Short post, because actual work I should be doing.
We all know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes – some conmen tell the Emperor the new clothes can only be seen by those with discernment and refinement. The Emperor is naked, everybody can see it, but have the ability/discipline to not convert what they see into knowledge.
It’s quite a talent, to be that obedient and willing to go along with the patently absurd.
The “neo-liberal” in the title is not strictly accurate, of course, because positivism and obedience is ancient and seen in all the isms. Stalinism had Lysenko, etc etc. But I use it for now because, well, we live under neoliberalism, since the early 1980s really, which is a Long Time.
All this is because an impact and action denialist commented on a Bsky post yesterday. I had made the point that our leaders had been warned about carbon dioxide build-up and its impacts over and over, for decades.
There was some one-and-a-half (not quite “to”, you see) and fro as he kept moving the goalposts. I pointed out that he was picking one metric (“well-being”) and other metrics were possible, such as ocean acidification and biodiversity loss.
He replied with this
I screengrabbed it simply because it was objectively hilarious.
Anyway, this was pretty much the final straw and because he was also setting up strawmen and claiming I had said things I hadn’t, I pulled the plug.
The point is this. There are “smart” (been to the right universities, got the right credentials) people who are “successful” who are incapable (beyond merely unwilling, I think) to join the dots, because to join the dots would crush their cosmology. If you say the Emperor is naked, you are cast out, and you also have to cope with the humiliation of your previous stupidity/wilful blindness. “Awks.”
This is not a new observation, and having written this, I am embarrassed for having wasted my time and your bandwidth on it.