What a bizarre argument. You confirm every single point of the case proving AGW, and you counter by citing that atmospheric CO2 only goes up half as fast as we dump CO2 into the atmosphere. This is something that has been long known and factored in by scientists. As long as atmospheric CO2 is going up then you're concurring that the AGW case has been established, and you're merely pointing out that in a fictional world without natural CO2 sinks the CO2 increase would have been twice as fast, a fictional world that would have had faster and more severe warming.
Basically you're saying the effect is real and proven, but it's only half as big as I imagine it could have been, therefore it doesn't exist? Huh?
It has been known for years, probably decades, that gene frequencies follow this mathematical rule, and that it has been mathematically proven optimal for solving Multi-armed bandit type problems. Each generation genes are tested by natural selection, and increase or decrease in frequency according to multiplicative increase or decrease. This is a mathematically optimal strategy for exploring and optimizing payoff in a complex unknown environment. Mutation creates random stuff to try, and this mathematically selection algorithm optimally crafts it into useful new information.
The problem isn't that someone can inject a fraudulent signal that does bad things. The problem is that THE OFFICIAL BROADCAST SIGNAL can include code that does bad things.
Just because code is part of a TV broadcast doesn't mean you should trust it. Just because code is part of a TV broadcast doesn't mean it should be able to hijack your stored internet credentials and automatically log into your account on any website, and take actions on those websites as if they were you, modify the content you see on those other sites, shouldn't be able to log into your web accounts as you, scan and phone-home a copy of all of your personal information accessible on that account. It shouldn't be able to spy on your activity and report it back. It shouldn't be able to scan and attack other devices on your home network.
Fucking asshats. They design a system with forty-two layers of DRM-enforcement security, but any signal that's part of the broadcast is given automatic authority to do anything it wants, given overriding authority against the TV owner's privacy and security.
What ever happened to products designed around the wants and needs and interests of the buyer, so that people will want to buy your product rather than your competitor's? These pieces of shit are obviously designed to serve and protect broadcasters, regardless of the owner's interests.
Someone also made a seven and a half minute film of the story. It has a few cute video aspects, but overall it didn't come off so well and it's missing a few lines. I definitely recommend the original text link above rather the video version, but here's the video link anyway.
Can we get a Star Trek like movie but instead of meeting human looking weirdos in outer space, let's meet species that look really weird, yet make friends with us and we commnunicate.
I can imagine a world without war, a world without hate, a world where everyone lives together in peace. I can imagine us attacking that world.
The Slashdot population leans heavy on the tech and science geek side, people who are generally pretty good at finding reliable websites like the National Academy of Science, and secondary websites that reasonably reflect reliable mainstream science.
Usually.
Except when it comes to fucking climate change, when suddenly a substantial portion of our population buy into some wacky conspiracy theory that the entire mainstream science community is in on some conspiracy to publish lies, and they start actively rejecting the fucking United States National Academy of Science as presumptively unreliable, and instead start digging up random blatantly trash websites that gain "reliable" status when they see that the info supports the "right" side of the issue. And you start running into "climate" papers cited to support a point - papers filled with blatant errors - and when you google the author's name to try to figure out what sort of idiot wrote it, it turns out the author wasn't a climate scientists at all..... no... the author was a "combustion engineer".... and then you think "WTF is a combustion engineer" and you find the link to his professional page you see (drumroll please) he's a combustion engineer specializing in how to burn coal better. And you can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. Because the otherwise competent geek you were debating with fell into paranoid conspiracy nonsense throwing out everything he knows about reliable science, and rejecting sites like the National Academy of science as "unreliable".... and instead found himself a "reliable" junksite that said what he wanted to hear.
You can use reliable sites to figure out what to believe, or you can use what you believe to determine which websites are reliable. One of those two options doesn't work so well.
I could point out that in 20 years of tracking the climate you'd EXPECT typically one result breaking the 95% confidence band on the high side and one result breaking the 95% confidence band on the low side.... and that I'm pretty sure we broke the 95% confidence band on the high side in 1998... but never mind that....
The whole warming thing is basic undeniable laws of physics. Sunlight shines down, hits the ground or ocean, and turns into heat. And basic laws of physics, CO2 blocks thermal infrared energy from leaving. Heat energy is trapped, Q.E.D. the basic principal and basic fact of global warming is an absolute undeniable result of basic laws of physics. The only complicated part is exactly what will happen with that trapped thermal energy. Where will it go and what will it do.
