So we need about 5-10 times larger bombings when ww2 to cool the global temperature with one degree. But we have increased the global temperature with one degree thanks to global warming. So you need at least 10-20 times larger bombings then ww2 to get a tiny atomic winter. And probably a lot larger to get any catastrophic cooling.
Well we’ve done 2 over cities closely spaced with each other and also following a firebombing campaign that burned a lot more cities. If a burning city or forest was all that was required for a nuclear winter we’d have had one long ago. Forests burn without the aid of nuclear weapons.
To get to nuclear winter levels of ash and dust you probably need dozens to hundreds of detonations and burning cities.
Uh, kind of? It has been shown that there was some contact between the Polynesians and the west coast of South America. The Kon-Tiki hypothesis is usually understood to be something like "the Polynesian islands were populated by a group of indigenous South Americans who drifted there in a boat", which is certainly not exclusively the case (an overall west-to-east migration to populate Polynesia is all but certain and corroborated by evidence across multiple scientific disciplines) and might still not even be partially the case, as the contact could have been Polynesians sailing to South America and back (as the paper's authors acknowledge).
Given that we know the Polynesians to have been expert navigators who explored basically the whole Pacific basin over the course of centuries, that explanation for the contact seems more plausible to me than the drifting-from-South-America explanation for the genetic admixtures reported last year; but even if you think otherwise, the hypothesis wasn't really "proven right".
I think you were a bit lax on the kon-tiki hypothesis. It didn't just posit the west-to-east colonization of Polynesia from South America, but that this was done be white-people originating in the middle east.
So while there is genetic evidence for contact between South America and Polynesia, that evidence is also evidence against the Kon-Tiki hypothesis.
It has been done studies of education and gullibility. Sadly enough people who has some education, like a masters degree, was more gullible then people who lacked education. It was first at PhD-level that education seemed to help.
The explanation was that people with some education become prideful and believed they know more then they did, easy targets for gullibility. But people lacking education had often street smarts and was less susceptible. And the ones with phd:s had learned how complicated things really are and was often reluctant to take a hard opinion about things they did not know much about.
Chekovs gun is a tool for better stories. It does not work in reality, because in the real world it is always a cost to doing things. And extreme action has extreme costs, so very seldom does any country do anything extreme. As an example, nobody has used a nuke in war since ww2.
In the past people believed in lots of stupid things like "god exists", "the poor deserves its situation and the rich has earned its situation", "hatred toward blacks, Jews, neighbor country, homosexuals, handicapped and many more", "kings are good and democracy bad", "the strong country has a right to invade the week country", "the rich are evil and the poor saints" and so one.
So I think the idea that stupidity has increased is an illusion. The thing in the modern world is more that the tolerance for stupidity has decreased so we discover it more. The sad truth is also that each one of us believes in lots of stupid things but we are more interested in finding errors in other when in self improvement. Like Jesus said, "and why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?"
Maybe, in the past stupid was mainly reserved for people who knew very few facts. Knowing or having access to facts was much less common before the internet. So people used to argue about facts. But since those arguments were about facts, they always died down (someone was right and someone wrong) and you did not have a feeling of "expanding stupidity".
Since access to facts is pretty much universal now, people have started arguing about values. If someone states they have different values than you, you call them stupid. Since no one is right an no one wrong, the arguments don't die down and you perceive expanding stupidity.
Stupidity is about lacking intellectual capacity (not necessary the same as IQ, also things like not being interested in thinking, or lacking necessary facts about a subject can give you a lack of capacity.)
Both stating wrong facts and having ridiculous values is correlated with being stupid. So I do not really see how the Fact-value distinction can be used here, stupid people fail at both.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-value_distinction)
I think this is undoubtedly a relatively large contributor to the perception of modern stupidity.
Additionally, I read it as part of some of the written hypotheses, but, upon rereading, I don't know that the exact conditions are captured particularly well in any of them.
I read that as using UV light to transfer energy to the working fluid, not that the actual nuclear reaction itself would be any different to any other nuclear reactor.
Even when it reads "It would be operated at temperatures of up to 22,000°C where the vast majority of the electromagnetic emissions would be in the hard ultraviolet range." ?
FDR tried to manipulate the supreme court by increasing the number of judges.
Lincoln engaged in secret manipulating of the media.
Washington was a slave owner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bil...
https://observer.com/2014/11/abraham-lincoln-as-media-manipu...