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A: "Let's not reuse syringe needles, it leads to spread of HIV".

B: "I've been using syringes for 35 years and clean needles won't get rid of HIV entirely".

Well no duh. But that isn't really a counter argument.

> become so bloated it was in itself

Whereas C is the pinnacle of expressiveness?



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1: you are incorrect about being safe

2: even if you were safe, "it doesn't affect me so, why should I care?" is common but still disgusting

none of us are saints but come on


1: Homosexuality isn't a choice.

2: Homosexuality isn't dangerous.


Statement #1: "Lol idiots this is horse dewormer!"

Statement #2: "This suggested treatment does not have the desired effect in clinical trials. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8406455/"

Can you agree that those are entirely different statements? And that one is trolling while the other is informative?


A: I already explicitly avoid products that are encrusted in this shit. B: I have not used either of these products since their respective changes, even though they’re otherwise still perfectly functional.

A notable flow on effect is both of these products had helped with the management and improvement of my health, and these changes have had a measurable negative impact since I’ve been unable to use them.


(a) The marginal benefit to pain assistance over heroin/morphine is almost nothing. Certainly not tens of billions of dollars of marginal improvement.

(b) It's only an ad hom if there's an argument being made, and that argument is something other than "that guy is an asshole."


A: “It’s utter ridiculous that the likes of Messieurs Pasteur and Semmelweis suggest our hands are unclean with those so called germs! We are gentlemen, gentlemen’s hands are clean!”

B: “Well, I think he has a point about surgeons washing their hands and they’re definitely gentleman?”

A: “Ah but that is the exception that proves the rule! Therefore Gentleman’s hands are clean! Well that’s that, the argument is shut down”

B:”but that’s not how the “the exception that proves to rule” works, that’s actually ..”

A: <interrupts> “vox populi, vox dei!. I shall now embark on an hour long treatise on gentlemanly learnedness!”

Scene cuts to reveals it was a Monty python sketch.


A: "I have nothing to hide!"

B: "Then stop wearing clothes."

A: "That's stupid, it's against the law to run around naked in public!"

B: "So what if we had privacy laws like that?"

A: "That's stupid, I have nothing to hide!"


(a) No it can't be, and (b) that's not what this thread was about.

A: "Let's attempt to solve poverty, addiction, spousal abuse, and sexual abuse."

B: "Why do you have to make everything political?"


>Would anyone sane argue otherwise?

a. no need to be rude and b.

The same reason sane people drive automobiles which kill 40,000 people in this country a year[0]: the alternative can be worse.

How many people do you figure are going to get rolled back into poverty at 15% world GDP loss?

[0]Less this year I suppose.


A: "Genocide is evil."

B: "That's just, like, your opinion, man."


> a. the response poorly written. the initial message was to the point

In what way(s) was the response poorly written?

> b. no

That's unfortunate.

> c. yes it does

``You cannot reach that conclusion from the evidence given'' --shpoonj


(a) Holmes seemed to be obsessed with this due to a personal phobia of venous blood draws (personal quirks are a surprisingly common driver of weird decisions in Silicon Valley-ish companies; the fact that small low capacity vehicles are used in Boring Company tunnels seems to be down to Musk's phobia of public transport, for instance).

(b) The original idea was that a patient would have one of these things _in their house_; a patient can't reasonably do a venous blood draw on themselves, but they can do a finger prick. There are some real working tests that work this way for this reason; HIV self-tests are normally finger-prick tests, say.

But by the time they'd repositioned as "the machines are in a pharmacy, or maybe a central lab", yeah, it made no sense anymore.


(a) I don't sit 6 feet from someone indoors either.

(b) The problem is we don't know, and I'm in a risk group, so I don't want to take chances until something is proven to be safe.


A: Is that a bad thing?

B: What Malthusian crisis? He's been thoroughly discredited.

C: That's like saying eating will delay death. It will, just keep on delaying it every day.


A. You are missing my point.

B. Generally speaking, I don't take painkillers. Studies suggest that, in most cases, they drag out the problem.

So, to try one more time to communicate, how you comment on it matters. Comments like Welp, somebody is tired of their career... de facto agree that it is reasonable for society to react by destroying someone's career for asking such a question.

I get the impetus there. I'm highly prone to that same impetus. But long experience suggests it is counterproductive.

It's much better to make more reserved observations, such as noting that this is a controversial topic, people have had their careers ruined for trying to talk about it, etc.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to shoot you down and [additional polite noises].

Best.


A: "I want to buy a phone with USB-C charging."

B: "You should buy a phone with USB-C charging."

A: "But I don't want anyone else to be able to buy a phone that doesn't have USB-C charging."

B: "You should petition the government to make that illegal, I guess."


1: there exists argument against X

2: lots of humans don't believe X

Maybe there is a third kind of "discredited."


1-"degenerate shitbags, or maybe adults making a rational decision to work for an employer balancing risk & compensation in a chronically high unemployment society working for a company operating in a very high margin business.

2- "there are bullets enough in this world to solve such a problem." the same amount that solved the Afhanistan war, right ?

3- "I think first of finding ways to prevent children from becoming addicted to hard drugs" . what a patronizing & woefully uninformed profiling of the typical drug user.

4- "Unfortunately, just because something can be accomplished, doesn't mean that it's going to happen." 50 years, trillions of dollars & hundreds of thousands of dead beg to differ.

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