Avery

Do you have proof

I got it from this book and a lot of psychologists seem to quote similar things. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1626251207/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1626251207&linkCode=as2&tag=spacforrent-20&linkId=77N7NCUP6RIJGHSV

So, there is no choice, hence there is no question of "why should I?"

Sure, naturally we suffer right? We all get old and get sick and die. I can just tell you that personally I am working real hard on myself to embrace pain. To seek it out. It's made me happier. Pain doesn't equal sadness nor does happiness equal pleasure. 

Let's be honest here. We lack enough words and descriptors in the English language and perhaps any language to actually be able to talk about the nuances of different types of pains and pleasures and how they overlap. If somebody feels physical pain while simultaneously getting sexual pleasure it's confusing  because by your definitions of pain and pleasure or how I perceive your definitions, than you shouldn't be able to feel both at once and certainly pain can't simultaneously cause pleasure or pleasure simultaneously pain, but we know both dichotomies can happen. 

I wouldn't mind seeing a more concrete plan for universal masochism, either. My objections are only theoretical, too, so it doesn't hold too much weight.

I think some religions and pseudo religions do this to a certain extent so we have examples. I would say that stoics, Buddhists and neo platonists are generally happier and all don't mind suffering. 

It would be superior (and more efficient) if only pleasure (or any positive affect) were generated.

This is bullshit. I don't know what it is like for females but . I have came and the mushroom head of the penis feels intense pleasure sensations afterwards. So intense that a continual rubbing of it is unbearable. I hear it is even worse for uncircumcised males. If a woman were to try and rub the sensitive area for too long I would have to smack her hand away because the intense pleasure is painful. I thought tickling would be a close comparable thing. I think overstimulation of the clitoris could be an example in some or most females even. 

I knoww there are women that have up to 100 involuntary orgasms a day and they virtually all seek a solution because they don't like it. To tickle a kid even after they ask you to stop is torture and in fact was used as torture in some ancient societies. 

I think your philosophy needs either a more clear definition of suffering and pain or we need to admit it falls short of accurately describing what the human condition seeks.

He'll even the more elementary definitions for pain and pleasure don't work. Have you ever seen anyone who is rich young, is desired by the opposite sex to a strong degree and the people of the same sex all aspire to be them. These people often follow self destructive paths. They hate the lack of suffering and pain in their life. I would say it is torture to deprive a person of pain. 

This hurts me to tell you a lot of this because I consider myself a transhumanist and I want to see radical life extension, but I think it's downfall is how many transhumanists are in general very hedonistic. 

When engaging in a run, the suffering is guaranteed but the pleasure is not, so there are times when only suffering is generated (especially in the case of an injury).

You should look at David Goggins talk about his first 100 mile run. Afterwards he had shit himself and pissed himself and was bleeding out of his dick. He couldn't move. His wife wanted to take him to the hospital. You know what he told her.

"I know I need to go to the hospital but let me enjoy this"

He said he never experienced so much pain in his life and he just wanted to enjoy it before the hospital gave him pain killers. There is some pleasure maybe immense pleasure in pain. 

Cold showers can be so brutal that you can turn it off and only suffer (although you probably won't get injured in the shower

It is tough and it sucks everytime. I enjoy lifting weights but am forced to do bodyweight exercises now. I can tell you the weights I find fun, but the body weight stuff is torture. Yet I do it. I willingly suffer and embrace it. 

Ayn Rand is not the final say on what is factual.

Correct she is not the final words on things I disagree with her on

I'm not saying there's a 1/1,000,000 chance of *any* event happening. I'm saying there is that chance for *this* particular event to happen, or *that* particular event to happen. It's extraordinary when heads is flipped on a coin 250 times in a row. It's beyond extraordinary when there are multiple instances back-to-back of heads being flipped 250 times in a row, 50 times in a row, 150 times in a row etc.  At some point you need to start asking: is the coin rigged? 

Every event which occurs does in fact have a statistically impossible odds of occurring in some context, which is why this kind of backwards rationalization is fallacious.

If a coin is flipped 250 times and lands on heads each time you would be rationally justified in accepting that the coin is rigged. If a coin is flipped a few trillion times and somewhere in that stretch it lands in heads 250 times in a row that is no where near as remarkable. In fact with enough flips it even becomes probable to happen at some point.

Your case is more like the latter.

I think it's far more reasonable to believe the 99%+ chance explanations for the Covid outbreak being a planned lab leak, rather than the 1 in a quadrillion/quintillion chance it naturally occurred.

[No response from Double R]

So your best single piece of evidence is a 2019 EO ordering a task force to study how to improve upon flu vaccines.

