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@thett3
Yeah. The fatalities seen throughout this process are the result of the staggering incompetence of Biden's so called military advisors, like the disgraced "General" Milley and so many others.
Realistically, I'm old enough to be more than halfway to a military career retirement. I was 17 when I graduated from high school, was being recruited by a Marine recruiter who ensured me that my signing bonus would be enough to buy a new vehicle. He saw my SAT scores and was over the moon that I was even willing to talk to him. But I was 17. I didn't know anything about anything. Had I joined, i'd have been off to Paris Island and who knows what part of the world I'd be in now or if I'd even still be here. Several friends of mine who went career military right out of high school are in that same boat. 20 years in. They'll retire around 2028.
One very close friend of mine is still in a branch of the military. I won't disclose which one or what he does in this context, but you can DM me on facebook if you want to know. A large part of his job involves interactions with new recruits. The point you made above is the exact same point he made to me when we were on the phone as this was unfolding a short time ago.
"These kids weren't even born when 9/11 happened. They have no idea what any of this was about. They're here because they don't have any other option. And somehow I am supposed to tell them that what they're doing is serving a greater good, when the fucking commander in chief can't even execute a withdrawal without disgracing this country?"
I recently learned that servicemen can't openly disparage ranking leaders in the military to the general public, too. He's got a lot of thoughts about what's going on, but there are very few people outside of his branch of the military in his command who have heard them. His wife, brothers and me. That's about it.
But turn on the TV? There's that stupid fuck, "General" Milley.
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@thett3
Can you imagine your son being one of the last casualties in Afghanistan? I bet at least one of those 13 dead was in diapers or not even born when 9/11 happened.
We're on the eve of destruction.
I can't imagine my son being one of the casualties in Afghanistan, but I can imagine my friends enlisting in the Marines (as I nearly did) after high school and being deployed there, in some cases on multiple tours of duty. Most weren't there for long. I am dating myself when I say this, but I graduated from high school almost 14 years ago. By the time I was out of college, a few of them were still in. A couple went full career military. Several remain to this day.
Keep this in perspective. The kids born on September 11, 2001 will be old enough to drink next year. If they were in diapers when 9/11 happened, by now they're at least 22 or 23. More than old enough to have served a full tour of duty or two in Afghanistan.
I agree we should have left. But not like this.
This is a disgrace. Biden is a disgrace. The United States under his so called "leadership" is a disgrace.
The economy is spiraling out of control. Democrats live in a state of delusion about the fact that the greatest transfer of wealth in human history is taking place in front of their eyes, and they are demanding more based on their fantasies about COVID. The ruling class are forcing the working people into a state of destitution on par with third world countries.
That is what is happening. It's happening all over the world.
That is the "great reset."
It is the design of international banks, globalists and multinational corporations who have devoured everything.
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@RationalMadman
The last thing like this you did for me was interesting and insightful.
Let's give this a go.
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@Double_R
Do you even know what critical race theory is?
Do you remember who I am?
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@Greyparrot
Where you'd see the difference is in the children of Nigerian (or any African migrants) to the United States. They are among the hardest working people in this country. Their work ethic is culturally similar to what you'd expect from Asians.
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@Dr.Franklin
And what is your profile picture from? Kingdom of Heaven?
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@drlebronski
IQ measures a lot. But it doesn't measure which race is smartest.
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@Greyparrot
That was such an underrated moment when Shapiro called out Nance as a "man of merit" that he is pushing to tear down the very "racist" system that has presently rewarded him based on his merits and not his skin color.And replace it with what exactly?
I wholeheartedly agree. Nance's position in society is itself evidence of the extent to which systemic racism is a leftist delusion.
