Meteorologists get death threats as hurricane conspiracy theories thrive

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/hurricane-milton-misinformation-meteorlogist-death-threats-1235130352/

by geox • 2 years ago

79 212 2 years ago

rollingstone.com

taylodl4• 2 years ago

These kinds of articles reinforce my idea that we're witnessing our society collapse before our very eyes. I tend to blame it on Republican idiocracy and Russian trolling, but I suspect the problem is larger than that.

It's just depressing.

Is the US the only country suffering from this lunacy, or is this a more global phenomenon?

Vampiero• 2 years ago

It's a global phenomenon but it's only crazy in the US, like most things

kjkjadksj• 2 years ago

Its crazy elsewhere too like in the UK, Hungary, Russia, most of eastern and southern europe, India, Brasil, etc. same MO just nationalist/racist/anti intellectual/conspiracy junk shared on social media.

fma• 2 years ago

We've always had conspiracy theories and fringe believes, but it's now mainstream in the US.

scruple2• 2 years ago

I don't know. I thought the news out of Turkey today was... interesting, at least from a historical perspective. I don't think it's just us in the US.

ysofunny2• 2 years ago

we are mostly unable to process the fact that science lied to us

what's worse, it became an authoritative tool of (often foreign) powers; at least in most of America (as science came from Europe, ...they brought us "culture" when they colonized us in the south; the north did not get colonized but replaced)

but of course science lied, but it's not that it lied, it is that it changes. newer truth comes along and fights the old truth until it dies ("the pace of scientific funerals")

turns out, breaking people's trust is much easier than gaining it.

but my hill to die on, is the old truth of material scarcity and media (or licensing) content versus the new truth of digital abundance and freely sharing things without the license to do so. why do I need permission from some faceless corporate owner to copy cultural assets that I love and wish to share?

croes2• 2 years ago

Science doesn't lie, people do. And people are stubborn that's why new discoveries need time to get accepted.

But this is different, this is not science but simply BS that is spread.

ysofunny2• 2 years ago

just keep repeating "earth is not flat and there's no way that could be"

those people get no voice around these parts.

also, nevermind the existence of higher order constructs like manifolds. that cannot be what "earth is flat" idiots could be referring to.

send me down another negative four, the invisibility threshold.

hindsightbias• 2 years ago

I think many other cultures are crippled by pervasive conspiracies that re-enforce views of having no agency. And their rulers like it that way.

In street drug circles today there are widespread complaints about the quality of fentanyl, withdrawal effects and treatment. OD's are apparently dropping. For those that live in some semblance of reality, I think many there's withdrawal going on. For those that don't get out and call in threats like this, they don't really believe anything persistently, they just believe whatever is the rage of the day. They'll OD someday, you just won't see it in the obits.

WorkerBee284742• 2 years ago

This is what happens when you coopt science as cover for political decisions - people stop trusting all "science" including real science. From what I've seen I more associate the issue with Democrats than Republicans, especially in the COVID lockdown days.

kaibee2• 2 years ago

From what I've seen I more associate the issue with Democrats than Republicans, especially in the COVID lockdown days.

Can you explain the chain of logic here? During the pandemic I "did my own research" which amounted to basically masking when other people did and getting the vaccines as they came out. At the time my SO was a nurse working on a hospital covid floor, so it seemed prudent. So, I'm not really sure how you see Democrats as being less science based? No snark intended, I'm truly curious.

xattt• 2 years ago

I can’t imagine this kind of stuff happens in the PRC.

The upside to a tightly-controlled “infosphere” is that people who are at the controls and have rational thought can jump right in and quench the idiocy fires right away.

smt883• 2 years ago

It is significantly worse in the PRC, where they don't believe that the Uyghur genocide is happening. At least (for now) the West has no similar level of denial about something within their own borders.

AnimalMuppet3• 2 years ago

And the downside of that upside is that they jump right in and quench things, not always on the basis of idiocy, but also on the basis of opposing the government's narrative. That doesn't actually lead to rationality.

card_zero• 2 years ago

Category:Conspiracy theories in China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Conspiracy_theories_i...

(From Category:Conspiracy theories by country)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Conspiracy_theories_b...

empath75• 2 years ago

It turns out that "The remedy for bad speech is more speech" doesn't actually scale globally.

You can blame this on Russian and/or Chinese disinformation ops and tik-tok, etc, but the problem is more general than that. One of the assumptions around free speech ideals is that the people who are speaking or publishing are citizens of the community in which they are speaking or publishing, and now a large part of the content on the internet is produced by people who are crossing national boundaries, or not even produced by people at all.

You used to be able to assume that the vast majority of the content you're exposed to is produced by people who live in your community or country and would not like to see it destroyed, and now, in fact, you should probably assume the opposite. You should assume that most content on the internet is produced by bad actors trying to rip the fabric of your society apart, particularly if you're reading something that enrages you.

The especially insidious part of this is that most of the rage bait stuff plays on widespread personal biases so it's self sustaining after a while. People start to hate each other, so then they do stuff to each other to make each other hate each other more and so on and so on until you've got Rwanda.

mistrial9• 2 years ago

not really -- rather consider the ability of a very small minority of voices to amplify tremendously without sufficient dampening.. stability in public communication is never simple. A psychologist might say that social rage itself, or anger with blame itself, is the root of the behavior. Every language group on Earth has rational, constructive people in it.

codingwagie5• 2 years ago

Russian disinformation is itself a conspiracy theory. Trump was investigated for the last decade, they essentially found nothing.

HeatrayEnjoyer2• 2 years ago

This is just a flat lie.

SketchySeaBeast8• 2 years ago

Just because no one acted doesn't mean that "they essentially found nothing".

The Muller report described Russian interference in the 2016 election as “sweeping and systemic.” The report spent a bunch of pages saying that there were “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.”

rcxdude• 2 years ago

Russian propaganda doesn't actually necessary need to collude with the people who's voices they amplify to meet their goals.

