And that’s where I side most with progressives.
I don’t believe it’s enough to merely rein in crony capitalism now, they’ve been profiting off it forever, increasingly so over the last several decades.
I believe in higher taxes on the 1% and stricter restrictions on big business, especially the ones who’ve profited from crony cap the most, and redistributing them either in the form of affordable housing, better, freer, but voluntary healthcare and living wages, or UBI.
I believe everyone who works or can’t is entitled to a decent standard of living and opportunities to get ahead.
Reducing the enormous gulf between the 1 and 99% will help prevent future instances of crony cap.
Gloominary: How bout we let individuals determine what sort of danger, if any, this thing poses to themselves and those around them, and how best to deal with it, rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all, top-down assessment of and response to it?
Are some individuals oblivious to the threat?
Or are they rightfully skeptical of its existence or severity?
Or are many of the sacrifices we’re asking many of them to make too great, or counterproductive?
Who’re the technocrats to say your livelihood, church service or social function is inessential?
Why’re we ruining young, and old peoples’ lives to supposedly give sickly seniors a slight extension of their lifespan, assuming imprisoning them in nursing homes doesn’t shorten their lifespan instead?
Is quality of life not equally important?
Does quality not affect quantity?"
K: ah, just a long way about saying, you don’t give a shit about anybody but
yourself… and if everyone died, hay, more land for me…
in case you hadn’t noticed, you cannot survive by your own actions…
you need, no must have a social network around you to survive as
a human being… there is no other possibility…we are not islands upon
ourselves…that is a fact jack…
what you have done is nothing more then solipsism…
I am the only being to exists in the universe…
I am an individual and nothing else matters in the universe…
and what of your obligation to the others in society?
do you deny you have any obligation to others in the society
that keeps you alive?
you say one size fits all science fails? no, no it doesn’t…
it is why you are alive today…the vaccines that you have had or your
parents had, are why you are alive today…if there had been a German
measles vaccine when I was born, I wouldn’t have lost my hearing…
millions of people have been saved from a wide variety of illness such
as polio and measles and smallpox… you would have of course, denied them
their vaccines because you are above such things as caring about the society
around you or you hold pretensions of being an “individual”, not part of the
“sheep” herd you believe lives around you…
those technocrats you decry are the very ones who have saved
millions upon millions of lives including yours…
talk about biting the hand that feeds you…
for vaccines to be effective, you have to vaccinate everyone or
it doesn’t work… you cannot vaccinate some and hope to
prevent deaths of millions… vaccinations are pretty much
an all or nothing proposition…you cannot vaccinates some
and hope to eradicate illnesses like Covid…
so, what make you so special that you are above the rest of us?
are you a god or a special human being that is above us?
and you don’t need to care about anyone else but yourself?
when the only, THE ONLY way you can survive today, is by
being part of the whole, part of society, part of the state…
so, pray tell,… why are you so special?"
Glom: Yea, people who take conservative or libertarian positions are evil, people who take progressive positions are good, how thoughtful and nuanced.
K: reread what I wrote… carefully…
Please show me the part where I wrote about “conservative” or “Libertarian”
or “progressive” positions? in fact, I made no mention of them at all…
I wrote about you specifically and the thread you made… I responded about that,
nothing more…I believe you are wrong for the reasons I laid out…that
individuals are often forced to make decisions that are against their specific
will but necessary for the good of society.
and I believe that vaccines are one of those points…yes, technocrats
and medical personal will often makes decisions that affect you… along
with millions of people for the good of all…society has, for better or worse,
taken upon itself to protect you from crime for example… if you are assaulted,
then the state will attempt to find and punish the person or persons responsible…
that is an example of decisions being taken out of your hands and put into
the hands of others…do you disagree with the state punishing people for
crimes committed?
you can’t pick and choose which state decisions you will obey and which ones
you won’t…it is again, an all or nothing proposition…
is justice unfairly practiced? yes, yes it is and that is the liberal contention
that justice isn’t equal…the law is another example of the society overall
method of “one size fits all”… do you disagree with society/the state
engaging in the judicial system as we know it today?
should people who commit murder, be able to decide their own fate?
