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A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

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Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#171

Post by dekhn »

aphantastic wrote: post #167
dekhn wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said it on Fox. You can go view the video here: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6330950198112 When you say that science is never "Established", that's horse pockey. Established means we have a high level of confidence (not absolute). Yes, things get updated, for example we now don't go around saying that "stress causes ulcers". And when it comes to vaccines, multiple high quality studies have failed to find a relati…

He’ll head the Department of Health and Human Services soon, little use debating what his position is here when we will see it play out soon. I do recommend you read his book, https://lfpl.overdrive.com/media/6093658 , it seems you are of the misconception that a paper being retracted is a statement that it is false. In reality, it’s a statement that state officials (sponsored by big pharma) have threatened the livel…

I'm sorry but I refuse to argue with people on the internet who think retractions are because the state threatened an author.

Further, I'm not going to read RFK's book. I place it in the same category as 9/11 Truthers- not even worthy of inspection.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#172

Post by aphantastic »

dekhn wrote: post #171
aphantastic wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’ll head the Department of Health and Human Services soon, little use debating what his position is here when we will see it play out soon. I do recommend you read his book, https://lfpl.overdrive.com/media/6093658 , it seems you are of the misconception that a paper being retracted is a statement that it is false. In reality, it’s a statement that state officials (sponsored by big pharma) have threatened the livel…

I'm sorry but I refuse to argue with people on the internet who think retractions are because the state threatened an author. Further, I'm not going to read RFK's book. I place it in the same category as 9/11 Truthers- not even worthy of inspection.

Ah. Well that tells me all I need to know about your intellectual honesty.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#173

Post by NotSammyHagar »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #144
llamaimperative wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that checks out. It's exactly the type of over-intellectualized rationale someone in a Democratic stronghold would come up with. The left wing didn't aimlessly move left away from labor. Biden was dramatically more pro-labor ("New Dealy") than Obama. The right wing lost their fucking minds because we elected a black man. Trump himself is a one-man microcosm of this: loosely Dem-aligned until... Obama. Spend som…

Biden was more "new dealy" and won. Harris had nothing of the sort to sell and lost. I'm not saying Obama's skin color isn't a factor in our politics since 2008 but it's not the Rosetta Stone.

There were a lot of unusual things about Harris that combined to make it harder to be elected. The vibe of the economy is worse, the reality that the economy is worse than it was 10 years ago for low-income people. The very short time she had to run, how she was kind of part of the Biden administration and tried to push new ideas.

And she's a woman and she's black, again. Then there was the issue that one side of the Democratic party wanted to support Israel more strongly or something, and the other side wanted to protect gazaans and the Palestinians. I think many people wanted to do both at the same time, but there is a fair number of people that picked one side or another. Some of those people voted against her. Some people in my family thought the biggest problem facing America was dei.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#174

Post by HarryHirsch »

tristor wrote: post #131
HarryHirsch wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one side. The other side looks like this: https://spelmanblueprint.com/810/opinions/professors-bitter-... The background is a new faculty member actually teaching at university level. We know that proofs and reading are required. They do not.

> We know that proofs and reading are required. They do not. In the context of you saying this after sharing a link to an article around difficulties at HBCUs, I'm trying to find some charitable way to interpret your statements as something other than horrendously racist. Can you please expound on this, or am I taking this correctly?

You do notice that it is the HBCU student who drags race in ("white male professor teaching at an all women’s HBCU").

Math education in large tracts of the country is not good, more so in areas plagued by rural and urban poverty, but that's no excuse to continue in the same way at college. It's sadly common that incoming students have no clue what a proof is and that mathematics isn't plugging numbers into formulas, but there's no excuse continuing that at college level, especially when it's an elite college.

But the kid who wrote the article disagrees, she demands spoonfeeding. Give me my economics degree, but it mustn't have math in it!

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#175

Post by foxglacier »

stevenAthompson wrote: post #146
foxglacier wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's right though. People have cultural knowledge which can lead to better outcomes than "correct" reasoning even when those cultural beliefs are factually wrong. The scientific approach has blind spots where it hasn't reached, especially regarding sociology which is something long-lived cultures excel at but modern science falls flat. "intelligent" understanding has blind spots where things are too complicated to st…

We're really far off topic here, but I'll bite because I'm bored. Firstly though, we need to agree on what "good" and "bad" mean, in a moral sense. To me "good" is anything that helps humanity thrive, and bad is when something does the opposite. If you have a different definition, this conversation will be a waste of both our time. > He's right though. He is not only wrong, he is dangerously wrong. Reason is mans onl…

> To me "good" is anything that helps humanity thrive, and bad is when something does the opposite.

I agree with that definition. However, it leads to a trade-off between short term thriving of individuals and long term thriving of humanity. We could pour all our resources into supporting every living person but would cripple our future development. Or we could go the other extreme and violate all the human rights to develop a more resilient long term society. Islam, for example, is very robust for thriving of humanity (no population collapse happening there) but very poor for thriving of all individuals within it (severe penalties for seemingly harmless "crimes", women's rights, etc.).

