The reason stuff like this really gets to me, more than other stupid conspiracy theories about UFO sightings, Chemtrails, lunar landings, and other batshit insane stuff, is that this targets and abuses people in a disastrous situation that are desperate for finding a cure for their problems, and does so for profit.
I know, it's a terrible thought. I'd love to believe our government and corporations are here to serve us and would never hurt us for their own gain. I'd love to believe that fluoride is good for you and that the spikes in autism and cancer have nothing to do with the aforementioned powers. I'd love to believe 9/11 was an outside job. I'd love to, but I can't. The world has evil people in it, and we can never underestimate what some of them are capable of.
No one's saying the government is perfect, it's just that most of us take the bad with the good. Government provides stability at the cost of taxes, some corruption, and bureaucracy. You may not appreciate it, but many of us value this stability, even while acknowledging the costs.
However, you'll have to do better than hearsay connecting supposed spikes in autism and cancer with government. Need I remind you that the decline in the number of pirates has been conclusively linked to the increase in temperature over time? And citing your belief that the September 11th terrorist attacks were an inside job is doing your cause no favors.
Being a libertarian must be quite a miserable existence. You believe that nearly everyone in power is "evil" (your own word) and out to get you, just because they can. Any misfortune is somehow linked back to the government, simultaneously turning a blind eye to any good it may do. Your political views are so broad and outlandish that they have no hope of ever being adopted by more than a fringe group, much less the government, ensuring that you feel perpetually downtrodden. I'd pity you if I didn't think your beliefs were destroying the country.
Lessons to take from this topic: guard your wallet carefully and don't be controlled by fear. Be rationally skeptical.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Bobo the King wrote:
Being a libertarian must be quite a miserable existence. You believe that nearly everyone in power is "evil" (your own word) and out to get you, just because they can.
I consider myself to be a libertarian, and I really don't see why you would believe it to be miserable. I don't really believe in widespread conspiracy, I just think that the government has no business censoring media, regulating gay marriage, or preventing the populous from buying guns.
There is a wide gap between libertarian ideology and conspiracy theory.
... I just think that the government has no business censoring media, regulating gay marriage, or preventing the populous from buying guns.
FTFY.
I have no problem with social libertarians. We may not see eye to eye, but it's a reasonable and mostly harmless philosophy.
But do you consider yourself an economic libertarian?
Hi Bobo (and others!) o/
So there's this, right? From Bobo's link, and I'm sure we've all seen it before. There are a few problems with it that lead me to question it's validity as an argumentative tool, however.
1) It shows "Approximate[ly]" 17 pirates. Compared with the scale of the other values, 17 hardly seems an approximation, but an exact value. An inaccurate exact value if you care to look up data for piracy in and around the year 2000.
2) The first two data points are confusing. They show an increase in temperature, and an increase in the number of pirates. That's fine. However, from that point on the number of pirates decreases. To a casual viewer, based on the title of the graph, it would be reasonable to draw the quick and careless conclusion that the number of pirates is constantly decreasing (based on x-axis trend at a glance), while the average global temperature is increasing. To me, that seems rather disingenuous and I don't really even know what that word means!
3) The author of the graph further confounds the reader by adding extraneous data. The year. A graph of Global Average Temperature Vs. Number of Pirates should graph Global Average Temperature Vs. Number of Pirates. What is most clearly displayed is Global Average Temperature Vs. Year. As it is, the data points are misplaced and confused because they are in chronological order, whereas they should be in order based on the number of pirates. The year is irrelevant and shouldn't even be included.
4) The author fails to indicate the distinction between maritime piracy and software piracy. Many modern readers might think of software piracy first and then get confused by the graph.
5) Before there were pirates, was the earth always super hot only?!!!
It seems to me the author here had an agenda and was leading the data and the reader to the conclusion that the decreasing number of pirates is heating the earth. Talk about your wild conspiracy! Based on the misleading and confusing nature of the graph, I think it's safe to dismiss it (and the conclusion with it) as biased and unfounded. So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
PS: In general, as Comicalflop's average rate of posts per day decreases, my age increases. Cf, post more plz kthx.
PPS: As the number of movies Deign submits increases, the number of movies Deign submits increases WTF NOWAI!!!
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Bobo the King wrote:
But do you consider yourself an economic libertarian?
Mostly, but I have my limits.