(it also doesn't necessarily need to spread false information, either. The general strategy is just 'find divisive statements and/or figures and amplify them'. Making up their own isn't usually necessary)

vixen99• 2 years ago

A few people say or do something completely nutty and the 'country is suffering this lunacy'. At what golden period in history were there no nutcases pitching some irrational extremes into the public sphere?

On the other hand maybe I'm quite wrong about all this. Someone has estimated (an open calculation) the payback time for the US debt burden at 90,000 years if it was paid back at the rate of $1,000,000 per day. Some might argue there's lunacy at work over many decades to achieve this result.

(from a comment on this blog) - -https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2024/10/08/the-smartest-pe...

creato• 2 years ago

$1m per day divided by ~400m population is essentially zero. Why even mention this? It's just using numbers with a lot of zeros to sound scary, but means nothing.

AnimalMuppet3• 2 years ago

1. It's different because the internet feeds us every bit of lunacy that happens anywhere in the country, so it looks like everyone has gone insane. (Especially in politics, where the Ds will tell you about every single stupid thing an R says anywhere in the country, and the Rs will tell you about every single stupid thing a D says.)

2. The national debt is probably a result of long-term lack of wisdom, yes. But with an economy the size of the US, there is absolutely no reason to pay it back at only $1,000,000/day. A serious attempt would be more like $1,000,000,000/day.

avgDev• 2 years ago

It is global. I was just in Poland. Literally same thing as in the US just a bit different flavor. Mainstream media bad, covid fake just a little flu and used to control society, proud for not wearing masks, did not vaccinate because some crazy reasons.

Not everyone obviously, but I was visiting smaller cities where I grew up. I always thought I could go back one day but I don't think I would be able to deal with people there. The customer service is non existent and when you are shopping/getting services you are an inconvenience. Crazy.

_1tem2• 2 years ago

The lunacy is definitely worse in the Anglosphere. I moved to Eastern Europe a few years ago and it's way more sane (and yes, I speak the local languages here).

See this article about Emmanuel Todd forecasting the collapse of the West using the same methodology he used to successfully predict the collapse of the Soviet Union: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/opinion/emmanuel-todd-dec...

ffujdefvjg3• 2 years ago

I read an Atlantic article the other day where a lit professor from Columbia University said that he has students nowadays who admit to having never read a book cover to cover. Ones that have tend to say their favorite book is something like Percy Jackson. They also can't focus on a small poem. This confirms what a teacher I know has been saying for a long time: highschool kids since around the class of 2010 are getting very noticably stupider.

I'm beginning to wonder if social media really has caused kids to miss key developmental stages. Parents being on their phones has led to kids hearing a substantially reduced vocabulary, these kids also receive less interaction from their parents and interact less with their environments and other kids. This stuff is really important for brain development, and we've replaced it with an iPhone.

I don't think social media started this, just accelerated the trend. I do think commercialized media for decades now has really been a driver of insipid banality.

SketchySeaBeast8• 2 years ago

Why are we blaming kids when elected representatives are parroting these conspiracy theories? MTG isn't seeking Gen Z approval.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

There’s a difference between stupid and ignorance. They aren’t “stupider”

scruple2• 2 years ago

Befriend any professor at any school who teaches reading, writing, or anything adjacent.

I have a friend who teaches journalism at a small, private liberal arts school in the midwest. He's been teaching for over 40 years. He says that, beggining in the late 2010s he noticed incoming students began to really struggle. Then, pre-pandemic he would recommend that they use the on-campus reading and writing labs to get help, lean on TAs, use office hours, etc. Post-pandemic, he says he now recommends that they drop his course because they aren't prepared at all, even with all of the help the campus provides. He says that this went from a small % of his course enrollment to being > 50% in the span of a decade.

Small N but I've gone into overdrive to teach my own (very young) children how to read and interpret literature.

stanski• 2 years ago

There's always been nutcases (apologies to people with actual mental illness). The problem is that politicians (worldwide) have figured out how to utilize them for their own benefit.

I agree that at times it does seem like a very bad premonition.

MildlySerious2• 2 years ago

I suspect the problem is larger than that.

My take is that this is a symptom of something else. Populism has existed for a long time, but it feels to me that the environment we created also created the perfect target audience for it on a scale that never existed before. Observing the alt-right and conspiracy bubbles collapse into one over the last five years, it feels like it's the result of a sort of mental defense mechanism for a group of people that is growing every day. As I see it, we have built a world around us that is very complex and abstract, and hostile to the mind in a way that enables this sort of ideology immensely.

In it, it is very hard to feel a sort of purpose, and it is very easy to be overwhelmed. On average, the work people do has little to no effect on themselves or their direct peers. All day, every day is spent shuffling around numbers on a spreadsheet, or doing work to aid someone who shuffles around numbers on a spreadsheet. Then you clock out having a net zero benefit on your life, or that of people that matter. Other than, of course, a number that goes up in a different spreadsheet. And while you do your shuffling about to scrape by another month, you get bombarded with a flood of information about this war or that catastrophe or those disasters.

It leaves people numb, overwhelmed, frustrated, angry, helpless, purposeless, etc.

Keep that up long enough, and what happens is something like a narcissistic collapse, except that it's not narcissists it happens to, but normal, healthy but vulnerable minds whose mental health can no longer be reconciled with a toxic reality.

In comes an ideology that does three things: It simplifies. It gives purpose. It provides an outlet.

Once you subscribe to it, everything returns from countless shades of gray to black and white. If you're not one of the good guys, you're one of the bad guys. If a bad guy says a thing, it's a bad thing. If you say a bad thing, you're a bad guy. The simple prescriptive labels of what counts as good and bad are delivered to you, on the house. Takes away all the nuance, all the complexity and all the mental burden that came with it.