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#176

Post by insane_dreamer »

svara wrote: post #161
insane_dreamer wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We get it, you don't like the government. So what? Well, if you don't trust the government, then the likelihood that you'll be willing to follow their "orders" is pretty low. > But more importantly, you're a danger to my health, my friends and my families' health, and to your own health as well. And __this__ response is exactly why people can become anti-vaxx without having a problem with medicine or science in gene…

> You're coming at it from a "the gov said its safe, so it's safe, ... What makes you think so? I don't need a government to make up my mind on scientific topics, and neither should you. Ironically, it's the person who believes the opposite of what some government says that is doing so.

> I don't need a government to make up my mind on scientific topics, and neither should you

of course, but you're missing the point being discussed here, which is "why are (some) people vaccine resistant but not resistant to medication in general?"; it becomes an issue when vaccines are _mandated_ (or quasi-mandated through heavy social pressure), because that's when the trust issue comes into play.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#177

Post by svara »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #176
svara wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're coming at it from a "the gov said its safe, so it's safe, ... What makes you think so? I don't need a government to make up my mind on scientific topics, and neither should you. Ironically, it's the person who believes the opposite of what some government says that is doing so.

> I don't need a government to make up my mind on scientific topics, and neither should you of course, but you're missing the point being discussed here, which is "why are (some) people vaccine resistant but not resistant to medication in general?"; it becomes an issue when vaccines are _mandated_ (or quasi-mandated through heavy social pressure), because that's when the trust issue comes into play.

A person who adapts their beliefs just so that they are in opposition to what some official institution is saying is not an independent thinker, but the exact opposite.

It's like when I was thirteen and suddenly thought my parent's interests were really uncool.

The reasons for why immunity to certain diseases is mandated is transparent and easy to understand.

Talk to someone with education in the field, like your doctor, rather than playing the edgelord.

In the abstract I can find the empathy in me to understand the childlike logic behind it, but like I said, zero patience for this bullshit.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#178

Post by Kamq »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #169
Kamq wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When will you feel like you all have won the war here? What is it that you need to happen? I was involved in a previous iteration of the culture war (religion vs atheism) pretty heavily. If this is anything like that, it'll start fading once people feel like the cultural dominance of the group is broken. If you want a rule of thumb, hollywood being considered non-woke and universities not requiring diversity statem…

Ok the diversity statement thing seems pretty actionable. Hard to say about hollywood I guess bc its feels very subjective: one guy's "woke" is always going to be another's "fun/wholesome" or whatever. But for the universities ok, this is at least a thing we can hold onto. It's a little rough to implicitly associate the "diversity" considered in hiring/enrolling at a school with the evil professors, because the entir…

> Hard to say about hollywood I guess bc its feels very subjective

It definitely is. But so was my iteration. A good chunk of the previous iterations of the culture war have been as well. A lot of my generation really didn't like how conservative the small towns we grew up in "felt", it felt oppressive and dumb.

> Either way, I just hope they/you get what you want.

Yeah, I'm not participating in this one. I missed a few years of the culture war during a raging alcoholic phase and both sides feel really foreign nowadays and kinda confusing. But I do occasionally like to pop a bag of popcorn and watch people fight.

> I used to be worried that this whole thing would spiral too much into violence

My guess is probably not much more than the 70s (and we're still a long way from that, there were ~2500 bombings in an 18 month period in 71 and 72), but it seems really unlikely to advance to civil war levels.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#179

Post by foxglacier »

stevenAthompson wrote: post #159
tivert wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He's right though. > He is not only wrong, he is dangerously wrong. You don't actually know that , because you keep missing the point. How do you know I'm wrong if you can't seem to grasp what I'm talking about? I don't think you're as clever as you seem to think you are. Maybe you should consider the possibility that the advice I gave up-thread is literally true in your case, and not just a reminder to take a pos…

> You don't actually know that, because you keep missing the point. It takes two people to communicate. If you have trouble communicating your point maybe try rephrasing it, instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks.

Sorry for adding fuel to the fire, but that's not an ad hominem. He's criticizing what you did, rather than what you are.

Re: A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic health textbook from 1929

#180

Post by MichaelZuo »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #40
api wrote: post #5

Science has delivered a standard of living to most of the developed world that is greater than that of an Egyptian Pharaoh or a Roman Emperor in numerous ways: health, food, availability of information, ease of travel, physical comfort, etc. Yet visit social media and it's absolutely overflowing with gloom and doom and histrionic political rage and fear bait. Saw a thread recently on Reddit about how many young peopl…

No one cares that our lives are better than humans who lived thousands of years ago or even 100 years ago. And why should we? The benchmark is other humans living today and how they are faring. > We'd have to fall pretty far for their standard of living to decline below that of Pharaoh Ramses II. Not most people in America. Sure, Ramses didn't have a car, phone or modern medicine; but he could get whatever he wanted…

Wouldn’t roughly half of the population always be below average at getting what they want “that was available at the time”?
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