Post AtY2sta0idQV9IuDaK by benni@social.tchncs.de
(DIR) More posts by benni@social.tchncs.de
(DIR) Post #AtY2EyhuEi8lT4Z4m8 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-28T11:13:33Z
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How would you debunk a conspiracy theorist who claims that the world population is not nearly 8 billion people, but rather something closer to 100 million? Obversly, what evidence might make the hairs stand up on your neck and you think maybe this crank is right?
(DIR) Post #AtY2VUaBUYPGxepMuG by DrorBedrack@mastodon.social
2025-04-28T11:16:29Z
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@futurebird I dont. I just hope they're not in a position of power
(DIR) Post #AtY2jQcX1Heqj8ZRWC by goose@fosstodon.org
2025-04-28T11:19:02Z
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@futurebird I've visited less than a tenth of the countries in the world and I've already been to ten cities with 10 million people. The dude is delusional!
(DIR) Post #AtY2lEacikgDzeXV5s by glennsills@dotnet.social
2025-04-28T11:19:18Z
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@futurebird Drop the person off in Beijing and walk with him to Calcutta. Use a manual step clicker, but count every human you see instead of steps.
(DIR) Post #AtY2oQ4uSmxaUdDy9Q by gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz
2025-04-28T11:19:51Z
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@futurebird Send them on a trip through half a dozen of India’s largest cities.
(DIR) Post #AtY2rbtkyNge1NWrFw by larrybiggs@infosec.exchange
2025-04-28T11:20:30Z
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@futurebird not sure if this helps https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a64222314/human-population-count/
(DIR) Post #AtY2sta0idQV9IuDaK by benni@social.tchncs.de
2025-04-28T11:20:32Z
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@futurebird WHO is eating all the food than?
(DIR) Post #AtY3MoxuRLkfWbLzsG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-28T11:26:06Z
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@PetraOleum Mostly it’s underestimation. But there would need to be places that don’t exist on the same scale. But the lies about additional cities are localized: so people in China think the US has more cities with 1 million than we really do, and people in the US think the same of China.
(DIR) Post #AtY3S13iu3jGTsYBdo by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-04-28T11:27:07Z
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@futurebird actually I'm afraid that disinformation claim will turn out to be connected to eugenics.
(DIR) Post #AtY3fj6yQdNss6bmiW by RolloTreadway@beige.party
2025-04-28T11:29:32Z
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@futurebird It would require a lot of densely populated places to not actually be densely populated. So you could get in touch with people in densely populated places, and ask them to just look out of the window.
(DIR) Post #AtY49278r89GCnf4k4 by steve@discuss.systems
2025-04-28T11:34:50Z
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@futurebird is taking them on a week-long tour of China an option?
(DIR) Post #AtY4J73tJducRhwnwm by SKleefeld@mastodon.social
2025-04-28T11:36:40Z
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@futurebird If someone is arguing that the entire planet's population is 1/80 of what it is, they're not going to listen to any sort of facts or rational arguments. I would just stop engaging with them and walk away.On the obverse, I'd need evidence on the order of immediately "turning off" the 99% of the population that isn't real.
(DIR) Post #AtY4aJPMfKUHf0C0Po by adhdeanasl@beige.party
2025-04-28T11:39:46Z
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@futurebird I’m tickled by how many commenters either ignored your question or misread it. I’d have to have incontrovertible evidence that the guy working the produce aisle in the grocery store is also the guy driving the bus, the guy cutting sheet metal, the guy operating on a kidney, the guy managing a Wendy’s, etc.
(DIR) Post #AtY4nEJMvUdDcMY1mC by Phosphenes@mastodon.social
2025-04-28T11:42:05Z
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@futurebird Let's go all-in and push eyeball replacement theory. Every time someone is born, the hospital replaces their eyes with robotic eyes that only show them what They want them to see. You weren't born in a hospital? That's just what you think.
(DIR) Post #AtY5FRcf1sHx0g1dAW by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-04-28T11:47:14Z
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@PetraOleum As soon as it’s obvious a conspiracy has a purpose it’s no longer interesting because it’s not an uncovered hidden truth (a rare thing that can exist) but rather a constructed rationalization for whatever hobby horse really gets the “theorist” going-
(DIR) Post #AtY5aeZG5vuvEvXyvw by simrob@social.wub.site
2025-04-28T11:51:00Z
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@futurebird on the second question: an argument that we could not be growing enough food for 8 billion people could make me nervous if I could verify a few data points convincingly.
(DIR) Post #AtY60efiKWu35kxtnU by suetanvil@freeradical.zone
2025-04-28T11:55:44Z
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@futurebird The direction I would go with trying to disprove that would be to look at an existing industry and then do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to figure out how many people it employs and how many customers would need to exist to make it look the way we see it.E.g. we know that there are 10-15 car manufacturers in the world. How many people do they employ and how many customers would have to exist for them to be viable?