Then, it gives purpose. If you fall into this hole, you end up seeing yourself as two things: A victim, and a savior. You see what others don't, and you suffer for it. "They" - the bad guys - are out to get you, to destroy everything. Every confrontation is thus someone attacking you, the victim, or defying you, the savior. It provides a narrative in a chaotic world where bad things happen for no reason and without explanation.

Last, it creates a target for all your bottled up frustration and anger. The bad guys are responsible for all the bad things, and it is made clear how very okay it is to channel all your negative emotions into hate towards some group. Be it Jewish people, immigrants, scientists, democrats or some imaginary lizard people. Hate is fine.

The end result is a full abdication of responsibility, and a return of control at the low, low price of a divorce from reality. To the mind that slips into this rabbit hole it is not so much a choice as it is a lifeline. That is why it is so incredibly hard to get people out of it, as well.

taylodl4• 2 years ago

This sounds like a discussion I'd love to have with you over a beer!

With that in mind, how serious are you? This is fascinating stuff and sounds like you've been thinking about it for a while. Is this your attempt to make sense of it all or is this reflective of something you've observed and studied?

red-iron-pine6• 2 years ago

trolling

this implies that its just a few folks talking shit on a lark, when it is actually a concerted, aggressive, multi-billion dollar effort across all-channels, with the goal of degrading civil institutions and hopefully causing a civil war.

that the average American rube can't figure that out is also part of the problem

ChumpGPT2• 2 years ago

MGT accused Democrats of colluding with other worldly forces and creating Milton.

She said "ask your government if the weather is being manipulated or controlled. Did you give them permission to do this? Are you paying for it? Of course you are paying for it."

She said the same thing about Helene. She is feeding the mental illness that grips MAGA. This is a sitting Representative and has the full support and admiration of the Republican Candidate for President.

Even Republicans are now coming out to try to explain that humans can't create or control Hurricanes all while their own and their Candidate for President is suggesting otherwise.

throwup2382• 2 years ago

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a Representative, not Senator. Even for the Republican party she’s a weirdo and she’s only able to win due to the “unique” demographics of her district. She’s unlikely to be able to win a statewide race anywhere, and Senators in general tend to be less radical.

Not that it makes her insanity any less insane…

ChumpGPT2• 2 years ago

Yes you're correct, will edit my post.

sundaeofshock• 2 years ago

I have to disagree with you here. Most of the Senators from the GOP have been happy to share the same drivel. Indeed, Senator JD Vance and Donald Trump — arguably the most powerful men in the GOP are as unhinged as MTG.

HeatrayEnjoyer2• 2 years ago

If the rest of the GOP actually didn't want her they could vote and expel her today.

cogman103• 2 years ago

Greene is a top fundraiser for the republican party. Part of the reason she gets so much attention is because she is bringing in more funds than most.

You can call her weird, I agree she is, but she's clearly representing a significant portion of republican voter sentiment.

tzs2• 2 years ago

Even for the Republican party she’s a weirdo and she’s only able to win due to the “unique” demographics of her district

What are the unique demographics of her district? I know it is heavily gerrymandered to make it almost impossible for anyone other than a Republican to win the general election, but to get to be the Republican candidate in the general election they have to win the Republican primary.

In every Republican primary she has won there were several other conservative Republicans who were not batshit insane and were actually well qualified to be a Representative in Congress. So why is she winning?

Animats2• 2 years ago

Maybe people are getting dumber because of COVID.[1] Even after recovery, having mild COVID seems to cost 3 IQ points.[1] Reinfection, 2 more IQ points.[2] This is for people who have recovered, and does not include "long COVID".

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-iq-brain-age-cognitive...

[2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2400189

rootusrootus5• 2 years ago

This was going full force well before COVID. Before 2016, though that was when it became a lot more overt.

autoexec6• 2 years ago

Between covid brain, ipad kids, heavy metal poisoning, and decades of attacks on the education system the US is dropping IQ points while mental illness is on the rise.

alistairSH2• 2 years ago

Did you leave out the /s? Or are you seriously implying the crazy conspiracy garbage we're seeing recently is a result of COVID? Because that sounds just as deranged as <waves hands at all the other dumb shit on the internet>.

Animats2• 2 years ago

It's not a joke. "A three-point downward shift in IQ would increase the number of U.S. adults with an IQ less than 70 from 4.7 million to 7.5 million – an increase of 2.8 million adults with a level of cognitive impairment that requires significant societal support."

Then there's long COVID. A detailed overview of that.[1] As of late 2023, about 5% of US adults report having long COVID. It appears that, if it lasts a year, there's usually no further recovery.

Some new results indicate that at least some long COVID sufferers still have a reservoir of the active virus.[2] That's encouraging, because antivirals may help them. It indicates where to look.

This is very real. Most people are tired of hearing about COVID, but the virus isn't tired.

[1] https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/27756/chapter/8

[2] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/10/getting-to-th...

mindcrime7• 2 years ago

Note that the person you are replying to never said that COVID was the only explanation for this stuff.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

I think one only has to look at history to discount such theories as this but people will still try to propagate such pseudo science.

xbmcuser• 2 years ago

This is actually the result of Facebook, youtube the hyper focus on surfacing a topic a post you see share or like to keep you engaged. You see a post share it with your friends Facebook algo see your interest shows your a hundred and keeps taking deeper down the rabbit whole. So the main reason for this is social media. A few years ago I used to argue with family and friends over such stupid topics to tell them it is wrong but mostly keep quite or ignore as my mental health is more important to me.

wcoenen2• 2 years ago

This clicked for me back in 2015. A friend shared something on Facebook that sounded plausible but felt off. I looked into it, and added a polite comment pointing out that it was a hoax. With a link to the Snopes article. I expected a reaction like "haha, oops". Instead, she deleted my comment.