Over the prior 15 years we have seen outbreaks of SARS, Mers, and Ebola. All of which heightened the international community’s awareness and concern for an outbreak that could be far more dangerous. In 2014 Obama said the following in a speech in Maryland:

“There may and likely will come a time in which we have both an airborne disease that is deadly, and in order for us to deal with that effectively we have to put in place an infrastructure, not just here at home but globally, that allows us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly, so that if and when a new strain of flu like the Spanish flu crops up five years from now or a decade from now, we’ve made the investment and we’re further along to be able to catch it.”

https://www.ajc.com/news/obama-warned-pandemic-threat-2014-but-republicans-blocked-funding/dh2H9HxiuBY05T5uPqtqpI/

In 2015 Obama would create a pandemic response team to deal with such a threat of it came to pass. When Obama left the White House in 2017 he left Trump a playbook on how to continue dealing with this threat. 

So at minimum, when you make this allegation, you’re saying that President Trump and his administration was part of the planning process.

the claymation movie "The Adventures of Mark Twain" has a beautiful  portrayal of Satan, being chaotic, kind, and cruel. Crazy, Great, Evil.

The underlying psychological issues of humans needs to be rectified. 

Why?  I know this is probably tough to answer because instinctually we think suffering is bad because it is painful. A pain of sorts anyway. Often people will justify their current pain thinking about some distant reward and they cope that way. I know you are used to arguing against the normal cope of suffering can lead to greater pleasure, but get out of your comfort zone for a minute.

Why should I or anyone for that matter, value pleasure or hate suffering? Why should I even try to avoid suffering? 

Sure it is painful, but would becoming a sort of masochist solve for that. Wouldn't that be an easier route to deal with human suffering than say working on rewiring the human brain if that is even possible or if you can even call us human, once it is done. 

fact, people thinking that becoming more powerful and intelligent would solve our problems, is precisely one of the issues I talk about in the OP: people thinking that they can think their problems away (they can't. History is littered of examples). Transhumanism needs to physically change the human brain, in order to rectify the issues of human psychology -- that's the real goal

Would you choose to be hooked up to a machine that gives you unlimited unending pleasure?

What about tickles which derive pleasure in a person, even if it is involuntary. Would you be okay with 3 people who dedicated their life to non stop tickling you and slept in shifts for eternity?

It's non stop pleasure after all.

Secondly, you're making my argument for me. The fact that you can't have a "great life" without suffering is proof that human life is inefficient and could be improved. 

Why is that? Why is a great life without suffering preferable to one with suffering?

You know why depressed people have a hard time beating depression? They like it . It activates the reward centers of their brain and they enjoy suffering. That's kind of beside the point.

I think we are missing a lot due to the limitations of English and perhaps and human language. We label suffering as in pleasurable but depression activates the brains reward system. We get a type of high from running 10 miles. Not only after the run but during the last hardest stretch.

Cold showers are torture but if you can withstand it for the first few seconds it makes you smile. 

The words pain and pleasure are both imprecise at truly describing the range of feelings we have and they certainly aren't opposites as they go hand in hand. 

People do this a lot with seemingly opposite emotions. For example love and hate. Ayn Rand said the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. Pain and pleasure are not opposites.

It's why some of us get horny when we are given an atomic wedgie. 

I think your life advice comes from a well-intentioned place, but this thread really has nothing to do with me personally.

Well my time here is limited and I thought since I have given you so much bad advice in the past I should try to make up for it

I'm not saying there's a 1/1,000,000 chance of *any* event happening. I'm saying there is that chance for *this* particular event to happen, or *that* particular event to happen. It's extraordinary when heads is flipped on a coin 250 times in a row. It's beyond extraordinary when there are multiple instances back-to-back of heads being flipped 250 times in a row, 50 times in a row, 150 times in a row etc.  At some point you need to start asking: is the coin rigged? 

Every event which occurs does in fact have a statistically impossible odds of occurring in some context, which is why this kind of backwards rationalization is fallacious.

If a coin is flipped 250 times and lands on heads each time you would be rationally justified in accepting that the coin is rigged. If a coin is flipped a few trillion times and somewhere in that stretch it lands in heads 250 times in a row that is no where near as remarkable. In fact with enough flips it even becomes probable to happen at some point.

Your case is more like the latter.

Feel free to address the OP of this thread, rather than a quick, summative comment I made mid-way through.

Not really interested. Conspiracies will always persist through rational scrutiny because they are relentless and exhausting. It takes far less effort to ramble off accusations than to do the actual work of understanding the situation and context. This is why I prefer to step back and look at the big picture. Your arguments are a product of anomaly hunting, just like going through trillions of flips to find consecutive heads. And of course, you fail to apply that same level of scrutiny to the alternative you are implying. 

Tell you what, pick just one of the points you listed as evidence that this was planned and I’ll look into it in detail and give you my thoughts. Just. One.