(DIR) Post #AtY6vlHiPqhs6jyEVM by andrewf@glasgow.social
2025-04-28T12:05:56Z
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@futurebird I mean, this is a flippant answer, but: I reckon you can construct a conspiracy theory that states ANYTHING, as long as the anything isn’t immediately debunked by the evidence of your own eyes.Moon landings: you weren’t there. Earth being round: you’ve never personally been to space. Vaccines: you need to do statistics to prove they work.So: population of the Earth being much less (or more) than informed consensus says: EASY!
(DIR) Post #AtY7XVMw2TGjkYPRVw by PeterLG@theblower.au
2025-04-28T12:12:51Z
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@futurebird Debunking the claim that 8 billions are actually 100 millions involves trusting data, and that's something conspiracy theorists simply don't do. They develop a dogma and will follow it to the bitter end.As for evidence they might be right? Seeing the same face in multiple roles across the world AND—because I know of 3 people that look just like me, and 2 that look just like my eldest—being presented with incontrovertible proof that the statistics are falsified.
(DIR) Post #AtYEr0RjPwjdJdtn6m by michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
2025-04-28T13:34:51Z
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@futurebird For the latter part: I would have to witness 79 out of every 80 people I know dying.At which point, the conspiracist would be the least of our problems.
(DIR) Post #AtYHE9E18zUZ6ye9p2 by doctormo@floss.social
2025-04-28T14:01:25Z
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@futurebird Mostly, never argue their conclusions. Once you are into an idea enough that it becomes a part of your identity, the actual facts will always be twisted to fit the idea. No matter how absurd it looks to an outsider.Instead try and unwind the motivation. "Why is it important for you to believe that there are fewer people?". For most people, it really doesn't matter if the world is flat; but it matters a great deal if you can be easily fooled by yourself.
(DIR) Post #AtYJJim8b0qwj1OKlU by log@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-04-28T14:24:45Z
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@futurebird The evidence would have to depend on the theory details. Is it that the 7.9 apparent gigahumans are not real people on paper, or that they are faked using AI and theatrical trickery? Or perhaps everyone has 80 bodies and the psychic linkage is suppressed by jamming technology? Or maybe, like astronomy, the observed effects can be explained simply by rotating huge amounts of dark matter? If the mechanism of action is unexplainable, it cannot be tested.
(DIR) Post #AtYJPCJADnhNlcRzo8 by crazypedia@masto.hackers.town
2025-04-28T14:25:49Z
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@futurebird I've discovered that a lot of people struggle to conceptualize numbers over, like, 20... So this Yahoo just doesn't understand scale of numbers, something every human admittedly struggles with, but some people embrace it as a personality choice.
(DIR) Post #AtYKVur9ba6Zcf7IDw by DLink@posthat.ca
2025-04-28T14:38:16Z
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@futurebird it's one thing if you WANT to try and debunk that, but there's a rule that makes this simple. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The burden of proof is on the crank. And there's no way in hell they have a single piece of evidence.
(DIR) Post #AtYMNIYOKTsWQ9MKCe by dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-04-28T14:58:55Z
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@futurebirdI don't find James Gleick's analysis satisfactory, though I think he's right, but it wouldn't be enough for a budding conspiracist... Assuming they haven't fallen all the way into the rabbit hole, what are some calculations they could do to get the order of magnitude? One might be looking at public transactions of barrels of oil or quantity of grain being shipped around the world. Its too hard to fake those up because it would harm your economic interest as a powerful rich person.
(DIR) Post #AtYMa2WxDM8IUSlKds by dacig@mastodon.social
2025-04-28T15:01:25Z
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@futurebird It would take a massive number of authorities and individuals to either be complicit/incompetent at reporting in censi, adding them up Highly unlikely Theres an equation to calculate the likelihood of a conspiracy being revealed:"The equation calculates the probability of a conspiracy-busting leak as 1-e-tφ, where φ includes the (potentially changing) number of conspirators over time and the odds that one of those people leaks information in a given year.https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/an-equation-that-debunks-conspiracy-theories/
(DIR) Post #AtYNFlaGbyvu5tD0TI by pbloem@sigmoid.social
2025-04-28T15:08:57Z
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@futurebird Obviously the theorist can dismiss any evidence, but in the interest of coming up with an argument, you could look at the sizes of national lottery jackpots vs country populations.This will be a very clean relation. What's more, you can show from basic math what the payout should be for any number of people n. The theorist can observe locally that this law is true based on small-scale sports betting etc.
(DIR) Post #AtYYAgAsOartMf6q9Y by JonnyT@mastodon.me.uk
2025-04-28T17:11:17Z
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@futurebird "Obversly, what evidence might make the hairs stand up on your neck and you think maybe this crank is right?"I live in London. I've travelled to many populous places globally, including New York and Tokyo. There's nothing that would convince me that there are only 100 million or so people in the world.
(DIR) Post #AtYjQQlqX6m9ih7Cls by listless@social.cringecollective.io
2025-04-28T19:17:19Z
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@futurebird Facts and evidence only entrench someone who has a belief like this. Best option is to act as if you're not sure and then casually mention "this one weird thing I don't get" and entice them to investigate on their own. Keep doing it until they research themselves out of their belief.