I feel like government intervention is important to keep competition between businesses fair. (including an organization like the FDA. Making sure that labels are accurate and that food is what it claims to be is important) Without some regulation you would just have cartels and rampant fraud.
But that said, things like social security and shit like tax incentives that make businesses provide health insurance to their employees makes my skin crawl. People should be trusted to save for their own retirement, and health insurance is something you should buy at your own discretion.
I just don't like when government makes decisions for me. They apply higher taxes on things like gasoline and beer just because people can rationalize that taxing it might help to curb its consumption. They let you deduct more from your taxes if you have a home or children. I don't think that the government should be in a position where they are paying me to do certain things or live a certain way.
Short answer: I think radical ideas like disposing of the US treasury or undermining the authority of the FDA is stupid, but backing off a bit and letting people control their own money would be nice.
*apologies for US centered examples. The gist should apply in general however.*
Joined: 9/21/2009
Posts: 1047
Location: California
Truncated wrote:
A question for sonicpacker, if you are still in this topic. By your own reckoning there are a lot of intelligent people here. How do you feel about the fact that people seem to be very distrusting of the documentary you posted? Does it weaken your beliefs in its message, doesn't change your opinion, or even reinforce your beliefs?
Let me just say, I'm not some crazy conspiracy theorist. *looks at nfq*.
I'm also going to point out, I don't believe that Burzynski's "find" is a miracle cure by any means. Results have shown that it is 25-ish% effective when dealing with specific types of cancer, with no harmful side effects. That being said, chemo/radiation isn't nearly as effective, and the side effects are horrible. I don't know how any of you guys can call it fraud when there are multiple personal accounts of Burzynski's method working.
Aside from me thinking he isn't necessarily a fake, what really bothers me is when people say "this movie is a fraud" and they don't even watch it. The point of the movie is not that there is a cure for cancer:
sonicpacker wrote:
The real point is that the FDA is run by money grubbing whores that don't actually care about what's best for the people of the US.
I still believe that statement is true and it would be very difficult to change my opinion on that.
So let's suppose that the government doesn't force companies to provide healthcare to fulltime employees. Immediately, every company stops providing that healthcare, because healthcare is leeging expensive. Sure, they pass on the savings to their employees in the form of higher salaries, but now that each employee has to buy their own healthcare, economies of scale go right out the window (everyone has to deal with health care companies on a one-to-one basis), not to mention each employee is now at the mercy of the healthcare insurance system, which has consistently shown itself to have all the empathy and caring of a brick through your window. Got cancer? Whoops, you aren't covered. Failed to make your payments for a month? Re-sign your contract with tripled premiums. Done everything correctly? They'll still make up an excuse to delay paying.
With employer-provided healthcare, this is slightly less of an issue, because the employer can go to bat for their employees. After all, they need the employees healthy and working! And emeployers are more able to afford the required lawyers to navigate the legal morass that surrounds every contract out there to make certain that the insurance the employees are getting in the first place is actually useful. You lose all that as soon as you go to individual healthcare plans.
The bottom line you have to keep in mind here is that companies are basically sociopathic. The government's first job is to keep a gigantic herd of powerful sociopaths from trampling roughshod over the entire country. This results in some weird rules sometimes, and doesn't always work that well. But most regulation (that isn't bought and paid for by a powerful sociopath, c.f. continuing farm subsidies long after the 1970s corn crisis) has good reasoning behind it and was introduced to solve a serious problem.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I take some issue with that middle paragraph; it is not uncommon for large scale employers to take life insurance on its employees. In theory it guards against the company's losses in having to hire and train a replacement in the case of an unexpected death. In practice it means that it doesn't matter to them if you live or die.
That said, yes, you are a lot more likely that you will be covered with group benefits because if a certain company has millions tied up in a certain insurance company, they would never risk losing that client.
Let me just say, I'm not some crazy conspiracy theorist. *looks at nfq*.
Well, crazy is in the eyes of the beholder. I (and most others here it seems) think the conspiracy theory that the FDA and its counterparts in all other industrialized countries and all independent researchers are silencing Burzunski are no less crazy than what nfq is claiming.
sonicpacker wrote:
I'm also going to point out, I don't believe that Burzynski's "find" is a miracle cure by any means. Results have shown that it is 25-ish% effective when dealing with specific types of cancer, with no harmful side effects.
