First, I said “so much less”, it contains within it the assumption that it is less. Try reading before launching into your prejudicial tirades.
Second, Coca-Cola are an archetype for the increasing commercialisation pressure leading to the dismantling of cold-war era institutions in the eastern bloc. If the reference wasn’t obvious then perhaps it is you who needs to “think” a little longer.
Well. That didn’t take long.
Edit.
I’ve just noticed the post you removed. I assumed it was my rant about the implications of this news story, but no. It’s the post with the actual fucking data in it from two medical sources…
Where exactly was the misinformation. Was it the Cass report, or the critiques offered by medical professionals in a medical journal?
And you wonder why people get angry about these issues…
No, that’s not what I’m implying. I don’t believe I even mentioned children, but if you want to quote the part you think implies that children undergo such surgery I’ll be glad to add an edit to clarify.
Removed by mod
So, let me get this straight.
Iran does tons of gender affirming surgery (the thing the trans campaigners are pushing for more of)
It does as much surgery as the US plus more.
And all of that surgery (the entire current US surgery docket plus more) is for the wrong reasons.
So what protections are in place in the US to prevent surgery being done for the same ‘wrong’ reasons?
Is that US healthcare system is so notorious for its concern for people over profit and never ever advises treatments that benefit the insurance companies more than the patient?
Is the the notoriously open and friendly attitude some states have toward gays and lesbians so that those people grow up completely comfortable with expressing who they are?
Is the notoriously healthy mental state of our nation’s teenagers so that every decision they make is well thought through and not at all influenced by their peer group, parents, social media, or culture?
No. It’s fuck all. It’s blind ideological faith that something being legally mandated and something being well marketed have radically different effects on people’s willingness to comply.
Well, they do. People are far less willing to comply with something that is legally mandated and will often risk their lives to resist.
That’s all very true.
I said “…that the Nazis did it”, not “…when the Nazis did it” for that very reason.
They say those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it. I guess those that do are too. In a few years when Gaza has been wiped off the map, it’s people killed or displaced, I expect everyone will suddenly find a mass agreement that it was terrible and should never happen again.
Trouble with most progressives is it’s always that last war that was unjust, never the current one.
I wonder who Netanyahu has a picture of…
The Nazis didn’t have the support of the world’s major economic powers, the media, and the majority of those on the so-called left.
In short, the world gave a fuck that the Nazis did it.
Well, the AP there doing an amazing job of promoting Russia’s interests.
Instead of ten bullet points showing how and why Swann is factually wrong about Zelenskyy and the Ukraine war, they go off on a rant with barely concealed nationalist overtones about how his work was “funded” and people were “paid to promote it”. Well, stop the fucking press. Journalists influenced by governments and money! Headline fucking news.
If he’s wrong he’s wrong. Doesn’t matter who paid him, who he paid, who else agrees, who else those who agree also agree with… It matters if he’s wrong. If he is, just say it.
Trying to play cold-war era patriotism just plays directly into the hands of the conspiracy theorists who will, as we speak be saying “notice how they couldn’t actually deny any of his claims…”
It’s a damn good assumption as I also could shit out a few dozen links after one Google search, too.
It’s not, though. That’s the point. Finding sources to back an unpopular opinion is, by definition, trawling through Google to find them. If you disallow that, you disallow unpopular opinion. Epistemological integrity does not simply oblige us to believe whatever view had the most sources, it’s not dishonest to have a gut feeling about something and check that it is reasonable, based on finding supporting evidence. It’s the mainstay of all academic essaying, for example. It’s normal to check one’s opinion is reasonable, we don’t all arrive at an issue with blank slates to fill and if you think you do, you’re lying to yourself.
Epistemic responsibility is about changing that initial view if it is overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, it’s not about updating it according to some popularity contest. Truth is not decided by vote.
So searching through Google to find sources supporting your view is perfectly reasonable so long as the sources found are valid and reputable. That indicates it is reasonable to continue to hold your view. It doesn’t matter if a greater number of equally reputable sources present the opposing view because truth is not determined by popular vote.
