fides' Jack's Mega Anti-Vax Thread

[Ice_nine]

1 hour ago, Peace said:

I thought that it was a back-handed way to insinuate that religion is contrary to rational thought and evidence. That is, the essence of religion is to believe something that defies thought and evidence.

If that is what was intended it is quite ironic, given that atheism is one of the most irrational and evidence-free assertions in history of mankind.

maybe, but I don't find Anomaly to be the back-handed type. And I think he respects religion even though he can't bring himself to believe.

It would be disappointing if that's what he was saying. Maybe I give him too much credit.

1 hour ago, ReasonableFaith said:

Perhaps some of the fun time discussion should be spent on the deaths, bodily injury, emotional trauma, property damage, ruined careers and potential threats to public health cause by today’s most popular conspiracy theories. 

Where you right "popular conspiracy theories" I can replace with almost any noun in the English language and find an example to illustrate my point. I think you are likely estimating the scope and scale here.

I'd be willing to say that actual conspiracy have probably caused more of the above than mere theories.

But there's no real way of empirically knowing or quantifying the harm done when we're talking about one versus the other. It's really more about what you believe.

[Ice_nine]

45 minutes ago, hakutaku said:

Conspiracy theories have had disastrous consequences for entire democracies.

I wonder about the course of German politics, for example, if there had been a deliberate effort to combat the "Jewish Bolshevism" and stab in the back conspiracy theories, similar to the efforts described in the Time article.

So you are indeed religious after all. Trump and his supporters are just like Hitler and the Nazis, evil, and therefore elites controlling the flow of information is a good thing. The ends justify the means. Amen.

Also censoring an idea is not combating it. That is a joke. You are fooling yourself if you think censorship actually eliminates the targeted ideas.

[Anomaly]

@Ice_nine   Thanks.    You’re right in the money.   I respect religion and most religious people immensely.   It mostly is a rational expression of fundamental beliefs. 
My post was ironically sarcastic to state that anyone can choose to ignore rationality and attempt to justify it by demeaning the other side as superstitious or blind ideology. 
 @Peace You’re better than that 95% of the time and I can accept that I respect you more than you respect me.   Sorry that you think I rip on religion.  I respect enough to try to not be a hypocrite.  

[hakutaku]

54 minutes ago, Ice_nine said:

So you are indeed religious after all. Trump and his supporters are just like Hitler and the Nazis, evil, and therefore elites controlling the flow of information is a good thing. The ends justify the means. Amen.

They're not evil, they are (as I said) dangerous to democracy.  Are you perhaps ignorant of the tight control that the Nazis' wielded over the press?  The problem I identified was not that the press was too free.  The problem was that there was no concerted effort to push back when motivated individuals began using conspiracy theories to justify anti-democratic political ends.

1 hour ago, Ice_nine said:

Also censoring an idea is not combating it. That is a joke. You are fooling yourself if you think censorship actually eliminates the targeted ideas.

This fundamentally misunderstands the concept of censorship.  Censorship is when a government (e.g. the Papal states) use their authority to enforce bans on certain ideas (e.g. the Index Librorum Prohibitorum).  What was described in your Time article was not a government ban on ideas.  What it described was a consortium whose goal was to take idea-amplification tools out of the hands of people seeking to use them for anti-democratic political ends.

[Peace]

1 hour ago, Anomaly said:

  @Peace You’re better than that 95% of the time and I can accept that I respect you more than you respect me.   Sorry that you think I rip on religion.  I respect enough to try to not be a hypocrite.  

Friend, when are you gonna stop with this "You are better than that" jazz? You are not my judge, and you know plenty well that I do not care one iota about where the quality of my posts ranks on your scale.

That being said, I respect you as a person. I disagree with your views on God, religion, and many other things. I call things how I see them, and that is what I thought was being insinuated by your post. If not, you can clarify otherwise.

It's just business baby. Nothing personal.

