I'd, personally, take the reddit and AI parts individually.

Sloperator and reddit chud, rather than attributing the AI evangelism to reddit specifically.

But again, im guessing, I could be entirely wrong.

Thats, very distinctly, not a denial of troll-like behaviour.

You believe a layman is still able to discover something in medicine. We'll see.

I think the belief that "the only place innovation can come from is trained scientists" is arrogant and unscientific, even in specialised fields.

Im not suggesting people will be producing testable medical end- products on the weekends.

Just that some things are worth testing/looking into, even if its suggested by someone not wearing a white coat.

If anything, the lack of low hanging fruit in the current common knowledge base should be an incentive to look in unorthodox places.

In addition there's a wealth of historical information that is siloed by culture, language and accessibility (among other things).

That includes dusty old tomes in buried cities but also folk remedies passed down among small villages or families and everything in-between.

Various new snake oils (ivermectin or urine for cancer , COVID and whatnot) sure aren't it.

Absolutely agree.

That's a lot of ad hominem for someone so vocally against it.

If your entire argument is "look at this mistake that was made, why did we trust scientists in the first place?" (with some personal attacks thrown in) you're going to struggle to find a genuine conversation.

Scientists are people too, they aren't a homogeneous pool of unassailable morals/ethics and correctness.

People fuck up, constantly, poor decisions and mistakes abound.

The whole idea of the scientific method is iteration towards success, if everyone always made the correct decisions there would be no need for iteration.

It's not an excuse for shitty work, science as a whole has a bunch of problems that urgently need addressing, but it is an explanation that allows for more nuance than "scientists stupid, hur hur".

Given your other answers so far I'm not expecting you to actually respond to this in good faith , i'm putting it out there mainly for me.

I can save you some time and say that if this is the calibre of response you normally provide, you should probably just block me, you are almost certainly not going to like interacting with me (or reading anything i write).

You’re not responding to me in good faith. Are you just incapable of doing so?

If you want to make a claim , provide examples, even a single example works.

All of my replies have been in direct response to your statements, with quotations to match, if you think one of those responses was in bad faith, point it out.

You can do this in real time, instead of waiting to vaguely accuse me of something without pointing to an example.

I have responded in good faith to you. Your questions aren’t really clear (many seem rhetorical) and you keep referencing things that you don’t really seem to have brought up in any real tangible, palpable meaningful way.

You have responded..sort of, yes, good faith is debatable

My questions are clear, there are a lot of statements because I’m providing context and/or my stance something to support my claims and/or follow up questions.

Again, citation on the "reference to something not previously brought up" ?

You just kind of glaze over them. And I’m really not sure what you’re getting at.

Again, citation? literally any example you wish to point at, i will address.

I've been responding almost line by line, pick any example of when that response was vague, it's not a test, i genuinely want an example.

And I’ve told you this so much over and over again and you really don’t explain yourself while I have explained myself to quite a lengthy extent which you don’t really seem to appreciate and instead insult.

There are copious examples of me explaining myself and my positions, if you want i can provide a list, or you could...just read the history.

You have explained some things and i have responded to them, again, line by line mostly.

Most of my responses have been to try and get clarification on the apparent contradictions in your explained positions.

The only vaguely insulting thing i can from my side was the last reply in the previous response and it was in response to a literal nonsense reply from your side.

And again… I can explain things to you but I can’t understand them for you. Real understanding takes a mutual dedication to try to alleviate ambiguities and not reinforce them and entrench inside of them.

If there was something you explained and i then replied with the same question again, please point it out.

Like, I’m pretty sure everyone reading this knows where my stance is but I have no fucking clue what yours is. Maybe just a clueless contrarian?

If by contrarian you mean i disagree with many of your stances, then yes, otherwise my positions have been consistent.

I've stated why i disagree, if you wish to discuss , reference an example.

For clarification my stance is:

• God's design (which you didn't mean?, so that's fine) and what is "natural" are a poor foundation for a shared framework of morals and ethics because they are subjective.
• Harm reduction includes psychological harm, to exclude that is poor reasoning.
• It's possible to use body modification as an expression of self without having an underlying mental illness or psychological issue.
• Counting Crows big yellow taxi is superior musically but Joni Mitchell’s original is better for the feels.
• Providing a whole-ass book, or series of ideologies instead of an actual position is poor conversational technique, especially if you don't even specify if it represents your position.