I guess we disagree on whether this has been shown. You think it has been shown since an online documentary says so. I think it has not been shown because
a) the only studies that claim these results are those by Burzynski himself,
b) these studies have laughable sample sizes, no double-blinding, and no control group, making them worthless, and
c) other scientists have not been able to replicate the results.
sonicpacker wrote:
I don't know how any of you guys can call it fraud when there are multiple personal accounts of Burzynski's method working.
Because personal accounts mean NOTHING. Unless there is a control group, it is impossible to know how effective the treatment is, and how many of those that tried it that did not improve with his method, and how many who would have improved anyway.
There are also multiple personal accounts of alien contact, crystal healing, astrology, and (conflicting) accounts of religious contact with god. Do you believe all these to be true, too? In the dark ages before the scientific method, doctors thought that sucking blood out of seriously ill patients with leeches made them better (it made them worse), because they were trusting personal accounts and not comparing it with no treatment at all.
sonicpacker wrote:
"The real point is that the FDA is run by money grubbing whores that don't actually care about what's best for the people of the US."
I still believe that statement is true and it would be very difficult to change my opinion on that.
Admittedly I don't know much about the FDA, mostly about its counterparts in Sweden. I don't see what they could possibly gain (financially or otherwise) from trying to silence a treatment for cancer. And why didn't they do the same with the cure for tuberculosis, which in its time killed and crippled a comparable amount of people as cancer today? Or measles? Or smallpox?
I know, it's a terrible thought. I'd love to believe our government and corporations are here to serve us and would never hurt us for their own gain. I'd love to believe that fluoride is good for you and that the spikes in autism and cancer have nothing to do with the aforementioned powers. I'd love to believe 9/11 was an outside job. I'd love to, but I can't. The world has evil people in it, and we can never underestimate what some of them are capable of.
So you are basically saying that you believe in all those conspiracies for the simple reason that there are evil people in this world. Frankly, that's quite a stupid argument.
You clearly don't understand how science works. Even if there was a huge evil organization rotten to its core that would want to establish some falsities as the currently accepted scientific truth, that would simply be physically impossible. You can't control the entirety of the world-wide scientific community. The scientific peer-reviewing process makes sure of that. Things are evaluated, tested and experiments repeated by different people from different countries and cultures. If something is false, someone is going to raise questions and others will have to answer those questions satisfactorily. How exactly is this evil corporation going to silence all of the scientific community? Claims like "the FDA is suppressing cancer cures, and in fact wants to cause cancer" is such an US-centric notion that it gives me nausea. It's like the only country in the world with any saying on medicine would be the USA (and hence the FDA). Any person making such claims is an idiot in my books. (The same goes for all the other conspiracy theories as well.)
FODA wrote:
If you believe there are no sentient planets then how can you believe there can be any sentient planet? That doesn't make much sense.
"Do you believe that fairies exist?"
"No."
"Would it at least be possible that they exist, but we simply haven't detected them?"
"I suppose."
"So do you believe they exist?"
"No."
There's nothing illogical in this argumentation. Conceding that something is possible doesn't mean you have to believe it exists, and there's nothing nonsensical there.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Derakon wrote:
So let's suppose that the government doesn't force companies to provide healthcare to fulltime employees. Immediately, every company stops providing that healthcare, because healthcare is leeging expensive. Sure, they pass on the savings to their employees in the form of higher salaries, but now that each employee has to buy their own healthcare, economies of scale go right out the window (everyone has to deal with health care companies on a one-to-one basis),
You make a good point, but its not like group bargaining is all that great either. It leaves little room for personal choice (because most employers have only a few flavors of health care to choose from) so ultimately, instead of people getting the money in hand and deciding what is best for them personally, they take whatever gets handed to them.
Also, it means that if you loose your job, you loose your insurance as well. If you get a new job, you might end up with a new carrier, one with plans you don't even like, and if you spend some time unemployed, you will have to go get independent coverage instead of just continuing to pay your premiums from savings.
I just think people should get to choose what they want instead of their employers doing it.
Inzult wrote:
That said, yes, you are a lot more likely that you will be covered with group benefits because if a certain company has millions tied up in a certain insurance company, they would never risk losing that client.
I believe that to be true, but the problem is not with independent health coverage, but the way health insurance works in general.