Surface temperatures have been rising slightly slower than predicted for the last few years, however the ocean temperatures have been rising faster than predicted for the last few years. That means the total warming balances out right just as expected. As I said, basic laws of physics, a pretty well predictable amount of heat energy was trapped, exactly as predicted.
The complicated part is how that heat energy will flow in the climate system and what abnormal effects it will produce in climate system. And just as we (in general) expected, it resulted in random anomalies in climate circulation - there was anomalously high rate of ocean mixing carrying more of the heat energy into the deep ocean.
The earth is warming exactly as expected, and weird random shit is starting to crop up in climate circulation patterns, just as anticipated. (I believe Donald Rumsfield would call these "Known Unknowns. We can predict that the climate is going to start doing weird shit we've never seen before, even if we can't predict exactly what that random shit is going to be. The overall heating of the Earth is a pretty well Known Known.)
Changes in ocean circulation is a core expected "unknown". The slight increase in vertical mixing we got is pretty insignificant, it gives a temporary slowing in the land-temperature rise. But another very possible change in ocean circulation patterns would be a shift or shutoff of one of the north-south circulation loops. If that happens.... well.... then they're going to start saying the "Alarmists" were overly optimistic. No one can even guess at the odds of that, so scientists focus on the known-knowns of the total amount of warming and sea level rise.
I suspect a lot of AGW denialists are also Evolution deniers
Indeed, there is a heavy overlap. Furthermore there's a well established correlation between conspiracy theories in general. Someone who believes in one conspiracy theory is more likely to believe in others. Anti-vaxxers and moon-landing deniers are more likely to be warming-deniers or creationists, creationists and warming-deniers are more likely to be anti-vaxxers or moon-landing deniers. Oh... and toss in 9/11 Truthers of course.
Once you start believing NASA/Doctors/Biologists/Climatologists/Geologists or whoever are in on some vast global conspiracy of deception, it's easy to expand and merge the conspiracies.
I don't like societies transformed by government mandate never been a society successfully "transformed by science"
Lead was eliminated from gasoline (and our air) by government mandate. The same goes for keeping mercury and other crap out of our water.
So either agree that it is reasonable and appropriate for the government to restrict/prohibit the usage of the atmosphere/waterways as an unlimited dumping ground for industrial waste, or go move to some communist country toxic hellhole city in China or Russia where society polluting HASN'T transformed by government mandate.
Here, you use the old tired fallacy of Argumentum ad populum (appeal to widespread belief, bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) - where a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many people believe it to be so.
No, he wasn't using Argumentum ad populum. An example of Argumentum ad populum fallacy would be "Most of the general public believe global warming is scientifically controversial, therefore global warming is scientifically controversial".
He was using Argument from Authority, and as he was citing expert climatologists on an issue of climatology, he was using it in a non-fallacious manner.
The "bandwagon" says eating lead paint chips causes brain damage in children. And if you think effectively unanimous agreement of experts in a field and decades of research and thousands of peer reviewed papers and an entire planet of scientific evidence "bandwagon" is a SANE justification to reject something, then clearly your parents actively avoided the lead-paint-chip-bandwagon when you were a child.
Genuine global mean temperature data, continuous coverage from 1965 to 2013.5, no tricks or manipulation other than cherrypicking 5 dates to split it into 6 cooling trends. The graph was inspired by recent claims that warming has stopped, it's a perfect illustration of how utterly fictional that claim is.
Does anyone have any info on what sort of tech this company is using? From the little info in the article I get the impression they are using satellite images? I'm rather skeptical that surface images can pick up elemental signals from the sea floor at substantial depth.
Or flip the view: A towering bank undercut by a small church.
----------------------
In the intersection between religion and the modern world Religion razes grandeur to the ground for 20 pieces of silver. In the intersection between religion and the modern world Religion refuses to budge from barren historical ground. In the intersection between religion and the modern world A towering bank undercut by a small church nearly kills us.
There is no if. There is no 100%. "If" is anti-vaxism. "100%" is antivaxism.
Real world data from a multitude of studies by a multitude of independent professionals show that vaccines are something like a hundred or a thousand times safer than any random food item. There is no "if" there. There is no "100%" there. Vaccines are safer than food.
ad hominem attacks
Ad hominem means "against the person". More specifically, an ad hominem attack is an argument that someone's statement is false, or should be ignored, because the person is bad.
When the argument is "don't listen to her, she's a nasty ugly bitch", that's ad hominem.
When the argument is "she's repeating stuff that was shown to be fraudulent research, and her claims have been exhaustively proven false, therefore she is wrong" is not ad hominem.
