Lurker > adjl

Kyuubi4269 posted...

I have never seen Joe act in this way so I have a hard time believing it. Sure he's an idiot, I don't think he's malicious.

He knows his audience, and his audience wants to see scientists "lose" "debates." He's a better businessman than to deny them that.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

I wouldn't say this is true of Joe either. He's learned his stance in the first place, question is are you convincing enough to overrule what feels right to him.

It's not a question of being convincing enough. It's a question of whether or not he has the integrity to change his mind and learn from new information that corrects his mistaken beliefs. Even more than that, it's a question of whether or not he'll publicly admitting to having his mind changed, knowing that he will lose face among his audience if he does so because his audience sees that as weakness and hypocrisy (see: calling the CDC hypocritical for changing their stance on masks early on).

Kyuubi4269 posted...

It's even worse with masks because we see people say "I can't breathe with a mask on" and the response be "yes you can, the air still goes through", but the person still feels a sensation that they interpret as difficulty breathing. I've never heard anybody address that, i.e. "when your mask is soggy with your dank spit, the air will be humid and warmer, so it will feel different, but you still get air".

I've done pretty much exactly that (I tend to focus more on the subconscious panic response triggered by having something touching your mouth/nose than on the moisture issue, but the same basic idea) countless times in response to people insisting that masks suffocate them. I generally do so in conjunction with various citations demonstrating that O2 saturation is not reduced by wearing a mask. I had one guy get so pissed off that I wouldn't accept his belief that he had difficulty breathing as anything more than a psychological reaction that he put me on his ignore list.

People are very attached to being wrong about this.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

I see people stating the data, but it's not presented in a way morons can consume, it could be a cleverly worded manipulation as they don't have the means to understand it, so it makes more sense to them to ignore it.

If somebody's sufficiently bent on denying the science, they're going to insist that pretty much any presentation of the data that conflicts with their beliefs has been manipulated to distort the truth. Present the raw data instead, and it's either too complex or obscure for them to understand, or they accuse it of being fabricated (note that there is no such thing as data that has not been manipulated). Accessibility helps to teach people, but again, you can't teach those that are unwilling to learn.

I will say, as much as I'm arguing with you, I don't think you're entirely wrong. The attitude of "why should I bother explaining myself to people that disagree with me?" has the potential to be extremely bad for society's overall scientific competence and sow even greater distrust of science. While there are definitely instances where providing that explanation and debating the issue with people is going to be a waste of time, it is generally beneficial to err on the side of informing people, so people should try to do so. It is, however, utterly exhausting and deeply frustrating to have to keep doing so, because very often you do not make any discernible progress and instead spend the whole time being called an idiot and/or liar. To that end, as much as I can say that this scientist should maybe have taken the bait, I very much understand why he didn't. Dealing with science denial is a thoroughly miserable experience all around.

Revelation34 posted...

The donors money is already gone so there's no reason to sue them too.

If they contributed to the problem, they need to contribute to apologizing for it and cleaning it up.

Lips are just flesh moustaches.

Notschmendrake posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/1/AAfDOpAAC8WF.jpg

To be fair, I just plain don't get the concept of high-level math research. I know there are use cases for some of it (especially in computer science), but so much of the research is just so ridiculously theoretical and seems to boil down to "let's solve this super complicated puzzle and maybe somebody will be able to do something with the solution someday." It's weird.

40 years seemed kind of ridiculous for that (it's all kinds of nope, but not quite to that extent), but it makes a lot more sense taking the other charges listed into account.

Heck, I might even go so far as to say that I enjoyed playing Mahler's 3rd with a crappy community orchestra more than I enjoy listening to Abbado's performance of it with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (arguably the definitive performance of the piece). My version was, to no surprise, not very well-performed and generally much more thinly scored than it needed to be (it calls for 8 horns. We had two and two saxophones), but the last movement is an impossibly gorgeous piece of music that relies heavily on some really quiet parts that are all but completely lost in the recording (being Mahler, there are also some very loud parts, so it's a challenge to keep on top of the volume). Being right in the middle of it, I got everything, and it was magnificent.

KodyKeir posted...

It's why well funded public schools are so important, it is far easier to teach someone the right thing the first time, then to try to correct misinformation, misconceptions and misguidance.