The bottom line is that the insurance company should be forced to give you what they have contracted to provide. The fact that they sometimes don't is a problem weather or not you insurance is gained through an employer, so I feel like the solution is to force them to do what they are contractually obligated to do, not use this behavior to prop up this screwed up employer based system.
I coincidentally stumbled across this while browsing for something else completely. It seems that the fluoridation and vaccine conspiracy theories are pretty old (the flier is from 1955). It's all a communist conspiracy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unholy_three.png
I know, it's a terrible thought. I'd love to believe our government and corporations are here to serve us and would never hurt us for their own gain. I'd love to believe that fluoride is good for you and that the spikes in autism and cancer have nothing to do with the aforementioned powers. I'd love to believe 9/11 was an outside job. I'd love to, but I can't. The world has evil people in it, and we can never underestimate what some of them are capable of.
So you are basically saying that you believe in all those conspiracies for the simple reason that there are evil people in this world. Frankly, that's quite a stupid argument.
You clearly don't understand how science works. Even if there was a huge evil organization rotten to its core that would want to establish some falsities as the currently accepted scientific truth, that would simply be physically impossible. You can't control the entirety of the world-wide scientific community. The scientific peer-reviewing process makes sure of that. Things are evaluated, tested and experiments repeated by different people from different countries and cultures. If something is false, someone is going to raise questions and others will have to answer those questions satisfactorily. How exactly is this evil corporation going to silence all of the scientific community? Claims like "the FDA is suppressing cancer cures, and in fact wants to cause cancer" is such an US-centric notion that it gives me nausea. It's like the only country in the world with any saying on medicine would be the USA (and hence the FDA). Any person making such claims is an idiot in my books. (The same goes for all the other conspiracy theories as well.)
I believe in what I believe because my government lies to me constantly, puts out dis-info that is clear to anyone with eyes, and has much to gain in each of the cases I've mentioned. You're implying the government listens to the scientific community. Many people in the community have raised concerns over fluoridation and have denounced cannabis as a poison. The government doesn't care, and will continue to put out false information so that the people will believe them. Why would this be different in the case of cancer? It's not just the U.S; corporate interests have no borders.
Joined: 9/21/2009
Posts: 1047
Location: California
Truncated wrote:
Well, crazy is in the eyes of the beholder. I (and most others here it seems) think the conspiracy theory that the FDA and its counterparts in all other industrialized countries and all independent researchers are silencing Burzunski are no less crazy than what nfq is claiming.
Thank you for implying I'm crazy. To even consider that the FDA cares more about research than money is outright ignorant. Not only did they attempt to silence him, but they tried to steal his methods (through patenting and blatant lying) because of how effective they were compared to the trillion dollar business of chemo or radiation.
Truncated wrote:
You think it has been shown since an online documentary says so.
No. I believe it because of the evidence in the documentary, not simply because it was stated.
Truncated wrote:
There are also multiple personal accounts of alien contact, crystal healing, astrology, and (conflicting) accounts of religious contact with god. Do you believe all these to be true, too?
I can't even describe how shitty of an analogy that is. Those personal accounts you mentioned would have to be believed by trust, not evidence/proof. The ones I was referring to, I believe because of multiple human medical records, not simply word of mouth.
Truncated wrote:
Admittedly I don't know much about the FDA, mostly about its counterparts in Sweden. I don't see what they could possibly gain (financially or otherwise) from trying to silence a treatment for cancer. And why didn't they do the same with the cure for tuberculosis, which in its time killed and crippled a comparable amount of people as cancer today? Or measles? Or smallpox?
The medical/pharmaceutical industry is completely different today than it was back when those were large scale diseases. Also, the diseases you mentioned generally affect all ages, while cancer tends to occur mostly in older people. If young people everywhere started dying, that would be a bigger problem than people in their 50s - 80s dying.
That said, yes, you are a lot more likely that you will be covered with group benefits because if a certain company has millions tied up in a certain insurance company, they would never risk losing that client.
I believe that to be true, but the problem is not with independent health coverage, but the way health insurance works in general.
The bottom line is that the insurance company should be forced to give you what they have contracted to provide. The fact that they sometimes don't is a problem weather or not you insurance is gained through an employer, so I feel like the solution is to force them to do what they are contractually obligated to do, not use this behavior to prop up this screwed up employer based system.
I'm trying not to make judgments, but rather observations. The way things are set up in the US right now, right or wrong, that's how it is. If the solution is to set up a third party to force insurance companies to do the right thing, who would fund it, and who would have the authority to run it?
