It has been awhile since I wrote a word hijacking post. These posts are written to illustrate words that have been taken and used for propaganda or emotional purposes in ways that do not actually fit with what the word actually means. If you wish to read the older posts which began two years ago here are links to them. [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ]
I didn't actually think of doing a post of the word hijacking of the word "lie" until very recently. I was discussing some common things I hear these days with @thoughts-in-time on the discord server for #informationwar tag and he actually used some similar statements. I trotted out some of the things I often say when encountering these common statements about lies and liars and he at some point reacted with an epiphany. He indicated he had been using the word "LIE" wrong all of his life and didn't even realize it. I pointed out how the word had been hijacked and he recommended I write a post about what we discussed as he thought it was important. I told him I had done word hijacking posts before and I shared with him the posts above.
He is right. The word LIE and how it has been hijacked is perhaps one of the most important I can talk about. I simply didn't realize it, as it was obvious to me and I assumed other people could see it too. I assumed wrong.
LIE
In this day and age it is not hard to find news articles, forum posts or comments, and many other types of media and communication where people are referring to what someone said as a lie, or indicating that the person lies all of the time.
What they apparently don't know is that in the majority of these statements are wrong. I am not saying this about any particular target of such statements, or any political, religious, sexual, or racial preferences. It is happening from all directions and groups.
Yet it is still typically wrong.
So does that mean the people saying these things are lying too?
No, it does not.
One thing that apparently many people these days don't understand is the difference between being incorrect, naive, wrong, etc. and lying.
There is an important distinction.
A lie requires intent. That's it. That is the simple distinction.
A person must know that what they are saying is false, and say it anyway. That is what makes it a lie.
If they believe what they are saying then they are not lying. They can still be wrong, or incorrect, but they are not telling a lie.
Now whenever I have brought this up in the past it has been in response to something like "X has been caught lying incessantly" and I'll indicate that I can't find cases where X is saying something and giving any indications they don't believe what they are saying. I'll point out that they could very well be incorrect, but being incorrect does not mean they are lying.
If being incorrect is the same as lying then all of us are liars. None of us are gods. We are wrong, and incorrect about things. We are naive when it comes to certain information. We are not experts on everything. There is nothing bad about being wrong. If we can acknowledge we were wrong then we have opportunity to learn. A person who thinks they are never wrong, is the most pity worthy being, as they have no opportunity to learn.
Some people that do know the difference between lies and being incorrect I do believe intentionally use the term lie for the emotional impact.
There is a problem with this that may not be immediately apparent. We generally learn new words only a few ways. We learn them by frequently encountering them used in every day conversation. We may look at a dictionary to see what definition this dictionary or that happened to list. We may learn it by having someone tell us what it means. Of these three methods I listed I personally believe the most common one is to learn words by encountering them as used in conversation and after encountering them enough we have a mental definition of that word form.
So what happens when you learn what lie means by encountering it used in place of incorrect?
You might end up like my friend I spoke with this about who didn't actually know that a lie requires intent to speak a falsity.
There is another important thing about the lie. You can still say someone is lying, but unless you are secretly able to read minds it can be difficult to prove. To prove someone is lying you really need to find some precedent that contradicts what they said. Yet even in those cases, it still may not be a lie unless it was very recent. We all have the right to change our minds. In fact, if we are so stubborn that we do not change our mind as we learn new things then that would make us a fool.
So proving someone is lying can be very challenging. Not liking what someone says does not make it a lie. Someone stating something that is inaccurate does not mean it is a lie. They may just be ignorant and incorrect about what they are talking about but believe every word they are speaking.
I've had this discussion frequently and it will usually drift to one additional area of discussion that I personally think is important to touch upon for completeness.
It is very normal for people I discuss this topic with to mention that some people believe their own lies.
This is true. Yet people who believe the lie the moment they speak it is actually a VERY RARE psychological problem. It is not normal.
However, there are people who speak a lie, know it is a lie, and then later convince themselves that the lie was the truth. This can be a valuable skill to teach yourself if you think you are likely to lie, but want to be able to beat lie detectors.
