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@ADreamOfLiberty
The contention in today’s political climate I think is more about equality of opportunityOpportunity to do what? (Eat ice cream?)
Are you really being serious?
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@TWS1405_2
People - parents and their children, especially their daughters - have every right to fear this hypersexualized ideological cult, none of which has anything to do with bigotry
It’s entirely about bigotry, because the fear is dramatically overblown which is a direct product of bigotry.
But that’s just an opinion which you’ll of course disagree with, so let continue as we dig deeper into this issue…
I can go on and on and on...
Yes you can, because it turns out that anecdotes in a country of 330 million people are that hard to find. Who knew?
I can show you example after example of unarmed black people being killed by police, yet I somehow doubt that by the end of it you’ll be rocking a BLM T-shirt. So it seems you understand this principal well yet you use it to advance your ‘fear the LGBTQ people’ position anyway. Why?
Back then many argued, as I even did back then, that if SCOTUS grants that which is NOT in the US Constitution and gives legal precedence to allowing same sex marriage, then every other cockroach hiding in the woodworks would come crawling out. The cockroaches being the TQAI+++++, and to date, that slippery slope has become a reality.
Slippery slope and a slippery slope fallacy are two different things. I was clearly talking about the latter.
There is nothing at all surprising about people recognizing an opening and “going for it”. That’s all that happened in your example here, and it’s basic human nature.
Your example from before was of some handful of activists taking over our entire society with policies that are harmful to the people of the country. That’s absurd, if the policies were anywhere near as harmful as you claim people would oppose them and they would have no chance of being adopted by state after state until the takeover is complete. This is borderline 9/11 was an inside job lunacy.
Surprisingly, ADreamOfLiberty put it very well; what is the gravity you are referencing that takes the entire country down that path? If so many people would be hurt by these policies then where are these people and their representatives while this takeover occurs?
The reality of businesses, corporations, legislators, and the courts capitulating to the alphabet soup, the violence committed upon girls and women by transgenders (actual males), invasions of safe/privacy spaces of women by men (calling themselves trans), forcing tolerance through force of law, so on and so forth is what fuels the national discussion...not paranoia, but the fear of insanity taking over rationality is real though you're clearly blissfully denying that reality.
I accept the reality I experience, as does everyone else. Apparently you believe the entire country is just ignoring their own reality while the people who see it clearly are the ones not even experiencing it because they don’t even know any trans people.
Crazy how the world works.
And now we’re back to my original point.
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@TheUnderdog
Is it okay to be addicted to meth, heroin, or some hard drug if it leads to you stealing from other people to maintain your drug addiction? If you believe that Bodily autonomy > Fiscal autonomy, then you would have to believe that it's okay to be addicted to meth even if you must steal from people in the name of your bodily autonomy to be happy.
There is no necessary connection between meth addiction and stealing, so your formula is invalid at the outset. One could easily be addicted to meth while having the means to pay for it or be addicted while being unwilling or unable to steal from those around them.
Moreover, you’re also disregarding the right to one’s own property in the equation. No right is absolute, particularly when it clashes with the rights of others. So even if meth necessarily leads to theft then that would be a perfectly valid reason to take away that right. There’s no contradiction there.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Equality in the coherent political sense is equality of rights.
The contention in today’s political climate I think is more about equality of opportunity
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@HistoryBuff
So which is it? Do we blame america for intervening in wars, or do we blame America for not intervening in wars?
Whichever is politically convenient at the time.
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@Best.Korea
Literally, this is just one evil fighting with the other evil.
While the US certainly has its issues, comparing it to Russia is just ridiculous. The entire country’s economy is about the size of New York, meanwhile its dictator Is estimated to be by far the wealthiest man on earth. We can’t say what his net worth is exactly because he doesn’t allow his people to access information so no one knows just how corrupt he is. The people would rise up against him but oddly enough every time someone challenges him they suddenly have an accident where they fall out of a window.
You cannot in any real world sense say anything like that about the US.
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@TWS1405_2
No one is being disingenuous when discussing these important topics that affect us all. We see the bigger picture while you’re stuck focusing on minute irrelevant emotive arguments that have zero impact on the SJW end game.
The argument I focused on was a big picture point expressing why the multitude of threads here on this site and the exhausting amount of national attention to these specific issues is clearly motivated by fear and bigotry above anything else.
You’ve decided to combat that position by arguing that the reality here is just one big slippery slope where a handful of alphabet activists will - if we don’t stop them - succeed in commandeering the legislature of one state thereby harming its residents. Then, its neighboring state will see this and remarkably decide that they like this and follow suit. And since that wasn’t enough, then every state will jump on the same bandwagon, not because it’s good policy, but because the entire country will be beholden to the alphabet people hijacking the way of life for the entire country.
