this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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I thought this was basically their stance the whole time. People thought it wasn't real at all?
I had a coworker ten fifteen years ago who said basically "God's doing it and it's a sign of the end times." This dude was a trained engineer.
It's always amazing to me how people can be experts in a certain field of science, and then go on to deny other fields of science. I have many coworkers like that as a software engineer.
Itβs not that hard to understand. There is no reason to assume that someone that spent 4-8 years studying computers is going to be an expert in physics or other sciences. That person is an expert in computers and nothing else unless they studied it.
The problem arises tho when people who are an expert in one field or subject use that as validation to them that they are smart. Therefore any other topic they discuss makes them an expert and so you can never have a real discussion with them because in their mind they are always right.
I find it is hard to understand. Because now we all carry around a smartphone and can look at Wikipedia and a variety of other sources. On almost any topic, it is accurate with citations. And it really does not take that many people to create accurate sources of information. Truth basically is singular, you can detail it backwards and forwards. We have public libraries full of accurate information.
What I do understand is that oil companies spend a massive amount of money on branding, marketing, sports, etc. The information people believe isn't just random theories against how fire burning produces CO2 and warms up the Earth. They very specifically believe things the marketing and advertising tells them to. It's a basic business formula to spend x percentage of all your income on marketing. It works across every field, for every $100 income you put $3 right back into keeping your customer "educated" from a voice outside the product material (such as product placement in a film, or a sponsorship message between news stories).
I find people will sell their souls for free songs, free websites, free TV channels. They just don't see how artificial changes in group behavior can become popular through marketing/advertising. They can't face that marketing companies measure increases in sales, and sped precise amounts of money marketing a hamburger shop that everyone knows is there, but still the signal directs customers to change their choice of meals.
Even religions that are not their own. It's taught. They can't face up to the fact that a person who is raised with no religion does not believe the book they believe. And if you take them to a country with a different religion or human language, they can't make the connection that it is all learned.
I can understand not having a skill from experience. Spending 8 years to learn how to do surgery correctly. But there really isn't a reason for humanity to poison itself with marketing and advertising that climate change isn't real - just to keep a specific set of billionaires in power.
We could pay for our TV shows, songs, films, website. Not poison our minds with falsehoods in advertising. That chain hamburger shop doesn't need to remind us it is there, if it's good, we will go get a burger. It's the motivation systems of misinformation that seems the hardest thing to understand and change. People can be incredibly attracted to things they find "funny" or "odd". humanity can be sold all kinds of products that are not good quality or even cheaper.... just by branding/marketing/logo things. I can't understand why people haven't had ENOUGH of it. Like even the Reddit API change was about adding more marketing and cutting out apps that didn't do Reddit advertising.
It used to really boggle my mind too (I met a young earth creationist for the first time in my life, he was a network engineer), but then I realized a lot of people just look at techy type jobs purely to make money, not because they are science and tech nerds.
Many people go towards software engineer/computer science type stuff because that's where the money is. And honestly there is not much there that really would change someones ideology - nothing about sorting algorithms, processor opcodes, schedulers, etc etc really challenges someone's views - just tools to learn to make that paycheck. So a young earther learns what a packet is and how it gets routed from point a to point b - what exactly would challenge his view that the bible is literal in any of that? Those kinds of people don't really have any curiosity about the world and are not looking for any answers
That's the crux of Faith: maintaining it in the face of evidence to the contrary.
I used to work with a young earth Christian programmer. He was a great Dev and a genuinely good person. He also kept his faith to himself and only takes about it when we directly asked him.
It's like religion people who believe the Earth is only 6000 years old or something. They know about Darwin's Theory of Evolution.... but I'm like, dude, that's done by walking around and measuring plants, animals, insects. We have microscopes and DNA now. We know the DNA difference between two kinds of birds. We know how a single cell from female and male come together and follow DNA patterns to create the whole animal, even humans! They just won't accept that DNA was after Darwin's time and proved he was right!
Cut down all the trees and put roads and buildings everywhere since year 1800. Start burning whale oil and then petrol oil as fast as you can. Make everything powered by oil. it's burning, like burning wood at a campfire. Do you see the smoke and gas? Do you think a car is not burning petrol? A power plant isn't burning petrol? Fire! It burns carbon products, wood, uses oxygen. It makes carbon dioxide. "A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of CO2 per year."
Here, can't we take something like a fish tank and put a burning candle in it, and show you the smoke and gas it creates.
Oh, they are dumping pollution into the river and you think the town downstream isn't getting poisoned? Who is the town upstream from where you live.
But the advertising and marketing of the oil companies 'inform them'. You can't convince them how fire works, making smoke and gas. And start counting up how many fires you see driving around on the roads of the world, and how many power plants are burning petrol, etc.
Advertising and marketing can convince them of anything, the stuff they believe just because snazzy presentation.