coincidence. Therefore, I would support more rather than less emission control. As it stands, here in the USA, one group says zero percentage of GDP should be transferred by the government over to emission control and the other group says a tiny little bit should.

Here’s my quote containing the verifiably batshit crazy comment:

So if that’s what he meant then how can AF person think like that? And here’s the deal, I’m not saying that what he meant when he said New World Order. I don’t know what he meant. But I can see him have such an opinion. Craig too. I can see him having such an opinion. Because they both are on the record with some verifiably batshit crazy opinions.

I agree that is superiority complex-esque. In fact, my thread helped me greatly with putting my various opinions into the far-from-certainty category. Many of them were already there but some of them like “Trump is a completely unprincipled con man” or “the CCP sucks big time” were still very much in the complete certainty category. And it will take time for them to move out of there into a less superiority complex space. My global warming opinion was never in that space, however. Can I note how I said that on February 6th and our private conversation started on February 11th? Our private conversation deserves more consideration than you gave it.

I was too insistent on the AF people can be stubbornly irrational thing. I didn’t really need to establish any examples. I could have just left it open ended and moved on to the meat of the conversation.

That was my quote containing the “stubbornly irrational” comment. Not even remotely dogmatic, I don’t think.

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@claudiu did Richard & Vineeto read the thread itself?

I don’t know if it was a misrepresentation, you were arguing that they were biased to the point of cognitive impairment in this thread @JonnyPitt

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Who isn’t cognitively impaired? I’m partially tone deaf. My gf has dyslexia. So yea maybe it wasn’t a misrepresentation. I didn’t need to establish that they were and I, unfortunately, did try to walk down that road a few steps.

edit: Maybe it wasn’t a misrepresentation. I was just putting the idea out there for the sake of mulling over another idea. So I wasn’t pushing anything. Maybe I’m not being represented as someone who was pushing something. Not just something but something pretty rotten. What do you think? It seems to me they thought I was.

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Something I noticed when I was hanging out with R+V was that I was projecting roles onto them completely without their participation, such as seeing Richard as an ‘authority’ and thus being a bit afraid of him attacking me.

So I wonder if at the time of that interaction you may have been similarly ‘reading between the lines,’ in this case drawing the conclusion that they were very biased / not good at thinking logically.

You mentioned earlier in the thread that Vineeto ‘made it clear’ that the topic was ‘not to be pursued further,’ and I wonder if that was a similar moment. Usually the way such a situation is approached in the feeling-world is via ‘shutting someone down’ with vibes. Is it possible you thought at the time that you were being shut down, thus preventing the topic from being clarified at the time?

–

The tricky thing with this situation is with it not being a recorded conversation, it’s their word against yours in terms of who was biased, who distorted things in their memory.

My personal experience with memory distortions has been that when my emotions are higher I was quite prone to distortions. So you might look back and see if that was happening at the time at all

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Those are completely fine points. I’ve got no problem with that. Me and Vineto remembered that convo almost exactly. But she remembers a few clarifying words after being asked by Claudiu. So for two reasons I’ll assume she didn’t say them. And this really doesn’t matter at all. But 1) Claudiu may have been leading the witness. This is a well documented phenomenon with eye witness accounts, if I’m not mistaken. For example, iirc, no one on the grassy knoll in Dallas TX when President JFK was shot reported seeing a figure behind the bushes. But several years, most of them did. (Lol. Not quite the same thing as years of media reports doesn’t equal one leading question.) And 2) I was highly motivated to agree with absolutely everything Vineeto said. And I would have agreed 100% with that comment. Since I wanted to agree with what she said but wasn’t able to and her memory has her saying something I totally agree with then I’m going to assume my recollection is more accurate. But it doesn’t matter.

I agree with everything else you said.

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They read the thread themselves, I didn’t represent or misrepresent anything :slight_smile: Richard was quoting your words on the thread (even linking to them in the footnotes)

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Well that’s true. They read the whole thread so your email only omitted the private conversation, which to your mind may not change a single thing. So yea he definitely takes me to be denigrating him. That’s unfortunate. It’s easy to see now that I should have cleared things up with Vineeto before quoting her. That was very rude. I sincerely have a problem with reaching out to people. I feel like I’m intruding. But I’m 100% positive I could have gotten over that if I had gave it a good think before posting her opinion. If I deigned to consider how she should be aware that she is being represented in some other space. And given the option to clarify. To not give her that option was extremely disrespectful.

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Well instead of respectful or disrespectful I would think of it in terms of sensible or not sensible.

In that sense I agree with Richard that it is not sensible – to the point of it being “rank[1] absurdity[2]” (although I would prefer the phrase “wildly unreasonable” for example) – to say that you can make a case for why people without a self are “biased” or have “cognitive limitations” or have “bat-shit crazy opinions” or are “stubbornly irrational” etc, without needing to provide any examples of it!

Of course you have to provide examples! To make a theory of why they would be that way, you first have to show that they are that way. If you can’t show that they are then there’s nothing to make a theory out of, it’s only so much hot air. And of the two examples of ‘bad arguments’ you gave, one (“Soros is a socialist”) they didn’t even make (wrong context), and the other was not being presented as an argument!

Did you notice how the thread went on for over a hundred messages (188 to be exact) mulling over why Vineeto would make such bad arguments before I posted Vineeto pointing out one of the arguments they never made and the other wasn’t an argument at all… and then when I posted (part of) the actual argument she and Richard make (partly in #194 and #196 and then more fully in #198) the thread stopped?