But we’re not done, because then this will all go to the Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority and they will I guess be commandeered as well, thereby giving into the evil alphabet people whose take over of our entire society will be complete.
So this is what is actually fueling the national conversation.
Yeah, no sign of bigotry fueled fear and paranoia there.
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@TWS1405_2
Got anymore stupid questions and even more stupid irrelevant points to make?
Questions and points are easy to paint as stupid and/or irrelevant when you give yourself the freedom to make them up for the purpose of strawmanning someone else.
If you bothered to read and absorb my post you would know that I began by acknowledging that your point made perfect sense in isolation, but the post I began with and which you have been engaging with had nothing to do with isolation, it’s about how telling it is when you zoom out.
Of course you don’t need to know a criminal to understand how crime impacts people, but when your hot item which you care so deeply about is something like, for example, rampant crime in liberal cities, meanwhile you don’t live in nor spend any significant amount of time in any liberal city, that is highly suggestive of disingenuousness. Then when you zoom out and see that nearly everyone ranting about crime in liberal cities lives in rural and suburban America, meanwhile the people that actually live in liberal cities tend to prioritize other issues, that speaks volumes about what is really motivating the national focus.
That was the original point.
Same is of course true about transgender rights. Zoom out and the vast majority of people ranting about this aren’t being impacted by it at all and most have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. Trans people tend not to even live in the areas most fervently opposed to any of this stuff so when I see yet another thread on this issue by yet another poster who doesn’t even know any trans people I understandably have the reaction I displayed; a sarcastic “yay”.
If you didn’t want to engage any further you didn’t have to.
Like I said before I’ll say it again…posting subject matters that trigger you and make you cower in the closet…
The only thing I get triggered by is bullshit that persists throughout society no matter how stupid it is. Like the idea that allowing people to be who they are and live their lives with dignity and treating them with respect is somehow a danger to humanity.
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@TWS1405_2
Do you even know any trans people in real life?I don’t need to know any trans person in real Life to learn, know and understand how the ideological cult is causing harm upon humanity.
Do you even know what a cult is?
That aside, while your point might make sense in isolation, if you zoom out even you would have to admit if you were being honest how remarkable it is that the people most fervently against trans rights who are pushing this conversation nationally are astronomically less likely to have ever met or gotten to know anyone who’s trans.
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@TWS1405_2
IT is a current event that continues to develop and is having unnecessary implications and effects on the normal lives of people in this country through safety, education, law, employment, so on and so forth.
Do you even know any trans people in real life?
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@Best.Korea
Would society be better if everyone was Atheist?There would be more abortions, more sinning, more adultery. Religion exists because religion prevents sin. Remove religion, you also remove the purpose it played.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. Sin is a concept born out of religion, so the purpose of religion cannot be to remove sin.
Also, I think you have it backwards on adultery. Religion isn’t what stops people from cheating, it just takes the credit for it. Truth is it’s basic human nature to want what you are told you can’t have, so it’s likely that religion is actually feeding into people’s propensity to cheat. Without religion it would be up to us as individuals to restrain ourselves so we would respect it more, and those of us who can’t stay true to one person would have no reason to avoid seeking out open relationships now that we don’t have the imaginary arbiter of our actions in the sky to worry about.
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@Best.Korea
Why cant morality be so that only I have meaning, and that all my decisions and actions are only for my own personal benefit?
It can of that’s how you want to think of it, but then we’d be talking about completely different things.
Morality is inherently subjective, so no matter how you think of it it will ultimately be nothing more than your opinion. What we do as a society is come together to form a common understanding of it and we teach it to our children with the intention of bettering our society. You don’t have to care about that if you don’t want to, just recognize that if that were your position and there were more people like you then society would go backwards not forwards, so things like slavery would likely be our future not just our past.
Fortunately for those of us who do care, the vast majority of us do not want that.
So if you still take issue with my conception of morality, then what is yours and how does your conception escape the problems you identify in mine?
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@TWS1405_2
Yay, another anti trans thread.
Why are you people so obsessed with them?
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@YouFound_Lxam
Would you vote for Biden, or any other legitimate Republican candidate as President.
There is no conceivable candidate running on the Republican ticket I would vote for, what it would take for me to consider it is someone who is sane and rational, isn’t afraid to call out the GOP on its absurdity for following Trump, isn’t afraid to call out the Republican Party for its ridiculous pandering to the MAGA crowd, and is focused on real issues affecting real people instead of the stupid culture war stuff far right wingers have spent the past few years obsessing over. So they would pretty much have to be an anti republican candidate running to reinvent the party.