That's when I realized that Facebook was a platform for spreading digital viruses that use human minds as their host. I deleted my account shortly after and never returned.

anigbrowl3• 2 years ago

Maybe, but people were going like this before COVID.

blacksmith_tb• 2 years ago

That seems unlikely, but if we accept it's true, that's only 5% dumber for someone with an average IQ, and that doesn't seem like nearly enough to account for believing something obviously implausible like controlling hurricanes. If people had basic scientific literacy they should be able to see the amounts of energy needed would be staggering.

lamontcg2• 2 years ago

- We can't measure "IQ" accurately enough to 2 or 3 points.

- People have been dumb for decades, the modern internet + social media has just weaponized it.

- It didn't remotely start in 2020 unless COVID caused a time loop that caused Trump to get elected in 2016.

gitaarik11• 2 years ago

I already take the IQ test with a big grain of salt. Now there were some small studies done on IQ in relation to COVID? And it supposedly decreases IQ by a few points? Yeah, right, I believe it right away man.

And the vaccine increases your IQ?

ako3• 2 years ago

That is what you get when you stop funding general education because you think people should pay for it themselves. People lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, lack the ability for critical thinking.

I benefit when others around me get better education, that's why I'm happy when my taxes are used to fund schools and universities and other ways of educating people. And it also benefits the economy, so every tax dollar/euro spend on education has a huge ROI.

gjsman-10005• 2 years ago

I actually disagree.

This is what you get when scandal after scandal happens to public institutions. People go flat earth most often, not because of the "science," but because they do not trust the government for honesty.

This also happens whenever there is an apparent "win" even if it isn't quite so. For example, when a judge last week ordered federal Fluoride standards to be re-examined. It doesn't need to be a total vindication of the conspiracy theorists, for trust to be substantially damaged. Same for the Iraq war, with "weapons of mass destruction" - imagine if your child died from that lie. Repeat this every year, in multiple institutions, for 20+ years straight; and yes, observant people might well think that everything the government has ever said is a hoax. It's not about the science, or their ability to track truth from falsehood, but their reactionary hate of anything the institutions say.

rootusrootus5• 2 years ago

People go flat earth

Isn't the joke here that for most of modern history the flat earth discussions were a debate contest by people who didn't actually believe the earth was flat but enjoyed trying to prove it was? And then it leaked out and found a welcome home amongst people gullible enough to believe all of the "evidence" that had been concocted.

justsocrateasin• 2 years ago

People going to flat earth and believing in flat earth are two separate things. As OP said -

People lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, lack the ability for critical thinking.

Distrusting governments is not the cause of people believing flat earth, people believe flat earth because they are unable to separate fact from fiction, which, I believe is a consequence of poor education.

ako3• 2 years ago

When you defund science and education, these institutions have to turn elsewhere for funding, and now you're at the mercy of the one providing the funds...

smt883• 2 years ago

This isn't just distrust of the government and other public institutions. It's also distrust of:

- first-hand reports from other people

- private news networks

- the governments of other countries

The scale and degree of this distrust of other people is new. Arguably the US government was far, far less trustworthy in the past, such as when it was massacring people in Vietnam or secretly conducting experiments on Black people. These revelations did not lead to meteorologists getting death threats.

philipkglass• 2 years ago

Observant people learn to evaluate the words of government officials as critically and analytically as they would treat any source. Credulous people switch from uncritical trust in government officials to uncritical trust in talk radio hosts, podcasters, and social media.

Spivak• 2 years ago

I don't know, I think the biggest difference is that the view we have of government isn't heavily curated by a few major papers and news broadcasts. The dirty laundry is on display 24/7 and thanks to social media The Washington Post, The Flat Earth Society, and Dave the guy with "THE END IS NEAR" signs on the corner of main street are on the same newsstand.

And I don't think it's intelligence, smart people get sucked into cults all the time, being smart makes you better at convincing yourself of the nonsense. It's self-administered cult indoctrination. I don't think anyone has defenses for this kind of stuff outside of being primed to believe it's nonsense.

antisthenes• 2 years ago

People go flat earth most often, not because of the "science," but because they do not trust the government for honesty.

It doesn't matter "why" someone chooses to believe a conspiracy theory. What matters is how they came to be an adult that still believes in conspiracy theories - and the failure lies somewhere between bad parenting and the education system, and definitely not with meteorologists, even IF the public agency that employs meteorologists was involved in a scandal.

zpeti• 2 years ago

I don’t know why you are getting downvoted. This is just as valid as saying education has gotten worse.

It’s likely both are causes, and some other things too.

yongjik2• 2 years ago

For example, when a judge last week ordered federal Fluoride standards to be re-examined. It doesn't need to be a total vindication of the conspiracy theorists, for trust to be substantially damaged.

This is such a weird way of looking at it.

Imagine, for simplicity, there's an optimal amount of fluoride to add, which is X. Also imagine science can guess the number but, obviously, it's not perfect.

What will happen is that we will start at some number, and gradually change it as we get more knowledge. Sometimes we'll be below X, sometimes we'll be above X. When we're above X, and we find it out, we'll say "Oops it was too much fluoride, let's reduce it a bit."

And obviously policymakers need to work on imperfect information, so sometimes we have to add Y amount of fluoride even though we know it's not optimal - because, the alternative, adding zero fluoride, would be actually worse.

This is totally natural way of how science works, and saying that this undermines public trust of science is actually a point in support of GP, namely, the American public has poor understanding of how science works, due to poor education.

jgeada• 2 years ago

Staff government with people that hate government and got elected on the principle that government is the problem. Those people sabotage government at every opportunity, thus it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Use the chaos and dysfunction you created to sell public assets on the cheap to private companies.

