WTF Google?

In which I whinge at Google for getting their core business of search badly wrong.

I am (as so often) looking for my post "I dislike rights-based language". But I can't remember exactly what I called it (when I started this process...). If I search for site:mustelid.blogspot.com "I dislike rights-based language" I get a link to 2021/06 which is, to be fair, Rawls, continued and does (now) refer into the then-future post. But it fails to find the post with that title. And a search for site:mustelid.blogspot.com "language" doesn't pull up anything relevant; nor does site:mustelid.blogspot.com "rights". FFS.

Update 2024/02: Bing finds my posts. I have taken to using it by default for this kind of search.

Another: I wanted my "Malthus" post. It turns out to be Why did Malthus assume linear increase in food? But site:https://wmconnolley.wordpress.com/ malthus doesn't find it. Interestingly, Bing does find it. Has it really come to this? Should I dump my Google stock? Happily, Bing still screws up the "rights" search.

Incidentally, I have "solved" this problem by Google Takeout of all my posts, and using good old reliable grep.

Another: Godwin's law.

Refs

* Torpids 2023

* Extreme Weather #2 – Trends in Frequency and Intensity of Tropical Cyclones out over the Ocean

* Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved

* On Jobs and Economic Dynamism

* The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate

* This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Directionalists vs. Destinationists

* Give Up Seventy Percent Of The Way Through The Hyperstitious Slur Cascade - ACX

* Mixed Feelings About My First Fieldwork Project - Aardvarchaeology

Bad beliefs: Misinformation is factually wrong – but is it ethically wrong, too?

More wank - but I shouldn't spoil the plot - by Lawrence Torcello, who has form. Naively, he wonders whether people are ethically accountable for not just what they do, but what they believe – and how they consume, analyze or ignore information to arrive at their beliefs. If so, we have him bang to rights, because he continues about Plato’s “Republic,” in which Plato depicts Socrates’ endeavors to uncover the nature of justice and goodness. But this is bollox; The Republic is essentially a work of propaganda; "Socrates" is not S but P, and he does not endeavour to uncover the nature of justice, instead he presents a shamelessly biased account of Plato's tribalist ideas. TOSAIE refers, as ever, and I still haven't written it up properly. And to answer his question, yes you are accountable for what you believe, and no putting the blame on Evil Oil Companies is not an answer fit for an adult.

Refs

* Pembroke regatta, pix and vidz

* Extreme Weather #1 – Long term trends in Frequency and Intensity of Landfalling Tropical Cyclones - SoD

* Torpids 2023: a few vidz

Advancing the estimation of future climate impacts within the United States?

Roger Pielke has a Twit complaining bitterly about Advancing the estimation of future climate impacts within the United States. He appears to be correct. I don't have much to add to what he said: it is so badly broken as to be useless. The paper itself begins

Evidence of the physical and economic impacts of climate change is a critical input to policy development and decision making. The potential magnitude of climate change damages, where, when, and to whom those damages may occur across the country, the types of impacts that will be most damaging, and the ability of adaptation to reduce potential risks are all important and interconnected. This study utilizes the reduced-complexity model, Framework for Evaluating Damages and Impacts (FrEDI), to rapidly assess economic and physical impacts of climate change in the contiguous United States (U.S.). Results from FrEDI show that net national damages increase 20 overtime, with mean climate-driven damages estimated to reach $2.9 trillion USD (95% CI: $510 billion to $12 trillion) annually by 2090.

So I think it is intended to be taken seriously; this isn't supposed to be wild, useless speculation. But, oh dear: the CI is so wide as to be utterly useless; RP says this is because they have averaged across all scenarios which looks rather likely; but it makes the answer useless. Furthermore, essentially all the damage is from Heath due to Extreme Temperatures. Ecosystem damages are by contrast trivial. This seems quite likely to be the wrong way round. But 2090, if it is needed, air conditioning will be universal, for people but not for plants.

Quite how this can be reconciled to 4th National Climate Assessment report: Extreme Temperature Mortality I don't know.

While I'm here: notice that RP isn't happy with Alex Epstein; as you'd hope.

Refs

* If I'm Old During the Next Pandemic by Bryan Caplan

* Unity at Last! by VERONIQUE DE RUGY

* The 1619 Project on Hulu Vindicates Capitalism by David Henderson