[ReasonableFaith]

3 hours ago, Ice_nine said:

4 hours ago, ReasonableFaith said:

 

Where you right "popular conspiracy theories" I can replace with almost any noun in the English language and find an example to illustrate my point.

Kumquat: noun - an orange-like fruit related to the citruses, with an edible sweet rind and acid pulp.
 

Go!

 

3 hours ago, Ice_nine said:

I think you are likely estimating the scope and scale here.

 

3 hours ago, Ice_nine said:

But there's no real way of empirically knowing or quantifying the harm done when we're talking about one versus the other.

So perhaps we estimate, no?

[Anomaly]

6 hours ago, Peace said:

Friend, when are you gonna stop with this "You are better than that" jazz? You are not my judge, and you know plenty well that I do not care one iota about where the quality of my posts ranks on your scale.

That being said, I respect you as a person. I disagree with your views on God, religion, and many other things. I call things how I see them, and that is what I thought was being insinuated by your post. If not, you can clarify otherwise.

It's just business baby. Nothing personal.

It’s opinion and surmise, friend.   Call it judgment, but I’m not meting out punishment.  
I call it how I see it, and your grade is in the decline.  

[Peace]

3 hours ago, Anomaly said:

It’s opinion and surmise, friend.   Call it judgment, but I’m not meting out punishment.  
I call it how I see it, and your grade is in the decline.  

Yeah well. You got an F the moment you became an atheist. Maybe if you spent less time worrying about other people's grades you could improve your own.

[Anomaly]

16 minutes ago, Peace said:

Yeah well. You got an F the moment you became an atheist. Maybe if you spent less time worrying about other people's grades you could improve your own.

And your response is the example of emotional thinking and irrational response, devoid of facts.    I don’t harsh on religion.   I harsh on hypocrisy and inconsistent and irrational thinking.  And yes, I know I’m not perfect either, LOL. 
 

My respect for you is based on you usually giving an intelligent reasoned response or rebuttal. My grades analogy was just showing my respect for your typical response.   It’s not meant to demean or annoy you.  
 

Discussion about disagreements should not typically devolve into emotional debate sans rational thinking.   

[Peace]

25 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

And your response is the example of emotional thinking and irrational response, devoid of facts.    I don’t harsh on religion.   I harsh on hypocrisy and inconsistent and irrational thinking.  And yes, I know I’m not perfect either, LOL. 
 

My respect for you is based on you usually giving an intelligent reasoned response or rebuttal. My grades analogy was just showing my respect for your typical response.   It’s not meant to demean or annoy you.  
 

Discussion about disagreements should not typically devolve into emotional debate sans rational thinking.   

Look, telling someone that his "grade is in decline" is an insult. Now you say "Oh, I was actually giving you a compliment because you usually do so much better!"

That was one of the most comical attempts at gaslighting that I have seen in quite some time.

[Ice_nine]

15 hours ago, hakutaku said:

They're not evil, they are (as I said) dangerous to democracy.  Are you perhaps ignorant of the tight control that the Nazis' wielded over the press?  The problem I identified was not that the press was too free.  The problem was that there was no concerted effort to push back when motivated individuals began using conspiracy theories to justify anti-democratic political ends.

Of course you can't admit that they are evil. Your worldview precludes that concept. But whether you call it evil, dangerous, problematic, a boogeyman were still talking about the same thing. They are dangerous. They must be stopped. They are the Nazis. Lying to the American people, covering up true information as long as done for our good, is a-ok in the face of this
danger.

The press is not free. Do you actually believe that Trump was a threat to the free-press? He was their biggest boon! He very ironically gave life to the dying industry he always railed against. For all of his flaws he at least called them out on their bologna. That doesn't absolve him of his own hypocrisy, but it was fun to watch.

And again, I will say, censoring information is not "pushing back" against conspiracy theories. Maybe it keeps you warm at night to think that these powerful elites are just looking out for our own good and helping to "protect democracy," but they are only driving people further underground and further to the edge by using force to eject them out of public discourse. That does not kill ideas. A lot of the time it makes them stronger.