Well for starters, Hispanics can be brown (and are mostly brown). I don't think White people can ever be brown (except maybe a crazy fringe case scenario). Hispanics usually only have dark features, whereas White people are far more diverse.

Secondly, if you line up a bunch of Hispanics, mixed race and Whites, you'll be able to point out the races most of the time, even when you get some admixtured people:

What you’re doing is boiling race down to simply appearance and skin tone, which is precisely what people that call it a social construct say. I can definitely point out a Hispanic from a White. It might not be utterly meaningless, but it is close to it.

White is a meaningful classification, particularly in America, because of all the interbreeding. Same with blacks, which is why they supposedly deserve a capital B.

And white is still meaningful, yet to a lesser degree, in Europe. But they often think in nationalist terms rather than racial ones, not in a small part due to their relatively non-mixed heritage.

But Hispanic just really means brown. There isn’t even the shared history that Europeans can claim. Argentinians have nothing in common with Mexicans, yet they are thrown into the same category. Hispanic is too broad to be meaningful. Just like African, without distinguishing North African and sub-Saharan African.

When Blacks complain about differences in hiring and university admissions, they're looking to get special privileges for Blacks -- it's about collective bargaining. It doesn't matter whether the story is true or not. That's why feminists still go on about the wage gap, that's why Native Americans still complain about mass genocide of their own, and it's why Blacks complain about underrepresentation -- it gets them benefits and free stuff.

It's presence of having differing racial groups that causes the issues. Affirmative action is just one way of many that this racial collective bargaining manifests.

Obviously the presence of different groups leads to a desire to extract benefit for them. But that’s not the point. Barring a “two state solution” or mass deportation of any non-white, I don’t see how you could fix that problem.

We have to work with the situation we are in. That means outlawing the practice of them extracting benefits for their groups on racial grounds. There is far less incentive to racially demonize whites just for the sheer joy of it, if there is no associated financial benefit.

The only feasible way to lessen the race problem is: eliminate affirmative action and reduce immigration

and be scolded for asking a rude question or being intolerant or whatever.

Well that pastor failed miserably at apologetics if that is their response.

If you question something enough, eventually you won't believe it.

Disagree. God has been questioned for 6,000 years and there are more believers today than ever.

The validity of feminism really isn't all that relevant to thread's topic.

Let's just quote the OP on this one:

Thoughts? Does anyone agree? Should feminism be falsifiable?

OP literally asked if feminism should be falsifiable. Therefore it is completely relevant to the topic

feminism has some major logical gaps in it.

Well, that's because it does. The current feminist narrative is that men and women are equal yet women are inferior and victims.

Feminists state that men and women are equal, but then bitch when men compete in women's sports. Well, which is it? Are men and women equal or do you want segregation and admit men are better athletically than women?

Feminists state women are just as powerful as men yet then complain they are overpowered by the patriarchy and that it is hopeless. Well, which is it? Are women helpless victims of the patriarchy or are they equal and able to take over the business and political world?

Feminists can't answer the two above questions because they are blatantly unfalsifiable religious dogmas of feminism.

My thought is this: you're one step further to becoming an anti-feminist.

No he isn't.

I think Christianity should be falsifiable and I'm not one step closer to becoming an atheist.

We should believe things on the merit of their existence, that doesn't make you anti-the-things-you-believe.

Fwiw, I think mainstream feminism (i.e. not the wackjob 4th wavers) is completely logical and falsifiable. Equal rights just makes sense and is very apparent in nature and in man's natural impulse.

But that doesn't mean I am anti-feminism because I think it should be able to be proven. That's just common sense. People who don't think this way are a threat to society and no different than savages. We are thinking creatures. We have brains. We aren't unrestrained savages who do whatever we feel. We live in a society where we settle our disputes with logic and reason and not fists and temper tantrums. This is the enlightenment way of living.

I'm not in agreement with your comment on Hispanics. Hispanics can be classified as a separate race from Whites. They're generally browner and have other phenotypic traits. Clearly, there is a lot more admixture within that group, and the divisions can become tricky, but people's self-identification reflects their race pretty much 100% of the time, so it's not a big deal. 

I don’t think that Hispanics can in any meaningful way be its own racial category. It just vaguely means where they come from was run by the Spanish empire for a while. Central and South Americans are quite distinct- But a large percentage of those peoples are mixed race, which isn’t really its own racial group

I don't agree with your concluding paragraph. I don't think eliminating AA will end racial tensions. HBD related issues and race-based politics will always cause racial problems.

Also, the "American way of life" is created by certain genetics of certain races, so if you want that way of life, you need those certain races.

