The Devil’s Algorithm: Unplugging from the Climate Matrix
The world is trapped in a digital Matrix, not unlike the one depicted in the iconic 1999 film (The Matrix) where Morpheus offers Neo a choice: take the blue pill and remain in a comforting illusion or the red pill and confront the unsettling truth. The blue pill, in our case, is the dominant narrative on climate change, peddled relentlessly by mainstream media, tech giants like Google, social media sites like YouTube and artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT. This narrative — man-made global warming, caused by fossil fuel use, is an imminent existential threat — has achieved near-total dominance, suffocating dissent and sidelining credible scientists who dare question it. Mainstream media and Big Tech’s search algorithms often constitute determining factors in shaping our perception of climate change.
To ‘red pill’ someone is to set him or her free from the manufactured climate consensus, to be open to contrarian views and, in the process, to restore science to its proper place as a field of sceptical inquiry, not ideology.
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Red Pill #1: Temperature is an intensive property, and by definition cannot be added. Ie a glass of 20c water added to a glass of 21c water, done not become 41c.
As it cannot be added, it cannot be averaged as temperature does not vary with volume. Ie one temperature could be a glass of water, another an entire ocean, there is no average of them, just a mid point statistic.
Furthermore there is no standard method given by the ISO to average temperature, precisely because of this. Any ‘averaging’ of temperature is merely a method of calculating abstract statistics.
Oh, yes. Thanks for this. This very well made point helps me better argue what I have been saying since the age of 14, thirty years ago, that “global average temperature” is a meaningless, abstract, mathematical concept which bears no relationship to reality, like, for example, the number of apples in the market this morning divided by the number of olives in the market this morning. It’s a calculation which can be performed, and accurately, but it means absolutely nothing of value.
You would not believe how hard the teenage Marcus struggled to get my handful of teachers to accept this simple, evident truth. They were useful idiots, of which there are many, many more today.
An everyday example I’ve been using: Let’s assume a hallway with a burning candle at one end and two thermometers, one next to the candle and the other at the other end of the hallway. Averaging the two temperatures measured in this way is not a meaningful statistic about the general temperature inside the hallway because it’s going to be much warmer close to the candle but this will be entirely unnoticable even a short distance away from it.
And one doesn’t even need to measure anything to demonstrate that temperature is a very localized phenomenon, the candle alone is enough: Putting a finger directly into the flame will result in serious burns after a short while. But holding a hand ½ a foot away from it won’t even result in noticable warmth. The flame itself has an average temperature of 1000⁰ C. But the effect on the surroundings is essentially non-existant.
There is no way to measure the temperature of a glass of water, let alone of an entire ocean. Only some approximation of the temperature of the immediate surroundings of the measurement device can ever be known.
We got lots of nonsense about temps dressed up as science. I saw once in the BBC a person claimed to be a climatologist who said, “We just had a 20 deg C day in Feb, the normal Feb day is 10 deg C, that is twice as hot. Imagine if a summer’s day were twice as hot? That would be 50 deg C.”
He was seriously put on the BBC as a scientist!
You can’t multiplicatively compare temps like this without going to Kelvin (or Rankine).
This is actually incredibly obvious. Think of another example: let’s say the average temp on a particular day is -1 deg C. This year that day is 20 deg C. Does that imply that the average summer’s day will become -500 deg C? I did exactly the same maths as was published on the BBC…
To correct the maths, we note that 20 deg C is about 3.5% warmer than 10 deg C. If a summers day were 3.5% warmer than an average 25 deg C then it would be something like 31 deg C which is well within the parameters of normal variance.
Can’t allow any critical thinking especially the kids.
Blair kicked that off a long long time ago.
Indoctrination of the young is a sure mark of a tyrant.
I know. But I did it to my kids.
The interesting thing to me is how Grok comes to give a contrary view. It is as incapable of weighing evidence intelligently, surely, as Google AI, so surely it has just been trained on information more friendly to sceptics. That must depend on the biases of the humans programming it.
If I’m right in that, the danger is that people come to trust the AI of their choice, as they trust the algorithms on YouTube etc that provide sources to match their opinions. And at that point, they are just as manipulable as anyone else, and all because “AI saves time and effort.”
It could be that Grok is allowed to be intelligent in an unrestricted way and finds the figures and math from Happer et al credible but the hockey stick story to be undermined by geological research
In the UK the censorship is tightening with the Starmer administration pressuring Internet and AI to stick to the government line.
Hopefully Elon and Trump will tell 2TK and Ursula where to stick their fines
Where the AI don’t shine.
As much as it pains me to write it (obviously I agree with what “Grok” has “written” in this case), anything where Musk is concerned needs to be taken with an enormous pillar of salt. He always twists narratives to suit his agenda of the day, and he has always twisted them back again when it suits. People have short memories…
I would not be one bit surprised if Elon had pushed for Grok to give contrary answers to the climate debate. He is looking for the right moment to divest of TSLA, mark my words, and he wants to control the timing, and then watch it burn after he has left. He knows that – with the subsidies drying up and the public acceptance of the narrative starting to deteriorate – the writing is on the wall for BEVs.
He bought Twitter for a reason.
I think it is about filtering. If the holes in a net are very small it will only let very small fish through. If you then ask are all fish small, the answer will be Yes.
If you make the holes very wide, the answer will be No.
If Grok is allowed to look at all sources and make comparisons, the it is less likely to present just one viewpoint.
There is a significant amount of published information which argues and demonstrates there is no “climate crisis” – which receives virtually no publicity in the media or Government sources, whereas the “climate crisis” is promoted by relatively few sources, each of which just echo the other but published prominently by media and Governments.