that seems to be your contention…we should be free to act in our own self interest…
hence making murder, an individual choice…
you may make the argument that the size of the choice, getting a vaccine
and committing murder, as two separate things… but they are not…
they are simple two sides of the same coin… freedom of choice…
are we free to commit murder or do we limit the act of murder?
are we free to avoid getting a vaccine or do we risk getting society
very ill from some disease? Under your theory, those in the Middle ages,
were free to choose if they got a vaccine (if there was one) from the black plague,
that killed almost half of the population of Europe… do their individual
choices overrule the need of society to protect itself?
you are trying to split the baby and that isn’t possible…
to have the best of both worlds and it isn’t possible…
if you accept the need of society to protect itself, then
then the society/state can force you to get a vaccination,
as it also has a judicial system to protect us…
Kropotkin
PK
If the technocrats of the day got together and decided blacks were inferior, and that they should ride on the back of the bus, do you think blacks should go along with that?
I don’t think you do.
We can, and do choose what laws to follow.
I always consider what my society mandates or recommends, but if I have strong reasons for believing something to be immoral or wrong, I won’t go along with it.
You’re comparing murder to not wearing masks but to me they’re apples and oranges.
Murder is unambiguous, while there’s s a lot of ambiguity, and holes in the narrative about this phenomenon and the medical world in general, and I’m not the only one who thinks this way, while we may be a minority, millions, perhaps billions of people think like me.
I will continue to resist Covid restrictions by any means necessary, including the vaccine if and when they mandate it.
This would mean no conscientious objectors to the Vietnam and later wars. That it would be purely immoral for say a poor black to eat licorice to get high blood pressure on his intake exam to get out the Vietnam War (IOW given the the court system would have treated COs in the Vietnam war I see little reason for a poor black not to simply avoid the war. This would eliminate all sorts of open and passive civil rights disruptions and acts. And trust me, the state could have come up with rationalizations for why the mixing of whites and blacks was problematic. A lack of compliance both open and covert has been used by all sides of the political spectrum for a long time. Would a Southerner who did NOT return a slave but helped them on the underground railroad be immoral to do so? Or is the contention that governments no longer make immoral laws or policies?
I assume that you then have a great deal of criticism of Black Lives Matter and Antifah who are both selective about what laws they follow and in many instances have been allowed to be by local state governments who think they are right to oppose the laws, both national and local.
And what of illegal immigrants?
They don’t belong here, right PK?
They should leave or be rounded up and deported?
And this kind of mind reading is not grounded in evidence. People can disagree over what is done but all have good intentions in relation to other people. What Gloominary’s real motives are are not accessible online, so why not consider that you disagree over actions to be taken and focus on that?
I realize that you also get categorized as an evil communist who hates freedom or whatever the binary geniuses here call you, but, then, that doesn’t excuse your doing it. And I would guess Gloominary did not start down that road with you.
PK: you can’t pick and choose which state decisions you will obey and which ones
you won’t…it is again, an all or nothing proposition"
GL: If the technocrats of the day got together and decided blacks were inferior, and that they should ride on the back of the bus, do you think blacks should go along with that?
I don’t think you do.
We can, and do choose what laws to follow.
K: ok, let us start here… I have already made statements about the difference
between the “LAW” and being moral…for example, slavery was legal as was
the holocaust as was the Jim Crow laws and was laws making women the property
of men…I disagree with these laws, but they exists on a different foundation then
laws requiring the mandatory vaccines…
I agree with the proposition… “all men are created equal” that is the heart of my
social, political and philosophical beliefs… if we treat blacks different then whites
or women different then men, then we are not engaged in holding to “all men are created
equal” we are treating some people differently then others because of some arbitrary
and unequal application of the law…we must treat everyone the same, that is what
is justice and justice is equality… so to say to blacks, you must ride the back of the bus,
while we let whites ride the front of the bus is to engaged in an arbitrary engagement
with the unequal application of the law… discrimination as it were…
but how does the requirement of making EVERYONE, EVERYONE in America,
an engagement with an arbitrary and unequal application of the law… you are
not engage in some different treatment of some because of their age, race, color,
who they love… there is no exclusion in the application of the vaccine to everyone
in America… everyone is getting vaccinated… and thus no unequal application of
justice… it is equal…
and there is a vast difference in the application of law to require “EVERYONE” to
be vaccinated as oppose to requiring black people to ride the back of the bus,
which is clearly discrimination… because it exclude some from the application of
the law…
when the law is applied to everyone, then we cannot attempt to pick and
choose which laws we decide apply to us… that path is the path to complete
and total society failure…we will collapse as a society if we can pick and choose
what laws we are going to obey… you are asking for complete and total anarchy…
even a former anarchist like myself cannot go with that…
GL: I always consider what my society mandates or recommends, but if I have strong reasons for believing something to be immoral or wrong, I won’t go along with it.