Understood, but that is a different race problem. I’m talking about one the average site goer would get behind. My point is that groups would be more or less getting along and not going out of their way to foster anti-White hatred if there was no economic and power incentive to do so and the government actually had the will to tell people: America is better than where you came from. Assimilate or leave

So, his counterargument is along the lines of: not all technology causes/contributes to industrialization, that technology which does not is permissible

I am not going to scroll up to remember what I posted more accurately, but I wasn't talking about how we would or would not return to the same state. 

I think his argument against transhumanism was basically that the transhumanists claim that the downsides of industrialization will be eliminated by some future technology, and kazynski was merely skeptical of the claim this future technology was likely and he certainly felt like if it was possible than the current sacrifices weren't worth it. 

I think the issue with the Matrix conception is that it's attempting to work with what humans are, rather than attempting to change humans. It's been the issue with any major Progressive work -- humans psychology overrides cerebral notions.

Can humans fundamentally be changed? If we implanted cockroaches with some sort of super powers and increased their intelligence, wouldn't they just be really smart and powerful cockroaches? 

Ted would say that a harder life is better, but I'd counter by saying that even no life would be preferred to that life, and also that we could simply evolve past that limitation.

Cassie, the sooner we can drop this notion that life will be better, the better off we will be. You can't be great and have a comfortable life. You must suffer. 

Forget the rest of human society who seek to be like the pampered babies in Wall-E . 

As contradictory as it seems. You will never be happy unless you wake up every single day and impose as much suffering on yourself as humanly possible.  [...]

I'm arguing that having super unlikely events, like an insanely optimized coronavirus supposedly happening naturally in nature, are all compounding and making it astronomically unlikely that the Covid-19 outbreak didn't come from a lab and wasn't planned. Moreover, I'm saying that having multiple 1/1000 x 1/1,000,000 x 1/1,000,000 etc. events makes what I'm saying a virtual certainty. 

That hardly changes anything.

Every event is itself unlikely. What are the odds that me and my now wife would have found ourselves in the same place at the same time on the same day that we did? You’re painting the bullseye around the bullet hole and then using the odds of the bullet hole landing where it did to justify asserting something else which you’ve made no attempt to justify.

All I argued that it was planned and that it was a lab leak.

The “planned” part is the part you have no evidence for nor any rationale to justify.

I just found it odd that a person on the media admitted Covid policies require propaganda with no mention of science,

And yeah, it does help that I am also damn good at my job. 

Disclaimer: I posted this initially on a reddit thread I won't say which and this was literally deleted and I was blocked for this very simple and actually non controversial point. So now I ask two questions. a. Should I have been blocked

b. Should feminism be falsifiable in our political discourse?

As a feminist, I see neither 1 or 2 as desirable. No discourse sounds like a recipe for social strife and I don't think feminism is some dogma to be believed in. I think there are facts to be assessed that will give people good reason to believe it and even if it isn't accepted by someone, at least I know that I was rigorous and thorough in my beliefs.

Thoughts? Does anyone agree? Should feminism be falsifiable?

I thought women just liked cuddles and the odd wedgie.

Response to post #46

I have an unusually good memory and about 4 years and 6 months ago you told me a story that connects with this theme a bit. I won't elaborate, but I am very intrigued. 

I don’t think it was planned 

Then how do you explain the preparation for Covid before the outbreak of it? Why was the virus being optimized to attack humans, and did end up optimized at 99.5%? I can't think of an alternative explanation other than plandemic.

Classic argument from ignorance fallacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3fFMEvIJZM

Do you know the title of his follow up work? I don't remember him making this argument.

I think he dedicates approximately 2 sentences to it in his manifesto, and he never uses words like transhumanist or other such things that only came to popularity after he was imprisoned.

As far as his follow up works are concerned. It has been 10 years since I have even glanced at anything and I would check Amazon first. If they aren't on Amazon it might require a difficult scavenger hunt that involves reaching out to various green anarchist groups. 

I was only looking into his work because I consider myself a transhumanist and I wanted to see the strongest rebuttal possible. I know he does a good job of writing people back who write him, but I didn't want to disrespect him by making him reiterate any points he already made in his published materials. 

Being fulfilled without suffering is the preferred state of being -- that's what should be engineered in humans.

If it's even possible to engineer that. https://youtu.be/8I4BtnZ6Vmk

 But okay, the positive tribalism feeling would spring to life if people lived like in the olden days -- working in close-knit communities that are battling in a tough environment really brings people together. Although, people can already trigger this by supporting sport teams, and still live in modern times.

The problem is replicating it feels hollow. You can often see the tension of society in the media it likes to consume. They hide their anxieties in stories. 

Have you ever wondered why sitcoms with a dad and no mother with lots of kids were popular in the early 90s. Things like full house? It represented an anxiety about more women entering the workforce and losing their mother.