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@drlebronski
The basic problem with Charles Murray's arguments about race and IQ is that the average scores of particular demographic groups do not remain constant over time. The key, relevant data-set would be the United States' military's historical IQ scores of its recruits. For example, Jewish draftees to fight in WWI had about the same IQ as blacks, whites and others. This was at a time when the average level of educational attainment among Jewish populations was roughly the same as those other groups. For the most part, they were poorly educated migrants from foreign countries. Two generations later, that trend changed dramatically and presented some of the results Murray talked about. Similar trends are observed with other groups as well, and relative IQ increases tend to associate with increases in socioeconomic status and educational attainment.
Thomas Sowell has published on this, fairly extensively.
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@Greyparrot
I think he's just spent too much time with the idiots on MSNBC. He wasn't always like this.
I am reminded of the "transitions" of people like Chris Cuomo, from when he was about my age covering 9/11, to whatever he has become now. Cuomo was not always like this, but whatever he's become is a disgrace to himself and his family.
Same for Don Lemon. Don Lemon was, in 2003, practically a neocon. Now? Well we all know what he is now.
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@Greyparrot
Yeah, the thing is that before that fiasco I liked Malcolm Nance. I've read his books, too.
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@drlebronski
Malcolm Nance disgraced himself in that interview.
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@drlebronski
Here's what Ben Shapiro said on Bill Maher, and I agree with what he said:
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@Greyparrot
Every age before this one has performed or permitted acts that to us are morally stupefying. So unless we have any reason to think we are more reasonable, morally better or wiser than at any time in the past, it is reasonable to assume there will be some things we are presently doing – possibly while flushed with moral virtue – that our descendants will whistle through their teeth at, and say ‘What the hell were they thinking?’ It is worth wondering what the blind spots of our age might be. What might we be doing that will be regarded by succeeding generations in the same way we now look on the slave trade or using Victorian children as chimney sweeps?Take the case of Nathan Verhelst, who died in Belgium in September 2013. Nathan had been born a girl and was given the name Nancy by her parents. She grew up in a family of boys and always felt that her parents preferred her three brothers to her. There was certainly plenty that was strange about the family. After Verhelst’ s death his mother gave an interview to the local media in which she said, ‘When I saw “Nancy” for the first time, my dream was shattered. She was so ugly. I had a phantom birth. Her death does not bother me. I feel no sorrow, no doubt or remorse. We never had a bond. ’For reasons that this and other comments make clear, Nancy grew up feeling rejected by her parents and at some stage settled on the idea that things might be better if she was a man. In 2009, in her late thirties, she began taking hormone therapy. Shortly after this, she had a double mastectomy and then a set of surgeries to try to construct a penis.In total she had three major sex-change operations between 2009 and 2012. At the end of this process ‘Nathan’, as he then was, reacted to the results. ‘I was ready to celebrate my new birth. But when I looked in the mirror I was disgusted with myself. My new breasts did not match my expectations and my new penis had symptoms of rejection.’ There was significant scarring from all the surgery Verhelst had undergone, and he was clearly deeply unhappy in his new body. There is a photograph of Verhelst as ‘Nathan’ on a sparsely populated Belgian beach. He is squinting from the sunlight as he looks into the camera. Despite the tattoos covering part of his chest the scarring from the mastectomy is still visible. In a photo from another occasion he is lying on a bed in shoes and a suit, looking uncomfortable in his body.The life that Nathan had clearly hoped for had not come about, and depression soon followed. So in September 2013, at the age of 44 – only a year after the last sex-change procedure – Verhelst was euthanized by the state. In his country of birth euthanasia is legal and the relevant medical authorities in Belgium agreed that Verhelst could be euthanized due to ‘unbearable psychological suffering ’. A week before the end he held a small party for some friends. Guests reportedly danced and laughed and raised glasses of champagne with the toast ‘To life’. A week later Verhelst made the journey to a university hospital in Brussels and was killed by lethal injection. ‘I do not want to be a monster,’ he said just before he died.It is not hard to imagine future generations reading such a story in a spirit of amazement. ‘So the Belgian health service tried to turn a woman into a man, failed and then killed her?’ Hardest of all to comprehend might be the fact that the killing, like the operations that preceded it, was performed not in a spirit of malice or of cruelty, but solely in the spirit of kindness.