You’re comparing murder to not wearing masks but to me they’re apples and oranges.
Murder is unambiguous, while there’s s a lot of ambiguity, and holes in the narrative about this phenomenon and the medical world in general, and I’m not the only one who thinks this way, while we may be a minority, millions, perhaps billions of people think like me.
I will continue to resist Covid restrictions by any means necessary, including the vaccine if and when they mandate it.
[/quote]
K: and If you resist covid restrictions, you are committing murder…
how many have died in the last 9 months from Covid?
250,000… you know how many died in WW2 in combat in 4 years?
around 300,000 in the U.S…you cannot pick and choose what laws you will
abide by because it will cost someone their life… you don’t seem to have a
problem with killing others with your choices…
and as for your assertion that “Murder is unambiguous”…
that is clearly false… the very act of murder is quite often
ambiguous… for example, was the death of Travon Martin “clear and unambiguous?”
or was the death of George Floyd, “unambiguous?”… I don’t think so…was he
murdered? I believe so and another can make the argument that it wasn’t murder…
the police were simply doing their job…
for you, the world is black and white… that is a sure sign of being very young or
very old…for the rest of us, the world is shades of gray… a very ambiguous
world indeed… what is right and what is wrong, is quite often very
ambiguous…What is the “TRUTH?” When I was young and naive, the truth
seemed to me to be very black and white, up and down, right or wrong…
as we age, the “TRUTH” seems to become opaque and not very clear at all…
quite often around here the many arguments the “truth” side and the
shades of gray world come about because the “truth” side believes that
there is absolute and clear proof of the “TRUTH” and as we age, we see that
there is no such thing as the 'TRUTH"… there is only shades of gray…
I cannot see what can be classified as the “TRUTH”…
I can only see possibilities and chances and probabilities of what might be
the truth… as to what is the “TRUTH” I have no idea… and that boys and girls,
is what happens between youth and old age… we can no longer see what is
the “TRUTH” anymore…we can only see shades of gray where the truth is no
longer absolute and a given…
Kropotkin
You have a principle, that ‘all men are created equal’.
That’s a pretty black and white principle, so maybe the world isn’t so shades of gray for you after all, or maybe you pick and choose what to be black and white about, like most of us do.
For you, this principle is above the law.
I too have a principle I’m pretty black and white about, that government shouldn’t deprive the people of our liberty arbitrarily, they should be able to demonstrate to us beyond any and all reasonable doubt, if we do A, B and C, we are unreasonably causing others serious physical harm, harm they couldn’t reasonably avoid.
Government has failed to convince me, and millions, perhaps billions of others like me from all walks of life, we are causing that, if any sort of harm, instead it looks far more like a power grab.
In that case, I, and millions of others like me, should be doing 25-life.
Clearly no one actually believes that.
My government has failed to convince me a single person was killed by ‘Covid’.
Unlike Covid, killing unambiguously causes harm.
Whether that harm is justified, depends on the circumstances, like yea, if it was committed in self-defense.
Murder has been around since the dawn of man, this ‘new virus’ and many of the lengths we’re going to, to deal with it, just arrived on the scene several months ago, and so it’s far, far more ambiguous.
