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Wired's Apocalypse Not: Here's Why You Shouldn't Worry About the End Times
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P A
Bluelighter
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No it wasn't. It was an exceedingly simple analogy about something very incongruous.
What?
See man, this is what I'm talking about - I'm not sure if you're just trolling at this point, or what, because I think I've made myself sufficiently transparent re. whether I consider this thread, your OP, and the article itself as having merit.
When? By whom? In what scientific publication?
But saying this only makes you seem bizarre. Not to come across as petty or condescending, but I'm not the one posting heroic-length text walls about the reasons for and degree of his consternation.
I guess I'll leave that up to readers to decide. Go look, heh.
Err ... see my post before this one about how things might have gotten complicated.
I see a ton of work I did on this question for bluelight was pruned. I had a thread in this very forum with eye tracking studies comparing internet and print reading and much much more. This is exhausting but I can offer you these articles tonight: here, and here just to convince you I'm talking about a thing.
What text walls? Where? I make paragraphs. What is it that you're insinuating I'm conspiring to do here exactly (I can only assume with this sort of response)?
EDIT: I really think this all has to do with what I'm talking about in post #20. I've only really continued with this for the bizarre exercise it is -- I get off on anything novel (and because, you, PA, decided to do so in post #22). In any case it's been fun? with a capital "?"Last edited:
-=SS=-
Bluelighter
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OK, I've now actually read the entire artical.. and god damn it I was right the first time around. What a rubbish article.. wasted my time reading that. Should have just looked at the author and read a bit about him. Chairman of the failed Northern Rock bank, Eton educated.. in other words someone who is academically smart but still a retard (like Richard Dawkins for example).
Instead of picking on issues that the media just blow out of proportion to sell their crap, maybe he should have actually done some research of his own and picked up on issues that they DON'T touch, you know, real issues that actually paint a true picture of what is going on. He is obviously just another dupe of established society, I mean his credentials smack of someone who isn't going to be able to see outside his own well-off paradigm.
He mentions fusion or thorium based reactors at the end of the article. Thorium reactor technology has existed pretty much in parallel with Uranium based tech.. the only reason it wasn't developed properly was because it wasn't going to produce weapons grade material and they could make far more money from Uranium tech. They knew about the benefits of Thorium but fucking ignored it. As for nuclear fusion.. they've been trying that shit for years but continue to fail. He talks about being "rationally optimistic" in his other work.. yet he spouts the fusion thing as if that's going to happen. It is NOT going to happen that way. Free energy technology already fucking exists, it has done for almost a century. The reason why we don't see it is because of rich upper class donkeys, like himself, who keep the technology supressed so they can make a fortune by using inferior tech.
There is no mention in his article of real problems the world faces. Like the amount of plastic floating in the oceans right now (and other waste). Like the continuing nuclear disaster at Fukashima. Like the continuing deforestation and plundering of natural spaces. He also makes a quick one paragraph jab at air pollution not being a big deal.. this guy evidently doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about. The continuing rise in childhood asthma is a clear indicator that something is not right with air quality.
And finally there is zero mention of the rich upper class/ruling class that runs things, and that is running our entire societies into the fucking ground. Where are his comments on that then? Being a chairman of the first bank to receieve a bank bailout in the UK I think he'd know all too well just what his ilk are doing to society.
Sorry, but fuck Matt Ridley and his stupid article. Everything might be OK for you on your £300,000 salary as a (ex) bank chairman, but you live in a fucking bubble world of delusion. No one should be taking perspective on life and the world from an upper class douche like this.
Hah! Thank you for participating in the thread. This is all I wanted. Effort.
rangrz
Bluelighter
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But they have never been genuine scientific consensus. They have been jumped on generally by smaller sub-groups of scientists at a particular institute or employer (Even if that happens to be a huge one like the US govt, it's still not real consensus as much as it is institutional groupthink) but b) more commonly, they have been harped up by non-scientists- politicians and the media- going far beyond the actual researches claims as well as avoiding all rigor such as mentioning reasons why the hypothesis/scenario may be flawed/unrealistic/not going to happen/something else is going to happen. ( hyperbole example: writing detailed predictions of what would happen if a huge impactor collided with Earth, but not mentioning that there is no reason to expect one is going to do so any time soon)
Next on that list: How many doomsday scenarios have been predicted? How often are these predictions accurate? One starts to get the idea it's all a bunch of nonsense.
