Academic Heresy Hunters

Did you know, dear reader, that not every person in the world believes in the Everettian (many worlds) multiverse? Shocked, aren’t you. Maybe even outraged, our favorite emotion. I know I am. I know how you feel.

How can people not believe that every time a measurement of a very tiny object is made, entire new universes are spun off, each exactly the same as ours, but each taking only one of the possible new values of the thing measured. Never mind this requires infinite energy and some overseeing entity to ensure each new universe gets the proper value. The Science has declared this theory true and it is therefore our duty to believe it.

It’s appalling in this late day and scientific age that science deniers exist, and are allowed to exist. It’s obvious multiverse deniers should be hunted down and that they should have their awarenesses raised. The hard way, if necessary.

I was so amazed and incensed about this denial that I followed the example Dimitrios Gounaridis and Joshua P. Newell in their Nature: Scientific Reports paper “The social anatomy of climate change denial in the United States” and used AI—AI! AI! AI!—to make maps of multiverse denial in the USA. Like them, I got my denial numbers from trolling around Twitter, searching for malcontents, scientific scofflaws and other bad people.

Here’s what I came up with, a heat map, showing denial hotspots in red.

This map is science itself, and must be believed. Because it used scientific techniques, done on a computer, and AI. Further, the map is a true map, for I did find an instance of multiverse denial on Twitter, and the denier does live in Michigan, the greatest state.

For the poster was me.

I am nothing if not inconsistent.

Now this stunt I made you read, asinine as it is, is no different, at all, in essence from the stunt Gounaridis and Newell pulled off.

Their peer-reviewed effort is just as useful at deciding the truth of “climate change” as my stunt was at deciding the truth of the multiverse. Indeed, mine was better because at least the (many worlds) multiverse has a well known definition that can be understood and therefore critiqued. “Climate change”, on the other hand, has no fixed definition and is allowed to float, depending on the use to which it is put, which is intolerable.

Sometimes “climate change” means that the earth’s climate has changed, which is true and doubted nowhere. Sometimes it’s that all or most of the change is caused by man, which is true, false and uncertain: true that some is, but only because all creatures affect the climate; false (obviously) that all change is due to man; and uncertain how much is due to man. Sometimes “climate change” means a political stance you must embrace that involves it’s “solutions”; resistance to the “solutions” is called “denial” too.

And there are more meanings beside these.

We can sometimes back out the definition authors had in mind. Let’s see if we can do that here, by looking at their Abstract (my paragraphification):

Using data from Twitter (now X), this study deploys artificial intelligence (AI) and network analysis to map and profile climate change denialism across the United States. We estimate that 14.8% of Americans do not believe in climate change. This denialism is highest in the central and southern U.S. However, it also persists in clusters within states (e.g., California) where belief in climate change is high. Political affiliation has the strongest correlation, followed by level of education, COVID-19 vaccination rates, carbon intensity of the regional economy, and income.

The analysis reveals how a coordinated social media network uses periodic events, such as cold weather and climate conferences, to sow disbelief about climate change and science, in general. Donald Trump was the strongest influencer in this network, followed by conservative media outlets and right-wing activists. As a form of knowledge vulnerability, climate denialism renders communities unprepared to take steps to increase resilience. As with other forms of misinformation, social media companies (e.g., X, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok) should flag accounts that spread falsehoods about climate change and collaborate on targeted educational campaigns.

Let’s see what we have: Preposterous self-importance; denialism (a state); gratuitous covid vax mention; woke measure of “carbon intensity”; conspiracy of coordinated enemies who sow disbelief; Orange Man bad; misinformation and the call for both censoring unapproved ideas and propaganda.

That “knowledge vulnerability” is new to me. Sounds like the kind of effeminacy typical in woke academia. They use it like this: “Climate change denialism is also a risk, in the form of knowledge vulnerability.” Aha.

You can only know what is true. (But you can believe anything.) These guys are saying, therefore, that “climate change” is true, and beyond doubt. Which is not possible because there is no fixed definition of the term. What they call true is false, or at least undefined. Which makes this paper is yet another instance of the electronic inquisition for the rooting of out of heretics. But this one uses “AI”.

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