With that said, if I had to vote for someone in the current field I’d vote for Christy. Not sure who would be second, maybe Scott or Haley as a distant second. Actually I think there are a few others running who have not been afraid to call out Trump but couldn’t ever recall their names.
Ramaswamy lost me the first time I ever heard him argue an issue when he talked about the so called politicization of the justice department and demonstrated that he’s really just a sophisticated ignoramus by arguing that the presidential records act gives Trump the authority to take whatever he wanted. He could have at the very least prefaced it with “I’m not a lawyer but…” but couldn’t even do that.
And then there’s of course Desantis and Trump who are in a league of their own. I still maintain that Trump is worse but Desantis isn’t as far behind as I once thought.
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@Best.Korea
What if I only value my own life, while considering lives of others to be meaningless?
Then you are not a moral person capable of carrying out moral actions regardless of their effect.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I was going to say this sounds like the same sensationalist spin they put on Trump, but then I saw your comment. Your standards are now more than a light year apart.
How so? Please let me know what part you don’t understand so I can enlighten you.
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@Best.Korea
Thats not a logical answer. Thats just you assuming that two different people are same person. It’s just an appeal to virtue of justice.
It wasn’t supposed to be a “logical” answer, it was an example to show how simple the concept of morality really is and how easy it is to figure out.
If you however don’t care whether a stranger comes up to you and kills you then you’re right, we are two different people and there may not be any resolution to that. Fortunately, the vast majority of people on earth share the same basic instincts and desires which is why morality is able to work for us.
So you reject teleology, that says how the cause of something is also its result?For example, morality is caused by that morality causes us to survive, and survival is caused by morality.
Two things can play off each other, but my post was in response to the OP who seemed to have looking for a more simplistic kind of answer. Truth is survival can’t be the motivator of morality because anything that is done for the purpose of self preservation is by definition not moral. If you put a gun to my head and tell me to donate to charity or else and I do it, then I wasn’t acting out of a sense of morality, I just did whatever I needed to save myself.
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@TWS1405_2
How does not liking the hair sniffing old fart with dementia occupying the WH = "right wing arguments"?
It was tongue and cheek, calm down.
I will say however, if you don’t like a man who sniffs others hair, you’re really not going to like a man who has admitted out loud that he sexually assaults others and has 27 accusers.
And if you don’t like someone who’s not up to par cognitively, you’re really not going to like a candidate who thinks clean coal is when they take it and scrub it with a brush, or that the answer to CA’s wildfire problem is a rake, or that it might be a good idea to drop a nuke in a hurricane.
Can’t wait to see your reaction to that guy.
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@YouFound_Lxam
Morality isn’t a product of our instinct to survive, our survival is a product of our inherent moral system. If we didn’t care about one another, we probably would have never made it this far and thus we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.
The only thing that separates us from other animals is our intelligence. No other species on earth has the capability to sit here and debate morality and come up with systems and rules to follow. Morality is really nothing more than empathy and compassion combined with basic logic. Why is killing someone else wrong? Well, do you want to be killed? If not, there’s your answer.
We can get into complexities and moral dilemmas, but at its core it’s very simple.
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@TWS1405_2
No, not my reality
Didn’t know we get to just pick them. Right wing arguments suddenly make so much sense.
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@Greyparrot
Only a fascist capitalist media outlet like Wapo could be so brazen about promoting support for an overtly tyrannical and openly corrupt government.
You mean by citing facts…?
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@Greyparrot
- Lack of coherence: The speech lacks a clear structure and transitions between ideas. Biden jumps from one topic to another without providing a logical flow. Some words sound like gibberish.
- Excessive use of humor: While humor can be effective in engaging an audience, the speech contains excessive and sometimes irrelevant fictional jokes that detract from the main message.
- Repetition…
Are you sure this list is supposed to be describing Biden?
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@Greyparrot
Some of his aides believe occasional displays of his temper in public would help alleviate concerns that he is disengaged and too old for the presidency. The president's anger is not limited to specific individuals, as even senior and lower-level aides can be targets. The fact that no one is safe from his outbursts has become a known reality within the administration.Biden's anger was notably directed at Jeff Zients, then the administration's "COVID czar," during a shortage of testing kits in late 2021. However, such episodes are temporary, and Zients now serves as Biden's chief of staff. While Biden's temper is not as volcanic as that of Bill Clinton, it is a genuine aspect of his personality.Biden's anger manifests through intense interrogations rather than erratic tantrums. He challenges his aides on various topics until it becomes evident that they don't have the answers. Some see this as a meticulous process, while others describe it as "stump the chump" or "stump the dummy." Being yelled at by the president has become an internal initiation ceremony within the White House, indicating a level of respect.Despite the challenges it poses, Biden's high expectations for his staff reflect his commitment to policy-driven decision-making. Those who have worked with him appreciate the fact that he challenges them and helps them arrive at better decisions. Some argue that Biden's outbursts are a reflection of his deep care and desire for his team to excel.