Your stance in general is clear, has been from the beginning, it's when I’m asking for clarification that things get contradictory or vague.

Here is a summary (of my understanding) :

• You seem to have close to fundamentalist ^0^ (in my opinion) beliefs about what people should and shouldn't be doing wrt body modifications. ^1^
• Your stance is that you don’t push this on others ^2^
• You stated "I don’t think you’re going to improve on God’s design." with no other context clues but later ( a few replies later ) said that isn't what you meant. ^3^
• You think a lot of body modifications are due to underlying mental illness or psychological issues.
• Your boundary is restoring medical function/harm reduction is fine, anything else is not.
  • When asked if psychological harm reduction counts, you have provided no actual position except for a reference to a book.
• You have your opinions on what constitutes "natural", when asked about a contradiction in clarification your response was:
  • Cite a definition with no explanation as to why it was needed
  • Ignore the contradiction entirely
  • Claim i was using a special definition without specifying what you thought it was.

`

• ^0^ See the previous reply about the definition of fundamentalism I’m using here
• ^1^ Note the words in bold, they are important.
• ^2^ I don't necessarily believe that but I’d have no way to prove anything either way, so my beliefs are irrelevant.
• ^3^ Same as ^2^

TL;DR;

START READ HERE

Seems the previous TL;DR; was too long ill try to be more concise.

Two people disagreeing with you (for different reasons no less) doesn't mean they are associated, get a grip on that ego.

Grammar and logic aren't the same thing.

You've argued many positions from your imagination and not a single position that was actually taken.

There is no conversation (of this type) to be had with someone who can't separate imagination from actual text.

Good luck with life.

END READ HERE

BIG SENTENCES PAST HERE

I know long sentences aren't your thing, you can stop here, this is only so i have it written down.

Yeah I assumed you were associated with the other user in this thread — the essay and your snide comments about my word use more or less confirms this.

Two people disagreeing with you doesn't mean they know each other, I'm not sure how to even work with the level of ego it'd take to assume two dissenting opinions must be collusion, let alone the level of confusion needed to think that two entirely different opinions are somehow the same opinion because they both happen to disagree with yours.

That's going to be some lucrative therapy work for someone eventually.

By the way, don’t comment on how another person writes and then proceed to fail at capitilizing I. You can keep your essay.

Perhaps i explained it poorly, i was criticizing your word choice because that choice of words made your statements logically incorrect.

Me not capitalising an i doesn't change the logical content.

Word Choice (Logical):

The sky is always blue.

vs

The sky is currently blue.

Capitalisation (grammatical?)

I think the sky is blue

vs

i think the sky is blue

If you genuinely can't see the difference there I'm not sure I'm qualified to help you.

You can keep your essay.

That is my bad, i used too many words and it seems that's a problem.

Though i did put a TL;DR, three sentences should be fine, right ?

By the way, my point to you is the same as the other user — go out and fall on your sword or continue bloviating on an online forum

Your point was invalid the first time you made it, you've done nothing to back it up or expand upon it since then, so it remains invalid.

I'm not sure what kind of cognitive dissonance it takes to be arguing that "violence begets more violence (and is therefore bad)" and then suggest sword based suicide, seems like it'd be quite extensive though.

all I know is it smells like a couple of cowards to me.

You talk a big game for someone who hasn't actually engaged on a point they haven't imagined themselves, but you do you.

( for given values of imaginary and real, this is still only an online forum after all )

There is probably a name for someone who fights imaginary battles to avoid real ones.

hmm, actually ...i wonder if there was someone else we could point to as an example of someone who didn't engage on the talking points and went off on their own imaginary journey so they could claim victory ?

edit: reading prompts, ponderings

TL;DR;

You responses are weak and full of unjustifiable black and white objective statements.

I was never arguing for assassinations, only for you to try and phrase your arguments in a better way.

If you want to interpret me questioning your word choice as a personal attack on you, you might want to look in to why you are having that reaction, your call though.