The reason stuff like this really gets to me, more than other stupid conspiracy theories about UFO sightings, Chemtrails, lunar landings, and other batshit insane stuff, is that this targets and abuses people in a disastrous situation that are desperate for finding a cure for their problems, and does so for profit.
I know, it's a terrible thought. I'd love to believe our government and corporations are here to serve us and would never hurt us for their own gain. I'd love to believe that fluoride is good for you and that the spikes in autism and cancer have nothing to do with the aforementioned powers. I'd love to believe 9/11 was an outside job. I'd love to, but I can't. The world has evil people in it, and we can never underestimate what some of them are capable of.
No one's saying the government is perfect, it's just that most of us take the bad with the good. Government provides stability at the cost of taxes, some corruption, and bureaucracy. You may not appreciate it, but many of us value this stability, even while acknowledging the costs.
However, you'll have to do better than hearsay connecting supposed spikes in autism and cancer with government. Need I remind you that the decline in the number of pirates has been conclusively linked to the increase in temperature over time? And citing your belief that the September 11th terrorist attacks were an inside job is doing your cause no favors.
Being a libertarian must be quite a miserable existence. You believe that nearly everyone in power is "evil" (your own word) and out to get you, just because they can. Any misfortune is somehow linked back to the government, simultaneously turning a blind eye to any good it may do. Your political views are so broad and outlandish that they have no hope of ever being adopted by more than a fringe group, much less the government, ensuring that you feel perpetually downtrodden. I'd pity you if I didn't think your beliefs were destroying the country.
Lessons to take from this topic: guard your wallet carefully and don't be controlled by fear. Be rationally skeptical.
I'm not an expert on the scientific issues, but I've read several articles linking fluoride and certain vaccinations to brain damage and autism. Many products that are on the market today are known to cause cancer, the most obvious ones being tobacco, certain food products, etc, and if the FDA isn't taking these things off the market, then they aren't doing their job. That said, as I've said before, it's very hard to debate these things without a scientific background as I don't know who to trust. I just have a very hard time believing a government that supports the "War on Drugs" has any interest in my health.
The thing I am a lot more informed about, however, is 9/11. I don't want to derail this conversation further than I already have by talking about non-medical issues, but I take offense that you merely said bringing up this case doesn't do my cause any favors. If you'd like to discuss it on IRC, I'd gladly chat with you about it.
I try to expose the evils in Washington and beyond. I supposedly have a movement that will not be adopted by anyone, and I'm perfectly within my rights of free speech, yet this somehow means that I am destroying the country. That doesn't make any sense, you know it, and even if you disagree with me, claiming that somehow my words are destroying a nation that was built on dissent is un-American.
By the way, how's Final Fantasy Legend II going? :)
I'm not an expert on the scientific issues, but I've read several articles linking fluoride and certain vaccinations to brain damage and autism.
Cite.
Many products that are on the market today are known to cause cancer, the most obvious ones being tobacco, certain food products, etc, and if the FDA isn't taking these things off the market, then they aren't doing their job.
Tobacco's pretty heavily regulated. It's worth noting that almost EVERYTHING is carcinogenic to a small extent. Banning any particular foodstuff to prevent cancer deaths is a fool's errand.
That said, as I've said before, it's very hard to debate these things without a scientific background as I don't know who to trust. I just have a very hard time believing a government that supports the "War on Drugs" has any interest in my health.
I'm not a fan of the war on drugs either, but don't throw the baby (government regulation) out with the bathwater (government policies that suck and need to be changed democratically)
I'm not an expert on the scientific issues, but I've read several articles linking fluoride and certain vaccinations to brain damage and autism.
Cite.
Sadly, I don't think it'd help my case much to link to an interview of a doctor conducted by Alex Jones.
Many products that are on the market today are known to cause cancer, the most obvious ones being tobacco, certain food products, etc, and if the FDA isn't taking these things off the market, then they aren't doing their job.
Tobacco's pretty heavily regulated. It's worth noting that almost EVERYTHING is carcinogenic to a small extent. Banning any particular foodstuff to prevent cancer deaths is a fool's errand.
I know that virtually anything can cause cancer, but if something is suspected to be carcinogenic to a abnormal extent, such as in the case of some microwavable products and cell phones, you'd think there'd at least be a debate on recalling said products, or at least some studies.
