Phi for All

One of the easiest ways to spot propaganda BS is to look for the hasty generalizations. I don't know whether you're just parroting things you've heard or if you really believe this, but it's clear you've biased yourself pretty badly to be able to make such ludicrous, all-encompassing statements like this. The West lost ALL wars?! What makes you think an opinion like this, something that can SO easily be debunked, is worth the time it takes to read it?

I think fascism and our new breed of strongman billionaire are overly compatible. Elon Musk is quite the little Mussolini, decrying woke stances (or any thoughts that threaten his lopsided status quo), making all kinds of ignorant COVID remarks in opposition to experts, bandwagoning with the ultra right to claim the entire left are pedophiles (while the evidence shows the opposite), ignoring public health over profits, threatening worker stock options if they unionize, and he shows disdain for women and minorities (I recall the misogynist crap he said about Elizabeth Warren when she said Musk should pay more in taxes). Jeff Bezos is even worse in some ways. Part of the systemic problems in the US are the efforts to keep us in as small a group as possible. We're supposed to shun anyone who isn't our ethnicity, kick our kids out of the house at 18 so they can learn how to do/buy EVERYTHING with no support, drive cars instead of use mass transit, and generally maximize the sheer amount of goods and services we have to pay for. Besides discouraging unions, our present system also discourages folks from organizing for anything that might bring us together or allow us to compare situations so we can figure out who the real enemies are. The two exceptions seem to be church groups and political groups (mostly right-leaning; the left has never been as organized), and those groups seem focused on stopping others from doing something rather than being focused on helping the most people. And, of course, US corporations still benefit from slavery, with the police rounding up millions of citizens and forcing them to work, which also helps keep the rest of us docile and tractable.

And ultimately, the ideology is just being used by capitalist extremists to split the lower classes and keep any kind of labor movement from happening. Something has to give though. We have too many people in the US who have to decide between living in a home or apartment and having a car. It's getting too expensive to have both, even with multiple incomes. The greed of capitalist extremists is astounding.

Isn't there a difference between a side effect and an adverse effect, or that not all side effects are adverse? I had a US physician (not necessarily the best source of pharma knowledge) once tell me that adverse effects are always bad, but side effects can sometimes be used beneficially, such as a medication that causes drowsiness as a side effect that works well for an insomniac. It's bizarre that a placebo could have an extreme adverse effect. I can understand someone making themselves nauseous, or having pains brought on by belief in a placebo, but your article cites deaths due to this effect. I had no idea it was that strong. I would also suppose the particular adverse effect makes a difference. If 1 in 50 patients who take a drug gets severe abdominal pain, the doctor can take that person off of it immediately. If the adverse reaction is kidney damage, you might not catch that in a timely manner.

Exactly, and yet the fascists keep pushing for more control of people and less control of businesses. In the US, almost half the population has been tricked into thinking that "small government" is better. Those voters think "small government" means "stay out of my personal life", but to the corporations it means "little to no regulation". This is one area where idiocy is leading us towards disaster.

We're seeing a lot of fascist tactics around the world, which tend to diminish the works of science and freethinkers, while glorifying both the military and corporate establishments, and simultaneously degrading labor, unions, marginalized peoples (LGBTQA, PoC, etc), civil rights, free media, fair elections, and constitutional protections. I don't know about other countries, but the US has a tax structure that lets individuals sit on billions of dollars in personal wealth, and most people don't understand how much money that is, and how dangerous it is to allow individuals to keep that much without re-investment. For instance, let's pretend you get paid one US dollar every second. That's $60/minute, or $3600/hour, 24 hours/day, 365 days/year. Pretty outrageous pay, right? At that rate, it would take you between 11 and 12 days to make a million dollars. But at the same rate of pay, to earn a billion dollars would take almost 32 years. It's ludicrous that anybody needs that much money, and furthermore it's obvious that the folks who make multiple billions of dollars in just a few years are doing so off the work of others while those others are barely making ends meet. I don't think this is human nature at all. I think most people aren't extremists, but we've allowed the extremists in leadership positions where they've lobbied to make their money do things it shouldn't be able to do. This is NOT normal. But it also doesn't have to lead to disaster. I'd like to see an end to rampant capitalism. We need a much better mix of social, state, and private spending, imo, where capitalism keeps it's greedy fingers out of socially-funded programs.