The above is correct.
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@drlebronski
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Critical race theory is not a threat to the United States. But it is a threat to the wellbeing, both social and psychological, of all infected by it. Belief in this new species of quasi-religious delusion places the follower into a schizophrenia of being.
At once, they are both oppressed and oppressor according to their imagined level of privilege/victimhood. At once, they are simultaneously the social judge of themselves, a member of the jury deciding the fate of the accused and the accused themselves, according to their degree of privilege/oppression as imagined by themselves and other believers.
The human psyche cannot contend with that level of dissonance while remaining intact. This, presumably, is why proponents of critical race theory manifest something like a hive mind at the collective level; and something approximating one or more clinically significant personality disorders as individuals.
The two are interrelated: the individual absolves himself or herself of their individual guilt by performance of works, something like "hail marys" to wokeness, by signaling their virtue, often by the only means at their disposal --- on social media. In having performed their "holy sacrament" of shaming all perceived "oppressors," they absolve their "original sin" of having been born with the mark of the beast, their "identity." All of it takes the form of something like an exorcism ending with burning someone at the stake. Or, in a more modern (and equally religious sense), a "struggle session" in the at the behest of Mao's so called "cultural revolution." Or de-Kulakization in the Soviet Union.
This phenomenon, to me, is unsurprising. It echoes the absurdities of identity-based political movements in the 20th Century --- all of which have come about in man's effort to replace the values human civilization developed organically (and which are reflected, generally, in the Abrahamic religion) with something secular. The communists tried communism. The fascists tried fascism. The Americans now try critical race theory.
In so many ways, "critical race theory" is nothing more than the fulfillment of Nietzsche's prediction in the Genealogy of Morals (and, to a lesser degree, Thus Spake Zarathustra). At the point in time Nietzsche wrote, man's capacity for reason had developed to the degree that he could both recognize his normative value frameworks as such and self-consciously criticize them. Largely, this developed as the result of the Catholic church's failures throughout Germany and the world to maintain its cultural legitimacy (a trend that continues to this day, albeit in different form). So, the need for an alternative arose.
But the basis of a normative value framework, critical race theory is not. It is the bastard-child offshoot of a praxis between the so called "Frankfurt School" and Marxists. It is a self-defeating cult of despair that extends precisely into the realm of psychosis.
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@Greyparrot
I agree. But I also agree that the culture is trying to make gay boys trans, and it's something that actively sickens me. Douglas Murray has talked a lot about that if you were curious. I agree with his perspective entirely.
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@RationalMadman
Yeah, there is one question that's wrong. But the circle and arrow wasn't it. Look at the relative change in rotation from frame to frame and you'll see the pattern very easily.
I got smart and diligent.
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I don't know what my SAT reading score was. It was around the 95th percentile.
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@RationalMadman
lol, well by that metric you're well suited to a leadership position in the German army
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@RationalMadman
Even though the guy was a nazi, it's the prussian military tradition that provides the basis of his thinking.
Smart and lazy is the better option.
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@Intelligence_06
3rd Reich
It's a combination personality iq test
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@drlebronski
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@drlebronski
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@TheUnderdog
What's funny about Ben Shapiro is that as a mischievous little brat, he is definitely my type. If he was about 25 and gay, at least. lol
And who said I was an environmentalist?
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I would legalize almost all firearms and let anyone over the age of 21 buy almost any of them.
The problem we have in society is not that guns are available, but that they are insufficiently carried. In a world where everyone owned a gun and carried it with them, there would be almost no violent crime.
Example:
1. Rapists and raping. Would a rapist rape if the intended victim could shoot back? Maybe, but I'd bet less often.
2. Robbers robbing. Would a robber rob if the intended victim could shoot back? Some might, but few would seriously think it a good idea.