This does happen. I know people that do this.
I do think that ability is becoming more and more common, but it is not likely increasing in my opinion due to what people would normally think.
I currently think that habit is on the increase as the population views themselves more and more as a victim, and they are trained to see themselves as a victim. With such indoctrination we see an increase in people unwilling to take responsibility. It is easier to say "It is not my fault, X did it", or "it wouldn't happen if the government did X, we should make a law for that". It is increasingly less common to hear "Sorry, I made a mistake" and then have the person hopefully learn from their mistake. Instead they look for scapegoats. They are being taught all manner of terms to help them protect their victimhood status. "It was not my fault, they used a micro-aggression", or "We should make this a safe space against X".
As people think like this I think it is logical to assume that it would become easier to believe their own lies.
Yet as stated above if there was no intent, it is not a lie. They are simply incorrect.
I will say with some confidence that I see the term lie, liar, and lying used far more often in an inaccurate manner than in the correct manner.
Whether you personally THINK someone is lying or not is irrelevant. What you think doesn't matter when it comes to lies. What makes something a lie depends upon what the person who spoke was thinking when they said it. If they intentionally spoke something they knew was false then that is a LIE.
Did I beat this horse enough?
I did not pick any specific examples, as I don't think they were really needed. As you encounter the word lie. Think about intent. Can you prove the intent? If not, then you can't prove it was a lie. They can still be wrong, or incorrect, but that is a normal aspect of being alive and thinking. A lie is something different and is intentionally misleading.
This should be applied to the term "Fake News" as well. It should be intentionally misleading for it to be fake.
Such as standing in front of green screen in the U.S. while claiming to be in the middle east during a bombing strike, air raid, with air raid sirens. (yes, this happened). Such as claiming to be having an interview between someone in London and New York when in fact both people being interviewed are standing at different locations in the same parking lot in New York. (yes, this happened). Such as claiming to be at a large feminist, muslim protest when in fact it is just a small crowd operating in a carefully taped off section of a lot with cameras and everything carefully arranged so it can be edited to seem like something big. (yes, this happened).
Those are intentionally misleading. That is fake. That is a lie.
If you don't like what someone says, if they believe what they are saying, then that isn't fake news. It may be incorrect. Yet that doesn't mean it is fake.
How we use words is important. If we let people hijack those words we cede territory in our minds. Stop letting them take over your mental territory. If they misuse a word, call them out on it, and make them use more appropriate terms. In many cases what they were wanting to do will fall apart as it was based purely upon you letting them redefine a word to fit their agenda.
Interested in joining or supporting the Information War?
Use tag #informationwar to post your own stories about the lies and propaganda being pushed on the public. @informationwar will upvote posts worthy of the cause.
Join the discord: https://discord.gg/JsXbzFM chat with like minded individuals like myself and share your articles to receive additional support.
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."— George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)What a wonderful response to a wonderful post. Following you both @dwinblood and @thoughts-in-time
People like you are the ones who keep me on this platform.
Thank you @d-zero, I shall follow you too. I don't know how frequently you read and write about informationwar related topics, but if it is of interest to you, you may want to consider joining us on discord.
Thanks for the invite. But I'm actually not on discord. I've never been interested in politics. But I've read and shared many #informationwar related stuff because they are really more about truth, psychology, philosophy etc. I like a good intellectual discussion. Unlike most politics discussion, infowar has this air of intelligence and integrity which I'm growing to love.
I'm still more interested in entertainment and how they can expand human consciousnesses. Here are few sample posts I've made.
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@d-zero/a-story-about-truth-and-doubts-something-i-can-teach-you-about-aliens-technology-and-consipiracies-with-a-photograph-i-ve-taken
https://steemit.com/steem/@d-zero/zappl-stats-that-you-didn-t-see-coming-a-new-perspective-about-the-steem-blockchain
https://steemit.com/anime/@d-zero/let-s-explore-what-makes-good-live-action-adaptations
https://steemit.com/anime/@d-zero/my-anime-tribute-collection-of-4-asmvs-2-amvs-4-soundtracks-3-bounus-material-have-fun
https://steemit.com/entertainment/@d-zero/analyzing-what-batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice-2016-really-was-and-why-it-is-a-flawed-masterpiece
Thanks for the follow :)
Thx, I'll check those out!