I would say zombie movies being popular is the same thing. https://youtu.be/iSwAbQD-gZU

If you watch that 5 minute video you'll see the professor talk about that hollow tribalism brought about by following football teams or joining clubs etc. 

No doubt people would miss modern conveniences, but we also miss things like having real bonds, and engaging in the tribalistic parts of our brain/inner being.

I don't know enough about this specific scenario to comment on it.

It's a boring subject but if you just know how common it is for people to run away from civilized societies to a more tribal one, than you would get the gist. However I will point to something more modern to highlight the same point 

These special forces teams are famous for not only having a strong tribe they belong to when in battle, but their suicide rates when they return home.

Look up the suicide rate of special forces returning home at some point. What people don't realize is that these people don't commit suicide when deployed or in the harshest environments. It is only when they return home to the comforts of modern living that they blow their brains out.

It's said that special forces members are in fact safer in battle than they are returning home to the comfort of modern life. They literally kill themselves when that tribal part of them is not activated.

So here we have people who are in your theoretical situation. Modern people reverted back to being tribal. The results don't really line up with what you think will happen.

I think you are likely correct, when they are in a foxhole eating MREs, I am sure they miss stuff like a nice home cooked meal and internet and air conditioning. However what we can also see is that they don't miss it enough to kill themselves, however when they lose the tribal atmosphere and go to modern comforts, they miss it so bad the blow their brains out. 

I wonder if a similar thing happened to Lannan. He had a brotherhood and tribe that just couldn't be replicated at home, as sad as that is. 

It's just too dangerous to be yourself, but I haven't covered every part of myself.

Yes, removing the mask entirely would be harmful. We need one, we just have to be careful not to become the mask, otherwise it loses it's purpose. 

Nope, no personal attacks.

But I've fathered children so proven myself to be a real sperm producer.

Which is what a real man is in my opinion.

Though more to the point, assuming the influence and authority to limit another user's participation is a tad egotistical.

I don't understand how you can say "there's just countless things", and then you only give me rumors.

What are the best pieces of evidence for it? Just rumors? 

LMAO the one saying it's a planned lab leak says that the only evidence allowed is concrete.

LMAO!

Fuck off.

Do you think they let the lab notes leak? Obviously not.

I don’t think it was planned 

but the evidence for a lab leak seems to be getting stronger as time goes on. It was always plausible on its face. A novel virus shows up in the exact same city as a lab which studies and engineers that exact type of virus. It’s certainly possible for a coincidence like that to occur but just looking at it from a high level it seems much more likely that the virus would’ve emerged from one of the other tens/hundreds of thousands of wet markets in China rather than the one that happened to be right next to the lab. 

The behavior of everyone involved has been extremely suspicious. It’s beyond obvious that the scientific establishment doesn’t want to look too closely at what happened because they fear the potential backlash which is very disappointing in a field that’s supposed to prioritize truth above all things. The fact that people were censored for suggesting it came from a lab is very bleak 

Side note: it was always very funny to me that “no no no the virus didn’t come from a lab it came from the disgusting food those filthy Chinese eat” was the establishment approved “woke” explanation lol 

I notice quite a few arrogant egos in this thread.

I don't see how you could be for removing their threads, if you're in favor of freedom of speech.

I don’t view this as a freedom of speech thing at all. My issue with freedom of speech online has always been people getting censored simply for having an opinion that goes against a narrative, no matter how well reasoned or respectful they are. I don’t think telling a user that they can’t make the website their personal Facebook page in a way that destroys it for other users is a violation of any sort of valuable speech. That seems like the entire purpose of moderation 

frankly the user in question violates the rules anyway since he constantly insults people. I found like two dozen posts of him calling people idiots, or morons, or dummy’s, or some other grade school insult just in the past week. I am much less concerned with insults than spam though. I don’t want him banned from the site I just don’t want to have to wade through his Facebook feed to read anything about politics

It's not that humans are not adapted well to changes brought about by the industrial revolution. It's that the technological society is trying to turn humans into a cog in the wheel.

Just read Uncle Ted's manifesto so he can explain how your are looking at this backward 

By 'hurt' I mean the income of.

If you owned any company at all that did not benefit from how lockdown forced companies to adapt, you at least short-term suffered under the chaos and time-off and lack of faith stockholders had in you therefore etc.

International trade where imports and exports were needed as well as any kind of overseas in-person encounters all halted, making all sorts of business impacted. The world didn't work entirely on video conferences, so many companies were hurt and the shareholders/stockholders were hurt as many companies that should have been on an up-trend suddenly slumped hardcore.

Wouldn't it be suspicious if they were making vaccines for a virus that didn't exist yet?

Flu virus already existed... Obviously...