And maybe that's kind of what they want. "if it bleeds it leads." Gotta get those clicks somehow.

15 hours ago, hakutaku said:

This fundamentally misunderstands the concept of censorship.  Censorship is when a government (e.g. the Papal states) use their authority to enforce bans on certain ideas (e.g. the Index Librorum Prohibitorum).  What was described in your Time article was not a government ban on ideas.  What it described was a consortium whose goal was to take idea-amplification tools out of the hands of people seeking to use them for anti-democratic political ends.

You can dress it up however you want. Censorship does not have to be done by a government apparatus. Not by the standard dictionary definition. Let's not play word games here. Powerful elites have suppressed the information they deemed harmful to their political/social ends (the Hunter Biden story is a great example. Before the election it was "fake news" and "Russian misinformation." After Biden wins, major media outlets admit "oh yeah there's actually some truth to that.")

Moving the goal posts and rapidly changing definitions and artificial imposing them is a game that leftist academic types like to play, but that doesn't change what the word actually means to the world at large. Censorship doesn't have to be illegal. It doesn't have to be done, explicitly or implicitly, by a government. Tell me why this niche definition is the only way to understand censorship, and I will admit my misunderstanding.
 

14 hours ago, ReasonableFaith said:

Kumquat: noun - an orange-like fruit related to the citruses, with an edible sweet rind and acid pulp.
 

Go!

 

 

So perhaps we estimate, no?

Kumquats give me heartburn. GERD smells of elderberries.

Yes we estimate. My entire point is that our estimations are largely shaped by our worldview and meta-narrative that we adopt. I see you are Catholic, so you can admit there is a grand-narrative we can use as a lens to interpret events.

Atheists and hyper-rationalist types, such as perhaps other dude in this thread, have a hard time admitting or accepting that. To them, it's often empiricism or nothing. That's why they can say things like "conspiracy theories are dangerous to democracy," and expect people to take that at face value and/or believe that he only came to that conclusion solely by rationality.

I am not excluding myself from this either. I don't see it as a flaw to interpret events according to a worldview. It matters more how correct the worldview is.

 

Also I meant to say "I think you are over-estimating the scope" in that other post.

[hakutaku]

1 hour ago, Ice_nine said:

The press is not free. Do you actually believe that Trump was a threat to the free-press?

I wouldn't go as far as Barry McCaffrey, retired 4 star general when he said: "The White House Trump statement telling the entire Federal Government to terminate subscriptions to the NYT and Wash Post is a watershed moment... This is deadly serious. This is Mussolini."

But I think no one can deny that the previous administration did their best to manipulate the media.  In my mind, the worst example was when the administration was found to have pushed racist conspiracies to Breitbart in order to drum up support for the family separation policy.

Not all examples were that egregious though.  There was widespread overruling of scientists seeking to publish their findings on topics Trump didn't like (e.g. climate change, COVID).  There were minor skirmishes over press credentials (reputable orgs denied were press passes, and had to file lawsuits to get them back).  There were numerous flailing lawsuits against the press, such as the one seeking to silence CNN's polling results during the 2020 campaign.

Now the only reason I wouldn't go so far as Gen. McCaffrey far is that I have some faith in our system of checks and balances.  But just because the proverbial tiger has a cage doesn't make it less of a dangerous animal, and I understand why people could be concerned when it seemed like the zookeepers were willing to help the tiger get his cage unlocked.

2 hours ago, Ice_nine said:

Moving the goal posts and rapidly changing definitions and artificial imposing them is a game that leftist academic types like to play, but that doesn't change what the word actually means to the world at large.

I haven't moved any goalposts, you introduced the topic of censorship, and I challenged your assessment.  So long as we understand that we are talking about private individuals agreeing not to spread ideas they believe are dangerous and not the use of governmental authority.