Sorry, you're wrong, here. They might have been lying. They might not have been. Just because you can't prove they were, doesn't mean they necessarily weren't, at all.
Interesting mistake. ;)
Then, the fake news....
Whether what is being reported can be classed as 'fake news' or not is totally independent of what tricks the presenters are also getting up to as they report the news. The presenters are very rarely the news. It's what they're saying that is the news.
If they're telling the truth but a million miles away from the event, their report of the event could still be pretty much legitimate if they stick to the facts. It doesn't matter if they're honest / lying about their whereabouts at all. They're not the news. If they're lying or intentionally setting out to mislead with what they're claiming to be news, then you could argue that it could be fake news if their lies / misinformation are significantly different from what the news should really be (and the presenters knew them to be). Like lying, you don't really have to be able to prove the news to be fake, either (not that you stated that) for it to be fake. It's fake or it's not fake totally regardless of whether someone can prove it to be.
Surely?
Actually I wasn't intentionally wrong. Just something I missed when I was proofreading. I fixed a few others including one where I had willing when it should have said unwilling.
It should say something like "Can you prove the intent? If not, then you cannot prove it was a lie."
Why would anyone ever be intentionally wrong, eh? ;)
Only example I can think of is if they are trolling or baiting you. :)
It was a rhetorical question (but good answer, all the same - I can't think of any other reason).
Yes, in the three examples I provided they were not reporting actual news. They simply were making up something. Much like going to a play or movie and calling that news when it was fabricated.
Sorry. I was confused I guess by the fact that you chose to mention they were being deceitful about their whereabouts instead of referring to the 'news' they were actually sharing with the world. As in your first two examples.
Yeah in all three cases they were also talking about things they were witnessing that were just things they were making up at the time. Were their events occurring in the world at the time? Sure. Just not the events they referred to.
Well that clears everything up then.
wow, how you grown since 2016. Amazing. 100k Steem or something. Hope in a year or two I'll be the same as you, bro.
Nah. I'm almost back up to 15,000 steem power. I'd have a little more but I powered down a few times to buy some other crypto too so I'd be diversified. It just takes persistence.
that's a really rational approach. Like, you never know what can happen to Steem. Although we all believe in it. 15k is still very, very good. I would have delegated it to bot to get kinda passive income during bear markets.
Hey Deva, long time no see!
Word Hijacking is an important topic and there is a lot to say about it, but I think on the topic of "Lies", you pretty much covered it all in this post.
I would rather like to talk with you about truth. I always tried to be as truthful as possible, which meant to me to put no filter on my thoughts, after all many people lie, because they are afraid of upsetting others (in a day-to-day life situation).
However I never really tried to analyze where these thoughts/emotions are coming from. I rather try to rationalize them.
Me being so controversial/antagonistic was always something I deemed honorable, because I only try to strengthen the argument of my opposite. That I am usually more "honest" to my friends, is also something I rationalized: I am friendly towards strangers/people I don't know that well, because I don't really care about them. But when my friends say something I try to spot the weakness, so they can improve.
In the past months I realized that it is maybe not just that. If people show vulnerability towards me, I tend to kick them when they are down, after all the world is full of suffering and the sooner they realize their struggle is futile the better. This is not what friends are supposed to do and if I am honest I am not that thick-skinned either. I am just good at striking back when I feel hurt.
I also have a strange filter for negatives. People tend to be quite nice to me, but as soon as I feel personally attacked, I will strike back using all the ammunition I got.
All of this is working rather subconsciously, so even when I argue just to put others down, I still think I am just being truthful.
So long story short: Sorry for being such an asshole sometimes, hope you have been doing well!
Good to hear from you friend. I didn't take it personal. We all have those moments. I also for a long time tried really hard to be reasonable and not offend people. In fact, I was praised on my ability to do so.