I mean there's just countless things, even ex-assassins on YT interviews saying there'd been rumours of the Chinese using SARS virus as a template for future assassinations. Rumours are just rumours though, except every single ex-assassin and ex-intelligence officer willing to put their name to their claims is saying it's likely, even  couple dead bodies and living Chinese intelligence are strongly suggesting this was a lab experiment meant to lead to stratified biological assassination.

Obviously Covid was not the finished product if that's the case as it was far too indiscriminate and contagious, what they were going to make was one that only affected a very specific type of DNA and aim at someone. It could potentially kill their relatives too though if they came into contact, which is probably why it was being stratified first to avoid killing the young, to at least spare children and teens no matter what.

In the future, I'm going to make a more concrete post operationalizing some of the core arguments of transhumanism/posthumanism, so look out for that if you're interested.

I will keep an eye out.

Are you saying atheists are disadvantaged?

This explanation is helped by the fact that Chinese people place great importance on saving face, too. 

Yeah, a trait I definitely don't understand. It's actually a trait that has been very detrimental to the freedom of their people as well. 

 It's a shame you can't verify these talks you've had with people "close to what is going on". It would be great evidence.

I don't think it would be great evidence. They merely think there is enough evidence for a lab leak, believed it extremely early on but didn't want to speak publicly about it and we're upset with other scientists who were willing to talk about the lab leak early on. 

Naming them and showing the emails, adds nothing new to the conversation while potentially alienating them from Chinese peers they are working with, assuming those working relationships still exist this deep into the epidemic.

I guess the second is true. It's just hard to verify generalizations like that.

It's definitely a judgement call. Either way it's kind of lose lose for politicians.

If you think a pandemic is unlikely and it hits, you are blamed for not preparing. If you prepare a ton and the preparation prevents a pandemic than it looks like you are wasting public funds on bullshit. 

If you live long enough in the swamp, you get used to it I guess. Even rationalize it.

Have you all found that debating on this site has helped you all become better debaters outside of the website? 

Are you able to demolish all your friends in debates and stuff? Do they all assent to your superior skillz?

Or has this website not really transferred over into the real world?

Oro is a very strong believer in the value of governance by technocratic oligarchs. You won't see any of his opinions sway one inch from that core belief.

Remember back when we all thought it was a Wuhan lab leak? Great job American Intelligence agencies, no, terrible job.

It was pretty obviously manufactured. My talks with people close to what is going on indicates that they were downplaying the fact it was a lab leak because they didn't want to alienate Chinese scientists who were of immense help in combating the pandemic. I don't think anybody in the know we're in denial about this day one, but it they had a pretty serious ethical conundrum.

1. Be honest about the lab leak theory and lose cooperation with the Chinese who were a major help in battling COVID-19.

2. Down play and even lie about the lab leak so that way they could get cooperation with scientists who worked on COVID-19 and knew it best so they could move quickly and save countless lives.

I think dishonesty is wrong in any case, but I might think differently if I had a choice of being honest and adding 1 million potential deaths or lying and saving 1 million lives. 

As for the other main point about running drills prior to the COVID outbreak. There have been people raising the flag for years about the potential for a very serious pandemic. A few years prior to COVID-19 I watched a documentary following some frustrated scientists around who could not get help trying to prevent the next pandemic because of 2 main problems. The first problem was there is zero money made from preventing a pandemic. The second problem is that public officials had an optimism bias and thought a pandemic was very unlikely despite a major one being way overdue. 

I am still torn if it was accidental lab leak or fully planned.

Why would the Western Elites gather to help China destroy the US?

It really hurt many rich people other than Bezos and Gates.

I fully believe it is a lab leaked assassination virus prototype. That is also why, thank god, it barely killed the young. It was streamlined to assassinate older people in ways that appear accidental. It was definitely not a finished product, it was too indiscriminate.

Flu vaccine has been a useful thing in the works for years, that is not part of the clues here in my opinion.

https://www.therealanthonyfaucimovie.com/viewing/

You are just repeating yourself

and have proved immune to rational argument.  

Let's see if we can put a period on your crazy accusation and put a close to this thing.

Scientific American once published a CONSPIRACY THEORY CHECKLIST that I sometimes like to rely on.

You just wait, I will overtake them both, it will happen before you expect it to.

they had bat samples for no apparent reason, of which definitely don't have similar genetic profiles to Covid-19. Yep, and I'm sure EcoHealth Alliance just stared at the bat samples and did nothing with them, too. I'm sure that the research in Wuhan, which isn't known to study coronavirus in bats at all (and if it did, it's definitely not gain-of-function research, either), didn't use any of its EcoHealth Alliance funding to study anything else How China's 'Bat Woman' Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus - Scientific American .