Um, yeah. So in other words, Biden is far more intense and driven behind the scenes than most people think. This article sounds more like a campaign ad.
Is there a point I’m missing here?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Any employee of the state departments: Doesn't know it's a lie, it might even be a half truth (which are the best lies).
Seriously? What do you think the people who work at the state department do all day? Sit around waiting for the VP to tell them what's going on around the world?
Obama: Doesn't know it's a lie, it might even be a half truth (which are the best lies), even if he was ever informed (which I have seen no evidence of). Meanwhile it tends to be counter-productive to put an underling in charge of something and then micromanage them.
It's not micromanaging to know when your underling is threatening to withhold US foreign aid to another country. The state department, as well as every intelligence agency in the government exists to keep the president informed of world affairs. And your answer is he didn't know because no one told him because the departments themselves didn't know. You can't be serious.
You tell me, why are they now convinced there are audio recordings of Biden accepting bribes (which he probably solicited)? Why would they do that?
Because of politics. Accusing Biden of bribery is what the base wants, even when the source is a Russian oligarch who provided no evidence and no one has talked to in 3 years.
How many people actually knew what was going on? Do whistleblowers not count? (because there are whistle blowers)
Everyone knew what was going on, none of this was a secret. Here's the thing you don't seem to understand... People talk to each other. People like knowing what's going on. If the VP were strong arming another country to save his corrupt son especially against official US foreign policy everyone working around him would know about it.
How do you think I know all this?
Because apparently Joe Biden decided to tell the entire world about his corruption, right before running for president
You are right the lack of wide politicization explains the lack of hard scrutiny before. It's easy to dominate the narrative when you're the only one releasing information.
Lack of politicization explains why you or I didn't know about this - because we have jobs of our own to worry about. Politicization means nothing to the people whose literal jobs it is to understand all of this stuff and deal with it - in real life.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
They aren't analogies they are examples of "large numbers of people to come together to advance a goal that defies the personal interests of the individuals involved".So yes, I think it is plausible because it's happened so many times and keeps happening.
You missed the entire point yet again.
As I explained in my previous post, I'm talking about willing participants in activities providing no discernable benefit to those involved. And by willing, I'm talking about people who are aware of all of this. You're talking about situations where large numbers of people are appealed to on the basis of a cognitive weakness being exploited.
The former goes entirely against basic human nature. The latter is entirely consistent with human nature. These phenomenon have all been well documented and studied. They're not the same.
The only conspiracy I've alleged (when you were paying attention) was that Hunter and Joe Biden were conspiring with the CEO of Burisma to deflect an investigation. Everything else could be easily explained by people following orders or reporting what they were told.Just as statements on WebMD without a shred of scientific utility (and just like religious dogma quite untestable for the moment) can easily be explained by WebMD staff wanting to lend aid and comfort to what is popularly seen as a victim group.
No, they couldn't.
In the first example, you have both the Vice President upending US foreign policy in order to cover for the corruption of himself and his son by making up a lie that the Ukrainian prosecutor is corrupt, meanwhile the State Department and the President decide to go along with it pretending it's all for legitimate reasons. Why? How does this benefit either? No conceivable answer.
Then you have government officials from both within the US government (including republicans) buying into the whole thing hook line and sinker. Why? Does the rest of the US government know nothing what about the world except what Joseph Robinette Biden tells them? Is there no other intelligence on the ground? No conceivable answer.
What about US intelligence communities? Any of them care to speak up about what was going on? No? Why not? No conceivable answer.
What about journalists? Anyone wondering why a non corrupt prosecutor is being fired for corruption after being pushed out by an official of a foreign government? Is any journalist going to look into all of the easily verifiable examples provided of this prosector not investigating corruption? Does anyone want to break the story of the corrupt VP covering up for his son? No? Why not? No conceivable answer.
So with all of the hard passes by literally everyone to look into this, how did we eventually find out? Oh, because the corrupt VP who got away with everything decided to tell the entire world about it just as he was gearing up for a presidential campaign.
And now that the issue has been widely politicized, all of a sudden we are learning the truth that no one wanted to know about before.