Especially, when every scenario from every source is different! When everyone theories diverge from each other, it's good sign that everyone is confused and does not what they are talking about. Good, solid science tends to reach a consensus quickly. I bet you every scientist you ask will give you the same value for the ratio of an electrons mass vs a protons, or for the orbital period of Saturn for e.g. ... because that answer will be a VALID approximation of objective reality. When they all give you different answers, you know at best only 1 of them is right, and that the rest are junk.
-=SS=-
Bluelighter
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I'm glad you're happy ¬¬ I'm pissed off now after reading that article and reading about the guy who wrote it. My tolerance level for rich upper class wankstains who spunk public money up the wall and then have the balls to come forward and say "don't worry, be happy!" is, well, zero. I read through loads of the comments too.. and only 1 or 2 people actually did what I did, look up the author. Everyone else is lost in a sea of pointless bickering and stupid internet rabble shite that amounts to nothing..
In fairness I agree that there's a lot of overblown hype about doomsday stuff.. but unfortunately no one is actually paying attention to the real doomsday stuff that is happening right now. Sophistry from an upper class douchestain does not change the fact that unless we have some serious revision in the way we operate as socieities.. we ARE fucked. I mean take "austerity" cuts in the UK and Europe at large for example.. how much longer do you think the people are going to tolerate the buttfuck before everyone just explodes in rage? Mr ex-wanker chairman does not have a clue evidently what the reality is like for millions of people right now across Europe. Why would he when he is clearly a rich fucking snob.
Infact the more I think about his article the more I see that even what he does talk about is just plain fucking wrong. I can only repeat my conclusion that the guy is an upper-class establishment whore who is out of touch with reality.
rangrz
Bluelighter
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^
I don't think social upheaval is what they mean by doomsday scenarios. That the rich and the poor may clash in an epic clusterfuck of a war may be true, but a simple war is not truly doomsday...I mean look, we're still here, despite all of the wars and revolutions in history.
P A
Bluelighter
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What readers? We're talking to each other.
But it's not very complicated. You got pissy because a few people (some of whom, including I, had read the article in part or entirety before commenting) proclaimed their indifference to your chosen thread topic on a public forum.
Forbes and and the New York Times are not scholarly sources of psychological literature.
You make obscenely long paragraphs. That is, to the best of my knowledge the definition of a wall of text.
No.
Gee, I don't know. Maybe the 214 views registered on this thread that are not the six people who have posted in the thread? This is what I was talking about in post 20 about perceived audience (yet you keep charging at the same points with all the fervor of a meth-crazed horse with blinders on about what you perceive my motives to be after I've made it explicit what they are repeatedly in that post and others). You're talking about the posters in the thread and what they've said. I'm talking about who I assume the other 208 might be based on the fact that this article was selected for its popular appeal by industry professionals for some professionally informed reason. That's been why I thought it defensible the whole time and why I've been responding this way to the people in this thread. I'm motivated to serve a popular audience with this thread. You, in turn have been telling me I'm "pissy" or "irate" because of what you and these others are saying when in red lettering I told you in my second post specifically why I was responding the way I was to avoid this very perception:
Later, I further explained my tone taking in a latter post, saying:
Again, this is all because of who we perceive is being talked about. I'm thinking that Bluelighters in general, the 208 others viewing the thread, are who you're telling me shouldn't be interested in this thread or in the article. You're telling me I'm getting pissy because of the comments in this thread, when I told you from the start my frustration is not with any of you, it's with the skimming style of internet reading, which you yourself have stated:
That's what's so simple and silly, and why I am disbelieving and find that your analogies about what my responses are like (the BBC documentary one) are complicated and don't match up to what's been stated in the thread. I'm seriously wondering about your motives at this point.