So I'm going to break this in to two sections.

The first one is a clarification on my actual point because your reply implies you didn't really understand what was being said, that could be on me and my poor communication skills.

The second is a reply to you assuming you did understand and were intentionally raising strawmen to dodge actually addressing the points. This only applies if you were intentionally ignoring the content of my reply, feel free to skip it

FIRST SECTION

Just in case its my fault for not being clear, here's a more comprehensive version of my original arguments.

A false dichotomy is where you present two options in such a fashion as to imply they are the only two options.

I think we can agree there are more than just the options you posited.

Speaking of the options:

You are a U.S. citizen and therefor a hypocrite for not having died on your sword already.

You are a foreigner with no skin in the game who should be focusing on problems at home (because there are).

Neither of these make sense.

1. Nobody was arguing that all US citizens had to fall on their sword.

Perhaps i missed it, fell free to point to an example of this and i will rescind my claim.

2. For this to be true you'd have to argue that no-one outside of the US is affected by anything happening inside the US.

I think we can both agree that you can't possibly justify that claim.

SECOND SECTION

To my knowledge of the reign of terror, the majority of people killed were the working class, peasants, followed by the middle class — for a series of killings seemingly only pointed at the bourgeois that certainly seems indiscriminate.

Ok, so firstly that's a terribly worded sentence but i think i get the gist.

Secondly the killings weren't exclusively aimed at the bourgeois though the movement was ostensibly about that, a lot of the people were purportedly killed for not being fully onboard with the revolution.

Regardless of any of that, unless you're about to argue they were just pulling up randoms on the street and killing them just because they could then it still doesn't satisfy the word indiscriminate.

Just because it doesn't fit your criteria of what was appropriate doesn't mean there wasn't discrimination.

If you participate in a system that punishes people with violent retribution indiscriminately, that violence will be visited upon you inevitably.

If you want to live your life by pretty sounding black and white aphorisms, that's your call, but i think we both know that sentence isn't true.

Increased likelihood, probably, inevitable that's some black and white hyperbolous nonsense.

Randomly killing politicians will not solve anything, and I’m not about to detail what will on a public forum. You can take that however you will, I’m not about to continue arguing with blue MAGA.

i wasn't arguing any solution, assassination-based or otherwise but if you wish to pretend i was so you don't have to address the actual point made i suppose that that is an answer in and of itself.

Edit: oh, and no — I’m not of the opinion that a reign of terror will happen. I think something worse will happen.

I wasn't implying you were, i was wondering what kind of acceleration you were envisioning but nothing you've said so far leads me to believe you are going to engage on any of the actual points i raised, so i won't hold my breath.

A false dichotomy? In this economy?

Also neither of them make sense.

Actually is it a false dichotomy when neither option exists, is there a word for that? A false fauxchotomy?

Also also, I don't think indiscriminate is the word you are looking for, as a clear criteria was set here and unless Robespierre truly killed with no criteria they would both fit the bill for discrimination ( even if you don't agree with their reasoning )

Edit : wait, no it'd need to just be fauxchotomy or that's a double negative

It doesn't but a neurodivergent person can absolutely be an arsehole.

Its not a magic label that makes everything "quirky" and "eccentric".

If you'll notice I mention the biggest offenders and/or the the underlying management infrastructure.

Private jet owners getting systematically luigi'd would also fall under that remit, I was just using data centres as an example.

Oil rigs, Nestlé, blackrock etc would also all work , with varying degrees of efficacy and difficulty.

To address your argument directly, before you get all preachy think of the actual consequences of major data centres going down, all the critical infrastructure running on said data centres would also go down.

That's air traffic control, shipping and logistics ,and yes, agriculture; any system relying on cloud services running in those data centres

If you pick the right ones and do it properly (a competently executed strategy, if you will) then you could cripple most industries, with all the consequences that brings.

Describe "real" rationality ?

I genuinely can't infer what you mean from that statement.

"by a wide variety of men"

I imagine your ability to definitely determine parentage, i'm assuming through observation and research, got you moved to somewhere your observational talents could be better employed ?

No point in wasting that kind of talent on the streets fighting the statistically high percentage of 15 year old bodybuilding thugs and their mothers.