And, of course, it's no coincidence that the politicians benefiting most from this ignorance and misinformation tend to be the ones in favour of stripping down public schooling even further (not to say that simply throwing more money at schools necessarily solves the problem, but simply taking money away definitely won't).

KodyKeir posted...

especially if you cannot remove them from the toxic environment that fostered their belief.

Which has really been the biggest issue with Covid. I can put in all the effort I want to try and convince somebody of the truth around the matter, but when they finish reading my comment and scroll down to immediately see another meme painting Covid denial as "free thinking," any progress I made on bringing them around is lost. There's a steady bombardment of validation from a very vocal community of anti-vaxxers and science deniers, and being welcomed by that is a much more comfortable, attractive prospect than letting the seeds of doubt be nurtured.

It's worth going to actual orchestra concerts, if you can swing it. The dynamic contrast in classical music really relies on having good acoustics to carry the lows; recordings rarely do them justice and often require active volume adjustments to catch the quieter parts without being deafened by the loud bits. That's generally going to be less true for video game music, since it's composed and performed with the express intent of being recorded, but live performances of the same music can still improve on the dynamic contrast for an even better experience.

MartianManchild posted...

If the laws are there to actually protect people, there shouldnt be any exemptions.

It's all about risk/benefit analysis, which is why truckers were exempt from the testing and isolation requirements until recently (which has resulted in this absurd tantrum over no longer having special privileges). Not being able to get critical medical supplies because no vaccinated drivers are available is likely to cause more harm than an unvaccinated driver is, so that's an exception. An unvaccinated driver is likely to cause more harm than waiting an extra couple days for a shipment of Fortnite action figures, though, so that driver isn't exempt.

If you want a better-established example of this, consider ambulances running red lights: Running red lights is illegal (technically, even for ambulances), but ambulances are almost never held accountable for doing so because it does more good than harm (helped along by the risk being mitigated by the lights, sirens, and proceeding carefully through the intersection).

Notschmendrake posted...

So... did yall see those fucking animals using their kids as human sheilds? Shameful behavior that I'm sure TC will be quick to excuse.

They've basically been doing that since day 1 (I still doubt the police would have done anything even if there weren't kids present, but the presence of kids has nonetheless been a deterrent), but I'm not surprised it's become more brazen now that they're actually under attack.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Anybody unwilling to debate science doesn't get what science is for.

Any scientist worth their salt can and will back up their claims with observations, show how it was controlled for and explain how they assert their margin of error. Part of what makes science great is that you can and should have back and forths to air potential vulnerabilities and show how they either don't apply or don't matter.

adjl posted...

Nothing about [this] is a legitimate effort to have intellectual discourse on the subject. It's a never-ending torrent of ridiculous arguments that even a high school science education can see through, presented in such a manner that it's extremely laborious to reach the standard of proof they're demanding despite the claims being so clearly wrong. It's specifically designed to wear out the patience of people that know what they're talking about so they stop trying, at which point the science denier claims victory and the audience he's attracted by doing exactly this eats it right up because they're all too stupid to know any better.

You're not wrong that the anti-science crowd's rhetoric has been a major stumbling block for the pandemic response. Heck, I might even go so far as to say that rhetoric gaining the traction it has is the only reason Covid is still a thing (Might. That is a considerable stretch and there have been many other factors). Debating them on their turf, though, is a complete waste of time. Rogan is not extending this invitation for the sake of inviting legitimate debate and educating himself and his viewers. He's extending this invitation because he knows accepting the invitation would be an exercise in extreme, disingenuous frustration for the experts in question and because his audience wants to see the experts discredit themselves (in their eyes) by rejecting it. Even if the invitation is accepted, I can guarantee Rogan has lined up enough bad faith arguments that even if the scientist does spend the entire week painstakingly picking them apart by repeatedly explaining rudimentary science and showing the same incontrovertible evidence again and again, he'll still have enough left un-debunked (just bunked, I guess) that he'll claim victory and his followers will accept that (if they haven't already disregarded the explanations because they think using the same evidence to answer the same question worded differently means the scientist has run out of proof).

This is a waste of scientists' time because it is brazenly designed to be a waste of their time. This is not an educational opportunity, this is an opportunity for Rogan to profit off of reaffirming his audience's pre-existing, misinformed beliefs. I really cannot overemphasize what utter pieces of shit Rogan and his ilk are, given the success they are building by encouraging people to kill themselves and others with their ignorance instead of learning how not to.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

It's hardly a waste of time considering their sentiment's majorly detrimental effect on pandemic suppression.

