81–90 of 639 posts
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If the current functioning is it doing "the best it can", the whole thing should be burnt to the ground.
> A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason would be much preferable surely you don't actually believe that? I don't think the result of this is just 0 false positives. The result of that is a lot more crime, and a lot more injustice.
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I think that speaks more towards the author than higher education. Definitely a tangent, but attributing that attitude to higher education is like someone attributing a doctor saving their life to an act of god. Like yeah if you squint I guess that’s true. My experience with higher education has been that of administrators taking advantage of my naivety for profit, elitism towards those not in academia, and dismissal…
Lots of other parents driven to look for answers about what happened to their child, but being far less educated on how to read and understand academic papers, ended up "doing their own research" and became antivaxxers. There's a lot to be said for having an education that enables you to evaluate scientific literature effectively.
First off, this was genuinely valuable during the first few months. Gigantic medical institutions were moving at a glacial pace and were making proclamations literally months behind the state of the research. In order to conserve masks, propaganda was put out that masks were only effective if you were a medical professional, and the most common way I saw this rationalised was that the general public was simply too stupid to wear a mask in a sanitary way. So I proceeded to wear a mask in a sanitary way. Then after a few months mask stocks started to pile up so propagandists THEN pronounced that more science was conducted and masks were actually effective for everybody!
That positive outcome aside, what other people saw was that the younger people got, the lower the risks of COVID, and the higher the risks of getting vaccinated. In fact, it seemed from the numbers (This is for the earlier strains of COVID), that for certain populations (young people who lived like hermits, in other words, hacker news readers) it could be on a selfish individual basis, be irrational to get the COVID vaccine. The risk from myocarditis could actually outweigh the risk of COVID itself. It was however, always in the collective interest for as many people to get vaccinated as possible, to reduce the transmission of COVID, and reduce the consequent strain on medical resources and the direct/indirect deaths this caused. Public health institutions did not get into this nuance, because it wasn't in the collective interest, so they just told everybody the vaccine was good for you. I proceeded to get vaccinated, and the main person I held discussions with did not, after both drawing the exact same scientific conclusion. Not every anti-vaccer was stupid, some of them were just massive civil libertarians.
What I saw from people who DIDN'T do their own research is that they were UNIFORMLY misinformed because they tended to either believe institutions who would lie to them whenever it served their purposes (2 weeks to flatten the curve!), or believed whatever podcaster told them about Ivermectin.
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Abusers sometimes take their victims elsewhere - new doc, new town, new state - when people start getting suspicious. The victim may also be retaliated against; accused of trying to get help. There’s a risk to consulting someone you suspect might be the perpetrator.
If the parent is abusive, trying to get their cooperation in fixing the problem may be an effective means to out them. They had absolutely no reason to believe I was abusing him. Most likely, they were just trying to cover their own butts and err in that direction rather than in the direction of "what's best for this child?" That's without getting into larger concerns of "What on earth is wrong with the world that a…
trully unbelievable, i lose faith in thr justice system day by day
The justice system does the best it can with the information it has. It is far from perfect. It makes horrible mistakes all the time. The problem, of course, is improving it without knock-on effects making it worse. There are huge swaths of people doing the work required to make it better, every day. It's not as easy as turning a dial from "bad" to "good"
Or what basically every prosecution does, when it knows that the science behind some things isn't airtight but still presents it in the best possible light to get a conviction.
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to be replaced with what? i'm all for making changes that are an improvement, but just burning it to the ground for the sake of it with no end game is not an improvement
A system that does not incarcerate anyone for any reason would be much preferable to the atrocities that are the current criminal justice systems in most of the global west (and especially of course the United States).
Unless the person above is, of course, an anarchist who has no answer for what to do about Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Phillip Garrido, or Brian Mitchell. I would say that as imperfect and heavily flawed as our system is, "Perfect is the enemy of good."
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If the parent is abusive, trying to get their cooperation in fixing the problem may be an effective means to out them. They had absolutely no reason to believe I was abusing him. Most likely, they were just trying to cover their own butts and err in that direction rather than in the direction of "what's best for this child?" That's without getting into larger concerns of "What on earth is wrong with the world that a…
I’m speaking more generally than your specific case.
I was molested as a child. I know a fair amount about abuse.
There isn't always a clear bright line between ignorance and abuse. Assuming the worst can make the problem worse.
People tend to not be paragons of virtue who have all the answers for everything they run into. Some people can be helped to become better parents.
I thought long and hard about that while sending care packages to a couple of welfare moms. Declaring them unfit moms and having their kids taken and placed in foster care wasn't some magic solution that guaranteed a fabulous outcome, so I chose to try to help them succeed to whatever degree I could, on a limited budget and from a distance.
trully unbelievable, i lose faith in thr justice system day by day
The justice system does the best it can with the information it has. It is far from perfect. It makes horrible mistakes all the time. The problem, of course, is improving it without knock-on effects making it worse. There are huge swaths of people doing the work required to make it better, every day. It's not as easy as turning a dial from "bad" to "good"
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I think that speaks more towards the author than higher education. Definitely a tangent, but attributing that attitude to higher education is like someone attributing a doctor saving their life to an act of god. Like yeah if you squint I guess that’s true. My experience with higher education has been that of administrators taking advantage of my naivety for profit, elitism towards those not in academia, and dismissal…
Yeah I dunno... I mean, a lot of these things are true, and they all are big problems, but also, in my experience, academics (at least in the sciences) do actually know how to read and understand research, which is an extremely difficult and useful skill.
Anyone with the wherewithal can learn to “read and understand research” it’s not a magical power bestowed upon the few who receive recognition from some long standing bloated institution.
Attributing the drive and work of an individual to such an institution is weird and elitist.
I should note that if said institution paid for, assembled the team, and provided resources, then that institution obviously deserves credit.
trully unbelievable, i lose faith in thr justice system day by day
Nothing shook my faith in the medical system more than having kids. Holy cow is modern medicine still as smugly wrong as it’s always been. Every generation laughs at all the stupid stuff the previous generations believed, and then acts so confident that they’ve got it right this time. And as a result you get unworthy nurses making moms feel intense shame for not “trying hard enough” to somehow magically produce milk.
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I’m not questioning anything about your story. I’m just curious: what types of “junk food” were they recommending?
They routinely recommend pro inflammatory foods like peanut butter. It's an inflammatory condition. They recommend sugary foods. It's a condition that puts one at high risk of diabetes. They recommend ice cream as a high fat, high calorie food. It's a condition that predisposes people to having trouble tolerating milk and milk products, especially from cows.