That said, as I've said before, it's very hard to debate these things without a scientific background as I don't know who to trust. I just have a very hard time believing a government that supports the "War on Drugs" has any interest in my health.
I'm not a fan of the war on drugs either, but don't throw the baby (government regulation) out with the bathwater (government policies that suck and need to be changed democratically)
Again, I'm not trying to get rid of all government regulation. That said, if certain agencies aren't doing their job, then they should be abolished and replaced, or heavily reformed to where virtually all the heads of the agency are replaced. Furthermore, there are agencies that I believe shouldn't exist period (Department of Education, DEA, and the TSA to name a few).
If you don't think the government is doing its job (representing public interest), then the solution is not to get rid of it or make it smaller, but to fix it. If the FDA isn't doing its job, then likewise. I'd argue that the wars the US is in atm are primarily in corporate/imperialist interest. Can you blame faulty government for it? No, I don't think so because a large part of the population thinks these wars are necessary to keep the world a safe place. Is it faulty government if they get rid of business regulations? No, because a large part of the public believe it's in their best interest if the global market is as free as possible. Indeed, a freer market enables large companies to make larger profits, but I doubt it's in the public's best interest if that increase in profit doesn't come from them improving their products and services, but from making them worse (in terms of overall good they do to the global population). Does the public care if bailouts are pretty much unconditional (too big to fail) so it suddenly becomes ok for everyone to do over-the-top risky business? No, I don't think so either.
If you want to change anything, smaller government will probably only make matters worse. If you want to fix your government and its institutions, you have to first educate the public so that it can take stances that are truly beneficial to themselves, else I fear it's impossible. If nobody cares, nothing's going to change. If everybody cares, everything is going to change. The real problem is the public and its lack of interest in real world affairs, not some kind of evil conspiracy.
The Department of Education is the only agency that possibly could be for educating the public for their own best interest (as opposed to f.e. teaching them why a free market philosophy is best, which is primarily in corporate interest). It could also help to make good education more publicly accessible, which I think should be in our every interest. If you don't think the Department of Education does its job properly, that doesn't mean you should try to get rid of it.
Fluoride can inhibit the growth of certain microorganisms (or force them to mutate to be more fluoride-tolerant). Do I want to inhibit the growth of cariogenic bacteria in my mouth? Yes, so I use fluoridated tooth paste and fluoridated mouth rinse. Do I generally want to expose my whole body to fluoride? No, I don't think I want to generally inhibit the growth of microorganisms in my body elsewhere. I agree it should be everybody's free decision if they want to consume fluoridated water or not. I don't think it would have any serious effects on my health, but I expect fluoridated water over only using fluoridated dental hygiene products to rather have very minor negative effects on my health than positive ones. Can fluoride be used to control my mind? No, I don't think so. Can fear over a giant evil government conspiracy be used to control my mind? Yes, I do think so. It would help some pretty powerful people to slowly get rid of any form of government that doesn't act exclusively in their interest altogether.
I really hope America isn't on the way of an armed civil war in the future. The polarization of patriotism vs "conspiritism" really worries me. I don't believe a civil war would be in best public interest. All the public needs is a change in attitude imo.
Regarding autism, it's always on the rise, just because it gets more and more popular as a diagnosis. It's only defined by its symptoms and recent development goes into a direction where even if not all of them are present, people can still be diagnosed as having mild autism. As the diagnosis becomes more tolerable and popular, apperantly the number of autistic individuals increases, but it could very well just be an illusion. Autism is most likely to be like cancer in that it can have multiple causes that would be classified as sepereate diseases if we knew more about it. Also, there are many things that can cause people to act a bit like autists, without them actually being mentally ill. But since autism is only defined by its symptoms, they could still be diagnosed. To statistically link an increase in autistic individuals to any other recent developments without causal evidence is idiotic imo.
The problem with the idea to shut down an institution and then replace it is that it comes from the idea that the people inside that institution are to blame. I don't think so. If external circumstances force them to act in the public's best interest, then it doesn't matter how evil they supposedly are. If the public actually cares, then they'll have their way. There's no need to change anything but the public stance imo. If a government institution has to become corrupt just to survive, then I'd be for reducing the amount of taxes that go into the defense budget and use that money to finance that organization instead. For that to be possible, the majority of the public only has to care and be seriously for it and it will be done.