Yes, which is why I lamented before posting those articles that my thread on this topic that I thought I'd be able to refer you to was pruned before posting them. This is also why I only stated I was posting them to claim what I was talking about was "a thing," and never said there was a scientific consensus. Think about what you’re even asking for: definitive scientific consensus about how the internet generation’s reading comprehension in 2012(?!). I said it was documented extensively (and numerous articles and books, as well as yes, some scientific studies that bolster the claims therein, have been written about the general topic of a large change in literacy styles spurred by the effects of the internet on reading). You're the one telling me I've made all sorts of different claims I haven't, and that I have motives I've told you I don't repeatedly.
Here's an analysis of web based reading pattern's about how web based reading is different than linear print reading. Here’s an article written in response to an assessment of 19,000 test scores. Here’s some studies about how reading online (the disproportionately used source of reading material for the younger versus even slightly older generations) differs from classic linear print reading: study 1; study 2
All this and far far more I can't be asked to spend hours dredging up hangs together to support what I've said. That's about as much as can be expected in 2012. Stop making unrealistic demands and acting as though I'm making things up because I can't meet them. Stop ignoring me in order to justify yourself, or, in the case of the following, ignoring yourself to justify yourself:
From Urban Dictionary:
Now go ahead and count the number of lines in the largest paragraph for me and for yourself in this thread. My largest is 10 lines (post #11), how "obscene," and your longest is 14 (post #17). Are you joking or just a jerk?
I've put in all the effort I'm willing to put in to explain myself to somebody content to manufacture the same verbal traps and make believe he's caught something over and over again. Now I'm ignoring you and this thread. You, perhaps, smoke too much meth.Last edited:
P A
Bluelighter
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Okay, I get the distinct impression that you're just trolling. If you're truly sincere, I suggest that you try counting again. Either way, this has gotten quite tedious. On the whole, you have produced far and away greater volumes of text devoted exclusively to your confused plaints than I have typed in this entire thread.
If you had been reading my posts with any degree of comprehension (as opposed to merely skimming) you'd be perfectly aware that my analogy served as an attempt to illustrate to you why people were patently unenthused in or were simply indifferent to your thread and its respective topic(s). It had nothing to do with the separate issue of skimming, with which I had already dispensed and dealt in numerous posts. My argument was, and still is, roughly this: People's negative reactions had nothing (or barely anything, at most) to do with skimming, as evidenced by the sheer number of people who actually read the article (cf. rangrz, SS, and myself) and were simply reflective of a large, open forum's tendency, on the whole, to present varying degrees of attention spans, interests, tastes, and reactions to posted content. The topic of skimming and the 'Google generation' is only obliquely related to the disinterest of your peers, which stems, as I think I've satisfactorily explained by now, from a wide variety of sources.
Facepalm - no, it isn't. My essential thrust since the beginning has been so monotonously straightforward that I wonder how this thread has reached two fucking pages in the span of a day or two (unless troll). You posted a link to an article. A few people (some of whom had actually read it, not skimmed it) expressed disinterest or distaste. You reacted negatively and disproportionately, rambling about abstract generational trends in reading comprehension. I then contended (for the fourth time now) that this was not the primary cause of their negative reactions. I did all this to preclude the possibility of you being discouraged or somehow put-off by the reactions you had obtained thus far, which discouragement could have resulted in your deleting the thread, for all I knew. I tried - apparently highly unsuccessfully - to tell you that the post was a good one, and to remind you that reactions to content in open fora tend to be inherently unpredictable, and sometimes off-base. That is all.
P A
Bluelighter
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Another contextual fuckup on your part. You said that you would "leave it up to readers to decide" whether my analogy was convoluted/misdirected or not. But there isn't an audience here. I'm speaking (posting?) to you directly. Whether what I've said is to the point is not for some general committee of gawkers and lurkers to decide, thank you very much.
No, that wasn't what you were talking about at all. Post #20 refers to the perceived confusion (not shared by me, I can assure you) re. the attendant audience of Bluelighters for whom you posted the article. That has nothing to do with the supposed convolution of my BBC analogy (which was meant to dispel your whole 'skimming' tirade and demonstrate the psychological mechanism by which others' have dismissed your post, and nothing more) and your comments thereupon.
Requesting primary scientific sources before indulging in dubious phenomena is hardly unrealistic in my book.