Speaking as somebody with a background in science and medicine and a near-front-line seat to the public health response to Covid, who has devoted countless hours over the last two years to correcting and arguing with Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers, it is almost invariably a waste of time to argue with these people. You cannot teach those that are unwilling to learn, and the extent to which dismissing Covid's danger and fearmongering about preventative measures has become a matter of personal and political identity means these people feel that they would be compromising who they fundamentally are as a person to accept that they have anything to learn.

I continue to try, on the off chance that I might manage to chip away at their ignorance enough to make a difference, but my main focus in doing that is making sure that their misinformation doesn't go unchallenged. The science deniers themselves are generally a lost cause, but there are still a lot of people out there who genuinely don't know what to think (this being a pretty confusing, scary situation for most laypersons, and most people having the basic integrity to not let that fear lead them to completely deny everything) and are still weighing their options. I feel that, as somebody who can inform them, I have a responsibility to do so. I don't know how to fix the overt deniers (they refuse to learn, and any attempt to force them to do so or stifle their ability to influence others only seems to galvanize the position), but there's still hope for the people that are just confused.

KodyKeir posted...

I suggest we hold a week long debate to prove Joe Rogan exists.

I, for one, have never seen him, so I don't think he does.

MartianManchild posted...

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/unvaccinated-truckers-delivering-vaccines-covid-devices-exempt-from-border-rules/ar-AATZ9KM?ocid=uxbndlbing

Youre exempt from the border rules as long as youre bringing in more vaccines. lmao

Makes sense. That stuff's important and needed relatively urgently, so interfering with it would cause problems. In general, it's unlikely to actually come up, given that the vast majority of cross-border truckers are vaccinated already, but building in the contingency is reasonable.

The exemption for parents dropping off students, on the other hand, seems stupid.

GameLord113 posted...

What really is a good troll though? There have been some here that Ive enjoyed more than others, but ultimately theyre not very good especially when one of their main purposes is to annoy and antagonize others.

One that's entertaining to watch, mostly. There's no small amount of subjectivity to that, obviously, but there's still room to call trolls good/bad without needing to explicitly acknowledge that.

LinkPizza posted...

I thought they already found something like that.

Whether or not it's "pain" is up for debate, since plants don't have "nervous systems" in the usual sense, but most plants exhibit some kind of systemic chemical response to injury, which can regulate healing, scarring responses, or influence how the plant grows. Fundamentally, that's all that pain is, so making a distinction between that response and what we call pain is really just being anthropocentric about it.

KodyKeir posted...

Image one is from V for Vendetta.

"I couldn't find any actual images of the widespread carnage BLM caused, but we all know they caused it, so using a similar scene from a movie is fine."

Harper was an obsessive micromanager who destroyed libraries' worth of climate science data and actively muzzled any scientific journalism he didn't like because it disagreed with the oil-friendly narrative he wanted to maintain. He's the last person who should be cited as a critic of stifling dissent.

Or about his identity when on an alt. The only alt of his I readily know of is just "Zangulus" backwards.

Revelation34 posted...

Stardew Valley is a murder simulator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM

Revelation34 posted...

Probably Zangulus anyway.

Zang doesn't really make a habit of hiding behind alts to say slightly inflammatory things.

MartianManchild posted...

According to a recent Gallup poll, 37% of Americans identify as conservative.

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/michael-w-chapman/gallup-americans-ideology-37-conservative-24-liberal-35-moderate

So with a population of 300 million +, thats over 100 million people. Youre sighting examples of extremism and not whats based on reality of the population as a whole. Thats why your opinion on conservatives is bias and ultimately wrong. Until you can stop your own internal bias, you will always be wrong.

But nobody's "sighting" (you mean "citing") extremists to make that generalization. Reluctance to consider new information and an affinity for clinging to tradition are fundamental to conservative philosophy, which is the basis for what he said. That's not inherently a bad thing (the saying "keep an open mind, but not so open that it falls out" is relevant here: moderation and finding balance between philosophies are key), but it's also not exactly "free thought." Those that do cast aside traditions for the sake of freely considering new information and ideas are, by definition, not very conservative.

kind9 posted...