K: and yet, you have failed to answer any one of my points… first of all,
the equal application of the law… to require everyone to be vaccinated is
an equal application of the law… it isn’t arbitrary… it fits everyone,
whereas your point of putting blacks in the back of the bus is arbitrary
and discrimination because it includes some and excludes others…
it is nice to see that science engages in some sort of “reasonable doubt” which allows
you to escape being a responsible person…the science and medicine is quite clear
as to your choice of actions… the government isn’t actually the one that has to convince
you, it is the science and the medicine and you deny both…
and how is forcing you to take a Virus shot, “depriving you of liberty”…
the point is that we engage in actions and duties all the time that
“deprive us of our liberty” for example, under your theory, I don’t
have to stop at stop signs or I can simply run people over with my car,
because anything else “deprives me of my liberty”… I am a free agent and
I decide how I act… regardless of the consequences to other people…
to say that making you take a virus shot is “power grab” is a personal
statement without merit… please explain how protecting your follow
American’s from dying, is a “power grab”?
your personal principle of “only doing what I decide is right” is to
invite full scale and complete anarchism in the world…
recall your Hobbes:
“…no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear,
and the danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish and short”
that is the society you are advocating for… short, poor, nasty and brutish…
that is the society you wish for… for that is the society you will get if every man
can decide for himself what laws he shall or shall not obey…
Kropotkin
K: and If you resist covid restrictions, you are committing murder…
[/quote]
Gl: In that case, I, and millions of others like me, should be doing 25-life.
Clearly no one actually believes that.
K: are you so sure?
K: how many have died in the last 9 months from Covid?
250,000… you know how many died in WW2 in combat in 4 years?
around 300,000 in the U.S…you cannot pick and choose what laws you will
abide by because it will cost someone their life… you don’t seem to have a
problem with killing others with your choices…
[/quote]
Gl: My government has failed to convince me a single person was killed by ‘Covid’.
K: and once again, the denial of science and medicine… do you then deny science
and medicine?
K:and as for your assertion that “Murder is unambiguous”…
that is clearly false… the very act of murder is quite often
ambiguous… for example, was the death of Travon Martin “clear and unambiguous?”
GL: Unlike Covid, killing unambiguously causes harm.
Whether that harm is justified, depends on the circumstances, like yea, if it was committed in self-defense.
Murder has been around since the dawn of man, this ‘new virus’ and many of the lengths we’re going to, to deal with it, just arrived on the scene several months ago, and so it’s far, far more ambiguous.
[/quote]
K: so you seem to deny science and medicine… how do you survive the modern world, when
you deny its basic and fundamental basis… to deny science and medicine is to deny
the modern world…
so, this is your moment to declare freely and without hesitation,
do you deny science and medicine? for the government itself depends upon
the science and medicine… so what say you?
Kropotkin
Covid laws haven’t been equally applied, for example Marxist groups such as Antifa and BLM have been exempt from them, as well as other laws, like burning and looting, and big business has been more exempt from them than small.
Firstly, there’s nothing responsible about letting an individual or group do all your thinking for you, it’s irresponsible.
I believe the people have every right if not a duty to question, and reject the scientific consensus if we find it to be unreasonable, just as we have every right to question and reject a claim the MSM and politicians made.
I always consider the science, and I consider what the MSM and politicians have to say, but they’re not my be all and end all, I also consider my experiences, insofar as they’re applicable, and my reasoning as well as the experiences and reasoning of other reasonable people I talk to, and sometimes the latter overrides what the science, MSM and politicians have to say.
Just as you believe the pharmaceutical industry is bribing, blackmailing or threatening researchers into withholding cures for AIDS, cancer and so on, I believe corrupt corporations and politicians have put corrupt scientists into positions of power to steal our liberty.
It wouldn’t be the first time corporations and politicians conspired with scientists to empower themselves at the expense of public health.
Secondly, what is the scientific consensus, really?
It’s not necessarily what the MSM tells us it is, it’s not necessarily what the scientists politicians have put into power tell us it is either.
I’ve listened to hundreds of doctors and scientists on alternative media outlets like londonreal.tv say they disagree with corporatized and politicized scientists on Covid and other issues.
In countries like Sweden and Belarus, their politicized scientists took a completely different approach to Covid than us, a much more laissez-faire one.