! Moderator Note You've stepped over a line and this is now a personal attack. It needs to stop.

Then you're Begging the Question by assuming your conclusions about the technology are correct. Can't you discuss the advance of technology and its consequences without the assumptions about a technological afterlife?

! Moderator Note Agreed. Michael McMahon, please don't start any more threads in mainstream science areas if you're only going to speculate using "maybe" and "could be" and assertions with no evidence. This thread is closed.

! Moderator Note This is a problem we probably don't deal with effectively. Staff wants you to use the Report function so the threads don't get derailed, then we're reluctant to derail a thread with reports on reported posts if it isn't actionable, but I can see it looks the same as ignoring the report.

! Moderator Note You reported it as a "personal attack", which 3 staff members judged it wasn't . If you want to report someone using a Strawman argument, please be clear.

! Moderator Note No. They don't have the same units. You've had 5 pages to persuade us that your idea has merit, and this isn't the first mistake you've made. You aren't going to be able to convince anyone unless you show more rigor in your explanation. If you can't do that, we'll have to close this thread.

I'm glad to hear this. I don't understand those who view waking up to social injustices as a bad thing, but I've never been in the "ignorance is bliss" camp either.

Their definition of "chronic disease" is pretty broad, and includes anything you take a regular medication for, and anything that hampers any aspect of "daily living". That said, for the money we pay out, we have a terrible healthcare system, where who gets paid is more important than who gets well.

Yeah, that site is unfortunate. NOT to be confused with thescienceforum.org, another good site, which many of our members also frequent.

The big one is PhysicsForums. Lots of good moderation, lots of advisors, anything non-mainstream gets shut down pretty quickly. They have the largest member base by a lot, from what I've heard.

They each have a different character, imo. Some (one, at least) are huge and one can feel a bit lost. Some are very rigid about what can be posted, others not nearly rigid enough. Too many are just guesswork factories eschewing mainstream approaches. For me, it comes down to civility and respect for the process of science discussion, so we can all learn things we didn't know before and help pass that along to others.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/13/trump-admission-election-aides-january-6-panel Even if he won't say "lost" where the public can hear, he's admitted to not winning. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-finally-admits-defeat-i-didnt-win-election-1695339

Part of me understands why you want your opinions to be held to less rigorous standards, but part of me thinks you just want to be able to make bald assertions without having to do the work to persuade us of your superior position. I, for one, don't want anybody to feel like they can make claims that won't go uncontested. From my perspective, NOT challenging you would be tacit approval of your claim. I hope you can see that it's waaaay more than picking nits.

The first is your opinion, and we can ignore it or relate to it as we will. The second is you magically knowing what's actually going to happen, but not providing a shred of evidence meant to persuade us. So, duh, you get a great deal of pushback from people who put a high value on rigorous, reasoned arguments. And you've been doing this to us for a long time.

That's another subject entirely, but I think it evens out. We get "tired" but they get "knackered". The UK and US also have some contradictory definitions for the same words. For instance, if you suggest that a subject for the meeting be "tabled", if you're in the US it means you want to postpone or cancel the subject, but in the UK it means you want it brought to the table.

I've noticed this as well. Very intelligent and successful, but miss the spelling of fairly simple words, or don't bother with punctuation other than periods, exclamation points, and question marks. I've always thought it was because of spellcheckers.

In my head, I always break down words I think need an apostrophe. If I start to write "they're", I say the sentence and substitute "they are" and see if that makes sense. I think people forget the proper way, but pretend they don't care, or that it doesn't matter ("You know what I meant!"). My personal rule about "their" and "there"? Decide if it's a person or a place that's being talked about. Spelling and grammar rules for me seem to be about memorization and patterns. A word misspelled JUMPS out at me, so "the proper way" is the ONLY way. Archaic? We think you're using too many letters in your spelling, like the extra "i" you put in "aluminum". What's archaic is words that are longer than they need to be. And don't get me started on pronunciation. You cook with "Bah-zil" and "or-eh-GAHN-o", eat your "VITT-a-mins" and "YOGG-urt" while watching "ad-VERT-iz-ments" about "vawzes" for your "GAIR-udj".

Well, I'm very impressed by YOUR journey here. In just five posts, you went from "who can i win money in internet ?" to bullet-pointed essay answers to philosophical questions. I'm certain we'll soon explore your particular purpose in life.