Traditional ideals and religious authority are two fundamental hallmarks of conservatism in America as far as I can tell. This tells me that if you're a conservative many of your positions are decided in advance based on tradition and authority and you're going to attempt to logic and reason your way there later. That's antithetical to freethought.

And to come full circle, this entire protest is against the need to change in response to new problems the country and the world are facing. In typical conservative fashion, they've missed that these responses are not actually new (vaccines have been a requirement for many industries for about as long as vaccines have been a thing) because they've paid little attention to the world outside of their personal experiences (another hallmark of conservatism).

Now, the anti-vaxx movement has been fuelled by both sides (typically the naturalistic fallacy from the left and religious and anti-government sentiments from the right, with both religion and naturalism fuelling anti-science sentiments), so it's unfair to characterize it as entirely a conservative thing, but this protest can definitely be characterized as right-wing even before looking at the literal goddamn Nazis running it.

I said pretty much the same thing you did. That's not much of a defense.

Who hides behind an alt to say PO talks a lot? That's like the least controversial opinion ever.

Then do you have any examples of such conservatives? Preferably examples that outnumber all of the idiots we get to see doing things like blockading national borders or storming the capitol, since otherwise the minority you cite is being outcompeted by the minority you're trying to deny the existence of (while also praising).

This really depends on your sample size. In a group of 17 people, 15 people doing something is indeed a ton. In a group of 400 million people, less so.

MartianManchild posted...

Maybe you should get out of your echo chamber and actually talk to some conservatives instead of forming unfounded bias opinions about them?

Do you consider yourself an example of such a conservative?

That is a common refrain among people who enjoy being wrong.

SunWuKung420 posted...

Because she said she'd be happy if this relationship lasted 5 years.

This implies she isn't looking for a lasting relationship. Just something to pass the time. She doesn't want 10, 15, 30 years.

I'd be happy if I won $1 million. That doesn't mean I don't want $2, $5, or $10 million, just that $1 million would be pretty great.

Moreover, the idea that relationships' value can/should be measured primarily by their length is incredibly toxic, resulting in countless relationships that should end but do not because people see that as some sort of failure. Breakups and divorces are not failures. Quite the contrary: they're often necessary decisions to make to improve one's quality of life and overall happiness. Similarly, a lifelong relationship is not the only possible way to find success in love. If bouncing between medium-term relationships is what makes somebody (and, ideally, their partners) happiest, that is the right thing for them to do. That's also usually something that's determined retroactively (that is, looking back on one's life and recognizing the pattern that has made them happiest), rather than any sort of long-term plan.

MartianManchild posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/4/AAb2N0AAC8Oo.jpg

I don't know of any fundraising efforts that were specific to the violent BLM and BLM-adjacent protests. Most fundraising efforts were for the movement as a whole, which was overwhelmingly non-violent. Had there been specific fundraising for the violent folks, I would have similarly been in favour of freezing those accounts.

Once again, this is a terrorist movement, not just a protest. Its fundamental aim is to coerce political change through large-scale economic disruption, not merely to make their voices heard. As a movement, BLM had no such aims. Any terrorist activity done under BLM's banner (and yes, there was some, despite your insistence that nobody calling this terrorism thinks there was) was ancillary to the movement, not an inherent part of it.

SmugRickMoranis posted...

What about eggs, dairy, and honey, though? Never understood that aspect of veganism.

I understand the abuses inherent in large, industrial farming operations, but if you source responsibly and locally, why aren't those aforementioned foods accepted as cruelty-free?

Some of it's just a principled objection to the whole exploitation angle, a big part of it is recognizing that it's impossible for small, cruelty-free egg/dairy farms to meet the world's demand for those products (so even if they personally stick to responsible sourcing, they're still contributing to total demand that has to result in unnecessary suffering), you've still got the issue of trophic levels making them less efficient and requiring more overall loss of life... There are enough other factors that I can understand taking it a step further than just "I'll avoid supporting cruelty-heavy corporate dairy farms."

Honey, on the other hand, is an issue that vegans are pretty divided on. It retains the whole exploitation thing, so some people object on that basis, and there are many beekeepers that aren't particularly kind to their bees, but there are also many that do take good care of them, and the honey we collect is an excess that they produce naturally. Bees are also extremely ecologically important and are struggling to survive naturally, so farming them is of significant benefit to the environment (unlike pretty much all other farming) and many feel that justifies exploiting them for honey.

SmugRickMoranis posted...

