I think my comment has been badly misinterpreted given the down voting. I’ve reread my post and I’m not sure why it has been so misinterpreted. Clearly I failed to convey my intent. Obviously the blog post is about how one can construct a misleading graph by cherry picking data.
The blog shows how one can cleverly display data to reinforce a prior belief. In this case the prior belief is that temperature is not rising. Recently I’ve encountered a number of people making the claim that temps have been declining. I’ve wondered why this claim is being made and now I know the source. As shown in the blog post the source is a purposefully misleading graph. As stated by the author this misleading graph has recently been making the rounds on the internet.
This is a very nice blog post. Quite instructive. Recently, several times I’ve run into people tell me that temps in the U.S. are rising and I’ve wondered why they make such a claim. The blog sources the claim and overall the point I take from the blog post is that it’s easy to deceive people since people seek, by and large, confirmation of preconceived ideas rather than the truth.
The real election hacking come from the fact that people are easy to sway. We succumb to subtle nudges in ways that we aren’t always consciously aware of. We now live in an era where a given nudge can be directed and concentrated to the right group of people and doing this at scale is practical.
The adage in politics has been, “All politics is local.” This appears to be changing in the U.S. Money and influence comes from all over and the issues that rile up people enough to vote are less and less tied to local problems. At least this is how I see things. I don’t know a good solution to the problem. Perhaps Asimov had it right in his story “Franchise”.
Not the person you responded to but my answers to your questions are no. But it's still unfortunate that things have gotten to this point and hopefully seeing the changes before our eyes will lead to action.
It's OK to point out things are bad even though I haven't done everything possible to mitigate the harm. Perhaps that makes me a hypocrite but the veracity of the claim that it's unfortunate that we've gotten to this point still stands. Please don't let my hypocrisy or anyone else's hypocrisy prevent you from recognizing the growing harm to the environment that humans are causing.
It's unfortunate that as a species we tend to optimize for local min/max rather than global ones when engaged in our everyday behavior. Only regulations backed by strong political leadership will cause a change in behavior in enough people to make a difference. We need nudges.
Quite a few Native Americans did not willingly give up their lifestyle as soon as they could. They were herded into reservations that were way too small to continue their lifestyle. Change was forced upon them. This was especially true when the buffalo herds died off. I’m thinking in particular of the Great Plains Indians.
Overall though your point stands. It’s not like billions of people are going to willingly give up the comforts that we have. Though in part this is because it is no longer feasible to live off the land as people did thousands of years ago. The only way to go back, as you call it, is for the population of the world to decline. This would mean a drastic reduction in the birth rate. There is a number for the size of the population of the world such that if everyone of those people lived like Americans pollution wouldn’t be large enough to be a problem.
Your comment is at odds with my perception of the system of bail in the U.S. It was quite illuminating. Thanks for the reference to the paper. The system is much more nuanced than I thought it was. I guess this is the danger of reducing a complex system to a set of simple black/white statements.
Nicely put. Your comment reminds me of Rubin and Summers ripping up Glass-Steagall at the end of the Clinton administration and the current uproar at attempts to get rid of some banking regulations.
The blog shows how one can cleverly display data to reinforce a prior belief. In this case the prior belief is that temperature is not rising. Recently I’ve encountered a number of people making the claim that temps have been declining. I’ve wondered why this claim is being made and now I know the source. As shown in the blog post the source is a purposefully misleading graph. As stated by the author this misleading graph has recently been making the rounds on the internet.