I stopped trying to do that some time ago. I did so because, I see all around us madness stemming from people trying not to offend each other.
This is a fantasy. It doesn't do them any service.
It is a mental safe space.
So by going out of my way to filter my speech I was really not being honest with them. So now I may be harsher, but I am that way as I believe it is important for people to learn to take getting offended and still be able to move on and recover from it.
As far as the truth. It is subjective. Truth to each of us can only be based upon what we know, see, learn. Thus, as we learn and encounter new information if we are honest with ourselves then our truth should be ever changing.
That of course is the big picture truth. Not so much the opposite of LIE which I think the word HONEST is a better word for the opposite of LIE. Truth has a much bigger meaning.
I change my mind about the Truth all the time. I learn. That doesn't mean I was lying if earlier I referred to the truth as something different. It just means I learned, I changed my mind.
People are quick to indicate people are lying. I think in most of those cases they are not. There needs to be an intention to deceive for it to be a lie.
As to word hijacking. I am actually thinking of doing a repost of my 2 year old posts on the topic to kickstart it back up.
I have realized though, that I am way too much of a bitch in a way. I remember reading some of your posts in the past and while I agreed with 95%, I focused on the 5% I didn't agree with. I actually felt personally attacked when you talked about "the left", even though you said multiple times that you don't lump me together with them.
I expect people around me to be thick skinned even though I am not really that open for criticism myself: when I feel hurt, I will strike back 10 times harder, so "I win".
I always said that I am nice to strangers and much harsher to people I care about, because I want to improve them. That is not what friends do though, friends are there to support each other.
In my last job I met a girl that was really nice to me, but I was making stupid jokes when she felt vulnerable and I abandoned her, just to test her feelings towards me. I also deemed her stupid, because she could not argue with me, when I tried to have controversial debates. When she finally got mad at me, I tried to show her how easily I can ignore her...
Now that she does not talk to me anymore (and most likely never will again), I feel a ton of guilt and realized that I might not be as self aware/conscious as I always claimed to be. I think I have a tendency to put other people down, just to feel better about myself...
Oh and these days... when I talk about "left" I am talking about the very vocal social justice warrior, antifa, minority.
There are many people that not too many years ago would have identified as left, that I now consider right.
The overton window has shifted largely due to the activities of those I call "left".
They love to call anyone who disagrees with them disparaging names and RIGHT or ALT RIGHT. Even if the person they are saying it to has always considered themselves liberal, left, progressive, etc.
The attacking of anyone that disagrees with them has shifted the Overton window and as such I see many people that traditionally would have been left, or centrist, as being kind of lumped with the right.
I've always been a centrist... yet I too am currently lumped with the right.
I kind of dislike the left/right paradigm and the use of the label, but it is used so often that it becomes a necessary inconvenience in conversation.
So at least you know who I consider the current LEFT. The very vocal minority that views anyone that disagrees with them in the slightest their enemy.
I know, buddy. You told me often enough. In fact I was resentful for you seemingly never reading my posts, unless I asked you to read them. I thought that if you are interested in my ideas, you would stop by from time to time :/
That is the actual reason I got mad. It was personal. I am an extremely resentful person that will wait and study until he knows your weakness and then he will strike.
I have learned to listen to my feelings, and I do actually love people and I need to have the courage to show that. So I guess, I love you buddy ;D, in a manly way ofc :D. Thanks for all the support, time and love you showed towards me!
Well, you are doing the most important thing. Examining your own mind. For in reality there is only one mind each of us can control. Our own.
Everyone else you can try to convince of new things, and sometimes it can be simply sharing with no intentions other than to share. Those things are like seeds. There is no telling how long it will take for those seeds to sprout, if at all. There is no controlling what grows from them.
I can honestly say that I've rarely seen anyone change their mind on the spot. It takes time, and self reflection.
We all make mistakes. As long as we acknowledge them and learn from them I believe that is healthy and necessary. It is those that look for a scapegoat, etc rather than accept their responsibility that are in a trap of their own making.
I am always learning things. I am not always happy with how I deal with certain situations. All we can do is learn, and move on.