2 hours ago, Ice_nine said:

And again, I will say, censoring information is not "pushing back" against conspiracy theories.

That does not kill ideas. A lot of the time it makes them stronger.

Deliberately spreading ideas through the media, on the other hand, definitely makes them stronger (e.g. see the Harold Camping end-times predictions.)  Indeed, if ideas are free to grow and strengthen under censorship, then what's your problem?

The point is that private individuals are always making decisions about what ideas to present and how.  You made one set of decisions in your reply, and I am making a different set of decisions as I type this out.  I am free refuse to sell my megaphone to the KKK, same as you.  I'll be the first to say that they should not be arrested for speaking their piece, but I am under no obligation to host them in my backyard.

[fides' Jack]

On 2/19/2021 at 2:52 PM, hakutaku said:

Now the only reason I wouldn't go so far as Gen. McCaffrey far is that I have some faith in our system of checks and balances.

I had faith in our system of checks and balances, but it's been shown now those can be circumvented by legalese and bureaucracy.  

The left is everything you claim to have been evil in the Trump administration.  The left silenced all media, scientific evidence, legal evidence, moral thought, and even common sense that opposed them.  

Blindness is bliss, I suppose.

[fides' Jack]

Way back in May/June 2020, Dr. Birx came on the air in one of then-President Trump's COVID press meetings, and admitted that they were not counting deaths from COVID the same way as they would from any other illness, stating that "if they die with COVID, we're counting that as a COVID death".  

On another occasion, she stated that she personally believed the numbers were inflated by as much as 25%, due to several different reasons. 

But back in August, a study was done that looked at the actual causes of death, and determined that, at the time, even though the reported death count due to COVID was 161,392 (in the US, as of August 23rd), the actual death count, using the same parameters as they use to ascertain cause of death due to other illnesses, was 9,684.  So the reported numbers are >16 times higher than the actual numbers.

Why all the fearmongering?

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-public-health-agency-documents-that-explain-the-exaggerated-covid-death-numbers

Edited April 13, 2021 by fides' Jack

[hakutaku]

Why is lifesitenews citing quacks that believe vaccines cause autism?

https://ipaknowledge.org/ASD-Causality-Model.php

"Science, Public Health Policy and The Law" isn't a scientific journal, it is a publication from that quack organization.

[MIKolbe]

On 4/17/2021 at 10:57 PM, hakutaku said:

Why is lifesitenews citing quacks that believe vaccines cause autism?

 

because it's lifesitenews?

[fides' Jack]

On 4/17/2021 at 8:57 PM, hakutaku said:

Why is lifesitenews citing quacks that believe vaccines cause autism?

https://ipaknowledge.org/ASD-Causality-Model.php

"Science, Public Health Policy and The Law" isn't a scientific journal, it is a publication from that quack organization.

Ad hominem.  Irrelevant to the issue at hand.  Learn to make a real argument, please. 

Are you denying that the covid death rate is exaggerated?

[hakutaku]

8 minutes ago, fides' Jack said:

Are you denying that the covid death rate is exaggerated?

I am saying that "Quacks asserting X" is not evidence that X is true.  What evidence do you have that it is exaggerated?

[fides' Jack]

Just now, hakutaku said:

I am saying that "Quacks asserting X" is not evidence that X is true.  What evidence do you have that it is exaggerated?

And I already called you out on your logical fallacy.  Calling them quacks has no bearing on the legitimacy of the evidence they already put forth, and which I linked above.

And since that's all you've ever really given in any of the arguments you've made on this site, that makes you a hack.

[hakutaku]

1 minute ago, fides' Jack said:

Calling them quacks has no bearing on the legitimacy of the evidence they already put forth, and which I linked above.

They cited no evidence.  They just asserted that because the CDC created a new diagnostic code for a new disease (which is standard practice) that COVID will be over-represented.  What evidence do you have that backs up the quack's claim?