3. Criminals committing crimes of any kind. Would any criminal commit any violent crime against any victim, where the criminal knew there was a non-trivial possibility they'd lose their life in the attempt? I think not.
That's the problem. Not too many guns, too few.
But Coal, come on. What about all the children who would die from gun accidents?
All the more reason for parents to teach their kids how to use guns, to respect them and not to play with them. Ever.
Wouldn't you just be increasing the likelihood of gun-involved violent crime? After all, we all know the first thing criminals care about when they're selecting the tools of their criminality are laws against those tools.
Hogwash. Criminals, because they are criminals, do not follow gun laws. Disarming law abiding citizens leaves them prey for those who would do them harm.
[All the other stupid arguments against guns, magazines of high capacity, arguments against automatic weapons, and everything else that's already been said by ten thousand people over, ten thousand times over.]
Oh, and get off my lawn.
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@TheUnderdog
Your profile picture is of a bratty little miscreant who clearly was insufficiently spanked as a child. I wonder if you, too, were insufficiently spanked as a child if Shapro is who you're aspiring to be.
lol
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@Theweakeredge
I don't debate here anymore, you know that. Furthermore, you're actual reading of sources are so intellectually dishonest I'm not sure I would want to debate you if I did.
So, is that your go-to special pleading phrase whenever someone says something you disagree with?
Relatedly, do you know who Carl Sagan is?
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@RationalMadman
I just don't care.
If he posted something like "The crackers and kikes are conspiring to infect black folks with aborted fetuses!" (something I have known of a black nationalist saying), I wouldn't call for him to be banned.
I'd just ignore him.
He is obviously being intentionally provocative, and it looks like you took the bait.
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@Lunatic
I don't know. If it happens though, I'll be surprised.
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Vote:
Debate:
Resolved: Violent revolution is a just response to political oppression
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@Double_R
The non-vaccinated do not cause or contribute to the immunocompromised becoming ill.That is just factually, mathematically wrong. If you are vaccinated you are far less likely to contact the disease and therefore far less likely to spread it. You don’t even need to read the studies on that, just look around. The virus is surging everywhere where vaccination rates are low.
It helps to think this through, logically. A person who is immunocompromised --- but VACCINATED --- is no more likely to catch COVID from a person who is vaccinated than from someone who is not, because they are immunized. That's the whole point of the vaccines. Whether you're immunocompromised or not is inconsequential to whether you're vaccinated.
So again, the non-vaccinated do not cause or contribute to the immunocompromised becoming ill. It's on the immunocompromised person to get the vaccine.
It is, first of all, a pretty dishonest characterization of what the left is doing. Lockdowns occurred early on before we understood what we were dealing with and how to combat it.
That is incorrect, although consistent with what the politicans at least claim. "Who could have possibly known lockdowns wouldn't work?" and "We all did our best under the circumstances!" they say. All bullshit. There was not then, nor has there ever been, any kind of scientific consensus that lockdowns were a necessdary or even appropriate response to any pandemic situation of the type COVID presened --- even as COVID was understood before and during the initial wave of lockdowns. That was an unsupported, fringe scientific opinion supported by exactly no one that had never been implemented and had no established efficacy rate. It was complete speculation to think they'd ever make a difference, and it turns out they did not.
Many, many people made this point at all relevant times before and during the first wave of COVID inside and outside of this country. But they were attacked by the scientifically and mathematically illiterate on purely partisan grounds. It was unconscionable what took place.
So I shouldn’t trust any doctor who explains anything publicly, but if they say nothing publicly then I never hear from them at all. Sounds like heads I win tails you lose.
I said be automatically skeptical, not "do not trust."
What democrats comprehend is how science works.
Some of them might, but if the evidence you're going to cite in support of their scientific competencies is the modeling used to justify lockdowns, I've got some bad news for you. They might be able to repeat the conclusions of others, but they don't understand the first thing about the methods used to reach those conclusions.