Proving her wrong, and then concluding she's a bad person because she's wrong, is not ad hominem.
Getting angry at her after she is proven wrong is not ad hominem.
Throwing gratuitous insults at her, after she is proven wrong, calling her an ugly bitch or whatever, after she is proven wrong, is not ad hominem. Gratuitous insults certainly add nothing to a debate, BUT THERE'S NO DEBATE HERE. On one side you have data and science and evidence, and on the other side you have an irrational social movement - fear based on a fraud all flying around a rumor mill of conspiracy theories and ignorance. "Don't take your child for their routine medical checkup, I heard the doctor is a pedophile! Don't take your child to any doctor for a routine medical checkup, you don't want to risk that doctor is part of the vast secret pedophile-ring that I hear is running the American Medical Association".
Heck even the huge Wakefield thing was handled like someone who was trying to cover up bad behavior.
Your description of events is rather inaccurate.
Wakefield was being directly paid to do his "research" by a lawyer looking to file a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. Wakefield drew up a business plan, with figures for how many tens of millions of dollars a year could be brought in by marketing a competing vaccine Wakefield established a contract with the medical school where he was working, requiring them to conceal the source of his funding, prohibiting them from disclosing his involvement with a pharmaceutical company. Walkfeild established a contract with that pharmaceutical company requiring his involvement to be kept secret - secret specifically until he would be able to cash out on stock options. Wakefield preformed "research" which, on later investigation, was found to be entirely fraudulent. In order to publish his research the Journal REQUIRED the disclosure of things like the source of his funding and relevant business plans or involvement with pharmaceutical companies. In order to get his fraudulent study published in the Journal he fraudulently denied the existence of any financial conflicts of interest. Countless legitimate scientists, a ton of valuable medical research money and research resources, were all WASTED trying to replicate the fraudulent Wakefield paper. It resulted in massive confirmation that the original claims were fictional and that vaccines were extremely safe. And then the specific investigation revealing exactly how Wakefield's original work was fraudulent.
And if things had ended there, all of this would be a pretty insignificant non-story. But things didn't end there.
We got a melting-pot that took on a life of it's own. We got the news media hyping an insignificant "research study" based on an insignificant patient sample, a paper which had not yet been confirmed (and which would turn out to be fraudulent). And in the melting pot we got parents of autistic children DESPERATE for any explanation why their kids have autism. And in the melting pot we got the kooks whom no one usu
It seems there's a portion of the population that will compulsively latch onto hear-say and pseudoscience nonsense and conspiracy theories, no matter what we do. Maybe we should just accept that. Just deal with it and make the best of things.
I've got this totally scientific evidence that autism is caused by the ink in lottery tickets. The ink doesn't affect adults, but the chemicals stick to your fingers. Then when you touch your kids the chemicals get absorbed through their skin and disrupt their developing brains. My kid was perfectly healthy one morning, and at a routine checkup that afternoon my child was diagnosed with autism! And the only thing that happened in between was that I bought lottery tickets and hugged by child! You can't imagine how devastating that is to a parent, unless of course you're a parent who bought a lottery ticket and immediately had their child diagnosed with autism.
Have the so-called "scientists" tested the lottery ticket ink? HELL NO! The government rakes in millions of dollars on lottery tickets! Scientists all want grant money (our money taken in taxes!) to do their research. And is the government going to give them money if the government doesn't like the results of that research! OF COURSE the scientists are going to be biased and tow the government line.
I am not anti-lottery-tickets. I just want to reduce the ink and reduce the toxins. Lottery tickets are fine when the government proves that that new ink ensures no children will get autism. If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want their kid to have autism, or whether they'd choose to pass up on a lousy lottery ticket, well duh they'll pass up on the lousy lottery ticket.
What parent would ever knowingly risk giving their child autism? It's unthinkable! It's just not worth the risk.
Now will somebody please explain to me why people shouldn't listen to this particular celebrity but we should all listen to and shout hosannas to the rogue's gallery of celebrities James Cameron got to spout off in his global warming movie.
Because the percentage of scientists who say anti-vax is nonsense is within a rounding error of 100%, and because the percentage of scientists who say global warming is real and serious is within a rounding error of 100%.
(Not that I know jack squat about James Cameron's movie, but the question was why one celebrity voice would be credible while another would not be. A celebrity who doesn't speak French, but who accurately recites a French dictionary, is backed by the full credibility of that dictionary.)
The tone was intended to be playfully humorous. I called you a "dick" for the sole purpose of invoking the "right and a dick" thing in a self-referential manner. "Whistling innocently" was my best effort to hang a guilty-of-mischief hat on it.