Makes perfect sense.
But there's more, because it turns out the world's third most utilized medical site decides to post whatever feels right to them with no science to back it up.
And the staff who run various aspects of this website just go along with it. Non of them share the fact that the website most people turn to for basic easily verifiable medical information is bullshit with anyone, including apparently after they leave the company.
And medical professionals from all over the world who could easily tell whether the information is bogus seem to care nothing about the fact that dangerously false information is being spread by this prominent site. Why not? No conceivable answer.
And no journalist wants to break the story and maybe win a Nobel prize for exposing the fraud that spreads false medical information to hundreds of millions of people every month. Why not? No conceivable answer.
And the owners of this website are laughing all the way to the bank because they could have just posted real information that would actually help people but instead seemed to know that no one out there, not even the experts themselves, care whether the information posted on this site is accurate.
This is the world we live in in the mind of a conspiracy. theorist
So again, when I call you one, it's blurry because you disagree with me or because you don't "trust authority". It's because you have a fundamental lack of understanding about how people work.
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@TWS1405_2
What’s hilarious to me is @Double_R hasn’t said anything here.
Awe someone misses me. I'm touched.
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@TWS1405_2
you have now been proven wrong
It was an injunction issued by one federal judge on the basis that the plaintiffs will probably win the case. Calm down there sparky.
The issue at hand in this case comes down to whether the social media companies were acting within their own guidelines and of their own accord or whether they were "coerced or significantly encouraged" by the government to act on the government's behalf. What I found telling about this ruling is that nothing in these 155 pages takes into account what the social media companies that actually made the decisions to take down certain posts had to say about it.
That said, there is actually compelling evidence that certain individuals went to far to the point where that line may have been crossed, if I were the judge in this case I might even feel compelled to rule the same way because of the precedent set here and knowing the type of people that are actually out there waiting to take advantage of it. But here is the part of the ruling that really stood out to me:
"What is really telling is that virtually all of the free speech suppressed was “conservative” free speech. Using the 2016 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government apparently engaged in a massive effort to suppress disfavored conservative speech. The targeting of conservative speech indicates that Defendants may have engaged in “viewpoint discrimination,” to which strict scrutiny applies. See Simon & Schuster, Inc., 505 U.S. 105 (1991)."
Page 94 - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.293.0.pdf
In other words, batshit conspiracy theories that are extremely harmful to the health of our society, the very thing the government is duty bound to protect against and that any responsible social media company would not want their platforms to be known for, is now classified as "conservative speech". If you are cheering this ruling you might want to think about how we got here.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Examples of large numbers of people coming together to advance a goal that defies the personal interests of the individuals involved:The catholic churchThe Nazi stateThe USSRSome say MAGA
None of these are analogous. You miss the entire point, in the type of conspiracy I am talking about which you are heavily implying, people would have to participate *knowingly*. Take the WebMD example; if the experts involved didn't know their information was unreliable, they wouldn't be experts. The alternative is that the understand it and did it anyway. Meanwhile, the rest of the worlds actual experts would have to look the other way as harmful misinformation makes it's way to the forefront of our society. No one decides to make the news, no one decides to come together to call ou this operation out and get the credit for saving the rest of us. It defines all credulity, but this is the type of stuff you consistently allege is reasonable. Because you know, don't trust authority.
All of your examples are of large numbers of people being manipulated by having basic weaknesses in human nature exploited. Religion continues to be the main purveyor of this throughout our society. The Nazis, MAGA, all examples of people being led by their worst impulses in a situation where people are scared and/or angry and looking for a scapegoat. Any social or political scientist could explain how this works in detail. None of this compares to the type of conspiracies you allege.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
As they knew with the abrahamic religions?
Religion fits perfectly into everything I said. Again, religion is not testable even in theory, and we are absolutely terrible at facing the apparent realities of our own mortality. It's easily predictable that religions would make their way through our societies.
That aside, it demonstrates your unseriousness that you are still pretending there is an equivalence between religion and pretty much any other profession on earth. I've already explained the difference, did you have any response to that?
People who don't dare question authorities don't police them.
WebMD is not an authority to anyone with a degree.
And no one ever suggested they were not questionable, that's just your human nature ignoring conspiracy mind at work. This is exactly what I'm talking about.
The #1 reason anyone spreads falsehoods is that they believe they are true.
Yes, in most cases this is true, because most cases involve people reposting what they saw on Facebook. We're talking about the 3rd most utilized medical site in the world ran by a large group of qualified experts. These are not the same thing.
What about those anti-vaxer shamans who are making $$$?