I'm not an expert on the scientific issues, but I've read several articles linking fluoride and certain vaccinations to brain damage and autism.
It has taken me far too long to learn this, but one should never trust an article that wasn't published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Even then, its veracity isn't a sure thing. If you read news articles that claim a scientific finding (and hey, I've been known to do the same for fun), I'd say the chances are far worse than a coin flip that the study is either majorly flawed or outright bogus. I know that can be frustrating because we'd all like to think we can be on the cutting-edge of science just by reading the news, but it's simply not the case.
Brandon wrote:
Many products that are on the market today are known to cause cancer, the most obvious ones being tobacco, certain food products, etc, and if the FDA isn't taking these things off the market, then they aren't doing their job.
And here I agree with you, though not for the reason you probably expect. I hate all addictive substances and I strongly believe they should be regulated and eventually outlawed. My views are rather extreme, but they're my own and they're consistent.
Brandon wrote:
That said, as I've said before, it's very hard to debate these things without a scientific background as I don't know who to trust. I just have a very hard time believing a government that supports the "War on Drugs" has any interest in my health.
Although you're being conciliatory and I should take that with grace, I can't help but say that you're doing a better job deflating your own points than I could. Your libertarian-born distrust has left you unable to filter out showmanship from logic and reason. Maybe if you'd accept that your fellow man-- even in a position of power-- isn't always determined to hold you down, you'd learn that you can trust some people, you'd learn who to trust, and you'll be able to see the good that government does.
Brandon wrote:
The thing I am a lot more informed about, however, is 9/11. I don't want to derail this conversation further than I already have by talking about non-medical issues, but I take offense that you merely said bringing up this case doesn't do my cause any favors. If you'd like to discuss it on IRC, I'd gladly chat with you about it.
It's true. Any idle readers to this conversation who were on the fence about the FDA just saw you connect it to a fringe belief that almost no one takes seriously today. If someone is trying to teach me quantum mechanics and they mention that they believe the moon landing was faked, I suddenly have to take everything they say with strong skepticism. This is not a rational person I'm listening to.
With that said, I will probably regret this, but sure, I'll discuss 9/11 with you on IRC.
Brandon wrote:
I try to expose the evils in Washington and beyond. I supposedly have a movement that will not be adopted by anyone, and I'm perfectly within my rights of free speech, yet this somehow means that I am destroying the country. That doesn't make any sense, you know it, and even if you disagree with me, claiming that somehow my words are destroying a nation that was built on dissent is un-American.
There you go throwing around the word "evil" again. Do you believe politicians are like Snidely Whiplash? Is a regular person who is elected to public office whisked away to a dark, smoky room where people in ominous robes brainwash and indoctrinate them into being "evil"? And what do you think of this famous photograph? The country is governed by people, people who are in many ways just like you and me. Sure, some of them can be misguided, greedy, and corrupt, but at the end of the day, they're still people who go home to their spouses and kids and have a job to do. Calling them evil dehumanizes them.
No, your movement will not be adopted by a majority of people. Yes, you are within your rights of free speech. Yes, I think your beliefs are destroying the country. Politicians are so endlessly vilified that only two kinds of people are crazy enough to run for office these days: those who do so because they see the problems that plague society and genuinely want to fix them (I think these people still form the majority of government) and those who want to milk the office for everything it's worth (these people conform to your twisted view of government). By unceasingly criticizing government, never being satisfied with any moves the government makes, and propagating disinformation, you are ensuring that the latter type of person only grows in proportion to the former. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy and it drags us all down with you. And to top it all off, you're just a big ball of distrust, frustration, and dissatisfaction. Quit tilting at windmills.
It is a nation built on dissent and dissent is patriotic, but it has to mean something. It has to be focused, rational, and a real problem. If your goal is to limit government across the board because it is "evil", that is not a focused, rational goal based on a real problem. You are hopeless. I know it sounds like I'm disparaging you, but the sooner you realize that you are making yourself miserable, the happier you'll be.
Brandon wrote:
By the way, how's Final Fantasy Legend II going? :)
FFL1, and it's going fine. I really should be spending more time botting it than discussing politics, though.
"Do you believe that fairies exist?"
"No."
"Would it at least be possible that they exist, but we simply haven't detected them?"
"I suppose."
"So do you believe they exist?"
"No."