It sounds like you are doing fine in that respect.
untrue. I control peoples minds like other people eat breakfast :3. I need to acknowledge and take control over my power, so it does not subconsciously let me ruin the live of everyone I know and care about.
2 Months of identity crisis, self-hate and despair. And ofc this would have never happened without the girl I met
Oh and you are right, I am talking about honesty. I think honesty is important to find the truth.
Seeing people lie to themselves is quite common as well, imo. Usually when people are very persistent on a "truth" about themselves and especially if they come around with this "truth" out of nowhere, it is most often a lie they tell themselves to not admit their weak spots.
On a different note, I am not sure if lying is always as bad as I thought it was. Take Trump for example, do you think all his tweets on foreign policy are honest or is he maybe overly aggressive on purpose, just so he can negotiate a peaceful solution behind closed doors?
I think Trump uses Tweets at a genius level. I have come to the conclusion he says things in tweets to keep the media, and his opposition focused on very trivial things. They'll get so focused on some word, or some petty bullshit that they don't really pay attention to anything else he is saying.
I think he often uses Tweets and some other things as misdirection like a stage magician would.
It is basically like a fighter who expends little energy but gets their opponent to move a lot and throw lots of punches and kicks that miss until they are tired and exhausted.
I don't think Trump is as dumb or naive as people think. I thought he might have been before. I think he uses that as an act, because it leaves his opposition approaching any negotiation or battle with false images on what the battlefield is and what is going on.
I could be wrong, but I've been gradually growing to believe this is more and more likely to be the case.
So many of his tweets and statements seem to come perfectly timed for when the media is calming down on chasing something petty. Almost as if he is seeing the fire dying down, so he adds another log to the fire.
Great post! Very needed. Language is the arena, the weapon and chalice of political freedom.
Orwell may be the more eloquent and far-seeing sources on this matter in recent times. But there also are some older explorations, particularly by the rhetoricians, of truth which bear on the lie, from which we get the terms {suggestio falsi} and {suppressio veri} among others. (It's interesting isn't it? that until modern mass democracy political philosophy didn't pay much attention at all to lies.)
Terms like "unconscious lie" and "deliberate falsehood" are more recent creations possibly created to clarify what people mean when talking about lying.
@dwinblood I would add to your definition of lying (that it is intentional) that the aim is to deceive and not necessarily maliciously.
Very informative post. Upvoted and resteemed.
LOL, Just Kidding.
The only way that someone could demonstrate that someone is in fact, lying, is when the lie is based in an act that the individual was (or wasn't) involved. In that case, there's a possible way to find out.
To catch a lie based on what someone thinks es nearly impossible. So most of the time people are wrong, until there is an act from that person that opposes his thinking, then is indeed, a lie.
Allow me to add my 2 cents using the works of another great person.
https://www.internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-the-recent-corruptions-of-the-english-language/
Hope I contributed something to the discussion :)
Nicely done. I was reminded of the phrase, "Lies, damned lies and statistics" while reading this. The idea being there are intentional untruths, intentional untruths designed to harm and statistics, which enables the twisting of truth to appear as one wishes it to. A simulacrum of truth perhaps.
And I lie regularly, when it comes to small things. We all do, they are called "white lies". The girl you want to impress asks if her jeans make her bum look fat (and they do)... Your husband is worried he's getting fat (and he is)... etc. There have been some interesting studies done that some lies are necessary to maintain social cohesion and harmony. Humans have a very hard time dealing with 100% truth all the time. That is why politicians and other manipulative control freaks have such an easy time of things. People often prefer to be lied to when things gets serious.
This also reminded me of the word hijacking that came up not to long ago about "alternate" facts. That set off a firestorm in my circles, with people mocking "alternate" as essentially a substitute for "fake", which it isn't semantically, not by a long shot. When the "alternate"/"alternative" facts line was uttered, I knew it would result in a s*itstorm of partisanship.