That's the key difference: you can't claim to "understand science" or "comprehend science" with just the results; because results are often wrong, especially where they're the product of unreliable methods not recognized or adopted by others in the field.
We can talk about why if you like.
By the way, I am not implying that republicans (unlike democrats) understand this either. But Republicans don't hold themselves out as being competent when they are not.
We take his word as representative of the best available information to date, not as the ultimate truth. It’s not his fault so many are scientifically illiterate and so many other talking heads are willing to prey on that.
So that's the problem. People took Fauci at his word when his peers spoke under their breath the entire time this fiasco was going on that he was off his rocker.
And no one even bothered to question him. Even though there was no shortage of subject matter on which to question nearly all of what he said.
Science is not a process wherein all-knowing-sensi "top doc" proclaims to the world what "the science" says. It's a discursive process based on the application of repeatable methods that are recognized to produce reliable results, to figure out what is objectively true in the world. What Fauci did is the exact opposite; and the efforts to censor anyone who says otherwise, like Rand Paul, are reflections of the extent to which this was never about science at all. It's about politics and power, which is why Fauci has no credibility whatsoever.
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@Mesmer
See comment 30:
To wit, exactly nothing you have put forward can be taken seriously.
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@thett3
The Second World War was just a continuation of the first, and occurred for the same reason as the first: to prevent German domination of continental Europe. The ideologies involved weren’t particularly relevant. Since Germany came to dominate continental Europe anyway, and Britain lost her empire, the war was pointless in terms of its *actual* purpose
Hitler's pursuit of lebensraum and eventual efforts to dominate the European continent were secondary to his ideology, which was evidenced by his misallocation of resources away from the war effort to implement the "final solution" (and operate concentration/death camps in the first place) rather than produce resources to support the Nazi troops on the Eastern and Western fronts. Though at the time I agree the United States was largely indifferent to Hitler's ideology. We did business with the Nazis up to and until the United States entered the European theater (and some thereafter).
But England lost its empire for other reasons, most of which began during WWI. Waves of anti-colonialism (encouraged in large part by the United States, the Wilson administration and successors) took hold in the colonized world. What ultimately broke the camel's back for England was when the British army started recruiting from its colonial holdings. India, in particular, was not inclined to supply soldiers to the army responsible for India's colonization.
I think you know my thoughts on that process, though. I'm all for colonialism. One need look no further than the current state of sub-Saharan Africa to understand why.
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@Bones
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@Vader
Dostoevsky is good stuff. Almost all Russian literature of that time period is worth reading, but Dostoevsky is especially worth reading.
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@Double_R
I don’t think we have as much disagreement as you think. Regarding the pandemic, my personal attitude is that I’m done with it. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, so at this point given that 99% of the deaths from Covid are unvaccinated I say let them die. I take no pleasure in that, but if stupid people are going to continue to be stupid I see no reason to intervene. There are drawbacks to this which I struggle with, the immunocompromised and now children who are not as immune from this variant as the last. But government can only do so much…
Here is my perspective on those issues. I understand the science and the math involved in consideration of these questions. I disagree with those who do not want the vaccine, because I understand the clinical trial results and the relative risks involved in the decision not to receive any vaccine to multiple, different patient populations. I have done what I can to persuade those important to me to get the vaccine and I will share my opinions on it with almost anyone who will ask. But if people decide they don't want to get vaccinated, I agree it's on them.
I do not attribute blame to those who chose to not get vaccinated for creating greater levels of risk to the immunocompromised. This is not a situation like with childhood diseases, such as polio, rubella or others, where only those who are medically unable to receive the vaccine are dying as a result of infection. The non-vaccinated do not cause or contribute to the immunocompromised becoming ill. After all, just because you're immunocompromised doesn't mean you can't get the vaccine. You can, and absolutely should.
