I’ve known this guy for a long time. He’s grown up in rural America so he has all the same reasons for supporting Trump as those people typically do with the added oddity of being more impacted by the negative outcomes of those policies. Guns, immigration, general economic stuff. At least those are the reasons they’ll state publicly.

It seems more like an in-group thing than anything else to me. I would have expected some sort of expression of disagreement with Trump on this particular issue but he says he thinks Democrats will do the same thing despite all evidence to the contrary. That is how he’s chosen to rationalize the situation.

I know a Ukrainan born US citizen with a significant amount of family still living in Ukraine who is also a Trump supporter. He hates Russia and wants Ukraine to maintain independence. I asked him a couple of weeks ago what he thought would happen to Ukraine if Trump was reelected and he said Ukraine would probably be left to fend for themselves. This statement did not come with remorse or condemnation, it was delivered in the same way you would describe the winner of a sporting event. A simple statement of fact.

I don’t know how to respond to that kind of thinking. If the understanding that your vote might lead to the death of your family members doesn’t break through the political polarization in this country and make you reconsider then I don’t think anything will.

$600 million / 55,000 claims = ~$10,000

Not a great deal imo but not exactly $3 either

I’m completely confident that people 150 years from now will say very similar things about us and our contemporaries. Maybe that knowledge will help you chill the fuck out, even just a bit.

He is a serial rapist so that is about as on-brand as it gets.

I think I’m fine with the phrasing as is

That’s a retarded description of the fall of Rome.

I’m not saying it’s not possible that the Sims franchise has gotten worse. I’m just saying that lots of people would have described every Sims game in the same terms OP did. I’m also saying that your tastes and preferences can change over time. It’s possible, but certainly not the only option, that these two things are more true than it is that Sims is getting worse.

Star Trek is a great example of what I’m talking about actually. How many legitimate scientists do you think are out there right now who either had their interest in science first sparked by or at least significantly influenced from watching some version of Star Trek? I would bet it is a lot of them. Not every concept in Star Trek is worth diving into from a scientific perspective but not trying to do that at all would be a huge mistake.

Now, Graham Hancock isn’t writing Star Trek but people listen to what he’s saying for the same basic reasons they watch Star Trek. They are curious about a science based approach to the world. They don’t know he’s exaggerating some things and taking other things out of context. Use the opportunity to teach them.

In other words, don’t call them idiots for watching Star Trek, start a conversation about space travel.

Lots of things people are interested in could reasonably be described as ridiculous by someone educated in the field. Why is it so hard for you to see those topics as a conversation starter rather than basically calling people idiots for wanting to learn about something?

There’s nothing fun about the game, and you see people streaming it, it’s just building. That’s all they are ever doing. Just building crap.

To be fair, that’s always been a reasonable description of games like Sims, Minecraft, and most other simulation style games, depending on personal preference. Maybe the fact that you’re choosing to use it now means you aren’t as interested in that style of game, or even video games in general, as you used to be. Maybe not, but I think it’s worth considering at least.

You’re ignoring the interesting questions he asks in favor of the easy to hand wave away stuff and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. To be clear, I’m not defending the things he says. I’m pointing out that his more outlandish theories gain more traction because the scientific community doesn’t lean into the softballs and use them as an opportunity to both teach people actual science and understand what different groups of people want to learn about.

Ignore the star / soul example and focus in on the possibility of an ancient and semi advanced civilization existing. That’s the part grabbing people’s attention. Talk about what that would change about our understanding of the past and what sort of evidence we would expect to find if it were true. Showcase people working in related fields and what they have found already. Propose other locations we could look for that evidence and discuss other topics we could study while looking for that evidence in those places. Engage the curiosity, don’t dismiss it. Anyone listening to Graham is likely uneducated in science but interested in it so use that as your jumping off point instead of judging those people for not being farther down the path.

I don’t see how getting more people interested in ancient history and geology is a bad thing. Part of the reason Graham has the wiggle room to make the claims that he makes is that the subject is relatively unstudied.

Obviously there is actual science taking place in the field and has been forever but funding for that kind of thing is notoriously difficult to come by compared to many other fields. Getting grants to study the distant past for essentially no reason other than curiosity is not a priority within an economic system that prioritizes profit over all else. The best way to break through that particular obstacle is getting more people to pay attention and ask questions. If we need a benign conspiracy theory about “big geology” hiding the truth from us to make that happen then where’s the harm in that? The vast majority of people prone to conspiratorial thinking are already farther down that rabbit hole than Hancock’s ideas will take them.

Additionally, actual scientists would do well to learn something from Graham about presentation. Despite what you may think of him, the way he talks about the subject resonates with people. People don’t want hear a regurgitation of facts in a research paper. Speculate a bit and get people excited about your future work. You don’t need to go to the extremes that he does but don’t refuse to branch out from what can be conclusively proven today either. Talk about your theories and what you’re hoping to find / learn just as much as you talk about the results of your research.

Oh quit whining and get off that cross you’ve prepared for yourself. You started this exchange by insulting my grasp of the concepts at play and blaming the situation on my lack of understanding. We both know that’s not related at all and all you’re accomplishing is making yourself feel better temporarily by looking down your nose at someone you perceived to be less intelligent than you.

Europe is going to be a shitshow in the coming decades no matter what direction voters are trending. We’re all talking about this as if it’s primarily a political issue and it just isn’t. Climate change is already fucking our shit up and that’s going to get exponentially worse. Desperate people don’t care about imaginary lines on a map.

We can’t even deal with a comparatively small amount of migrants without backsliding into the same kind of fascism that our grandparents had to invent nuclear bombs to subdue 80 years ago. There’s no way we’re going to deal with what’s coming in a rational way.

I think pre post-apocalypse is just the apocalypse. If you read the news these days that sounds like a pretty accurate description of the time we’re living in. We’re all just pretending it hasn’t started yet.

Hey now that’s not fair. AI can randomize your music playlists, summarize an email, write terrible code, steal others work, and completely invade your privacy.

What’s that? Oh, I guess you’re right, we could do all that stuff already.

Every once in a while they get faced with a line on a chart somewhere so unbelievably vertical that they have no choice but to look beyond next quarter. Power consumption going 10x in 2 years is one of those times.

It’s already allocated to healthcare, that’s the point. Instead of paying a huge insurance premium to a useless middleman you pay the government a medium tax amount.

If we changed nothing else at all besides who actually gets what you already pay it would still be significantly cheaper. If your insurance provider gets nationalized you could even cut a check to the same entity you do now.

The stance you’re are taking is exactly how this power grab by the courts becomes tolerated.

OK then don’t tolerate it. Or perhaps it isn’t that simple and that’s the point.

You can act like your superior insight into our predicament makes a difference but does it really? From where I sit it looks like you’re doing the same thing I am, albeit more pretentiously, and that is lamenting the fact that we don’t have an appreciable impact on the situation.