Still, I was surprised at just how vehement it got. The media really screwed the pooch on that one, twisting a word that means "other" to portray it to mean "completely fictitious" or "lying" took Newspeak to a whole new level. Since then, I have come to consider that a genuine battle in the information war sanity lost, with "alternate" and "alternative" as in alternative news, completely smeared for a large portion of the population, e.g. "Where did you get those alternate facts, the alternative news?"
Yes, we must not allow them to hijack the words. We need to challenge them on it when we catch them at it. Otherwise we cede linguistic territory to them and it seems to be a popular tactic to unsettle someone mentally as they attack. If you refuse to give in to their redefinition of words it seems to sometimes throw them off balance instead. Jordan Peterson is someone that is good at stopping this type of action. Ben Shapiro is excellent at it as well.
Curated for #informationwar (by @truthforce)
Relevance: Word Hijacking
lies there will be no happiness While honesty will always win, and I love your discussion here, thanks for sharing.
The Enemedia lie for a living.
That's what they do.
they even lie about the weather.
Everybody will presumably lie at some time or other. White lies to whoppers. If they were intending to mislead others. A fair bit of what you'll hear on your TV / radio will be legitimate also, though. Regular liars will tell the truth at times, just as those people you find respectable may bend the truth knowingly on occasion.
But as the poster says, some people simply make mistakes and have zero intention to mislead (whether another person thinks they can prove they were doing it intentionally or not).
Lying about the weather seems a bit bizarre. Got any links to any great examples where it's likely the presenter knowingly misinformed viewers / listeners? Would love to click one or two. I like a good laugh. :)
Everybody will presumably lie at some time or other
no.
No???
Shit, how can you be so sure? Do you know of someone that you know for certain to have never told at least one lie (other than the young that die before learning to speak are concerned - which is just being pedantic really, if this is who you're referring to, isn't it?)?
Have you yourself never lied? Not even just for fun?
I'm sure.
The person I'm thinking of was the closest that I've ever seen to a saint.
Trust is hard to earn...almost impossible to regain.
If you lie for fun then you ain't got it and likely never will.
Lol. That was an attempt at humour, @everittmickey. You're okay with humour? I very rarely lie (other than little white ones to avoid hurting other people's feelings unnecessarily on occasion). Honour and integrity is everything with me. And that was before my Japan years.
I'm thinking you're thinking of Monhandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Mahatma Gandhi, aka Gandhiji. The man I admire most. But he must have lied (white - whopper?) at the start of his life at the very minimum.
For he trained to be a LAWYER.
Tell me I'm right.
Ps. Religious epithets mean nothing to me. Saints? Religion generally being an invention of the rich and powerful to keep the poor happy with their lot in life? Being compared to a saint would never impress me, I know I can say for sure (not that I particularly expect to be ever). Your person was a very good person, I'll infer. Please let me know who it is all the same if it's not Gandhi. I'm interested, now.
when's the last time you heard about global warming?
it's a lie.
He's likely to respond that that is not really the weather. Weathermen basically are guessing and hoping their probability system is correct.
Global Warming is a bit larger than weather. I agree with you on the lying there.
Yet I also get what @zool237 is getting at that weathermen are not intentionally telling you the wrong weather report. If they kept reporting the news wrong intentionally they likely wouldn't be in business long.
You and I look towards the horizon and say "Hmmm... chance of rain".
They do the same with other tools...
Yet sometimes the wind changes and rain doesn't happen.
The weather though is likely near impossible for us to currently predict. Unless we're making the weather. If we have some tech to make the weather then our odds would be significantly higher. :)
weathermen are not intentionally telling you the wrong weather report
if that were only true.
when the so called 'weathermen' ALWAYS say it's a heat wave
no matter how briefly the hot weather.
Yet they ALWAYS say
it's a cold snap
No matter how long the cold weather lingers.
They're lying.
It could be ALIENS messing with the outcome. ;)
I thought of giving you that meme again. Just sayin'. Of course I'm just messing with you.
yeah..that's right...aliens.
I've been educating my self about climate for the last decade or so.
Climate is a complex thing. In fact it's a chaotic system controlled by a large number of variables.
Nothing so simple as fertilizer for plants.
one thing for sure..what the enemedia is telling us is NOT true.