Lastly, if scientists are put into positions of power by politicians, then they’re not strictly scientists doing science, they’re also politicians doing politics, and we should afford them all the same criticism.
At its best, when it’s at its least corrupt and most meticulous, science by definition can only give you the facts, what we as a society or as individuals do with them, can only ever be a matter of opinion.
Other considerations like liberty, happiness, the socioeconomy and so on have to be factored into the equation, considerations that’re not strictly scientific, but personal, philosophical, religious and so on.
Because I don’t want to take the shot.
You may argue there’s good reason for government to deprive me of my liberty, but there can be no question they are depriving me of it, justified or not.
I’m not violating the law on a whim, I have good reasons to believe it’s violating the liberty principle.
Like draft dodgers during the 60s and 70s who believed the military industrial complex wasn’t telling them the whole story about Vietnam, which it was later admitted they weren’t, they were lying, I and millions of others are dodging Covid Control because we have good reasons to believe they’re lying to us about this phenomenon.
Gl: Firstly, there’s nothing responsible about letting an individual or group do all your thinking for you, it’s irresponsible.
I believe the people as individuals and a collective have every right if not a duty to question and reject the scientific consensus if we find it to be unreasonable, just as we have the right to question and reject a claim the MSM and politicians made.
K: do you have the scientific background to reject the “scientific consensus”? you
are claiming that our biases and opinions are enough to reject science…
a doctor/scientist, says, “you have cancer” do you accept that or do you reject that
as just another “opinion”…getting a second opinion is still getting an opinion from
a scientist/doctor… do you simple dismiss that as worthy of being rejected,
because it doesn’t fit into your bias?
GL: I always consider the scientific consensus, and I consider what the MSM and politicians have to say, but they’re not my be all and end all, I also consider my experiences, insofar as they’re applicable, and my reasoning as well as the experiences and reasoning of other reasonable people I talk to, and sometimes the latter overrides what science, the MSM and politicians have to say.
Just as you believe the pharmaceutical industry is bribing, blackmailing or threatening researchers into not releasing cures for AIDS, cancer and so on, I believe corrupt financiers and politicians have put corrupt scientists into positions of power to steal our liberty.
I wouldn’t be the first time scientists conspired with corporations and politicians to make money at the expense of public health.
K: so, I go to facebook and ask people whom I consider “reasonable” to decide upon
my fate in regards to whether I have cancer or not? people with no science background
and no medical background to decide if I have cancer? I don’t think so…only a fool would
take that stance…the problem with your stance is, it ignores facts on the ground…
GL:Secondly, what is the scientific consensus really?
It’s not necessarily what the MSM tells us it is, it’s not necessarily what the scientists politicians have put into power want us to believe it is.
I’ve listened to hundreds of doctors on alternative media outlets say they disagree with corporatized and politicized scientists.
In countries like Sweden and Belarus, their politicized scientists took a completely different strategy to Covid than us, a much more laissez faire approach.
K: and where did it get them? Sweden for example, is getting hard hit from the virus right now…
the states in America that took that same “laissez faire” attitude are getting crushed right now
by the virus…you are so focused on “your liberty” that you are willing to kill a lot of people…
there is a scientific consensus about the virus… you just choose to ignore it in some
nonsensical attempt to hold on to your “personal freedom” which isn’t even being attacked…
Gl: Lastly, if scientists are put into positions of power by politicians, then they’re not strictly scientists doing science, they’re also politicians doing politics, and we should give them all the same criticism we give politicians.
K: yah, to criticize something like science that you don’t even understand or know about?
I must admit, if you really held your position about science, you shouldn’t be on
the internet, created by scientist, or the computer, created by scientist, or drive
a car which is science based or fly on an airplane because that is science all the way…
every single piece of technology that you use is science based, from the microwave to
the lights in your house… you reject science but accept the results from science…
hypocrisy be thy middle name…
Gl:
At it’s best, when it’s at its least corrupt and most meticulous, science by definition can only give you the facts, what we as a society do with them is up to us, it’s always a matter of opinion.
We may save more lives if we don’t drive over the speed limit, we may save more lives if we reduced the speed limit, doesn’t we will, or that we should, other considerations like the economy, liberty, happiness and so on have to be factored into the equation, considerations that’re not strictly scientific.
