on this ray epps thing you, MM, sound eerily like our mostly wrong lately FBI. Better be careful here. One thing for sure spreading that side of the story will not cost you your 1st amendment rights like it had done on the other for years now. Last rumor late last nite was Epps was to be charged and he was going to try to use one side of the media with costing him his freedom. As I had said the Epps story is curious and does not need to be so. The FBI has lied and cheated so often that fewer and fewer trust anything they allege. Just like many strange stories the last few years had the FBI been straight with the people from the get go most Americans want to trust them.

LOL  MIKE, RISING ISN'T MY FAVORITE ~ I ENJOY WATCHING THEM, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY DISAGREE.  LOL

NEITHER OF THEM MENTIONED THE FACT THAT EPPS TEXTED A RELATIVE STATING:...........AS HE WAS ACTIVELY IN THE FRAY  " I ORCHESTRATED IT"  SO, WHY WASN'T THAT PROOF ENOUGH TO CHARGE HIM FOR INCITING?!

Jean,

I was just kidding about it being your favorite since you passes on their stuff so often.

On Ray Epps, I busted this conspiracy theory many dozens of times with  enough authentic facts to obliterate it to smithereens in the minds of everybody...........except for people that go to far right places to get messages they want to read and  hear , so they NEVER fact check ANY of those messages.

As a result,  they never know what is REALLY true and what is ACTUALLY FALSE.

I enjoy doing the fact checking here. This is one of the great things about MarketForum. We never need to start from scratch on old topics beaten like a dead horse.

Now, all I have to do is provide the threads for you to NOT read and when you respond with absurd reasoning because one of your far right sources told you something you want believe.....I had already busted it dozens of times.

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/97249/

So now, we repeat another absurd point to use to ignore the Mt Everest sized evidence that proves that  Ray Epps did NOT work for the FBI and was not what the nonsensical far right,  conspiracy theories claim:

"NEITHER OF THEM MENTIONED THE FACT THAT EPPS TEXTED A RELATIVE STATING:...........AS HE WAS ACTIVELY IN THE FRAY  " I ORCHESTRATED IT"  SO, WHY WASN'T THAT PROOF ENOUGH TO CHARGE HIM FOR INCITING?!"

“Ray Epps confessed to Jan. 6 Committee he ‘orchestrated’ attack on Capitol”

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jan/06/instagram-posts/ray-epps-didnt-tell-congress-he-orchestrated-the-j/

• During an interview with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Ray Epps said he walked to the Capitol and told others to do the same.
• Epps texted his nephew at 2:12 p.m. Jan. 6 and said, “I was in the front with a few others. I also orchestrated it.” But when questioned about it in testimony to the select committee, Epps said he wrote this out of pride and that it was the wrong word choice in retrospect. He did not confess to Congress that he orchestrated the attack.  
• Epps said when the scene became violent, he told people to remain peaceful. Epps did not go inside the Capitol, and he is not among more than 950 defendants charged with crimes related to Jan. 6

A full transcript of Epps’ Jan. 21, 2022, interview, which was made public Dec. 29

You guys obviously never read the interview with Epps. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23558376/20220121_ray-epps.pdf

 It doesn't even make any sense that a person working under cover for the FBI(top secret)-the claim of the conspiracy theory- would be texting out to somebody about him doing what the conspiracy theory claims in the early stages of the riot. If he was working for the FBI that could have never happened. 

To make this thread more productive/enlightening, here's the actual timeline of the  attempt by Trump to overturn the most secure presidential election in history:

Timeline of the January 6 United States Capitol attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack

After reading the timeline, its loony tunes to want to blame Epps, an ex Marine with 0 ties to the FBI but a  long time Trump supporter (which all the evidence shows and why he went there that day) who never went in the building, while at the same time having the position that Trump is innocent.

It's actually rock solid proof of this:

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/77011/#89534

+++++++++++++++++

Neither political party has a franchise on the truth.

If you believe one party all the time......................you will believe in lies some of the time.

"The trick is being able to tell the difference between the truth and the lies, then picking the truth from BOTH parties and rejecting their lies.

What makes that incredibly difficult to do is that the stronger your affiliation to a party is,  the more blindly you embrace all the tenets of their belief system!

