I’ve never solved the mystery of why some people are easier to befriend than others. My first college roommate was a perfect match on the shared-interests questionnaire, yet five minutes after we met we knew it wasn’t going to work. We spent the next eight weeks avoiding each other until we had met enough other freshmen to arrange a swap.

I’ve also hit if off with folks immediately, really liked people who’ve rebuffed me, and cautiously avoided others who are made an effort to hang out with me. My closest friends are whose who see the world as I do, though I have grown apart from some other the years. I also have a few very close friends who don’t share my worldview at all. My best guess is that it mostly comes down to chemistry.

Work friends are different. I’m friendly with a lot of folks at work, then after I leave or they leave, I never see them again, with a few exceptions. There are some who are more fun to talk to than others, and since work friendships tend to start with work-related contact, work friends are more likely to have different worldviews from my own. My current job is no exception. In particular there are two people I would call young men, probably late 30s or early 40s, with whom I interact frequently even though they are conspiracy theorists.

I’m willing to listen for the most part, though I vocally disagree–not arguing point by point, just pointing out that I don’t believe the Earth is flat or the government wants to enslave us, and that Internet sites are not going to persuade me. I do not want to mislead anyone into thinking I agree, but I also don’t want to reject someone because we aren’t in sync on every topic.

After the huge pair of earthquakes in Turkey Feb. 6 however, these differences feel more consequential. Conspiracy theorists feel every significant event must be a conspiracy, including a very plausible news headline such as Large Earthquake in Turkey. These work friends were quick to explain that this was an attack on Turkey by the US, which has weapons capable of creating seismic events much bigger than Mother Nature can manage. This makes sense, they assured me, because of all the other weather-related weapons we have: The US can create torrential rain at will, and Israel has at least one submarine that creates tidal waves.

I made the mistake of bringing up the northwest Pacific coast earthquake that sent a 10-foot tsunami across the entire Pacific to Japan in 1700. Briefly I’d forgotten that everything humans might know based on sudden drops in land masses, massive death of forests, survivor reports, or tree ring, fossil, and sediment strata observations, is cat food compared to the wealth of (heavily recycled?) Internet evidence of weaponized weather.

Can we please send some of the dial-it-up rain to California before fire season starts? I’m sad that our Wakanda-level tech is never used for good, or I would be if I believed in vibranium.

Meanwhile, with a current death estimate of 41,000 in Turkey and Syria, I feel the need to disengage from the deniers. At some point it is offensive to say to the survivors, Whatever you think happened, we know better. Worse, it sets us an expectation of victimhood for the next weather event: Don’t blame Mother Nature or your God; other humans are doing this to you intentionally. This substitutes cynicism for empathy in those unaffected, and revenge-seeking for remedy-seeking in those afflicted. What the world needs now is empathy and remedies!