K: no, you have rejected a societal consensus already, It is not always a matter of opinion…
facts are still facts are still facts and not a matter of opinion…
if a scientist tells you that you have cancer, it isn’t a matter of opinion subject to
other considerations… it is a fact…and if you ignore that fact, you die… pretty simple.
that there are other considerations, perhaps, but I would and have rejected such
opinions that the economic is the highest consideration for our lives… the basis of
capitalism lies here (and Marxism for that matter) is liberty the highest consideration we should
have in medical considerations, like having cancer?
you have hung your hat upon on considerations that need to be discussed
and understood, as you haven’t done yet…
K:and how is forcing you to take a Virus shot, “depriving you of liberty”…
[/quote]
GL: Because I may not want to take the shot.
You may argue there’s good reason for government to deprive me of my liberty, but there can be no question they are depriving me of my liberty, justified or not.
K: so you are willing to kill others because you “don’t want to”… ummmm, I will
kill someone and use that as my defense… lets see how far that gets me…
K:the point is that we engage in actions and duties all the time that
“deprive us of our liberty” for example, under your theory, I don’t
have to stop at stop signs or I can simply run people over with my car,
because anything else “deprives me of my liberty”… I am a free agent and
I decide how I act… regardless of the consequences to other people…
[/quote]
GL : I’m not violating the law on a whim, I have good reasons to believe it’s violating one of my principles.
For you, politicians and technocrats sometimes violate the equality principle, but they violate all sorts of principles, like the nonaggression principle, we shouldn’t go to war unless we or our allies are being attacked.
Like draft dodgers during the 1960s who believed the military industrial complex was lying to them about Vietnam, which it was later admitted they were, I am dodging Covid laws because I have good reasons to believe they’re lying to me about this phenomenon.
[/quote]
K: yes, you are violating the law on a whim… you don’t have any reason whatsoever to
violate the law outside of, “I don’t want to”… your principles are as weak as your failure to
identify why exactly “they” are lying to you… skip all that and look at the number of
people who have died… 3/4 of all the number of people who died in battle in WW2…
but of course to your way of thinking, those people died to insure that you
“lose your freedom” because every decision you make is in terms of
“how I might lose my liberty or freedom”
the fact of the matter is that with your way of thinking, you have
rejected living in society, living within the laws and regulations that
insure the peaceful and continuous existence of those who live within
society/the state… obeying any law, any law is clearly going to diminish my
own personal liberties… and as such, I cannot in good conscious obey any
law because it will diminish my own personal liberty…
that my friend is a Hobbesian existence, a state of nature that include all of us…
“life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”
that seems to be your ideal existence… good luck with that one…
Kropotkin
The new normal…
washingtonpost.com/national … story.html
[b]A growing number of Republican governors, including some who had written off mask mandates as unenforceable or unacceptable to freedom-loving Americans, are now requiring people to cover their faces in public — a response to escalating coronavirus outbreaks overwhelming hospitals across the country.
After eight months of preaching personal responsibility in place of mandates, these governors have brought their states in line with much of the world by instituting the simple requirement backed by science but, in the United States, shot through with politics.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who once dismissed mask mandates as “feel good” measures, issued a limited order this week, as her state topped 2,000 coronavirus deaths. The state’s senior U.S. senator, 87-year-old Charles E. Grassley, said Tuesday he tested positive for the virus but reported “feeling good.” And a bipartisan group of Midwestern governors, in a joint video address, stressed that widespread distribution of a vaccine was a long way off and advised their constituents that returning to normal sometime next year first required surviving the holidays.[/b]
That’s the way world works. You can hold to certain principles, certain political ideals. But that’s only to the extent that “the situation” allows for them. Everyone has a breaking point. A line that, once crossed, calls for minds to be changed.
What’s particularly dangerous however [in situations like this] are those like Trump. Call him representative of, say, the authoritarian narcissists. There is no breaking point, no line for them. 250,000 dead later and they still won’t budge an inch.
