A few months ago I posted a Bingo Card. Thanks to feedback, more Climateball exchanges, with contrarians, and some vacation days, a clearer image has emerged. Here is the current version (1.1):
The up-to-date version will be found on the Climateball Bingo page. The image has been generated using a mindmapping tool. The one I use is called SimpleMind. Don’t you forget about that great band!
The central square features an acronym that stands for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. The C must not be interpreted as geological catastrophism, but as catastrophization. Which begs the question: how do contrarians know that potential catastrophes are a product of mere catastrophizing? Taking a stand on that question moves them away from skepticism.
The eight squares around the center (in blue) represent the core of the contrarian Bingo. The four corners (Science, the Press, Politics, and Evidence) orient most of the other squares into quadrants. The four squares between them (Advocacy, Costs, Bias, and Truth) tie the corners together like the Dude’s rug his room.
Finding the middle circle (in mustard yellow or light green) was the reason why I started the exercise in the first place: to reduce my 49-square Bingo to 25 squares. It represents what I’m tempted to call the limits of justified disingenuousness. Beyond it the silliness is harder to hide.
The outer circle (in yellow) contains mostly illustrative squares. For instance, “But Galileo” is subsumed under “But My Guru.” I suppose we could let go of them all, but I feel they have historical value. Besides, how fun can a Climateball exchange really be without any appeal to (say) the MWP, Da Paws, or hurricanes? Some of these squares also give you easy wins {1}: take them!
The core of the Bingo could apply to most policy-based arguments I’ve seen online, especially those around COVID. (By serendipity, many Climateball contrarians are also Covidball contrarians.) The middle circle might be generalized even more. Hard to tell what works best. So far it’s been useful to me.
All in all, I like the look of this version. It certainly could be clarified: “But Accelerate” and “But Damascus” rely on knowing Bible stories and weird online communities. There are many other connections between the squares than the ones presented. Classifiers made by hand integrate trade-offs. Lastly, bear in mind that the exercise should not be taken too seriously : I seek an artistic memory palace more than ultimate categories.
As always, comments and suggestions are most welcome.
{1}: Provided winning at Climateball is possible.
...and Then There's Physics 
> By serendipity, many Climateball contrarians are also Covidball contrarians.
For instance:
https://judithcurry.com/2021/05/17/how-epidemiologists-try-to-fool-us-with-flawed-statistical-practices/#comment-950455
The website linked by our favorite troglodyte is quite amazing:
https://anti-empire.com/who-or-what-is-empire/
I think this would count as “But PSYOP.”
I was with you until you said Simple Minds was a great band. Sorry, but your credibility crashed.
I guess I’ll keep my opinion on Duran Duran and Wham! to myself.
“I was with you until you said Simple Minds was a great band. Sorry, but your credibility crashed.”
On The Turning Away …
From A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Andrew,
It was one of the first bands that I saw live in post-apartheid South Africa. Admittedly, we had been rather starved (justifiably) of live music from international artists.
Judy goes “But Consensus”:
https://judithcurry.com/2021/05/23/collapse-of-the-fake-consensus-on-covid-19-origins/
She cites a paper by Henry Bauer in which we can read:
That’d be “But Modulz.” Note 34 reads, as example for “experts”:
Henry’s disinterested posturing can only fool readers who know nothing about Climateball.
“However, the pronouncements in these op-eds effectively shut down inquiry.”
China? China! The UN WHO sent a bunch of people over there who did not have full access. AFAIK they did not completely rule out a laboratory origin.
Heck, if it happened in the US or the EU, I would still expect all forms of obfuscation.
But hey, a strawperson post that ends up talking about the IPCC and guilt by bizarre association.
A conspiracy theory that talks about other conspiracy theories.
David’s concerns are understandable:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/05/david-relman-on-investigating-origin-of-coronavirus.html
However, David might not seem to realize how contrarians and Freedom Fighters could exploit his efforts.
My own intuition would be that to invest in both risk-mitigation efforts might be just better. Less downsides. More upsides.
“Serendipity” is one word for it.
In my naivety I thought that a large part of climate “scepticism” was driven by the very long time lag and very noisy short term data.