++++++++++++++

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/77011/#90063

In 2022, people no longer need to believe their eyes and ears, especially in politics but even in science, when politics hijacks science for an agenda.

They can just decide what they want to believe or a message gatekeeper in their party can tell them what to believe.  

They just  convince themselves that manufactured/alternative realities that they like are true and completely reject the authentic truths that contradict anything that they don't want to believe. Then, only go to places that reinforce what they want to believe.

+++++++++++++

So my MAIN point in this thread is not to convince mcfarm and jean that Ray Eps had no connections to the FBI and that its just a whacko, far right conspiracy theory. That was proven conclusively a dozen times already. It appears that they will never believe otherwise.

My point is that for topics like this, many people will NEVER change their minds.

For many people, if you show them 10 pieces of powerful evidence that disproves conclusively what they believe in but their favorite sources show 1 piece of bogus information that they want to believe in which confirms what they think that they know on the same topic............they will almost always cling to the 1 bogus item and never objectively fact check it , while rejecting the 10 times greater authentic evidence contradicting what they want to believe in.

So when I post a crystal clear, authentic debunking of the crazy Ray Epps conspiracy theory like these below.........

Even if they read thru the entire thing, the next time they tune into Fox or Info Wars or Tucker or Ted Cruz,  Margy Green or Matt Gaetz on the topic, any good points in the articles that temporarily connected in their brains,  will get flushed out  and replaced with what they would prefer to believe from the sources that are victimizing them by telling them what they want to hear/read.

Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory Centers on Baseless Claim About Ray Epps

https://www.factcheck.org/2022/01/jan-6-conspiracy-theory-centers-on-baseless-claim-about-ray-epps/?gclid=CjwKCAjwh8mlBhB_EiwAsztdBAOz7oKZLtl6NLDpo0oBr4j6ZDKUolWh-QTHgLMzUz6q981y0dOFuRoCeB4QAvD_BwE

How conservatives turned Ray Epps into a

Capitol riot scapegoat

Epps described his treatment following the Jan 6 Capitol riot by fellow conservatives as ‘criminal’. Graig Graziosi explains how he got here

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ray-epps-capitol-riot-conspiracy-explainer-b2122611.html

Further, Mr Epps was able to prove that he had left the Capitol before the violence began in earnest. A protester who had fallen ill required help away from the chaos, and Mr Epps volunteered to help lead them out.

And despite this impossible to agree on topic.............an even more important point:

FROM THE PDF.   "Whatdid you mean -- | think you've alluded to this, but what did you mean when you said, Go in the doors like:  everyoneelse? The doors to the Capitol, I'm assuming  A Well, that's the way we get in if we go into any building, legally and without  force."

... HOW MUCH MORE LAUGHABLE OF A RESPONSE TO THAT QUESTION, CAN ONE GET?  LOL  HE LEARNED HIS REHEARSED LINES, LIKE ANY PRO WOULD.

________________________

MIKE ~ I REALLY CAN'T SAY ANY OF MY SOURCES OF NEWS / OPINIONS ARE A FAVORITE.

GOODNIGHT ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz    

Thanks Jean!

Again, you're scrutinizing everything with a specific subconscious filter in your brain that is only looking for evidence to reinforce what you think that you know.........in this case, small flaws in the guilty party's statement rather than 100 times greater flaws in the actual reasoning for what the guilty party did wrong. 

I totally get this because the same exact thing happens to me hundreds of times every year on many topics. It's almost impossible to NOT have cognitive bias as human beings.

There are 3 main things that help me greatly to overcome this (but it still happens).

1. As a scientist, I try to adhere to the scientific method. This compels the scientist to try to prove their theory is WRONG first. The inability to be able to do that, gives them confidence that they must be right. It's the same thing as sincerely looking at situations thru the eyes of other people, including smart people and wondering how the heck they are so convinced of the complete opposite of your opinion after viewing the exact same situation that you are.

2. Despite that, I still get strong first impressions that IMMEDIATELY cause me to assume that I know what's right and wrong. All the time. It happens with EVERYBODY.. By definition, our brains process new information based on what we already think we know and not what we don't know. This initial assumption is what determines the path that we take most of the time. 