On the question of COVID and children (so, pediatric .... age 0-18), according to the data from every country on earth with a reliable infrastructure to produce it (so, the US, UK, Canada, most of the EU and India) children face essentially no risk from COVID infection. In the first instance, they are appreciably less susceptible to infection and even if they are "infected" they almost never become symptomatic. Of the incredibly small subset of those who do become symptomatic, essentially none require hospitalization. Of those even smaller subset who do require hospitalization due to COVID infection, almost 100% of them were (1) over the age of 13 (so, they NOW would be eligible to receive a vaccine), (2) had at least one severe, serious underlying health condition (namely diabetes) and (3) had some form of respiratory complication, in addition to their underlying health condition, such as asthma.
A tremendous amount of misinformation has circulated on the subject of COVID and pediatric cases. The main species of that misinformation now is something along the lines of "the United States has the highest levels of pediatric COVID hospitalizations since the pandemic began!" At some level of analysis, that's literally true but highly misleading because of what is meant by the phrase "pediatric COVID hospitalization." One egregiously incompetent doctor at Boston University recently issued a tweet that contributed to the spread of that delusion.
Here is the reality: Childhood hospitalizations are slightly lower than what they were in 2019 for this time of year. But they are up relative to 2020, because of the increased incidences of the typical reasons why kids go to the hospital in the summer; things like bike accidents, broken arms and water-related injuries. Importantly, every kid who is admitted to any hospital for any reason in the United States is tested for COVID. This is standard operating procedure no matter where you go, to insure against the risks of asymptomatic spread in a medical context. Shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that hospitals are cautious about that sort of thing. But the result is that "pediatric hospitalizations WITH COVID" are high; whereas "pediatric hospitalizations DUE TO COVID" are almost non-existent, anywhere in this country. If you don't believe what I said, go on Mt. Siani's or Presbyterian Hospital's website and look at their COVID testing policies for all admitted patients, or call them and ask what they do. Then when they get a positive result, regardless of whether it's incidental to the reason for which any kid sought medical treatment, ask them what they have to do with that information.
That is the process by which these misleading headlines come to suck up all the oxygen in the room. It's the same level of nonsense they did in the 90s when the media all claimed in unison that vaccines caused autism. Bottom line is that the media are stupid, scientifically illiterate pornographers of shock and awe. Whenever anyone in the media, including media doctors who typically are among the most inept in their profession, says anything medically related you should automatically be skeptical. That includes Fauci, in particular. And that woman at the CDC, whatever her name is. Wollensky.
And although that’s my position, I understand why people feel differently. You say people have the right to harm themselves. I agree, but that’s not what people are choosing here. Most or at least many of the hospitalized didn’t get vaccinated because they thought this was a hoax. As soon as they learn it wasn’t, they beg for the vaccine. They’re victims of misinformation, and that’s worth considering.
As I indicated in another context, I have spoken with several people who have declined the vaccine. One example that stands out to me is a sort of 24-year old gay Freddie Hampton. His perspective is this: You don't take vaccine skepticism seriously because you do not have something like Tuskegee in your family's living memory. We remember. We remember the last time the government tried to give us a free vaccine and what harm it caused. We'll wait and see how it works for you all, and then maybe we'll get it. And what am I to say in response to that? That's not the kind of position I can rebut with "well, if you look at the clinical trial results." That's a mindset that was borne of the historical mistakes and abuses of so-called medical experts from generations ago that is still around. The left's response to this is to force society into lockdowns until everyone complies? No. That is beyond insanity.
I raise the above because if you look at the demographics on vaccine hesitancy, sure there are some fairly ridiculous evangelical types in the south who don't want the vaccine; but there are many others who see what is going on and think of Tuskegee. Without my own background, were I in their shoes, I can't say I'd have a different opinion. People make judgments based on what they know, and when the best the government can do is put some lying-two-faced fraudster like Fauci who can't even make up his mind on the vaccination threshold required to reach herd immunity, who says "no mask" one day, "one mask yesterday" and "two masks" tomorrow as the nation's so-called "top doc," is their reluctance to trust that system any real surprise? It isn't to me. This is what democrats don't comprehend.