Again, follow basic human nature. If WebMD spread misinformation it would take down their business because accuracy is their product. But there will always be some segment of society that doesn't understand how the world works and is easily manipulable. This segment will always be much smaller but can be sold just about anything so misinformation will always have monetary value, and there will always be someone willing to capitalize on it.
The catholic churchThe Nazi stateThe USSRSome say MAGA
If you had a point here you forgot to make it.
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@Public-Choice
Ok. So I was right then, you do believe the science is wrong on homosexual attraction.
That's not what I believe. I would go on to explain where your analysis of me went wrong but since you didn't quote my words I have no idea where you're getting this nonsense interpretation from, which I suspect was the point.
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@TWS1405_2
You are ok with shutting him down so that he lives his life the way you see fit, not how her actually wants to.Strawman.At the end of the day his choices are still his choices. I (nor anyone else for that matter) have NO power or control over his choices. He chooses. He alone. End of story.
It's not a strawman, at least not based on this. Obviously you don't get to make his choices, you aren't Professor X. But you feed into a societal narrative the he because of his choices should be regarded as mentally ill and dangerous to children. That may in fact be a choice, but it's clearly not the one that anyone would want to have to choose between, and as a result many people live as if they're straight when they're not. That's tragic for all involved.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
The issue is whether you can trust an organization simply because:1.) They spend significant time devoted to a single subject or field2.) They generally agree with each other3.) They publish official assertions and those assertions are trusted by many people
Another strawman. I've already explained to you the primary factor which makes any particular expert or their field in general reliable; a proven track record of results.
WebMD is the third most utilized medical site in the world. That wouldn't have been accomplished if they were spreading anything but reliable information. Religion meanwhile, has no such track record, because, unlike any other industry on earth, the only way their claims could ever be tested is if we die. Not exactly repeatable and verifiable.
To not be able to see the difference between these two things is breathtakingly unserious.
But at the end of the day it all does come down to trust. What you misunderstand is that it's not about trust in any organization or individual, it's about trust in basic human nature. If WebMD was spreading misinformation, people would know about it. The information they give is fairly basic and could be verified by pretty much anyone with a degree, yet despite its 130 million users monthly, barely anyone has came out to accuse the website of this. Not anecdotal examples, but an actual, noticable pattern. That defies human nature. Also, WebMD is a for profit organization who relies on their reputation in order to attract visitors, so accuracy is central to their business model. Why then, spread misinformation? They wouldn't, because like all of us they care about their well being over anything else and spreading misinformation would severely and irreparably harm that.
So when I call you a conspiracy theorist it's not because you don't trust the sources I deem credible, but because you don't trust basic human nature. You seem to think it's perfectly plausible for large numbers of people to come together to advance a goal that defies the personal interests of the individuals involved, or for even larger numbers of people who are in a position to recognize what's happening would say absolutely nothing about it to anyone. I don't know what society you grew up in, but that's not how people work.
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@Lemming
But I don't want to be attracted to pillows,Or go through the time and effort required for such.
What time and effort? In my last post I asked you to recount the process you went through in order to shape your current sexuality, you ignored that request.
Society I grew up in normalizes and prioritized in normalcy, people being attracted to the opposite sex,If the society I grew up in had normalized and prioritized in normalcy, people being attracted to the same sex, it's possible I would be gay now,
Possible and reasonable to believe are two different things.
The fact that society has normalized being straight but not gay gives one reason to wish they were straight, that does not mean they decided what to be sexually aroused by.
I've given you an example of how you could demonstrate to yourself if nothing else that sexuality is chosen, you refuse to take part because you don't want to. You also haven't yet provided the details of how you decided upon and eventually arrived at your current sexuality. Till one of those changes I don't see what is left to discuss here.
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@Lemming
I wouldn't want to be sexually attracted to pillows, 'just to prove a point.
You could easily choose to become unattracted to pillows if it's a choice, so why not?
Also probably time consuming, irritating, to train responses in oneself.
Did you train your responses to become attracted to the sex are are currently attracted to? Can you tell us about that process?
On the question of choice though,People acquire and de-acquire tastes frequently in life.
Changing of tastes has nothing to do with whether those tastes were chosen.
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@Vegasgiants
You have an opinion sexuality is not a choice but can find no scientific agency that agrees with you
I gave you a clear example of how the answer to this question could be demonstrated. You've unsurprisingly ignored it.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I've never told you to disregard anything. What you choose to trust simply isn't an argument.
It's an inductive argument, not a deductive argument. I've already explained this.
could you please acknowledge that Occam (who you love to quote) was clergy?