Turns out that a time lag of just a few days and huge signal to noise elicits an identical response from the usual suspects.
Did Curry really cite Crichton? Now you’ve made me check…
Judy cites Henry whom cites Michael and Fred, Very Tall.
Your point about how contrarians process data might fit with my latest addition to the Bingo. A sock puppet at Roy’s said today that Richard Feynman discovered that NASA was so corrupt they were willing to kill astronauts to keep the funding coming in. That made me revisit the Wiki page on the affair:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_of_Richard_Feynman
My own reading of this affair is that managers tend to underestimate risks. Risks cost money, and they are tough to communicate objectively. Private (and anonymous) channels still matter. Etc.
There are many ways to spin a story. A story without a story isn’t impossible (think Seinfeld), but it’s still a story.
At first I was pleased that I understood all the boxes in Climateball Bingo 1.1 without even reading Willard’s explanations.
Then I was depressed.
❤
“managers tend to underestimate risks”
Where I work, a certain number of managers consider each job to be a stepping stone to the next, and probably are quite aware of the risks – but generally figure that when the risks become an event (i.e. $#!^ happens) it will be after they have moved on, when someone else is in the chair. You don’t worry as much about risks if you think it will happen to someone else, not you.
Skate fast over thin ice.
I have yet to see any manager consider that
Not even Keith Richard’s manager.
“But Semantics” was on full force this morning:
Warren Buffett might wish to have a word with that contrarian. There’s even a Wiki entry now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrarian
“Dissenter” does not fit the same bill, and “critic” is too self-serving. Everybody’s a critic. Science Cop and auditing are for other things.
Climateball is a word placement discipline.
The cagwocentric bingogram is a masterpiece of posteuclidian polytopy- it corresponds exactly to a stellate polyhedron of 48 faces and cuboctahedral symmetry
The ClimateBingo card can be readily transformed into an elegant three dimensional object using this free software :
https://www.software3d.com/Downloads.php#stella4D
Nice, Russell. I’ll see what I can do.
***
Perhaps I should note that the Climateball Bingo only helps identify, organize, and respond to talking points. These talking points are mostly squirrels. Like a contrarian at Roy’s is fond to do, repeat “But Emails” as soon as you hear the word “Phil,” even if it’s because of an unrelated paper in a discussion about the virtues of medians over means.
That said, the Bingo is powerless against other forms of pragmatic abuse such as this one:
https://judithcurry.com/2021/05/23/collapse-of-the-fake-consensus-on-covid-19-origins/#comment-950837
The basic form of it is “unless you accede to my demands D, you’re a P.” And you can be sure that once you accede to D, you can E, F, and all the alphabet.
That’s in fact the trick that brought me to Climateball. It has been overused at the Auditor’s for many years. Jean recognized it the first time she went:
https://scientistscitizens.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/debate-in-the-blogosphere-a-small-case-study/
This kind of trick can take many forms. There are many ways to protect oneself against it. Hence why I also need to build a Climateball Manual. I will write it when each Bingo page will be around 90%. I already have my outline.
Very well written post linked there Willard.
Here , ready to install at its center of asymmetry, is the 49th component of the Willard Solid,
the Cagwohedron
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/05/climateball-seven-fold-way.html
From Covidball to Climateball in one single step:
https://judithcurry.com/2021/05/23/collapse-of-the-fake-consensus-on-covid-19-origins/#comment-950906
I now am pulled in to opine on nukes because I dared to mention risks.
By chance I already wrote my response four years ago.
Coup de théâtre!
Junior has jumped in the “but debate me” bandwaggon!
Who would have thunk?
Junior? Junior! Curry? Curry! Ignore? Ignore!
The doubled edge sword of the internets, is it doing more good than bad? I think it does more good than bad, but that the ratio of good-to-bad is getting smaller wrt time.
Evidence? Small Hands!