If he does “do his research” and happens to have a list of links at the ready, that is just weird or it’s someone with a motive other than showing how smart they are
So damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
You’re familiar, I assume, with the self-immunised argument?
dissent with bad information is just poor form
It is. Unless the dissent is over whether the information is ‘bad’, in which case evidence must be brought to bear to support arguments to the contrary. No doubt this poster would not simply agree their information was ‘bad’, so that is the point over which you disagree. Again, assuming it’s bad when that’s the very point of disagreement is begging the question.
“despite increasingly popular opinion” is supposed to convince me of something based on the rumored opinions of what?
I was merely commenting on the increasingly popular move of repeating things back in alternating capitals aS iF tHaT pRoVeD aNyThInG At All.
Addendum:
Basically, some people’s initial view on some matter will coincide with that of the mainstream. They’re lucky. The evidence supporting their view will be plastered over every newspaper and government announcement. They won’t have to do any digging to support it since quality newspapers are (generally) reputable sources.
Others, however, will form a contrary initial opinion. They are not so lucky since, by definition, sources supporting their view will be less well disseminated. They will have to actively search.
Doublely unlucky if that view happens to oppose US policy because the US’s many enemies will also be seeking out such evidence to use in their propaganda.
Triplely unlucky these days because conspiracy theorists and online cultists are also looking for dissenting evidence to add credence to whatever bullshit they’re spouting.
But a healthy democracy requires that neither of these issues is used to simply smear all dissenting opinion. Otherwise we just have a monolith.
Dissent is not spouting off Russian propaganda verbatim
Why not? If Russia finds information which is opposed to the US/NATO position they will use it in their propaganda. It follows that anyone dissenting from the US/NATO position may also use the same information.
Something being part of foreign propaganda doesn’t mean it’s false. Propaganda isn’t just lying. If the US had done something wrong, you can guarantee Russia would use it in their propaganda. They don’t just lie about everything. They lie about things they want to hide, but if the truth helps their cause they’ll tell it. It follows from this that some Russian propaganda is likely to be true (unless you want to make the case that the US never does anything wrong, or successfully hides it from Russia in all cases).
Dissent is also not searching for every internet based opinion piece with a flashy headline that aligns with a specific view.
That’s true it isn’t. But you’ve no evidence at all that this is what’s happening here other than that the resulting opinion is a dissenting one.
If you simply assume all evidence for dissenting opinion must have been derived this way purely on the grounds that the view it supports is not a mainstream one, then you have a self-immumised argument. The antithesis of rational thought.
It is a structural necessity of dissenting opinion that it be based on fewer sources. If you deny the ability to present sources simply on the grounds that they are select, then you deny dissent, because dissent, by necessity, will be based on select sources. Opinion based on majority sources is, by definition, majority opinion (among a rational community).
Dissent is actually showing, to the best of ones abilities, real cause for action.
No, it isn’t. Because whether a cause is a ‘real’ cause is the matter over which there is disagreement, so it is begging the question to only allow those causes you consider ‘real’ into a discussion about which causes are ‘real’. You preemptively clear the field of all dissenting opinion before the debate even begins.
To properly use these articles, you have to dig. You need to understand the authors, the sources and the motivation. Again, link-boy is likely not doing this
As before, you’ve no evidence this hasn’t been done other than that the resulting opinion is a dissenting one. If your proof that sources are inadequate is solely that they are used to support a dissenting opinion then you have by definition denied dissenting opinion.
You want to get all script-flippy about “sPeAkiG diSsEnT” when the people “dissenting” don’t know what the actual fuck they are posting with.
Unfortunately, despite increasingly popular opinion to the contrary, putting an argument into alternating capitals doesn’t make it go away.
So. Out of interest. Which alternative to presenting a dissenting opinion and sourcing it, would you prefer?
Not presenting any dissent at all - the only opinions posted should be ones that agree with the mainstream view?
Present a dissenting opinion, but don’t provide any evidence for it?
Present a dissenting opinion but then provide evidence supporting the mainstream opinion instead?
