Our Demon Haunted World

TL;DR: trolls are among us polluting the online world. But sometimes even trolls have a point that should be answered, hopefully without resorting to becoming one, so here’s a couple of follow-ups on the SRS fire, which seems to have been nothing, despite initial confusing reports from SRS itself, along with some thoughts on trolls and their role on the internet.

In 1995 Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan wrote a book called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. In it they lamented the decline of critical thinking skills, the rise of mysticism, and the misuse of science. Sagan passed away in 1996, and often I wonder what he would have made of the increasingly dystopic world that lives on the Internet and how that dystopia is intruding and distorting the real world.

Instead of demons, we have a new creature of darkness that stalks the world spreading their vileness in the hopes of corrupting the souls of their human prey: trolls. They crop up from time to time in the comments, normally in their natural environment of Social Media. Facebook seems especially fertile ground, and is one of many reasons I dislike that platform. I’m not talking about disagreement or healthy debate, which of course is fine. And sometimes it’s maybe just a normal person having a bad day that leads to an angry toned comment (I certainly have them from time to time). This rant is about the name-calling, insulting, self-important, often wrong posts from people who rarely actually read the blog, that are designed to denigrate, attack, provoke, and inflame.

How bad are trolls? I try to keep in mind that with tens of thousands of people seeing my posts across various platforms, statistically, using the PCL-R definition, 1.2% of them will display the clinical signs of psychopathy. That’s a lot of troll material – just looking at Facebook, when I post something that means upwards of 500 readers are potentially going to be obnoxious. If even 1 in 10 of the clinical crowd are triggered enough to reply, that’s potentially around 50 trolls to ruin a discussion.

Case in point: I was surprised at the number of obnoxious comments about the SRS fire post. Most of them were obviously from people who didn’t take time to read the blog, and were simply doing a knee-jerk response to the FB teaser if they even read that.

Responding or not is a catch-22. Just deleting them or not responding is always an option. The problem with not responding is that sometimes they sort of have an underlying point that needs to be answered, at least for the 98.8% of normal readers, despite the tenor or obnoxiousness of the comment. Responding in a measured way that addresses the underlying point is hard, and requires a lot more patience than I typically have. But here’s a few replies, with some snark of course.

To start with, there were complaints I was doing clickbait. For BlueSky, Twitter, etc. I was clear saying there was no threat …

I was less clear in the FB post, mostly complaining about the fact I couldn’t post a link to the blog with the details. Long time readers know that if there is a danger I say so up front; if I’m asking “is there a risk” the answer is usually no. If FB didn’t limit links, like the other platforms I probably would have done what I usually do, such as the above, and say it’s not worth worrying about and if you want more here’s the link. This drew a snide remark that I was trying to drive traffic to the blog. Yeah, so what? I’m not going to feed the master troll, Facebook itself, by duplicating free content on their site that keeps people trapped in their for-profit ecosystem.

Others said I was fear mongering and providing misinformation. That one is really puzzling. First, the blog post was very clear: there didn’t seem to be a problem, and I noted that the levels in Savannah were background. However, at the time of the post, there wasn’t really very much information other than there was a fire and, according to SRS itself, actions underway to assess if there was any potential for off-site contamination. Initially they said there was an “unfiltered ground-level release.” They weren’t doing the kinds of things that said major radiological incident, so it seemed it wasn’t a huge deal, but their own statement does say a release of some kind.

Later SRS has said no radioactive material was involved, but neither SRS or DOE have given a clear narrative of what happened as of today (Friday). The National Labs have a somewhat mixed record with respect to these sorts of incidents, so those jumping on the “it was nothing” bandwagon are just as premature as those freaking out. All I was saying was that based on my independent readings (with a NIST calibrated radiation monitor, by the way), was that I didn’t see anything, the winds were blowing it away to the South West, and it was more than likely nothing. That’s all we knew then – or now for that matter.

This leads to the second complaint, terminology, and some very pedantic comments on “contamination” vs “radiation.” Well, those posters were technically inaccurate as well: if you want to be seriously pedantic, it’s radiation resulting from contamination that’s the problem. Most people aren’t aware of the difference, and I was already having to explain what a microsievert meant, so the rest seemed like an unnecessary excursion. I didn’t get in to how the weak nuclear force is involved in quarks changing their flavor, transforming protons and neutrons into one another and triggering nuclear decay, either.

And in that light …

Finally, a few took issue with the HYSPLIT wind trajectory graphic. The HYSPLIT data was illustrative of the direction the wind was blowing and where low level particulates might end up. I used the raw graphic on FB as an eye-catcher – with the note that a longer explanation was on the blog. Nowhere on that graphic did it indicate anything about radiation. People who didn’t read the blog jumped to conclusions.

In summary, as I have frequently ranted, the internet is rapidly becoming a dystopia. It is far from the vision of an open, free exchange of information that it began with. Social media was initially a great idea, but it has become a means of turning you into a commodity: *you* are their product. One of the ways it keeps you engaged is by amplifying negative emotions because they are stronger and more easily exploited than positive ones. The latest change to Facebook in particular make it a terrible platform for news and breaking events. Blocking outside links, and showing posts based on engagement rather than chronologically. This enhances otherwise problematic behaviors. It’s simply capitalism at work, and troll-like behavior isn’t a bug for them, it’s a feature. Trolls are a huge profit center for social media because they keep everyone “enraged and engaged.” That’s why they get uprated …

At least we know where the trolls are, and don’t have to worry about the bridges so much any more …

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