I've seen this trajectory far too often to think what is happening is accidental.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

There have always been scandals. What changes is that nearly half of America has given up its brain and free thought and allowed the right wing media machine and various messiahs (one in particular) to fill their brains with mush about conspiracies and fear of the other. It’s ridiculous that people don’t want to think for themselves.

autoexec6• 2 years ago

the lack of integrity and accountability really has eroded trust in critical institutions society depends on. I can't blame people for being skeptical in science when anyone can see that scientists are routinely paid by corporations to to produce whatever results they want, and that you can pay to get even obvious garbage published in peer reviewed journals. The flat-earthers are wrong about the shape of the planet, the creationists are still wrong about evolution, but they're right that what passes for science these days is full of lies and can't be trusted.

I feel a degree of sympathy for antivaxxers for the same reason. Pharmaceutical companies get away with literal murder, the makers of medical devices are serial killers, and doctors are taking kickbacks to overprescribe dangerous medications. Even the CDC cares more about politics than the truth. The antivaxxers are still wrong about vaccines, but they're right that the medical industry can't be trusted.

When government waste and corruption goes unchecked people lose faith in the government. When the police are criminals, judges take kickbacks to send children into private prisons, and corrupt prosecutors go unpunished people lose faith in the justice system.

Resentment, distrust, fear, and uncertainty are just natural and appropriate responses to what's going on around us. Even if drastic action was taken today to increase accountability and transparency to fight the corruption and greed undermining people's faith in these institutions it would still take decades to restore the trust that's been lost and realistically, I don't see any kind of drastic action being taken to fix the problem any time soon, so I expect things to get a lot worse before they get better.

the_gorilla3• 2 years ago

That is what you get when you stop funding general education because you think people should pay for it themselves. People lose the ability to separate fact from fiction, lack the ability for critical thinking.

On the other hand, this sounds like something you just made up and decided to connect to the current topic. Is this fact or fiction?

ako3• 2 years ago

It's a theory, that may need validation ;-)

programjames• 2 years ago

America spends $15k per child for education. That is a ridiculous amount of funding. I think most teachers are of the opinion that the educational decline is due to NCLB, Common Core, and other top-down initiatives that give them less power yet more responsibilities. Many teachers complain that 1-2 students disrupt a class of 25-30 students, but they can't do anything about it.

sellmesoap• 2 years ago

Even in Canada one of my kids decided to try a different school because their class was so disruptive.

autoexec6• 2 years ago

The amount of money we spend "for education" isn't reflective of the money that goes to educating children. We have waste, corruption, and people stuffing their pockets everywhere. Schools spend more of that money on sports than actual teaching. In the end, criminally unpaid teachers have to buy even the most basic school supplies with their own money or beg parents to provide them for the over-crowded classrooms in buildings that are falling apart.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

Teachers are simply overloaded and parents have given up responsibility for keeping their kids in check. Little Tommy can do no wrong and is just misunderstood. I personally feel if a child is disrupting class and the experience for others, out they go, back to the parents. Public education should be free, but it has to have conditions that your little Tommy isn’t messing it up for those who are there to learn. We’ve grown too lenient and expect teachers to be cops, therapists, babysitters instead of teachers and instructors. It should be more like college.

RickJWagner• 2 years ago

Can confirm classrooms are hazardous environments. (I have a son that teaches, and my wife substitute teaches.) Classroom discipline is hard to enforce. For women especially, the threat of violence is real. I wish it weren't true, but many long-time teachers say they do not recommend it as a career choice.

o11c2• 2 years ago

I found slightly different numbers, but the exact details don't matter.

If $12.5k is spent per child per year, and there are 20 children per classroom, that's $250k.

Combining random sources (which use widely different divisions), I see numbers like:

  60-90% instruction salary/benefit and related (higher numbers likely include non-teacher staff)
  55-60% salaries
  20-25% employee benefits (probably health insurance, which is really expensive in America no matter who pays for it)
  5-20% capital/operations/contractors
  10% administration
  8% supplies
  5-35% support (likely varies depending on what counts as "support")
  0-5% debt
  4% other

pj_mukh2• 2 years ago

Then why is the problem worst among Boomers [1]?

Alternate Theory:

This is purely the result of "too much news". Breathless coverage of every little detail means every little mis-step blows up to infinity, quickly eroding trust.

The 24hr + internet news cycle is basically a reaction maximization optimization machine with a dt ~ 0. Fox News walked so Facebook could run and now Twitter is sprinting. Insert long form podcasts in the mix for a constant hum of algorithmic misinformation and this result is inevitable.

tl;dr: more people need to go out and touch some grass.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7505057/#:~:tex....

SketchySeaBeast8• 2 years ago

I think I'd move the quotes - the problem is too much "news", but I think you're right. It's 24/7 misinformation factories that push people to the point where they can assume that somehow the US government both has a hurricane machine and that it would use it on its own citizens, even though that doesn't stand up to any sort of rational introspection.

ZeroGravitas2• 2 years ago

I'd argue that it is intentional nitpicking of science/institutions because they were a threat to concentrated business interests (tobacco, lead, fossil fuels, factory farming etc.)

smrtinsert3• 2 years ago

Anecdotally you can spend some time on facebook and see exactly that they are not consuming news at all. The seem impervious to any link or discussion that doesn't automatically feed back into their trusted sources - which of course are not trustworthy

anigbrowl3• 2 years ago

No it isn't. There people are not clueless ignoramuses, they're paranoid assholes who have chosen to weaponize their dislike of anything 'official' for political ends. There is a market for propaganda and it is thriving, because many people want their biases reinforced.

Thinking the issue is a lack of education is a kind of procrastination, as if we can just fix this over a 20 year span. Ignorance is not the problem here, malice is. There are plenty of ignorant people who are uninformed or believe silly things without being assholes about it.

There's an unwillingness on HN to engage with the fact that the amplification effect of the broadcast/internet/social media selects for liars and propagandists and fraudsters absent countering mechanisms. That's why spamming and scamming are ubiquitous in our super high tech civilization.

consteval7• 2 years ago

While I agree with this, I will say that people most susceptible to propaganda and confirmation bias are people who lack critical thinking skills IMO.

Critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning, as taught in your average language arts and social studies courses, specifically calls out bias and teaches kids how to be skeptical. When I was in school, we read passages and books and got to make whatever conclusion we wanted. But the essay we wrote had to be evidence-based. The teacher didn't care so much what we said, but rather that we could form a logical string to say it.

All this is to say, I think yes - if public education is further destroyed this will only get worse.

soco• 2 years ago

It's difficult for people employed by the same platforms built (by the same people) with the aim to precisely amplify and trap, to recognize that their work is a major factor - if not biggest - in the erosion of whatever we hold dear. Nevertheless, education is suffering as well.

slibhb• 2 years ago

This has little to do with education.

It's just political polarization. Conservatives (of a certain variety) in the US are polarized against the establishment (the media, science, colleges, etc), and this is the result. Better education might save some of them, but not many. The smarter ones retain the same core beliefs without the abject silliness.

mindcrime7• 2 years ago

I don't think it's (entirely) that. Did you see the recent story about how college entrants at even highly selective schools, entrants coming from highly regarded private prep schools, are struggling to read books? That seems to me to be indicative of a problem different from what you're pointing out.

lamontcg2• 2 years ago

That is what you get when you stop funding general education...

These people are likely predominantly over 50 and were in high school in the 60s/70s/80s.

They've just been deliberately choosing to stew themselves for the past decade or three in right wing and fringe media.

leokeba• 2 years ago

I don't think this is about education, but I suspect rather something more akin to "intellectual revenge". Let me explain : In my experience, people who are into conspiracy theories are usually people who have been intellectually marginalised or disparaged during their life. It's not about being stupid - I think that's besides the point - but it's about being called and made feel stupid, literally or metaphorically.

People don't want to believe they are stupid, and they especially don't want to believe the people (or institutions) who call them stupid are superior to them. So they find a way out, by believing something that not only makes them feel important (they know but other people don't), but also superior to those who ostracised them in the first place.

I've been thinking about this for a while, but somehow never came across any similar ideas anywhere, anybody got references (or comments) ?

gitaarik11• 2 years ago

Yeah, that psychoanalysis makes sense, but why would there suddenly be so many people that supposedly had traumatic experiences in being judged stupid?

Smoosh3• 2 years ago

There is also a component of this which is (some) people needing a simple explanation for problems and injustices and preferably one where _someone else_ (individual or group) is to blame.

QuantumGood• 2 years ago

Education does not automatically make the person getting it wiser, nor less prone to manipulation or cognitive errors. And remember that one of the effects of propaganda bombardment is to destroy judgement.

I've hired students who graduated with a low "C" average in their area of study, who were D- at the parts of their job that required that study, and had no personal interest or accurate knowledge to share about their study.

GaryNumanVevo• 2 years ago

conspiracy isn't arrived at via some logical process. the outcome is decided and the steps to get there are hallucinated. it's all post-hoc rationalization.

Smoosh3• 2 years ago

Can I point out that “the outcome” here that conspiracy theorists start with isn’t “space lasers control the weather” but “the government is to blame”.

raxxorraxor• 2 years ago

Another factor is that lies or misrepresentations have been thoroughly normalized. Almost all media products have a spin in some way, objectivity even became a bad word in modern "journalism". I think this is an example of education not working correctly.

Readers only have superficial means to reward or punish journalism, which is much more focused on getting attention and clicks these days. Advertising always has been their main income, but the economy thoroughly changed in recent years.

All these issues undermine trust and in the end more arcane conspiracy theories serve as an explanation, why we read so much shit left and right.

rootusrootus5• 2 years ago

As always, the media softens the truth to try and keep their subscriber numbers up. Or their inboxes from overflowing with death threats. They sugarcoat the problem as "political polarization" but this is bullshit. These conspiracy theories are almost entirely a right wing phenomenon.

If you put a Trump sign in your yard, will you get death threats? Nope. Laughed at? Maybe, but not to your face. People are afraid of Trump supporters. Now try putting a Harris sign in your yard. Your local sheriff will tell the world to make sure they keep track of you for future recriminations. You'll get anonymous death threats in your mailbox.

There is sickness in politics today, but the solution is not "fix both sides."

croes2• 2 years ago

There is also left wing violence, more often from the right but not zero from the left.

rootusrootus5• 2 years ago

Agreed, I won't absolve the left from having some loonies. But they are recognized as the loonies they are. On the right it has become mainstream. The things I hear from friends and family are just mind blowing, and they think what they're saying is normal. So much anger, so much venom.

codingwagie5• 2 years ago

A lot of storms are blown out of proportion to get clicks. There is a large gap between the predicted damage and the actual damage.

rootusrootus5• 2 years ago

To get clicks, or to keep people alive after a few storms in the not-that-distant past were not recognized for the monsters they were until it was too late for people to evacuate?

There is certainly a risk that people will take the next warnings less seriously. And then an unexpectedly large number of people will die, and we will cycle again.

mykowebhn• 2 years ago

The paradox seen in many today is that the stupider people in fact really are the smarter they believe themselves to be.

bell-cot• 2 years ago

Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes

But even before the Speed: Horseback tech upgrade was discovered, "kill the messenger" was an all-too-common human reaction.

SHAadder• 2 years ago

Is this what hackers do all day? Watch mainstream media articles talk sh* about politicians they don't like? https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqC.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_Active_Auroral_... https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ee/53/36/ac05709...

It's an interesting theory, at best this is virtue signalling taken as GOSPEL by the other side.. so BAU.

switch007• 2 years ago

“Nowadays, there’s so much bad information out there that if we spent our time getting rid of it, we’d have no more time.”