Dissenting opinion, by it’s very nature, has fewer sources, that’s the whole point of it being ‘dissenting’, as such the character of any set of resources supporting it will be one of having “trawled through” a load of sources presenting the opposing, mainstream view.
By suggesting that any argument whose sources display that character is to be ignored, you’re arguing that we should live in a society with no dissent from mainstream opinion.
Is that the sort of society you think Ukraine are fighting for?
Yes, because MI5 never lie for the government do they? Famous for telling the absolute truth all the time are MI5… terrible at counterintelligence as a consequence… But at least they’re honest…
Unbelievable. If the government says jump, you say…?
Antibiotics and other prescription medications are more often prescribed to older folks
But https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6996207/
In this study, we also analyzed antibiotic prescription rates according to age. The highest prevalence rates were observed in patients aged 71 years (80.3%) followed by 4-year-old children (60.7%).
Since 71 year olds wouldn’t show any long term effects, that leaves the four year old group.
as a prescriber, I do warn my patients of the dangers of taking antibiotics willy nilly.
Of course you do, I’ve no doubt you’re very diligent. Because now we know they have serious negative consequences. 40 years ago, however, the people this article is about would have merely been told they were “safe and effective”. That’s exactly the point I’m making.
You now have to take precaution with a medicine because of new information about its safety that wasn’t known at the time it was developed.
Same is true for every other factor mentioned in the report. Human innovation is absolutely suffuce with things we thought were safe and effective at the time, but later turn out to be quite unsafe.
Yet taking this unequivocal fact and applying it to a rational scepticism about new medicines has, since 2020, become ‘misinformation’.
Its the one that coincides with a concern of mine, yes.
Do you comment on absolutely everything regardless of whether it interests you or not?
Are you suggesting that the mere fact of being more interested in some issues than others indicates some kind of unreasonable level of fantisicm?
So “no firm conclusions” means what, in terms of the other comments here?
As far as I can tell, people are understandably a bit troubled, and a bit cross (since some of the proposed causes probably should have been dealt with a lot earlier). They’re maybe hastily jumping to theories about a few likely candidates. Do you blame them?
Or should we just do nothing? Wait, and put all our faith in…? What?
The vast majority of the things mentioned would do us absolutely no harm at all to avoid, or even legislate against as a precaution. So is there a good reason we should wait for “firm” conclusions?
Seemed as good a place as any.
I assume the report wasn’t posted in the spirit of “oh well, nothing we can do about it”. I assume the message was, “let’s try not to let this happen again”.
But maybe im assuming too much basic human compassion.
No, not at all.
I’m pointing out that concern about vaccine safety is legitimate given that many treatments thought “safe and effective” at the time later turn out to have been harmful. The effect antibiotics have on the gut biome being just the latest example.
People concerned about the safety of the drugs they are told to use are not all “lunitic conspiracy theorists” as often branded. Some simply have a completely reasonable caution about the hubris of the medical establishment.
Funny how so many responses have skimmed over the implication of antibiotic use.
Now ask yourselves, these antibiotics… If you’d have asked your doctor at the time “are these drugs safe and effective?”, what do you think the answer would have been?
Now ask your doctor if the latest vaccine is safe and effective and tell me how confident you feel about their response.
None of it is ‘clear’, and of course we don’t ‘know’. The question is what on earth you have on your list of reasons to give Antony Blinken the benefit of the doubt.
I’d love to know what it is about his record in office that inspires such trust.
Honestly, the level of fawning obsequiousness to the government these days is like something from Mccarthy’s America, I thought we’d moved on as a society.
The point isn’t whether he actually did approve bombing aid trucks. The point is that he, like any government official, should be terrified of the response if he did, because it’s only that fear that reigns in the abuse of power.
Do you think Antony Blinken is going to be terrified of “oh, we don’t have absolutely conclusive proof he actually said those exact words so we’ll just drop it”?
… is one opinion. Success of westernisation through corporate media is another. The difference is, I’m not trying to dismiss yours.
My actual words: “so much less”
Your judgement: “so you’re saying its more”
Which actual words did you use? The ones in your head?