An AI can spot this. So could a Human given enough time and the possibility to look at everything published. AI just does it in a few seconds.
AI is pattern recognition. If trained on a pattern which is 99% then any search will return the same result. Contrarian climate views are, like Einstein said, it only needs one to be right for the 99% to be wrong.
I wonder if anyone has asked the Google AI, to justify it’s massive power usage as a contributor to global warming (as it sees it).
Probably best to avoid the use of ‘red pill’ as an expression.
‘The Matrix co-creator Lilly Wachowski broke down why the landmark 1999 science fiction film is a trans allegory…..broke down the film as a trans-narrative, where the company also shared the video of Wachowski speaking about the film. Wachowski came out as trans in 2016, four years after her sister and co-director Lana Wachowski made her first public appearance as a trans woman.
‘Not only is the pill literally Neo’s gateway to seeing the world as it is and the systems built to define and control his identity, but it’s also an apt metaphor for hormone therapy.’
‘The red pill has also been taken on by the alt-right, as well as conspiracy theorists and white supremacists…….Each group’s version of taking the red pill serves as a metaphor for being indoctrinated into whatever beliefs they hold.’
https://www.newsweek.com/matrix-creator-red-pill-trans-allegory-mens-rights-activists-1523669
Quite apart from anything else, a bit like the term ‘gaslighting’, it really does just sound a bit silly….
Unless, of course the metaphor is not apt at all. Many life events may cause fresh insight but the insight may or may not correlate with reality. I don’t mean to say that hormone therapy is not appropriate for some people…
Apt or not, the whole ‘red pill’ usage thing is, in my view, very silly indeed.
I don’t know what Tilak did differently but when I tried Grok on my laptop https://grok.online/chat asking the same “Are we facing a climate crisis?” it replied with the usual establishment narrative BS:
Hello! How can I help you?
Are we facing a climate crisis?
Yes, we are currently facing a climate crisis. Here are some key points to consider:
Evidence of the Climate Crisis
Clearly they’ve fixed it.
I don’t think you have included the full response. Here it is. The question of whether we’re facing a “climate crisis” depends on how you define the term and weigh the evidence. I’ll break it down based on data and perspectives, aiming for clarity without pushing one side. Evidence for a Climate Crisis: • Rising Temperatures: Global average surface temperatures have increased by about 1.1°C since pre-industrial times (1850-1900), per the IPCC’s 2023 AR6 report. This is largely attributed to human activities, particularly burning fossil fuels and deforestation. • Extreme Weather: There’s evidence linking climate change to more frequent and intense heatwaves, wildfires, and heavy rainfall events. For example, the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome was deemed “virtually impossible” without climate change (World Weather Attribution study). • Ice and Sea Levels: Arctic sea ice has declined by about 13% per decade since 1979 (NASA). Global sea levels have risen by roughly 3.7 mm per year since 1993, accelerating due to melting ice and thermal expansion (NOAA). • CO2 Levels: Atmospheric CO2 is at ~420 ppm, the highest in at least 800,000 years (ice core data), driving radiative forcing and warming. • Economic and Human Impact: Climate-related disasters caused $150 billion in damages in 2022 alone… Read more »
I’m not an expert on social media nor AI. My son however is especially tuned in to using AI positively and getting it to give realistic, logical and common sense answers that we used to get.
What I have learned is, like the author shows, if you ask a question in a specific way you will get the answer that is the ‘accepted wisdom of the moment’. He asked the question in the news section of Google so obviously all the top answers will be the accepted ones. As an example our dog ate an acorn, Mr B googled ‘will an acorn harm my dog’, first page reported it was a death knell, when he searched further a calmer attitude was shown ‘don’t let her eat a bushel, dog will be fine’. This is the same with AI ask it “Is there a climate crisis” you’ll get what they want you to see.
You have to be canny with the question, many are not so get what will keep them as H. L. Mencken says menaced “with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“Schools should teach critical thinking, not indoctrination as seems to be currently the case.”
Yes – but the State is in charge of education and those in the governing class are Statists and collectivists who have adopted principles, if not the uniform, of Fascism, that spawn of Socialism.
The State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. This is totalitarian and interprets, develops, and rules the whole life of the collective.
I want to believe too that Grok provides a more balanced approach to the question Tilak Doshi asks of it (“Are we in a climate crisis?”). But a little contrary to his finding, my own question to Grok just now – using the same wording – elicited this (abridged) reply:
“Based on the latest available data and analyses as of October 2025, the answer is yes, we are facing a climate crisis…
It goes on, commendably, to express some doubts on the subject, but it’s thin stuff, and in summing up, says:
“The evidence tilts heavily toward yes: Warming is real, human-caused, and risky enough to warrant the “crisis” label…”
Is it not the case that AIs, most of which are no doubt programmed to be actively biased, simply reflect the sheer volume of unbalanced research currently in existence? In other words, do those AIs that are not actively biased simply reflect ‘background’ bias? I mean, an AI is just a mirror, right?
ps – The answer is to ask AIs purely practical questions such as ‘What are the tyre pressures for a 2009 Vauxhall Astra’; AIs are really useful for that sort of thing. Asking an AI’s ‘opinion’ on any open-ended, moral or politically influenced matter is a silly idea. Don’t, as they say, go there.
I disagree about ChatGPT. Ask it a question about some aspect of the climate issue and, yes, it responds with the orthodox position. But push it a little further with supporting evidence, and it quickly adopts a more sensible – even useful – ‘red pill’ position. Here’s an example: https://cliscep.com/2025/09/10/an-exchange-with-chatgpt/.