• excellent proof that you lack basic context about Wuhan.  After SARS broke out in 2003, virologists around the world were astonished to discover that bats in Southeast Asia and particularly in the caves around were just chock full of coronaviruses with zoonotic potential.  WHO and US scientist strongly urged China to build a lab in Wuhan that focused on coronaviruses, bat coronaviruses particularly, bat coronaviruses that might cross over into humans most particularly.  US and CHinese scientist weren't collecting massive amounts of  bat samples for "no reason"  Scientists knew since 2003 that COVID-19 was coming, was more or less inevitable and wanted a lab in Wuhan to serve as a lookout.  It is not a fucking coincidence, the lab at Wuhan discovered COVID-19 early and sounded the international alarm a full eight weeks before COVID-19 reached pandemic potential in the US.  Wuhan was purpose built for that exact reason.  American researchers were developing an mRNA vaccinne for 15 years for that exact emergency that smart scientists accurately predicted would happen.
  

The standard I am specifically using is that the NIH funded the Wuhan lab (through EcoHealth Alliance).

• Nobody has ever denied that Ecohealth sent a very small amount of money to Wuhan but it was not for "gain-of-function" research or virological research of any kind, it was just for gathering samples.  When your sources claim the Dr. Fauci was funding COVID- that's a total lie.  When your sources claim the NIH was funding something risky in China- that's a total lie.  
  
• It is hard to believe you genuinely don't understand this distinction.  You are just scraping for some kind of conspiracy where none exists.
  

All manipultion is a lie of some sort.

Prove it.

• "Manipulation can be described as news stories that use “real images or videos to create a false narrative” according to the scholars Tandoc, Lim & Ling (2018, p. 144). Despite there being some truth, using an adaption of imagery to sensationalize a story still misleads consumers by developing a false connection."
  

Talk about getting your panties in a bunch over nothing lol.

• I don't call false accusations that somebody mass murdered millons of people "nothing."   There's a lot of mental illness on this site.  If somebody believes your false accusations and does harm to Dr. Fauci based on your claim that he is a mass murderer, do you think you bear responsibility?
  

I want to know why it did happen because this man was heavily involved in dealing with the Covid-19 outbreak. It's important to know if gain-of-function research was being conducted, because that could mean a plandemic. 

• What is "it" in this sentence?  Many smart scientists have taken a hard look a the possibility that COIVD-19 was deliberate or designed but the whole nature of the virus and its emergence from a well known vector suggest it would be a stupid, pointless, impossible to control design which is borne out by the fact that if China did it deliberately they hurt themselves harder than they hurt anybody else.
  

I can't agree with Fauci's original quote that he "had nothing to do" with closing down schools. He did use his big, national platform to say, "the schools should be closed".

• Not really.  I mean he spoke those a specific words but always in the context that it should not be a national shut-down, it should be local decision-making.
  

Certainly, you have to admit that a Governor like DeSantis is far more responsible for shutting down shcools than Dr. Fauci because unlike Dr. Fauci he had actual authority to shut down schools and unlike Dr. Fauci, he applied a "one-size-fits-all" statewide policy while ignoring Fauci's strong advice to treat school closure according to regional circumstance.  Based on the evidence and if you are reading what Fauci actually rather than what people like DeSantis say about him, then Fauci was objectively more 'pro open schools" than DeSantis or Trump or many other prominent Republican decsion-makers who falsely scapegoatted Fauci later on.  DeSantis was actually selling t-shirts saying "Don't Fauci my Florida"pretending that the decisoin was not his to make- I call that quite cowardly.

That is going to have some amount of influence on the people making the decision.

• Objectively, the decision-makers were far more cautious than Fauci's recommendations.  At the height of the pandemic, when 3,000 people a day were dying, Fauci was actively, publicly calling on schools to open  while very few polticians had the guts to make such a recommendation.
  

When Fauci says "and even if it was", he starts referring to a non-NIH version -- he doesn't only mean the NIH version now.

Furthermore, he shouldn't be entertaining what others might think because their definition should be wrong to him. His response to Rand Paul should have been, 'the NIH was not funding gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab'.   But those weren't the responses given. Instead, we got the contradictory 'it's not and even if it was, it's according to the guidelines'. Fauci's own words contradict himself.

• WTF?
  
• Dr. Anthony Fauci: (59:49) Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
  
• Dr. Anthony Fauci: (01:01:43)  I don’t favor gain-of-function research in China. You are saying things that are not correct.
  
• Dr. Anthony Fauci: (01:03:20)  I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China. However, I will repeat again, the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
  
• Dr. Anthony Fauci: (01:04:10)  I fully agree that you should investigate where the virus came from. But again, we have not funded gain-of-function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No matter how many times you say it, it didn’t happen.
  