For that matter, what about aging animals?

By and large, animals that are dying of old age don't produce good meat. It may be more morally acceptable, but if the resultant meat isn't worth eating, it's a moot point.

SmugRickMoranis posted...

Or culling animal populations?

Some would argue that culls shouldn't need to happen in the first place because population issues like that are overwhelmingly caused by human interference. Others would say it's okay, because whether or not they should need to happen, they do. Deriving some benefit from the cull is therefore making the best of a bad situation.

SmugRickMoranis posted...

Would it be okay to eat meat under certain conditions?

A lot of vegetarians/vegans do, actually. As much as people tend to think of both as being totally exclusive of all meat/animal products, it's quite common for people to just mostly eliminate them from their diets, consuming a greatly reduced amount and/or making sure they're sourced as responsibly as possible when they do. You get a lot of people saying "I could never be a vegetarian because I couldn't live without bacon" or whatever, but you can very easily cut down on the amount of meat you have and still enjoy some bacon. It doesn't have to be an absolute thing at all. Questions of vegetarianism aside, Americans could generally stand to do that, since the average American diet includes quite a bit more meat than is reasonable or healthy, but American culture (especially American masculinity) tends to balk at that idea.

That's nice, but it doesn't make your ridiculous, baseless theory any less ridiculous and baseless.

"Hello fellow teenagers!"

Probably point out that trophic levels are a thing and an order of magnitude or two more plants die to produce a pound of meat than die to produce a pound of plant-based food. Sometimes even more, depending on how many steps are involved (tuna's ~4 steps up on the chain, for example, so you get roughly 1/10000th the calories from eating it that you'd get if you could hypothetically eat the same mass of the phytoplankton that form the root of the chain). Even if plants suffer (and there's really no reason to believe that they don't, given that pretty much all of them have chemical responses to injury), veganism still results in less overall suffering than omnivory.

The only thing Canadian police are good for is assaulting natives, homeless people, and anyone that interferes with the business interests of Daddy Petrochem.

THEGODDAMNBATMA posted...

Conspiracy theorists think you can't prove them wrong unless you debate their bad faith arguments that they construe to specifically try to discredit your arguments.

Pretty much. Nothing about it is a legitimate effort to have intellectual discourse on the subject. It's a never-ending torrent of ridiculous arguments that even a high school science education can see through, presented in such a manner that it's extremely laborious to reach the standard of proof they're demanding despite the claims being so clearly wrong. It's specifically designed to wear out the patience of people that know what they're talking about so they stop trying, at which point the science denier claims victory and the audience he's attracted by doing exactly this eats it right up because they're all too stupid to know any better.

KodyKeir posted...

Depends, were they donating before or after it was publicly revealed that the clownvoy was organized by Western Separatists and White Nationals.

Given that that was revealed within 24 hours of the GoFundMe going up, let alone the GoFundMe being cancelled and these people sending their donations through a different platform instead, I'm gonna say it was after.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I'm aware of the saying in the context of joining a cult. That's what confuses me about your use of it. My outlook is to distrust everyone, not put faith in someone else.

It's not generally used so literally as to imply joining a cult so much as it's used to describe buying into some ludicrous nonsense. That's usually nonsense somebody else has come up with, particularly conspiracy theories and political extremism, but there's nothing inherent in the concept that means you can't come up with your own nonsense to believe in and have it describe that.

KodyKeir posted...

It never had much support to begin with, any perceived widespread support came from the international right wing media machine.

And even then, the vast majority of its support was "It'd be nice if things opened up a bit more," not "these restrictions need to go now and I don't care who has to suffer to make that happen."

wwinterj25 posted...

Typically no unless I'm expecting something important.

This, but I'm salaried, so it's a bit different.

sveksii posted...

While you might of been able to put out the fire with the fire extinguisher, you decided to just run away. Sure your 2 year old daughter burned to death because you just ran away and left her behind. And sure you just lost all of your possessions. And sure you died from hypothermia after running a away for a few hours in the freezing cold. But hey, ever since growing up as a child your only worry in life was not burning to death, so you solved your problem.

Hold up... are you suggesting that there might be nuances to problem solving and that making blanket statements about how appropriate running away is in any given broad class of situation is silly?