No, I'm pretty sure the use of zealots here refers to those who are so fanatically devoted to their position that they'll inevitably drive people away from the truth, due to their overbearing assholishness.
Calling people "overbearing assholes" makes you a total dick.
FWIW, it is possible to be right without being a dick about it.
I know nothing about the merits (or lack of merits) of a "European schedule" vs any other schedule, but reading your post all I can think is...
People are screaming that flowers attract fairies and fairies are eating children's brains, to which you reply: "Just plant European bushes outside the schools. European flowers don't attract fairies."
And Democrats are quick to paint distorted pictures of Republicans, because it serves their political gain.
Distorted picture? Seriously? Republicans fought a major legislative war to... literally.... take food out of the mouths of hungry children. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, feeding children in poverty through no fault of their own, Republicans wanted to slash it by $40 billion, and did slash it $9 billion. I could go on and on about the appalling impact of other Republican policies, but that right there, literally fighting to take food out of the mouths of hungry children, is so wildly egregious to establish the Republican model of compassion. Taking food out of the mouths of hungry children. Taking fucking food out of the mouths of hungry children. At that point, virtually the only way to "paint a distorted picture" would be drag in Nazis or something.
The evidence that Republicans have compassion is easy to find, look at their donations to charity.
I've seen the figures, and they don't support your claim.
Republican tax deductible giving is indeed higher, but you and I both know that tax deductible doesn't equal charity. Charity is giving to benefit other people, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, treating the sick, donating to research to cure diseases for the benefit all mankind, and so on.
A group of people buying themselves a clubhouse is tax deductible if you call the building a "church", hiring people to run that clubhouse and preform services for themselves is tax deductible if you call those services "religious services". But you and I both know that any money that goes towards buildings or goods or services for oneself is not charity. If someone gives $300 to their church, and only 3% of the church budget goes to feeding the homeless, then that's really only $9 given to charity and (tax deductible but non-charitable) $291 dollars buying a building and services for oneself.
The money given to buy themselves a church and buy themselves religious services cuts into disposable income, it cuts into the money Republicans give to charity.
Republicans have higher tax-deductible giving, but lower charitable giving.
How perceptive of you, picking up on the subtle persecution. Yep, because 6 and a half days a week the Slashdot community is wall-to-wall Odin worshipers.
Slashdot Mirror
What a bizarre argument. You confirm every single point of the case proving AGW, and you counter by citing that atmospheric CO2 only goes up half as fast as we dump CO2 into the atmosphere. This is something that has been long known and factored in by scientists. As long as atmospheric CO2 is going up then you're concurring that the AGW case has been established, and you're merely pointing out that in a fictional world without natural CO2 sinks the CO2 increase would have been twice as fast, a fictional world that would have had faster and more severe warming.
Basically you're saying the effect is real and proven, but it's only half as big as I imagine it could have been, therefore it doesn't exist? Huh?
-
It has been known for years, probably decades, that gene frequencies follow this mathematical rule, and that it has been mathematically proven optimal for solving Multi-armed bandit type problems. Each generation genes are tested by natural selection, and increase or decrease in frequency according to multiplicative increase or decrease. This is a mathematically optimal strategy for exploring and optimizing payoff in a complex unknown environment. Mutation creates random stuff to try, and this mathematically selection algorithm optimally crafts it into useful new information.
-
The problem isn't that someone can inject a fraudulent signal that does bad things. The problem is that THE OFFICIAL BROADCAST SIGNAL can include code that does bad things.
Just because code is part of a TV broadcast doesn't mean you should trust it. Just because code is part of a TV broadcast doesn't mean it should be able to hijack your stored internet credentials and automatically log into your account on any website, and take actions on those websites as if they were you, modify the content you see on those other sites, shouldn't be able to log into your web accounts as you, scan and phone-home a copy of all of your personal information accessible on that account. It shouldn't be able to spy on your activity and report it back. It shouldn't be able to scan and attack other devices on your home network.
Fucking asshats. They design a system with forty-two layers of DRM-enforcement security, but any signal that's part of the broadcast is given automatic authority to do anything it wants, given overriding authority against the TV owner's privacy and security.
What ever happened to products designed around the wants and needs and interests of the buyer, so that people will want to buy your product rather than your competitor's? These pieces of shit are obviously designed to serve and protect broadcasters, regardless of the owner's interests.
-
There's a semi-famous SciFi story first published in a 1990 edition of OMNI magazine:
THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT
Quite relevant, and quite funny.
