Eleftheros

That's it? That's the Global Warming Hypothesis? Oh, well, in that case we better ban fossil fuels immediately, or humanity will be extinct by 2030.

For the second time, define what you mean by the "Global Warming Hypothesis", because otherwise it is a meaninglessly broad and vague question.

Simple. It's because I'm not scared of reading material that disagrees with what I currently believe.

That depends on what you think the "Global Warming Hypothesis" is. If you mean the 97% consensus view that the earth has warmed since 1850 and that human activity can change the climate, then none of it has been disproven. On the other hand, if it includes predictions by people like Al Gore that the Arctic will be ice-free by 2013, or the UN's prediction that "nations would be wiped off the face of the earth by the year 2000 by rising sea levels" then there is an entire book that could be written about failed apocalyptic predictions.

There is no scientific consensus. There is a political consensus. And there's no need to drag up the fabled "97% consensus", because that is and always was a vague and pointless mess. I agree with that 97% consensus because the questions were so broad - Has the earth warmed since 1850? Can human beings change the climate? That is not the issue at hand, as activists well know. The issues at hand are: How much of climate change can be attributed to human activity? Is climate change dangerous? Can we do something about it? Would the cure be worse than the disease? On that score, there is full political consensus, but no scientific consensus, as there could hardly be, given the speculative nature of the enterprise.

That's exactly why consensus doesn't matter, in fact. Because the idea of a consensus is used, always, to create some single fixed and sacred unchallengable narrative (as with global warming and many other topics), and is thus the opposite of science.

No, that is not the point. The point is that experts can always be wrong, and thus their conclusions should always be able openly challenged. It's not enough to call them all "deniers" and continue to believe in your own perfection. As the great Richard Feynman said: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." The moment that you accept as truth one particular narrative - which is the only way to explain absurd political initiatives such as Net Zero - you have abandoned science in favor of dogma. "I would rather have questions that can't be answered rather than answers that cannot be questioned." Doesn't work that way in the 21st century, Richard - in fact, it's the complete opposite. No wonder people are losing trust in "science".

As the CIA reported in a special report in 1974: "The Western world's leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental climatic change. The world is returning to the type of climate which has existed over the last 400 years. That is, the abnormal [warm] culture of agriculture-optimism is being replaced by a normal climate of the neo-boreal [cold] era." Or, as the NOAA wrote in its Volume 4, Number 4 issue of October 1974: "Some climatologists think that the present cooling trend may be the start of a slide into another period of major glaciation, popularly called an "ice age". "Many climatologists have associated this drought and other recent weather anomalies with a global cooling trend which, if prolonged, pose serious threats to major food-producing regions of the world. Or you could watch the 1978 documentary "In Search of the Coming Ice Age", which intends to explain "how the human population is causing The Earth to Freeze." I understand why modern-day politicians don't want to talk about this stuff, but even without the Internet back in the 1970s, the sources are still available to those who care to look.

They will most likely have a long and fruitful career. This 'pandemic' is not going to end until the vaccine hustlers give up and go away, which won't be any time soon. The German authorities are now officially fretting about a new variant dubbed 'Eris', and the country's Standing Committee on Vaccination, better known by its acronym, STIKO (yes, really) is recommending more and more shots to maybe combat this maybe not-so-major threat. We will not be free of the virus until we are free of the vaccinators.

Some people suffer from anatidaephobia, which is "the fear that a duck may be watching you." And for those who think I am joking, this is a real thing.

Number 3 bus (8 baht) will take you (a roundabout way) to the BTS at Mo Chit. https://www.transitbangkok.com/lines/bangkok-bus-line/3

Activists say these stupid things simply to get attention and cause a reaction. My four-year-old niece often displays similar behavior. And there's always an outlet for their attention-seeking in woke dunghills like The Guardian or the BBC.

In case there is anyone so lacking in a sense of humour to take what I wrote seriously, let me reassure you that this was a joke. Well almost. The serially woke ABC Australia state radio did actually ask this question of Australian chess master John Adams, who summed up the situation accurately. "Trust the taxpayer funded national broadcaster to apply ideological Marxist frameworks to anything & everything in Australia!"

Yes, but on the other hand it's a racist game since white always goes first.....

The research I quoted earlier in the thread suggests one reason (out of many) why this is unlikely to be "totally sexist". I'm sure that cultural aspects play a role, but there sure to be multiple factors involved.

There are bound to be multiple factors involved. One could simply be mental stamina, as chess is mentally draining to play. Another could be that more boys take up chess than girls in the first place, creating a larger pool of talent. To dip a toe into a sensitive subject, there is some research suggesting that while average intelligence is similar in men and women, the spread of intelligence is greater in men; that is, there are more male geniuses than female geniuses, but also more male morons than female morons.

No. It means that, for whatever reasons, the very best male chess players are better than the very best female players. Even the phenomenal Judit Polgar, who was the world No 1 ranked female player for 25 years in a row, could never get higher than No. 8 in the world in the overall rankings. No other woman comes even close to Polgar's achievements.

And there's no need for companies to worry about being flooded with job applications written by ChatGPT on behalf of illiterates seeking work, as ChatGPT-generated inquiries are easy to spot. They are punctiliously grammatical, tick all the boxes of a person keen to toady to modern cultural fads like "diversity" and "inclusion" and are about as interesting and individual as rice porridge. They're so good, they're awful.

A good way to look at ChatGPT is as a natural-language front end to Wikipedia.

It takes less than a minute to set up a personal (and free) ChatGPT instance to play with and anyone who is interested in this technology should certainly invest that time. There are hundreds of versions of this technology out there, though as one poster has already noted, this is not really AI at all, but is based on Large Language Models (LLMs) which churn out results based on the input that they have stored.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there is some area of life or culture where you disagree with the "official" narrative being promoted in the legacy media on behalf of government. For example, let's say that you believe in the statement: "A man cannot biologically become a woman." If you ask ChatGPT to write a few paragraphs on why this is obviously true, you will get back a load of mealy-mouthed crap about how "The idea that a man can become a woman overnight is a common misconception. A man who wants to become a woman would need to undergo a series of surgeries... It's not possible for a man to become a woman without changing their behavior. " ... etc etc. I know this because I just asked ChatGPT this very question and that's what I got back. Its bias is so extreme that it is prepared to abandon physical reality in order to promote the current "official" fad.

It suggests, correctly, that there is far more content aimed at promoting and encouraging emotional climate hysteria than there is taking an even-handed skeptical scientific approach.

And so, if you ask ChatGPT to make the case against weepy hysteria over climate change (as I did), it answers with a screed explaining why you should get hysterical and why you should always, always, listen to your friendly government and obey their diktats. I expect the same obtains for anything to do with Covid, monkey pox, people who identify as cats, and any other topic where there is only one 'official narrative' and everything else is 'disinformation'. It's a chicken-and-egg thing. Did ChatGPT write Wikipedia or did Wikipedia write ChatGPT?

When the AI can get fitted with decent robotic skills, it can fulfill Thoreau's predictions about "those who serve the state." "The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well."

http://www.kailchan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Bangkok_metro_map.jpg Note that this is a futuristic map - some of the lines (orange line, green line east branch from Udom Suk etc) are projections and not in service, even if they are under construction. Edit: I'm not sure how accurate this map is - Yellow Line is correct, but the Pink Line looks off, so take this with a pinch of salt. The Thai map is the more accurate one, for sure.