My 360 controller is wearing out after like 12 years of quasi-regular use, but I'd call that reasonably durable. Even then, the issue is that the wire is partially broken, so it disconnects if I bend it at the wrong angle. I could probably splint it well enough to prevent that, but I should likely just buy a new one.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

So your argument for why Duckbear can't be the source of awareness is that no one has read ever a Duckbear post?

That's not at all what I said.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

And I've explained why it doesn't.

You've demonstrated why (namely, that you're really bad at processing the impact of new information on your existing beliefs), but I wouldn't say you've explained it. Explaining is generally a more explicit process.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Not interested.

Yes, you've demonstrated that you aren't interested in understanding the world around you. We know.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

No, to a conspiracy theory.

The existence of conspiracy theories is empirically verifiable. The actions that people take on the basis of their belief in conspiracy theories are empirically verifiable. The theories themselves generally are not, since that's what makes them conspiratorially theoretical (if you can verify them, they're just facts), but I didn't say that they were.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I understand you have difficulty comprehending the perspective of other people but imagine a person sitting at home watching the news [...]

People forget most of the news they hear, unless it's personally relevant or of particular interest. Qanon's existence and relevance to current events is no more or less forgettable than most other news.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I still didn't request them.

Categorically ignoring education that you didn't request is one of the best ways to maintain the Dunning-Kruger effect. I don't recommend taking that attitude.

mooreandrew58 posted...

If it's something THEY wanted me to do. Otherwise no

Specifically, if it's something they want that I'd otherwise have no reason to think about or prioritize. If it's something I should remember to do myself and I'm just asking for the reminder to increase the chances that one of us remembers, that's still mostly on me.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Not really. Someone had to read a Duckbear post.

So, yes really.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Earlier you said "Exploring any one of those will tell you all but conclusively".
Now you're backtracking that to "cause you to wonder".

That's not backtracking. Their mere existence should cause you to wonder. Exploring any of them (that is, gleaning all available semantic content from them) will lead you to something conclusive.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

No, I'm making fun of what you applied it to.

To things that are empirically verifiable? To what else would I apply "empirically verifiable"?

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I like the marshmallow topping for sundaes at Stewarts. There's a statement. Are you now going to argue with me that the marshmallow topping isn't good or that other people don't like it?

No, because that's a purely subjective statement. There's nothing to argue. If you told me that you think the marshmallow topping is made of aborted fetuses, that would warrant argument.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I still suspect that awareness of qanon is not common.

It's mentioned pretty frequently in mainstream media (which, again, there's no reason for you not to know).

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Why would it be common knowledge to people who have never heard of it where it originated?

Why are people who have never heard of Qanon relevant to a context in which everyone but you has heard of Qanon?

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I never requested that. I'm just countering your arguments which you keep claiming are conclusive.

I'm not claiming that (most of) my arguments are conclusive. Quite the contrary: I recognize that without putting in the effort to prove the chronology of the matter, I cannot conclusively prove anything. That doesn't mean I can't get close enough for colloquial speech, which is the point of that analogy. You don't need to be able to conclusively prove something for there to be a negligible chance that believing it is a mistake.

The argument that is conclusive, however, is that you have no basis to believe that there's no such thing as Qanon and Duckbear just makes it up for his topics. You similarly have no basis to believe that all of these other examples of the rest of the world recognizing Qanon stem from somebody reading a Duckbear post once and deciding to roll with it. These are falsifiable claims: If they are false, evidence can be found that will prove them to be false. If you wish to claim that they are false, you must therefore prove them to be false.

SmugRickMoranis posted...

I'd advise against having .3 babies

I dunno, that sounds less painful than trying to squeeze out a whole one at once.

With the addition of mouthful mode, Kirby doesn't need to swallow a condom to become one.

BlackScythe0 posted...

And this is why you're full of shit. You're just blatantly lying, I never talking about "reporting about the election" you did. I talked about the results of the election, the results have nothing to do with reporting. And yea the people on facebook talking about how it's fake and how they know someone who knows someone who might have heard something is a conspiracy theory and it is associated with qanon.

That too. They doubted much more than just what the news said the election results were.

Quite a few problems are best solved by running away. The challenge is learning which ones.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I don't recall saying they heard about it -from- Duckbear.

Your belief in the "somebody read a Duckbear post" theory hinges on that.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I know, despite outlining how to determine which mention came first you started treating it as unnecessary and that the number of mentions alone proves anything.

"It should cause you to wonder if your belief is accurate" is not in any way equivalent to "it proves that your belief is wrong."