There's nothing illogical in this argumentation. Conceding that something is possible doesn't mean you have to believe it exists, and there's nothing nonsensical there.
Right. Nonsensical is your argument with nfq where you specifically imply his belief is wrong, while neither you nor him can prove or disprove it in the first place. There can, however, be particular reasons justifying said beliefs. The only way to be right here is not to argue, science isn't (yet) involved here.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Right. Nonsensical is your argument with nfq where you specifically imply his belief is wrong, while neither you nor him can prove or disprove it in the first place. There can, however, be particular reasons justifying said beliefs. The only way to be right here is not to argue, science isn't (yet) involved here.
I think you are nitpicking about wording.
It's perfectly sensible to say "this isn't so" even though you can never have 100% sure proof of that. After all, perhaps nothing is at it seems. Perhaps I'm the only sentience in this illusory world, nothing is as it seems, I'm just a brain in a jar (colloquially speaking, of course) and everybody else is just a figment of my imagination. If that's the case, everything I could possibly assert about the universe would be false (except perhaps "I think, therefore I exist").
But that wouldn't be practical in any way. In fact, thinking like that would on the contrary be detrimental.
I can perfectly well say "this computer I'm using right now exists". I can't prove it with 100% certainty (nothing can), but there's no reason for me to doubt its existence. I can measure it, test it, verify that all these measurements and tests always give consistent results, I can compare to measurements and tests made by others and verify their consistency with my own, and so on.
I don't have to say "I believe this computer exists". In fact, that would imply something quite different.
In the same way I can perfectly well say "the universe/nature has no sentience". The statement is based on available evidence, and it's not a statement of absolute certainty.
I'd rather say it's based on the lack of available evidence, and that's pretty much the reason it's pointless to argue it, especially with people like nfq who believe just about everything as long as you can justify it with words, no matter how batshit insane your justification is. I don't even know what you were trying to achieve, lol.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I'd rather say it's based on the lack of available evidence, and that's pretty much the reason it's pointless to argue it, especially with people like nfq who believe just about everything as long as you can justify it with words, no matter how batshit insane your justification is.
Don't take my words so seriously now. Just because I say something doesn't necessarily mean I believe it. If I was serious, I couldn't agree or disagree with anyone, so I couldn't discuss anything, so I have to pick a belief so that I'm able to discuss something. If no one disagrees with anyone, there can't be any discussion, and the more disagreement, the more discussion, that's why I usually pick the most insane beliefs, because they are the funniest, lol.
Sincerely yours,
The devils advocate
So there's this, right? From Bobo's link, and I'm sure we've all seen it before. There are a few problems with it that lead me to question it's validity as an argumentative tool, however.
1) It shows "Approximate[ly]" 17 pirates. Compared with the scale of the other values, 17 hardly seems an approximation, but an exact value. An inaccurate exact value if you care to look up data for piracy in and around the year 2000.
2) The first two data points are confusing. They show an increase in temperature, and an increase in the number of pirates. That's fine. However, from that point on the number of pirates decreases. To a casual viewer, based on the title of the graph, it would be reasonable to draw the quick and careless conclusion that the number of pirates is constantly decreasing (based on x-axis trend at a glance), while the average global temperature is increasing. To me, that seems rather disingenuous and I don't really even know what that word means!
3) The author of the graph further confounds the reader by adding extraneous data. The year. A graph of Global Average Temperature Vs. Number of Pirates should graph Global Average Temperature Vs. Number of Pirates. What is most clearly displayed is Global Average Temperature Vs. Year. As it is, the data points are misplaced and confused because they are in chronological order, whereas they should be in order based on the number of pirates. The year is irrelevant and shouldn't even be included.
4) The author fails to indicate the distinction between maritime piracy and software piracy. Many modern readers might think of software piracy first and then get confused by the graph.
5) Before there were pirates, was the earth always super hot only?!!!
It seems to me the author here had an agenda and was leading the data and the reader to the conclusion that the decreasing number of pirates is heating the earth. Talk about your wild conspiracy! Based on the misleading and confusing nature of the graph, I think it's safe to dismiss it (and the conclusion with it) as biased and unfounded. So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
PS: In general, as Comicalflop's average rate of posts per day decreases, my age increases. Cf, post more plz kthx.
PPS: As the number of movies Deign submits increases, the number of movies Deign submits increases WTF NOWAI!!!