Is it? I don't discuss that normally though I'd still say you're wrong, either way. The records suggest greenhouse gases that industry and agriculture generate and deforestation hardly helps combat are unfortunately forever seeming to rise these days. These gases (eg. CO2) trap heat in a greenhouse. It's not a good idea for CO2 levels to rise too high, the world over. Global average temperatures will rise as a consequence (and are doing).
I prefer anthropogenic climate change anyway. That's the more important related scientific term. Ice caps are melting. Ocean currents diverted. Weather systems fucked with. When was the last time you broke the record for the number of hurricanes the US experienced during hurricane season? Or did the media lie there about the hurricanes?
And the selfish twats that we are polluting the air and the seas (etc) as we chase those dollars driving species we may need later to extinction as we do so, some will happily pretend like we and our ways are good for the planet's nature.
When we're so obviously not.
You surely don't dispute this last bit?
records suggest greenhouse gases that industry and agriculture generate and deforestation hardly helps combat are unfortunately forever seeming to rise these days. These gases (eg. CO2) trap heat in a greenhouse. It's not a good idea for CO2 levels to rise too high, the world over. Global average temperatures will rise as a consequence (and are doing).
no they don't. Global temps are decreasing. The sea levels are no longer rising. A little bit of research will show you that. I could go into a detailed explanation to explain why but you wouldn't listen. (I've done it before)
As the level of technology increases it becomes more efficient and thus less polluting.
but once again..you don't want to hear about that.
You seem to know me very well or is it you're referring to my my kind when you're claiming I wouldn't listen. (And if we're being honest, I'm confident a fair few people will have said that about you. A little more justifiably, too.)
Technologies, less polluting? Let me guess, you'd include HEP dams (that flood vast areas in their construction but produce green energy thereafter) and wind turbines in that. We'll pretend like Fukushima never happened, shall we? The wind turbines that the world's ubermaniac (Mr Trump) is against? Did he really use the expression, 'ugly industrial' in describing them? But then he calls coal beautiful, clean coal, doesn't he? I'm pretty sure he'll be the first person on the planet to have described coal in such favourable terms. With coal - as I'm sure you know, you dig it and you burn it. Hardly high-tech, would you say? You create eyesore killer slag heaps and then your chimneys bellow out black smoke?
Is that progress?
I think you're being a little optimistic, even if these new technologies you speak of (without going into) are so clean and green. You think everyone will get behind them? Even capitalistic pigs whose bottom line is usually profit? There'll be no swines cutting corners, cutting through red tape to sneakily cheat the system to gain on their competitors? That's so unlike man, isn't it! :D The technology will be shared the world over and the developing world will be helped (in an ethical sense, not the euphemistic sense) to embrace it? Because until everyone gets on board (an impossible dream, I'd say, unfortunately, the way things stand), the battle to save life on earth can't really get started. Can it?
Deep down, I'm expecting you know and will agree with half of what I've written. Maybe you've just given up and don't really care about the future of the planet beyond your own lifetime. I just hope you're not 'bitter and twisted' and rejecting greener views for that reason. I'm sure you won't be, though.
If we really do wish to address environmental issues, we'll need to alter our approach considerably and consider other fronts, not just the technological one. We're almost certainly going to have to up our game socially and politically, also.
Remember Paris? And was it Pittsburgh? ;) It's a good idea to start electing sane politicians once more. Would you not say?
Incidentally, apologies that the thread's gone off on something of a tangent, @dwinblood. It was hardly my intention.
What i wish to know in this vein, is what if the person is telling a specifically misleading narrative.
If they know of the difference between your usage of a word and their usage of a word, then is it a lie?
Such as:
We plan to go to Mars.
The population believing that Mars is a planet orbiting the sun
NASA knowing that Mars is an area beyond Antarctica.
Free energy would be a perpetual motion machine and as such cannot exist.
The population believing that a free energy device would be like a wheel spinning forever.
The black budget scientist knowing that energy is available everywhere in the universe, just as you would plug your lamp into any socket.
Great informative content @dwinblood.
I read your blog entries happily. Thank you for everything