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

So if someone says something it must be true?

Are you ignoring "empirically verifiable" because you don't know what it means, or because you don't know how to make the point you're trying to make while incorporating it?

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Now, my goal is to make you regret arguing with me.

Gaining a basic understanding of the world around you is a better goal than that, too.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

That's not saying much. I know of a bus stop where there's regularly a drunk man yelling unintelligibly. I would trust him more than I trust the media.

That sounds like a you problem.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Yes. What that is not, is me trying trying to convince other people of that. To back up your earlier statement you have to demonstrate that I'm trying to prove something.

If you make a claim, you're trying to prove something. That you're unwilling to follow it up is just you having commitment issues, not anything that reflects the underlying logic of the statement.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

You compared a situation were the earliness has been determined to a situation where the earliness has not been determined. The amount of work to reach that determination doesn't matter. Whether the determination has been made is the crucial aspect that makes the analogy flawed.

But the chronology has been determined. As I said, everybody already knows your claim is nonsense. That's common knowledge. It's also common knowledge that Rowling did not invent wizards: Nobody needs to look up her birth date and the publication dates of other fantasy media to know this. Similarly, nobody needs to look up Duckbear's posting history to know that he didn't invent Qanon, except apparently you.

The analogy is describing how absurd your claim is, not how conclusively those disagreeing have proven it to be absurd. If you'd like an analogy of your request for conclusive proof, consider somebody walking into a university-level calculus class and demanding that the teacher complete a full mathematical proof of every involved concept (including basic arithmetic) before proceeding with the lecture material: You're obviously just wasting everybody's time for no reason.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...
Says the person who starts an argument with me over something like this.

Despite your arbitrary insistence on clinging to nonsense and refusing to learn how to form properly substantiated beliefs like a functional human being, this is still substantially less work than proving that Duckbear didn't invent Qanon would be.

Ozmose posted...

You do realize vaccination does nothing to prevent the spread of infection, right?

I realize that to roughly the same extent as I realize that the sea is made of liquefied chicken. That is to say not at all, because it isn't true. Vaccination reduces the risk of being infected, the risk of spreading that infection to others, and the length of time people are infected, all of which act to prevent the spread.

What's confusing people like you is some ambiguity around the use of the word "prevent." Some people are using it interchangeably with "reduce the risk of." Others are exclusively using it to mean "eliminate the possibility entirely." The anti-vaxx types saying "it doesn't prevent infection" are falling into the latter camp. The pro-vaxx types saying "it does prevent infection" are using the former. Unfortunately, yelling contrary statements back and forth because they're using different definitions of the critical verb tends to muddle the message a bit.

It's also being further confounded by Omicron. Because Omicron differs so much from other variants, the abilities of all of the vaccines to reduce infection/transmission risk are dramatically reduced (AZ genuinely does almost nothing, Pfizer/Moderna are somewhere in the 20-30% range, down from 70ish against Delta and 90+ against the original virus). That's been made even worse by the CEO of Pfizer saying the vaccines won't stop infection, which anti-vaxxers have been eagerly taking out of context to cite it as an admission that they never worked at all. In practice, what he meant was that their efficacy is too low *specifically against Omicron* to rely solely on them to control the spread. That doesn't mean they do nothing, nor that they aren't useful for controlling the spread of other variants (Delta still exists because it's not directly competing with Omicron, and the vaccines will continue to protect against any further variants in that lineage), it means other measures like mask requirements, distancing, and capacity/gathering limits need to be employed in order to get a handle on things. Funny how the anti-vaxxers just stopped at "the vaccines don't work well enough" and didn't finish the sentence with "so we need to lock down like we did before vaccines were available if we want to control this," isn't it?

Ozmose posted...

It just reduces the severity of the illness in the vaccinated person. It has no significant impact on the general public.

I dunno, having ICU's at 100% capacity for extended periods of time sounds like a pretty significant impact to the general public. That's kind of a problem for anyone that needs intensive care.

MagicalPrincess posted...

Nope. Jesus doesn't want them to. Jesus is certainly not behind the shots. Not by a long shot.

Jesus was a part-time carpenter that moonlighted as a life coach 1900 years before viruses were discovered. I wouldn't consider him to be an authority on medical matters even if you weren't just putting words in his mouth because you think that makes your opinion sound more credible.