The issue (IMO) with Roger’s approach is that he seems to think that because he is a researcher who is interested in scientific integrity issues he is then allowed to probe in ways that imply that there might be some scientific integrity issues. However, just because you’re interested in scientific integrity issues doesn’t mean you have some special right to ask leading questions. You can, of course, do so, but I don’t think you can expect people to answer. Science might not be social, but some aspects of it clearly are.
simple minds. moshpit was in LA during the wonder years.
hang out with SKA bands, punk and new wave.
needless to say my warddrobe and hair went through daily changes.
introducing the coolest dude moshpit ever kew.
lars..
anarcho punk
two tone, or black and white. think english beat, LA style.
how many members of this band lived in the graguate student dorm at UCLA.
dorm parties were lit
from untouchables to repo man and plate of shrimp
theres a lattice of coincidences that lays on top of everything
Nice to see you back, Mosh.
Bill made me think of you:
https://judithcurry.com/2021/05/23/collapse-of-the-fake-consensus-on-covid-19-origins/#comment-950877
I did not have the courage to tell Bill that my first version was a simple B&W online-generated bingo card. So I told him about Flame Warriors:
https://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/
> Evidence? Small Hands!
*Six millions Jews enter the chat.*
More srsly, it’s an old conundrum. We’re all in this together. You may not have to play Climateball with contrarians, but sooner or later somebody has to do it.
And it so happens that contrarians help me with my Bingo. The better their responses, the better my Bingo. It also improves my Manual, as I’m trying to parry their pragmatic abuses in a way to produce constructive exchanges, at least from an artistic standpoint.
Ideally, contrarians would need to work. If you want a metaphor:
https://www.urbangreenbluegrids.com/projects/noorderhoek-sneek-the-netherlands/
This comes from this interesting episode of 99 PI:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/pipe-dreams/ `
Contrarian energy won’t disappear if we ignore it. Let’s tap into it!
Let’s show three concrete examples as to why sometimes I love Climateball.
First is this comment by TYSON (who’s a swell guy) in which he quotes Michael McCracken:
https://studylib.net/doc/13020877/the-real-truth-about-greenhouse-gases-and-climate-change-
I would not have found this all by myself. Second is this formal dialogue:
[VLAD] Perhaps you don’t know, but I’m a big guy in the SCIENCE ™ world.
[ESTR] Oh, really?
[VLAD] Very big.
[ESTR] Wow.
[VLAD] Like, this big.
*Spreads his arms as far as he can.*
[ESTR] Impressive.
[VLAD] But in fact, that’s not the true value of how big I am.
[ESTR] No?
[VLAD] No. I can’t tell you how big of a SCIENCE ™ guy I am.
[ESTR] Why?
[VLAD] You wouldn’t understand it anyway.
[ESTR] Damn. That’s big.
[VLAD] Why bother?
[ESTR] Words of wisdom, Vladimir. Words of wisdom.
I would not be able to write this kind of dialogue without meeting contrarians.
My opponent is turning into a quite ordinary SCIENCE ™ guy, but he told me that he happens to be the nephew of John-Linsey Hood:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Linsley_Hood
which I find rather cool. JLH amps are still made.
Whatever the silly arguments, there are amazing people in Climateball.
Black hat? Black coat? White shoes?
Why must Mosh’s albedo sensibility end at his feet?
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/05/climate-communication-time-to-lighten-up.html
Watching the Climateball-Covidball axis form in real time was a truly a wonder. A old classmate of mine, generally sensible, posted a WSJ oped on the lab leak coauthored by our old friend Richard Muller, and I noted his backstory. My classmate invoked “no evidence either way”, and I observed that the consensus of unlikely was established early based on physical evidence and hadn’t changed. His reply was that scientists had been wrong before, Galileo, and he preferred to keep and open mind. And it hit me: that always means that, contrary to keeping an open mind, he is utterly committed to never taking “unlikely” for an answer.
> that always means that, contrary to keeping an open mind, he is utterly committed to never taking “unlikely” for an answer.
Bingo. No pun intended. More srsly, of course pun intended.
I’m writing a post on How to Reason by Analogy using the Climateball-Covidball axis. Stay tuned.
afeman –
> Watching the Climateball-Covidball axis form in real time was a truly a wonder.
Yuuup.
Nice comment.
But speed limits
But no proof masks work
But sheep
But authoritarianism
Bit there have always been pandemics
…..
And of course, but modulz
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