And we’ve got a few of them here, don’t we?
with non-objectivists like PK, who needs objectivists. Gloominary has obviously been concerned about economic justice for people in general and freedom at a societal level not just a personal level. IOW he has priorities in values similar to PK and different from PK but in terms of people in general. So, how does a non-objectivist like PK handle this: by framing his opponent on this issue as only caring about himself, now in a second thread also, where the now mature PK is not longer an anarchist but a loving husband, and knows that if only Gloominary was married he would be moral like him. Instead of taking a charitable read of Gloominary (who has repeatedly here expressed concerns at the societal/group level and is thus merely an objectivist with different values) and argue just the merits of the actions and positions, rather than getting into poor psychoanalysis and uncharitable mind reading.
PK’s behavior putting PK in the kind of objectivist camp that is mirrored on the other side of the objective values divide by Unwrong and Pezer.
He starts the ad hom moral objectivist finger pointing in this thread with
I can’t see what he does but I will lay money on it that iamb does not call him out for his utter objectivism in this thread or his going ad hom. When it comes to beauty it’s all culture, when it comes to vaccinations, now objectivist moral finger pointing is just peachy. Will they work out their differences?
Gloominary, in contrast, does disagree with objectivists on both the right and left, not just in the abstract, but here in interaction with others. PK seems to follow party lines, another objectivist tell tale sign.
It’s funny it used to be the right wing that told people like liberals that they had no values. The Bill O’reilly type idiocy. We have values, you don’t. Now the Left follows this facile denial, at least here at ilp. PK cares about other people, Gloominary does not. His motivations are all selfish.
All I see is when waxing meta PK is a non-objectivist, but in practice interacting with others he’s just another objectivist and one who is quite happy to lower discourse in a thread to ad hom slinging. May he and the unwrongs find themselves in a house or mirrors together.
Who decides who the experts are?
Are scientists experts in health, just because they say they are?
Have the scientists who studied the phenomenon done so in an honest and thoughtful manner?
Has the integrity of their research been compromised by corporate and political interests?
Will you go along with them, even if time after time, what they say in one breath doesn’t match what they say in another, or with your experiences, or the experiences of your friends and neighbors?
Millions of people have partly or fully abandoned mainstream medicine because they believe it failed them.
Scientists are experts in health to the degree I say they are, for me.
To the degree their models are internally consistent and predictive, to the degree their potions and elixirs are affective, they gain credibility with me, and to the degree they’re not, they lose credibility (this isn’t an all or nothing deal, just because I find some aspects of science to be unreasonable or ineffective, doesn’t mean I find all aspects of science to be, anymore than because I think x good or service from x company is crap, means I think everything from x company is crap, that’s a false dichotomy, black & white cult-like thinking).
The more credibility they gain, the more I’m willing to defer to them in the future, likewise the more they lose, the less I’m willing to defer to them.
The way I see it, scientists aren’t so much experts in health, as they are experts in a peculiar way of doing health.
There are other ways of doing it, from naturopathy, Ayurveda to traditional Chinese medicine.
There’s also experimenting with your own body to see what works, for you (because while our bodies are all the same in one sense, we’re all human, they’re all different in another, we’re all individuals, what works for many may not work for me), as well as sharing your experiences with others.
Scientists don’t have a monopoly on health.
I like my medicine the way I like my democracy, lots of options, third parties and independents.
If an institution fails me, I’ll check out another in the free market, or I’ll figure things out for myself.
I don’t want any group to have a complete monopoly, that’s what people who hate democracy and freedom want.
It’s up to the public, as individuals, and a democracy to decide whether what scientists say has any merit.
While I respect democracy, to some degree, unfortunately my democracy is failing me.
They keep electing the same corrupt politicians, politicians who always take more liberty and prosperity, and give next to nothing in return.
These corrupt politicians have put in place scientists who work for big pharma, whose models on Covid and other phenomena have failed time after time, but because the public has bought the lie, that both or at least one of the two major parties isn’t completely corrupt, and that the technocrats they appoint should never be challenged, they have allowed them to trample liberty beneath their feet.
I won’t stand for it.
We are coming to a point now where the public are such lemmings they’ll gleefully be lead off a cliff to their demise while trying to take everyone else with them.