Are they referring to the Mayor of Tampa warning "you will die"?

ladzoppelin• 2 years ago

Guys I am not disagreeing with anyone here but the patents for weather technologies are very real and gag orders are also very real so could someone please explain or link to info on why these things exist instead of saying covid made people stupid, which I assume means you also think yourself and all government leaders are now dumber? That does not mean anyone is causing hurricanes but maybe if more information on technologies that has been for decades was explained it would not be so confusing and these things would not get so out of hand.

AnimalMuppet3• 2 years ago

the patents for weather technologies are very real

Would you cite some of them, then? Especially ones that are not just "weather technologies" but are capable of creating, amplifying, and/or steering hurricanes?

SketchySeaBeast8• 2 years ago

One doesn't need to be able to build the thing they patent. I've seen conspiracy theorist link to weather technology patents but they are things like "create a fog", which I think we'll both agree is SLIGHTLY less energetic than the current extreme weather, so if you know of a patent for and evidence of a working hurricane machine I'd like to see it. We can't just say "well they seed rain, therefore they have a hurricane machine".

joshdavham• 2 years ago

It's not hard to accept that stupid people fall for these kinds of conspiracy theories, but I'll never forget that one professor I had in uni who was teaching us chaos theory and dynamical systems and was convinced that the government was controlling the weather. I'm kinda skeptical how much education can do to fix conspiratorial thinking. If even a professor teaching chaos theory is convinced that the government is controlling the weather then frankly anyone could probably be convinced.

autoexec6• 2 years ago

yeah, idiots fall for more misinformation, but lots of very well educated people still fall for conspiracy theories. I feel like it's more of a lack of trust than a lack of education.

tempestn• 2 years ago

You've got to look at rates. I'd place a substantial bet that the percentage of professors, or even just college grads, who believe that is lower than in the general population. (Though you have to be specific about the question. We can control the weather in some very limited ways, but we can't, for example, trigger a hurricane. Or prevent one.)

VyseofArcadia3• 2 years ago

I want to shout out a specific man quoted in the article.

“I’ve been doing this for 46 years and it’s never been like this,” says Alabama meteorologist James Spann.

I grew up in Alabama, and I am positive James Spann has saved my life more than once with his tornado outbreak coverage. I can still hear him saying, "get to shelter now". He was a comforting voice at 2am when you and your family are huddled in the most central room of your house because mother nature is actively trying to kill you.

robmccoll• 2 years ago

Yes! James Spann was and is an excellent source of meteorological information. I remember him coming to our school and talking to kids about his job and encouraging us to take an interest in science and the world around us. Alabama needs more people like him and fewer people who are likely to encourage conspiratorial thinking for political points at the potential cost of human life.

Also, appreciate the username - great game.

ZeroGravitas2• 2 years ago

James Spann has also claimed that climate change isn't happening and it's just scientists chasing funding that explains their findings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Spann#Global_warming

So a bit of a "first they came for the climate scientists and I did nothing" vibe.

VyseofArcadia3• 2 years ago

That is unfortunate, but the man still does good work every time weather is putting lives at stake in Alabama.

gitaarik11• 2 years ago

On his wiki page it says:

"He asserts that climate change is naturally caused, as part of the climate's cyclical nature."

So you are, like many people, misunderstand him, and many other people like him, that they don't deny climate change, but just aren't convinced that it is primarily caused by humans.

There is actually no scientific data that proofs the idea that humans are the primary cause of climate change, so it is still an open question, and therefore different beliefs about it should be respected.

But it's such a controversial and sensitive topic, that many people don't even want to be open to another perspective, which is sad.

cheeseomlit• 2 years ago

Is this really indicative of a broad societal trend, or is it just one guy with an LLM and some burner emails?

VyseofArcadia3• 2 years ago

I have only anecdata for this, but I have a strong suspicion that people just don't think about things on social media the same way they do physical interactions.

If someone standing outside the grocery store hands you a flyer that claims the government can control the weather and they're sending you hurricanes on purpose, you'd dismiss them as insane and continue on your way. When your high school buddy Denise posts it on Facebook, though, you're more likely to believe it. Even if you'd think Denise would be crazy if she went out and handed out flyers at the grocery store.

It's like most of us have a built-in crazy filter that works fine for in-person interactions, but it breaks down when that exact same interactions happens online.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

This is why I never believe a tweet that I can’t confirm myself. I only pay attention to sciencey/CS people on twitter. Talking heads and political sources there are always nearly extremely biased and most are flat out untruthful.

arp2422• 2 years ago

I'm not so sure about this explanation; people believed in conspiracy theories in the past. Witch-hunts for example are fundamentally not that different from Q-Anon and all of that bollocks: "mysterious dark forces do evil stuff when we're not looking".

The whole "they're abusing our children" is also a trope that goes back a long time, most recently during the 80s with the whole "Satanic Ritual Abuse" stuff. That was much worse, because innocent people's lives were complete wrecked over what was complete bollocks. Pizzagate is near-identical, with s/daycare/pizzahut/.

More examples can be found throughout history – they're typically not called "conspiracy theories", but often they're not that different at its core.

I think what social media has done is allowing people to reach a wider audience. That person outside the grocery store reaches what, maybe a few hundred people with several hours of work? On the internet you can reach about 1.5 billion English speaking people with a minute of work. And that person outside the grocery store has no real way to organise a meaningful community, even if they do manage to gain 2 or 3 acolytes. On the internet you just create a Facebook group, or reddit sub, or whatever.

And all of that is including only the "crazy people". Add bad faith actors to the mix spreading misinformation simply to cause chaos and things quickly become well fucked.

mindcrime7• 2 years ago

It's mind boggling. And I can't even begin to explain it. We live in an age when something pretty close to the sum total of human scientific knowledge is available online, and mostly for free (especially if you count shadow libraries like Anna's Archive, LibGen, Sci-Hub, Zlib, etc). There's millions or billions of pages of high-quality scientific content, millions or billions of hours of lectures on everything from Geology to Abstract Algebra to High Energy Physics.