• Dr. Anthony Fauci: (01:05:00)  Yeah. I mean, I just wanted to say, I don’t know how many times I can say it, Madam Chair, we did not fund gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
  
• Senator Paul had deceptively switched the subject to Dr. Baric's research in North Carolina so it would have been  non-responsive and confusing to make some reply about research Wuhan to that specific question.
  
• Do you still stand by your OP claim that Fauci was lying about gain-of-function research in Wuhan?  And if yes, why?
  

This contention here is pretty relevant because it appears that the research conducted in Wuhan would be considered gain-of-function with the historical definition, but not the new NIH definition.

• Please answer as directly as possible.  What research in Wuhan are you talking about?  
  

None of what you wrote here proves that Covid-19 came from a wetmarket.

• I am not trying to prove that COVID-19 comes from a wet market.... scientists say they don't know where it came from, remember?
  
• I am arguing that you are deliberately slandering Fauci without evidence when you claim, "Anthony is partly responsible for Covid. He helped secure funding for the gain of function research conducted in Wuhan"
  
• To make your claim, you must prove that COVID came from the research lab in Wuhan.
  

I could get into how peer review means virtually nothing, or how this is all Ad Hominem (again), but none of that matters if the paper is correct, so I'm just going to focus on that.

• Again, you clearly don't understand ad hominem if you think that calling out a scientific claim for not revealing what procedures it followed counts as ad hominem.
  
• Nothing requires you to adhere to basic scientific standards for the formulation of your beliefs but then nobody in government or science will or ought to take your claims seriously.  If you are going to claim that Fauci knew about some kind of dangerous research in Wuhan, you must be able to show evidence that is both willing stand up to basic fact-checking such as peer review and applies those standard voluntarily.
  

Is there any evidence to show that this potential problem actually affected the paper?

• Yes.  It's like claiming you have Royal Flush in poker but refusing to show your cards.  Nobody has any reason to believe your claim.
  

This is not a specific critique of the paper.

• Yes it is.  That specific critique is that this paper does not adhere to basic scientific standards of proof, documentation, fact-checking, data sharing, etc.
  

Firstly, where is it shown that the "natural origin" theory is the consensus in the "scientific community?". Seems like a bare assertion.

• The fact-checker provided you with five citations backing this statement.  Why are you pretending they didn't?
  

Secondly, where does this critique contend with the facts I referred to above:

(1) no animal in/surrounding/involved in the Huanan market had traces of Covid-19, and

• You originally claimed  "None of the animals in the Huanan wetmarket initially tested had traces of coronavirus (around 2000 samples), and zero animals from 209 other wetmarkets around China (around 80,000 samples) has traces of coronavirus" but in fact many, many new SARS like coronaviruses were found.  SInce viruses rapidly mutate after zoonotic transfer, it is not particular surprising that no COVID-19 was found.  We don't know exactly what the virus looked like before it infected humans but it probably didn't look exactly like COVID-19.
  

(2) none of the first detected Covid-19 patients had anything to do with the Huanan wetmarket, and

• Total lie.  27 (66%) of 41 patients had a history of direct exposure to the Huanan seafood market
  

(3) of the patients who did have contact with the Huanan wetmarket (during the initial outbreak), none of them had Covid-19?

• Total lie.  27 (66%) of 41 patients had a history of direct exposure to the Huanan seafood market
  

It's rejected based on the above facts.

• So, yeah, your "analysis" is pulling from easily falsified fake news.  Your source doesn't even have simple, basic fact right.
  

LOL. Why would we acknowledge that when it's untrue?

• Yeah, right.  Your dude has totally proved the origins of COVID and hundreds of goverments and hundreds of thousands of scientists are all working together is some conspiracy to cover up the facts.  Use basic common sense.
  

Chinese whistleblowers 'disappeared'. One actually reappeared and "experienced things I'm unable to talk about" Missing Chinese Covid whistleblower appears after 18 months saying 'I’ve experienced things I can’t talk about' | The US Sun (the-sun.com)

Talking about Covid-19 on Youtube or Facebook would get you banned How Facebook bans users from saying Covid was man-made in China | Daily Mail Online Sky News Australia banned from YouTube for seven days over Covid misinformation | Australian media | The Guardian 

NHS staff were silenced NHS staff forbidden from speaking out publicly about coronavirus | NHS | The Guardian

• Both of these are frequently noted sources of fake news, one from the right, one from the left.  I'm beginning to think I'm wasting time on a fake new junky with zero legit research skills.
  

How the hell do you think someone is going to research for months on end and then publish extensive research on this?

• He didn't publish in any science journal. 
  

But since the NIH has never claimed that COVID-19 definitely orginates from bats that is not the NIH backtracking or changing narrative.

They're still claiming it as of March this year: "Research evidence suggests that SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV originated in bats"

• I see.  So the problem  here is that you don't comprehend that "research suggests" is an entirely different standard than "definitely orginates."