No, because it's not even worth the ten seconds it would take to Google it. I am not quoting Occam, I am quoting and advocating a very basic logical principal. I couldn't care less who Occam was. Would you prefer I call it by a different name?
How would you know if they didn't show you the science?
The fact that they don't show the science use proofing and if itself.
No true Scotsman much? Is it not a big enough example for you? Do religions "not understand their own field" or is it simply that nobody understands their "field" because the field is an arbitrary tangle of contradictions and fuzzy concepts?
This question makes no sense.
It's not a no true Scottsman. I explained why religion fundamentally gets it wrong. You have no response to that so you pretend everyone else is the same by my standards, without even discussing my standards. It's an amazingly dishonest and cowardly approach, and a waste of my time.
Then what about scientific socialism?While we're on it: psychology, and no it's not a conspiracy it's a pseudoscience. You can go find Jordon Peterson's talk on "Big Five personality traits" that's the best they got. It's statistics on questionnaires. That's all.I see you didn't quote the fact that the APA said the homosexuals were nuts. I'm bringing it back: Why did they think that then? Why were they wrong? Did they fix their methodology so they wouldn't make the same mistake again?Any real scientific community can answer questions like that.
All irrelevant to this discission.
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@Vegasgiants
Well we don't really know what causes sexuality so choice can not be ruled out
We can't rule it out in any definitive scientific sense. That doesn't mean we cannot form or own conclusions about the subject.
Not being able to rule out a possibility does not mean that possibility becomes reasonable to accept.
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@Vegasgiants
Who are you to say they are still gay if they say they are not?
Says the English language.
If you want to define gay differently then go ahead, that does nothing to change reality.
If a man is exclusively attracted to other men, they are gay. They can say they are not gay all they want, doesn't change the fact that they are.
I'm not talking about any individual. My position is that every individual should be taken at their word. You're trying to deflect to something else entirely.
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@Lemming
Is there a reason a person 'couldn't be sexually attracted to a pillow?
Of course not, many people are. My point was to use a pillow to test whether sexual arousal was a result of choice or whether it was a physiological reaction out of the control of oneself. If it were the former, than anyone claiming sexuality is a choice should be able to demonstrate it to themselves off no one else.
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@Public-Choice
Unless I'm mistaken, didn't you cite the WebMD article that said "experts agree" that being gay is genetic?Was that just to say an organization says it, or was it a statement of agreement to it?
The point of the article is that people do not choose their own sexuality, a position which I have been defending with my own arguments ever since.
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@TWS1405_2
Not switched on or off, but rather chosen to act or not to act. Just because someone has a mental desire or interest (curiousness) towards the same or opposite sex doesn't mean they will or would act on it until chosen to do so
Great, so we're all in agreement. An individual can choose their lifestyle, but not their inner desires.
A gay man can call themselves straight, marry a women, and have kids, because they're in control of their actions. Problem is, they're still gay.
So at the end of the day the difference between you and I is apparently that I support a man living as his true self and expressing his true desires. You are ok with shutting him down so that he lives his life the way you see fit, not how her actually wants to.
So is there anything left to discuss here?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
and how many times have you verified a track record of solid results?You don't, you assume someone would have told you if there was a track record of failure;
So if I have not personally verified someone's track record of results, I should disregard their expertise at face value. Is that your position which you exercise everyday anytime you come across any kind of information about the world you live in?
So you have now suggested three different ways a body of purported 'experts' (but who certainly agree with each other and spend significant time thinking about it) can be wrong:1.) They're lying it's all one vast conspiracy2.) They aren't employing science, if they were employing science they would show us (but we can't understand such lofty things and don't even try)3.) They are irrational, apparently togetherApparently conspiracy isn't the only reason to doubt :)
1 is a big conspiracy theory
3 would need to be supported by actual argument explaining how an entire body of professionals in a given field could all be making a fundamental flaw within the basis of their entire profession. I am aware of no other feild other than religion which this argument can be made against.
2 doesn't apply to any other field of expertise I am aware of except religion.
Can you please present a single example of an industry of expertise other than religion that fundamentally doesn't understand it's own field?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I've never implied that only experts could debate a subject, so we're in agreement.That is the only option if you think you can appeal to authority as a non-authority/non-expert and drop the mic.
Deciding that an individual is not worth the effort to engage in further conversation, and the idea that only experts can debate have absolutely nothing to do with each other, so one certainly doesn't follow from the other.
Fine, but if they're incapable of communicating the rationale there is no way to know if they're an expert, because (for the 400th time) the only proof of expertise is having the best argument.