Well I’m not going down with this ship.
If you want to live in the totalitarian nightmare the elite are rolling out for us brick by brick, go right ahead.
I’d rather live in a Hobbesian state of nature than on my hands and knees groveling at the feet of tyrants.
It’s buyer beware.
Scientists aren’t angels, they’re salesmen, just like the MSM and politicians are, and we as consumers and taxpayers, individually with our coin, and collectively with our vote, ought to be on guard.
Science doesn’t operate in a vacuum, it operates in conjunction with the pharmaceutical and other industries, industries whose primary motive is profit (and that’s what their motive is too, scientists need and want money, little-no science gets done without it).
The heads of big pharma are part of the 1%, they’re looking out for themselves and their class first and foremost, not us, in fact I think they mean us harm.
It’s always easier, especially in this day and age, for the 1% to circumvent the law than the blue collar bloke.
At the end of the day, we’re mostly responsible for our health, not scientists and politicians.
We have to live with the side or negative effects of what they sell and impose on us.
We must hold their feet to the fire, critically examine their claims, or be preyed upon.
What PK and his ilk are doing is not critical thinking, it’s religion masquerading as its opposite.
He has blind faith in the politicians and scientists they appoint, and there’s nothing scientific about that.
Science can be good, but scientism and technocracy, the idea the public should just shut up and do whatever the scientists and technocrats say, is a cult and it must be resisted.
watching the NBA draft… warriors took James Wiseman…
excellent choice…
so I will watch the rest of the draft and answer tomorrow…
Kropotkin
What does the layman know about society?
What does he know about government?
What does he know about economics?
What does he know about health?
Nothing, right?
So why have freedom and democracy then?
Why not have social engineers run society?
Governors alone run government?
economists alone run the economy and so on?
It’s not that hard.
The public can get informed, critically read what different economists, health experts (including ones who disagree with the official narrative) have to say from a broad range of media outlets and form an opinion.
These subjects are not that esoteric, like say quantum or astrophysics, they are stuff we all deal with on some level every day.
The left is always going on about racial and gender diversity, but what about diversity of thought?
If the public gets involved in the discussion, more ideas will be brought to the table, some good, some bad, more ideas and ways of looking at things will be available to select from.
Does the public not have the right to have a say in how they’re governed, whether it’s by economists or medical experts, on things that affect them in a deeply personal way?
Can we expect the technocrats, all or many of whom are part of the 1%, to really understand the plight of the public and how their policies will impact them?
Can we expect them to care?
We don’t have a problem when the public chimes in on matters of society, government and economics, so why are matters of public health off limits?
There is no reason.
Corrupt politicians found a loophole, the public will question them, but not a ‘health expert’ they appoint, and so they will surrender their liberty and economy wholesale for ‘health reasons’ without question.
let us recap:
GL does not believe in science, does not believe in medicine,
does not believe in experts… presented with something like
a cancer diagnosis, he would rather talk to others who
are “reasonable”… that means talking to people who holds
similar viewpoints that Gloom has…and avoiding anyone who
hold views different then the ones held by Gloom…
Gloom clearly doesn’t give a shit about people because his focus,
his admitted focus is protecting his own personal freedom at all
cost, regardless of the consequences to other people…
so let us flesh this out in real life…
I am guessing he won’t wear a mask, and why?
because that infringes on his “personal freedom” despite
what the experts say… because who is really an expert?
certainly not someone who has gone to school and received
awards, appointed to high positions… like say, I don’t know,
Dr. Anthony Fauci… who is just a self proclaim expert…
with over 40 years experience in this particular field of
infectious diseases…
what can he possible know that my “reasonable” friends don’t
already know? I mean nothing… do they have any type of training
in infectious diseases, not necessary or even wanted, because
the people Gloom talks to are “reasonable” and that is all that matter…
any training, schooling, education, is far less important in the field
of infectious diseases as is being “reasonable”… that is THE important
criteria for Gloom to base his decisions upon… certainly not experts
in their field, but people who are reasonable…
did I miss anything?
Kropotkin
And it is not clear what experts know or even believe…
justthenews.com/nearly-50000-do … pY7KmUUBKs