Anybody can use Khan Academy to get a reasonably decent education on critical aspects of math and science. Sites like Stack Exchange, (some) sub-reddits, physicsforums.com, etc. make it possible for anybody to solicit feedback and corrections on almost any technical topic.

In short, it's possible to be as educated as you want to be, and it's mostly free except for the time and effort involved. And instead a large portion of the population seem to be not only not pursuing real knowledge, but actively rejecting it and embracing obvious bullshit.

WTH people?

OK yes.. I know. Somebody is going to say it. The critical phrase above is time and effort involved. And maybe that's right. Maybe it's just laziness. But somehow that doesn't feel right. And I understand the notion that the widespread interconnectedness of the Internet allows small numbers of people with fringe beliefs to "find each other" and reinforce each other's nuttery, and that has some amplification effect on the prevalence of flat-earth thinking, etc.

And yet, I still don't think that explains what's going on with people. And the frank truth is, I don't have an explanation. Or a solution. And I wish I did. I hope sombody does. Because as @taylodl says in another thread:

These kinds of articles reinforce my idea that we're witnessing our society collapse before our very eyes.

I concur, and this troubles me deeply.

mppm2• 2 years ago

I can't explain it either, but maybe prophesies of impending collapse are a bit premature. The world has never been particularly rational, even in places that have near 100% literacy. Just look at the number of people who believe in astrology or homeopathy, not to mention that one guy who created the Earth and its inhabitants some 4000 years ago, in six days no less.

mindcrime7• 2 years ago

Fair enough. But I'll just say that I feel like I've seen a pronounced change in my lifetime, and more pointedly in the last 5-10 years, that I find acutely disturbing, even compared against that "background rate".

And maybe the answer really is as simple as "social media". Which I find to be a sad idea, as the potential of social media act as a force for good still exists and is something I've always been particularly appreciative of.

wcoenen2• 2 years ago

And yet, I still don't think that explains what's going on with people. And the frank truth is, I don't have an explanation.

Humans are social creatures and feel the need to align with those around them. Combine this natural inclination with social media algorithms that show you more and more of whatever they have determined to be "engaging content", and you get a feedback loop that spreads viral content and drives people insane.

mindcrime7• 2 years ago

I agree that that is at least part of the problem. I'm iffy on the issue of whether or not that is the entirety of the problem.

smrtinsert3• 2 years ago

I think sadly there are some people that simply will not be able to understand the material. For them it is much easier to believe in fairy tales and giant egg beaters that cause hurricanes than it is to study science. They certainly are concerned about a reproducibility crisis in academia. If I've learned anything by occasionally listening to Joe Rogan is that people (men I guess?) demand to be heard - even if they have no idea what they're talking about. The fact that exist means they should have a say in matters they have no understanding off in the slightest.

richardw• 2 years ago

Why are there no class actions to take politicians to task for spreading life risking lies? It seems like a slam dunk in such a litigious society.

time0ut• 2 years ago

I've always been fascinated by conspiracy theories. The weather weapon conspiracy isn't even new. I remember hearing "they" were controlling the weather to create storms using HAARP [0] like 20 years go.

Back then you had to seek this stuff out though. It was on obscure internet forums, fringe websites, and late night talk radio.

I am not sure what to make of the current situation. Its concerning. I think there are a lot of factors at play though with a big one being we gave everyone a megaphone and then monetized the result regardless of any negative consequences.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_Active_Auroral_...

tech_ken• 2 years ago

This is not an education issue, conspiracy theory prevalence is driven entirely by social dynamics and motivated reasoning. Watch that 2018 documentary about flat-earthers; one of the main 'characters' is like an aeronautics engineer capable of setting up a $12K laser gyroscope, but unwilling to believe it when it tells him the Earth is not flat. MGT is not spouting this stuff because she's stupid, she's spouting it because she can use the narrative to further her political agenda. All this conspiracy stuff over the last 10 years starts from what people want to be true about the world (ex. "the current political regime is evil and it is ethical to overthrow it"), and works backwards to decide what facts will justify that ("they are using the weather to hurt their political enemies"). That rank-and-file voters parrot this stuff is because it's a shibboleth for their social circle, and because it gives their chosen political proxies clout and attention; its truth is irrelevant to all but the most gullible.

EasyMark7• 2 years ago

It’s time that the government forms a department for this to prosecute these crimes, including working with interpol to track down foreign criminals. Then throw them in jail for a very long time. Death threats shouldn’t count as pranks but precursors to murder and be charged harshly (5-10 years in prison). I don’t care if you’re a radicalized suburban mom or MS13, no mercy for this buffoonery

rysertio• 2 years ago

The problem is we taught people to trust science, instead of teaching them science. People should learn to be able to critically analyze data and statistics.

_1tem2• 2 years ago

I’m beginning to understand the worldview of these people. For those who don’t understand science and technology, it is simply magic. And the government and scientists are magicians. So it’s not surprising when they blame the magicians for what is happening to them. From their point of view, their entire experience is dictated by powerful figures who create magical things such as “click a button to make stuff appear at my home with same day shipping” and “bring Napoleon alive on the screen”. I’m beginning to understand why they start to attribute everything to these entities who create such seemingly impossible things. It is a type of pagan idolatry.

smrtinsert3• 2 years ago

Is the real crisis here Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/TikTok? The lies just fly through all of them in an instant.

Why bother sending a military against the United States when we can be divided defeated by some guy "just asking questions" after "doing his own research" and sharing to his millions of followers.

tim333• 2 years ago

This has some signs of deliberate Russian misinformation for example the most prominent backer of saying the government is controlling the weather is Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene who has a record of parroting Kremlin propaganda. You've got to remember the US is sending many billions in military aid to Ukraine to kill Russian troops and Russia which can't attack the US back physically, probably is retaliating through information warfare.

Meteorologists get death threats as hurricane conspiracy theories thrive

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