If at the end of the day, people for whatever reason --- whether it's a good reason or not --- don't want to put something in their body, it is neither my place nor that of the government (or, frankly, their employer) to mandate that they do so.
It’s a good debate to sort through - just how far government should go to protect its people, but the problem is that we can’t even get to that debate because people can’t tell the difference between someone trying to protect society (the literal job of an elected official) vs someone trying to control society because they crave power… or something.
My answer to that set of topics is always going to be the same: under no circumstances should the government be given any more power than it already has, and whatever power it has should be stripped away with all deliberate speed until all that is left is only that which is minimally adequate to provide for the national defense and ensure domestic tranquility. Nothing else.
I agree that any democracy's strength depends on the capability of the electorate to make rational decisions, and misinformation has impeded their ability to do so. This trend seems to increase, with alarming rapidity. The solution, however, is not to censor to tell people what they have to think. It's to empower them to think for themselves. Sadly, our educational system has failed to do that at all levels for decades now.
The problem isn't that we have misinformation in the society. The problem is that we fail to teach our citizens how to sort fact from bullshit. More bullshit is never the answer to that problem, but that's all we get from the media and politicians (particularly democrats).
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@Reece101
If you are a woman who happens to have an abortion, it is you who will stand before God on your day of judgment and account for your actions; just as the rest of us will do the same, for ours.
So I clearly oppose abortion. But that is my opinion. What right do I have to force my opinion on others? None, of course. And the state would have even less.
The moral stakes of abortion are not for the state to resolve. The extent of the controversy surrounding the abortion debate is itself evidence of the fact that government has no place weighing in on its morality. Some people viscerally oppose it, while others support it with the same or greater intensity. The debate rages on, as it has, for the last almost 50 years.
So what, then, should be the default position?
Liberty, of course. The liberty to act according to your own conscience, based on your own values.
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@zedvictor4
Opinions are always right.
Mine is, sure.
Yours, less so.
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@Mesmer
Key points regarding your response:
1. Do not address me as "big boy."
2. Your nonsense about race is unpersuasive. For example, you linked a blog that is non-responsive to what I wrote written by an individual who lacks familiarity with the subject matters on which he opines. To illustrate this point: I reviewed some of his other writings. He clearly does not understand such basic concepts as psychometric testing, and yet purports to use data he doesn't understand to argue a point that is over his head. You further tried to make a point about skull shape. That point was incoherent, and non-responsive to what I wrote. Google the term "phrenology," and consider whether arguing with me over skull shapes is an efficacious use of your time.
3. Your comment that "If that's too complicated for you" will surely result in me not taking you or anything else you have to say seriously. That is particularly where, as here, you have been taken for a ride by a series of ideas that are devoid of any kind of scientific or other evidentiary basis. It's not even clear you can correctly repeat what, for example, Murray wrote on race and IQ; much less understand how Murray's methods were wrong, why or on what grounds.
To wit, exactly nothing you have put forward can be taken seriously.
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@TheMorningsStar
Your opinion is very wrong.
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@Reece101
Your opinion is wrong, but less wrong, sort of, than the person you're arguing with.
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@whiteflame
I agree that the risks of those two vaccines is essentially null, just felt the need to point out that, even at that level, a huge effort was put out to test those concerns.
Indeed, and even more significantly, no post-market data supports any risks associated with any of the vaccines currently available in the US, Canada and Europe.
So it's not just the clinical trials. It's the post-market data, too.
Honestly couldn’t recall his name when I initially posted this, but that’s the one! Guy has some good points, though I have misgivings about many of them. Knows what he’s talking about, though.
He's right about ivermectin, gain-of-function research and the fact that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a product of gain-of-function research. But he is wrong about vaccines, for the most part.