A perfect example  for me, was mcfarmer's post yesterday. https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/97278/

Honestly, when I read the entire post and didn't do any checking yet, one of the things my mind was immediately telling me to do was use what I thought that I knew and attribute much of  it to the increasing CO2, which DOES cause plants to be more drought tolerant and productive similar to what mcfarner witnessed. You're well aware of my position about CO2 being a beneficial gas. You will note that I didn't even mention that in the response. What happened to change my mind?  

mcfarmer claimed it was from wildfire smoke. My mind told me that wildfire smoke blocks the sun(Many agronomists today, still think this reduces crop growth/yields). 

mcfarmer is a very credible source and came armed with solid evidence to back his crazy sounding case which made it easier for me to consider it but I would have done that anyways because of being moderator.  

I've made a habit of  trying to fact check everything that slips by my flawed scientific method cognitive bias filter just because it's part of the job as moderator to see both sides. I realize that this is more of a blog site with my, sometimes very strong opinions but they actually, are derived and amplified by the fact checking process. 

When I started doing that about the wildfire smoke and mcfarmers case for his crops/plants doing extremely well from it,  a EUREKA moment...........discovering something profoundly significant that I assumed to be sort of impossible up until reading his post. 

My mind opened up because of mcfarmer and this caused me to suddenly remember my experience over a decade ago when I used a 5 ft X 3 foot mirror outside to grow a marijuana plant, taking advantage of solar radiation being reflected horizontally and hitting the backside of the plant that had been in the shade (I come up with that experiment/idea on my own, just understanding the physics and plants and the experiment was a huge success).

I've had tiny versions of that happen here to me many hundreds of times JUST BEFORE I was getting ready to post a FLAWED response to people about dozens of topics. Just before sending it, I do a fact check and realize..........whoops, I almost posted a personal opinion based on bs. Then I spend more time investigating and adjust what I was going to say to eliminate the flaws in the initial response.

Stuff still gets by because I'm not perfect but I've learned more here about more things in 5 years as moderator than the previous 25 years.

Sometimes, from others having different opinions(that includes when they are wrong and I need to objectively fact check for legit reasoning)

My objective is to try to share it. It's the main reason for me to be here.

The hope is, with this post, for instance that sharing my personal experiences that have helped me......... will help others.

Exercise

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/97261/

          Use this to help make yourself a betterperson!            

                                  https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/82252/

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/83844/

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/97032/

As always, my delivery method is flawed because I bombard the reader with excessive infomation. However, some readers can stay interested and absorb much of it, while others can take away what they want, including none of it.

MIKE ~ "whoops, I almost posted a personal opinion based on bs."

WHEN I READ THE EPOCH POST OF MEFARMERS'... I IMMEDIATELY ASSOCIATED THE SMOKE WITH HOW WATER ALSO DEFLECTS A PERCEIVED PATH & IT MADE COMPLETE SENSE TO ME.

talking about flaws in the study MM. Where is the mention of co2 and its affect. You very positive with data on co2 and I believe it completely on crop yields. Also why would they use 30 year studys with guesses on out put to verify what they already believe. That not very scientific. You have proven many times over that we were dangerously low on co2 and now is one of the best times for humans and animals alike to live.

Thanks, jean and mcfarm!

With regards to the increase in CO2..........this graph shows what corn yields have been doing the last 150 years.

Try to pick out the impact of CO2.

I've provided lots of studies from CO2 science in the laboratory that HOLD ALL OTHER VARIABLES CONSTANT except for elevating CO2.

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/69258/#71266

Changes in this controlled environment can all be attributed to the CO2.

Outside the lab in the real world, we have a dozen different changing variables.

Temp, rain, wind, planting dates, hybrids, weeds, insects and now.........diffuse light coming from wildfire smoke plumes.

How do we tease out just the impact of the smoke plumes that vary tremendously from day to day under different atmospheric conditions?

Very challenging!

If they can create a situation in the laboratory that controls all the other factors........it's much easier. 

The change in yields from year to year from increasing CO2 will always be positive from more effective photosynthesis but very small.

Over time they add up.

What mcfarmer reports was a big SUDDEN change and a huge NEW factor was the wildfire smoke this year.