When presented with the actual argument, there was nothing left to be said about why they make ‘bad arguments’. Cause it became clear they weren’t making a bad argument, haha. So therefore there’s no theory necessary to be made.

(Also as an aside, one might wonder why when the same topic came up (global warming) for you and for me, you left the exchange with the mistaken impression of at least 2 bad arguments that they don’t actually make, while I left the exchange with the actual (and good) arguments they do actually make…)

If it doesn’t matter then why even post it???

If, as it appears to be the case, the only way your theory can hold water is by considering things said in private, then it is also “rank absurdity” / wildly unreasonable / simply not sensible, to make a public post about it beating around the bush and alluding to things you can’t talk about meanwhile leading everyone on a fairy-tale unicorn dog chase with supposedly bad arguments that it turns out they weren’t but which then doesn’t really matter that they weren’t anyway cause the actual bad argument is something else…

And this is the crux maybe. You have an issue with some things Vineeto and Richard said in private. As such it’s a private issue, so… how could it hurt to reach out to them and discuss it in an appropriately private setting? I’ve never walked away from an interaction with Richard or Vineeto worse than when I started! Worst case they don’t reply and you are left in the same situation. Best case, they can help resolve some issues.

Cheers,
Claudiu

  1. rank: complete and utter (used for emphasis) ↩︎

  2. absurdity: the quality or state of being ridiculous or wildly unreasonable. ↩︎

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@edzd you may be very interested to read the just-added “Addendum Two”!

Cheers,
Claudiu

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@claudiu Neat! I see Richard’s main point remains the same and elusive to some of his correspondents. From what I understand, he’s looking for actual physical experiments that indicate greenhouse warming instead of mathematical models. His previous correspondents and the link I included failed to do that.

Rather than engaging the debate about climate change, might he be able to address the other point I was making? Namely the potential circumstances that could lead them to faulty conclusions or mistaken beliefs? Has this happened to them before?

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RICHARD (to Respondent No. 22): Speaking personally, I cannot believe anything. The ability to believe – believing in itself – has vanished out of me.

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Hi Ed,

Earlier you wrote:

If the AF-trio have any bias, I think it’d be because of the general doom-and-gloom attitude that can saturate these topics. They seem to err on the side that humans tend to often get things wrong because of it, and rightfully so when you look at many historic predictions that have not came true. And perhaps also because they’re acutely aware of just how pervasive and influenced a person is by feeling doomed.
[…]
I think Actually Free people can still hold opinions that influence how they approach a subject. In Richard’s case, I think he’s keenly aware of the doom-and-gloom that effects all humans, so he tends to contradict whatever hot-topic is trending in the alarmist circles. Climate change and smoking are good examples. I do think this could present him with blind-spots, but it’s a much smaller blind-spot than what we tend to deal with as feeling-beings.

I think your thought that actually free people could be biased (in this way, for example) suffers from the same issue that this thread in general has, which is that, you would need to point out some examples of that being the case for it to be anything more than a supposition.

The specific example you provided, Richard has thoroughly refuted, by demonstrating he already was aware of that and had already addressed it ~17 years ago.

And similarly to make the conclusion that they “err” on any side at all (one way or the other), one would need to provide examples of said erring.

Absent any examples, what forms the basis of making these suppositions at all?

Why say Richard “tends to contradict” – as in implying that his primary motivation being to contradict (and thus have a bias) rather than to uncover the facts and have uncovered that the facts contradict the (mistaken) consensus?

Also have you noticed the common consensus is that “you can’t change human nature”? :smile: .

Cheers,
Claudiu

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Because there are many complex topics in life, with vast amounts of information which could necessitate talent to comprehend. It’s possible to misunderstand things. And while I think a lack of identity would help one think more clearly, I don’t think it would prevent someone from making a mistake, or having a flawed opinion.

In other areas where I do have opinions, make estimations, find it reasonable to presume and so on, I never hold it to be ‘true and correct’ in the first place … for I am well aware that it is only a current appraisal until further investigation shows otherwise.

As for labelling … I label away to my heart’s content for I do not subscribe to that Alternative/New Age morality borrowed from Christianity: ‘Thou shalt not label’

So it seems fair to say an actually free person isn’t capable of being biased and while they may hold an incorrect opinion, judgement, estimation, or label, they don’t conflate these things with fact or truths.

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Ah indeed. I should have said it’s reasonable to suppose upon first meeting someone or coming in contact with the writings that they may be mistaken about things. So the question should really be , after having had much exposure to Richard’s writings, is there anything that would support this supposition that he misunderstands things or makes mistakes , regarding matters he has looked into thoroughly?

I would be cautious in saying an opinion can be “flawed” or “incorrect”. The opiner by opining is knowingly opining without knowing what the facts are. So there’s no truth value to an opinion per se.

If you mean for example that upon hearing something for the first time the first reaction may be like “well it sounds wrong but not sure why…” and later it turns out it’s right - then yea I see what you mean. A quick evaluation can be mistaken at first. But it’s not bias in the sense of the thread here cause one is making the evaluation knowing it’s an evaluation and not something definitive. And it wouldn’t be an example of erring or blind spots either.

Yes exactly. Richard wrote for example that he thinks the electric universe hypothesis is the most promising theory for explaining how the universe works. But he said that with the qualification that it’s just his opinion [1]. He didn’t write a 12-point summary of why the electric universe is the correct theory :smile:.

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    Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 27 ↩︎

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