That being said, I agree that he's smart and knows his stuff. He also says things few others will, even if they're very obvious.
There are numerous comparisons made to use of antibiotics yielding superbugs, and they frustrate me quite a bit because the people who make them absolutely do not understand the differences between bacterial and viral evolution, nor do they get the difference between a vaccine and an antibiotic.
I agree. Viruses do not "mutate" in the same way bacteria develop antibiotic resistance. Viruses typically do the opposite of what bacteria do, which is become less deadly over time. Even coronaviruses.
I think a large part of the problem with this species of thought is that people just assume that viruses and bacteria do basically the same thing for the same reason, because that's consistent with the pattern of unsupported woe they hear from the scientifically illiterate media. Every variant of concern, interest or whatever has been nothing more than the story of catastrophe that never materializes.
It's anti-scientific and irresponsible to scare the public like that without anything even vaguely resembling evidence. But if it bleeds it leads. Sadly.
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@whiteflame
It's not so much that I'm trusting the government officials or organizations. It's simply very hard for me to believe that so many companies would actively falsify data on this large a scale, give the resulting vaccine out to so many people, and for their cover not to be immediately blown after the first million doses were injected.
Agreed. A large problem with this is how media talk about things like vaccines. Their reporting on "side effects" like "blood clots" was reminiscent of how journalists in the 1990s reported that childhood vaccines caused autism. All of that was very irresponsible.
Hell, even cases like J&J and AstraZeneca where there were side effects found after the fact only came up when the population getting those shots increased dramatically above clinical trials numbers.
There is essentially no risk to human health presented by either JJ or AZ vaccines. Claims otherwise are frivolous.
As for scientific dissent, I will say that I've heard some intriguing arguments about the vaccine and the potential harms it could cause (at least from one or two people - honestly, the vast majority either don't know what they're talking about or are presenting something so rare and specific to very different viruses that it barely warrants discussion), though I also understand that they're fighting a PR war as much as anything else.
Are you talking about Brett Weinstein? If not, who?
I've seen a lot of nonsense from people who argue that vaccines are encouraging the formation of "deadly variants." That, too, is in the category of vaccines-cause-autism level misinformation.
Not saying that censorship is warranted (if anything, it tends to give many of these people far more credence than they deserve), but I can at least understand why they're doing it.
Def agree censorship is not the answer. But media need to be more responsible.
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@oromagi
Smallpox can be considered a respiratory virus.
Maybe by the pathway of infection; otherwise, no.
The moving of the goal posts is not in response to the disease but to the demands of freedom. If the whole human population just locked down for three weeks, the progress of the disease would likely be controlled, but humans just don't do that very well. Therefore, restrictions are raised and applied with a mind towards maximizing freedom traded against the disease's progress.
This is absurd, unsupported speculation.
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@Mesmer
That sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
- Race has absolutely nothing to do with nature. What we call nature, is the result of the psychological effect of ingratiation in a particular culture. All human beings are created equally; race is an irrelevant factor to distinguish them. The subjective meaning human beings attach to race is the result of that culture, as well.
- What you are calling racial differences are no such thing. They are cultural differences, manifested by the observance of human behavior that itself is product of what I described in No. 1, above.
- You propose a theory of human nature, that people "balkanize based on race" by some kind of "default." This is unpersuasive. Aside from the fact that you have no evidence whatsoever to support your position, human cooperation is something that biologically predates the manifestation of race in homo sapiens. The history, for example, of cross-breeding between denisovans, neanderthals and homo sapiens alone is sufficient to demonstrate that your argument is false. For, if it were true, that cross-breeding would have never happened; they would have either killed each other or been killed. Yet, they interbred to the point that they were indistinguishable from one another --- no small part of why a large percentage of modern people have the genetic remnants of each pre-modern human species in their genetic code.
- Anti-racism, as that term is understood among the lot of woke-type fools, is stupid, sure. But this is hardly groundbreaking.
These are facts.
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