If argumentation is a skill separate from one's expertise in a particular field, then no, the best argument is not proof of expertise.
An expert can be a poor communicator, that's not relevant to whether they have the knowledge and experience to effectively and efficiently accomplish a given task well above the capabilities of the average person.
A non expert can spend an hour on Google and come away sounding like they know what they're talking about. Without the relevant expertise they could very easily misunderstand important aspects or be completely unaware of a crucial element that would entirely change the approach they are claiming one should take. And without expertise for the person judging said argument, they would not have the tools to know what is missing or wrong about the argument. All they can know is that it sounded good.
What proves one's expertise is not argumentation, it's a proven track record of results.
every time you appeal to authority and I ask for a real argument you...
You don't come in asking for a real argument, you come in pretending that my statement is an appeal to authority fallacy, which is an entirely different conversation from the topic I was discussing.
You called it a conspiracy theory to suggest that reporters would run a story about corruption because an ambassador started talking about corruption
I called it a conspiracy theory to argue that multiple outlets reporting on multiple leading figures, entities, and populations all asking for the same thing is not evidence that said leading figures, entities and populations wanted that thing.
No one here is claiming all priests are lying.Then how can you deny their conclusions?
Via logic 101.
Words in a book cannot prove that there exists a spaceless timeless all powerful being.
Lying and being irrational are not the same thing.
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@Vegasgiants
I thought girls were icky....then I decided they weren't
So again, why if you thought girls were icky did you decide to change your mind? What was the calculus there? What was the benefit that you thought of which made you decide you were going to start liking them?
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@Vegasgiants
It's a choiceI decided I liked girls
You didn't decide, you discovered it.
If I'm wrong, tell us more about this choice you made. Please take us through the time when you woke up unattracted to girls, then thought about which sex you thought would be beneficial to start liking, and then made your decision. How close did you come to choosing boys? What was the determining factor?
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@Vegasgiants
I'm not gay. That's not my choice either
Are you mispeaking, or are you thoroughly confused?
If not being gay was not your choice, then sexuality is not a choice. Yet you have been arguing that it is. This is the second time you've said the opposite of what you previously argued, please keep your story straight.
Lots of people seem to do it
It's much easier to have a dialog when you quote the post you are responding to.
I assume the "it" you are referring to in this statement is people changing their sexuality. The fact that people change their sexuality does not mean it was a choice. You can be aroused by one thing today and not feel that arousal for the same thing later. This is no different than when people's taste buds change and they find themselves enjoying eating things they used to hate.
You don't choose what you like, you discover it. And our likes change in many different ways all throughout our lives. There's no reason to think sex is excluded from this.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I don't call myself an expert in anything except maybe software architecture and even then I wouldn't dare to imply that no one else could debate it.
I've never implied that only experts could debate a subject, so we're in agreement.
If the knowledge is true they also know the best arguments to attain that knowledge.
Argumentation is a skill separate from the expertise of any given field, so that's not necessarily true.
Which is simpler, to believe in your conspiracy theory about all the priests lying or to simply accept that they know what they're talking about after decades of study and contemplation?
lol at the king of conspiracy theories trying to hurl it out as a pajoritive.
No one here is claiming all priests are lying. You love knocking down arguments you entirely made up.
I accept entirely that priests know what they're talking about when it comes to the book they've been studying their whole lives. I've made this clear repeatedly, you pretend I haven't because it's inconvenient for you.
to show is more than to assert it seems.
Correct, no one here has claimed anything else.
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@TWS1405_2
The pillow is a tool, not a focus of sexual attraction.
It is your contention that sexuality is a choice. If that's the case, then that means you can choose to feel sexual attraction towards men or women.
Sexual attraction is the result of what you are aroused by, so if you can choose your sexual attraction then you can choose which gender arouses you.
Plenty of people are aroused by both men and women, some are aroused by neither. So it's not mutually exclusive.
Therefore, arousal can according to you, simply be switched on or off towards either sex.
If you can turn your arousal on or off towards a given gender, then you are in control of your arousal.
If you are in control of your arousal, then you can choose to be aroused by your pillow.
So go on. Make that choice and enjoy your evening.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Now imagine if that wasn't true and we were to try and debate without being experts?That's right, we'd be wasting our time.
Do you even know what the word expert means? You really think you're an expert because you used Google?
So exactly how many subjects do you consider yourself to be an expert on BTW, because according to you that would apparently be every topic you've ever engaged in.
They would say they study god, and they agree with each other so maybe you should trust the experts.
They study a book claiming there is a God. That is an objective fact.
How do you know that priests do not conduct scientific experimentation?
Because if they did they would show it.
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