Someone also made a seven and a half minute film of the story. It has a few cute video aspects, but overall it didn't come off so well and it's missing a few lines. I definitely recommend the original text link above rather the video version, but here's the video link anyway.
-
Maybe you were infected by a stray creationist meme, chuckle.
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Can we get a Star Trek like movie but instead of meeting human looking weirdos in outer space, let's meet species that look really weird, yet make friends with us and we commnunicate.
I can imagine a world without war, a world without hate, a world where everyone lives together in peace. I can imagine us attacking that world.
-
"everyone thinks this" is not always the best argument for something
It's a damn sight better than "all the experts think that, therefor I'm going to spin a wild conspiracy theory and believe the opposite!"
-
The Slashdot population leans heavy on the tech and science geek side, people who are generally pretty good at finding reliable websites like the National Academy of Science, and secondary websites that reasonably reflect reliable mainstream science.
Usually.
Except when it comes to fucking climate change, when suddenly a substantial portion of our population buy into some wacky conspiracy theory that the entire mainstream science community is in on some conspiracy to publish lies, and they start actively rejecting the fucking United States National Academy of Science as presumptively unreliable, and instead start digging up random blatantly trash websites that gain "reliable" status when they see that the info supports the "right" side of the issue. And you start running into "climate" papers cited to support a point - papers filled with blatant errors - and when you google the author's name to try to figure out what sort of idiot wrote it, it turns out the author wasn't a climate scientists at all..... no... the author was a "combustion engineer".... and then you think "WTF is a combustion engineer" and you find the link to his professional page you see (drumroll please) he's a combustion engineer specializing in how to burn coal better. And you can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. Because the otherwise competent geek you were debating with fell into paranoid conspiracy nonsense throwing out everything he knows about reliable science, and rejecting sites like the National Academy of science as "unreliable".... and instead found himself a "reliable" junksite that said what he wanted to hear.
You can use reliable sites to figure out what to believe, or you can use what you believe to determine which websites are reliable. One of those two options doesn't work so well.
-
I could point out that in 20 years of tracking the climate you'd EXPECT typically one result breaking the 95% confidence band on the high side and one result breaking the 95% confidence band on the low side.... and that I'm pretty sure we broke the 95% confidence band on the high side in 1998... but never mind that....
The whole warming thing is basic undeniable laws of physics. Sunlight shines down, hits the ground or ocean, and turns into heat. And basic laws of physics, CO2 blocks thermal infrared energy from leaving. Heat energy is trapped, Q.E.D. the basic principal and basic fact of global warming is an absolute undeniable result of basic laws of physics. The only complicated part is exactly what will happen with that trapped thermal energy. Where will it go and what will it do.
Surface temperatures have been rising slightly slower than predicted for the last few years, however the ocean temperatures have been rising faster than predicted for the last few years. That means the total warming balances out right just as expected. As I said, basic laws of physics, a pretty well predictable amount of heat energy was trapped, exactly as predicted.
The complicated part is how that heat energy will flow in the climate system and what abnormal effects it will produce in climate system. And just as we (in general) expected, it resulted in random anomalies in climate circulation - there was anomalously high rate of ocean mixing carrying more of the heat energy into the deep ocean.
The earth is warming exactly as expected, and weird random shit is starting to crop up in climate circulation patterns, just as anticipated. (I believe Donald Rumsfield would call these "Known Unknowns. We can predict that the climate is going to start doing weird shit we've never seen before, even if we can't predict exactly what that random shit is going to be. The overall heating of the Earth is a pretty well Known Known.)
Changes in ocean circulation is a core expected "unknown". The slight increase in vertical mixing we got is pretty insignificant, it gives a temporary slowing in the land-temperature rise. But another very possible change in ocean circulation patterns would be a shift or shutoff of one of the north-south circulation loops. If that happens.... well.... then they're going to start saying the "Alarmists" were overly optimistic. No one can even guess at the odds of that, so scientists focus on the known-knowns of the total amount of warming and sea level rise.
-
Physics actually can answer it to some degree
The laws of physics aren't PROVEN! They're JUST THEORIES!
Checkmate, warmists.
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I suspect a lot of AGW denialists are also Evolution deniers
Indeed, there is a heavy overlap. Furthermore there's a well established correlation between conspiracy theories in general. Someone who believes in one conspiracy theory is more likely to believe in others. Anti-vaxxers and moon-landing deniers are more likely to be warming-deniers or creationists, creationists and warming-deniers are more likely to be anti-vaxxers or moon-landing deniers. Oh... and toss in 9/11 Truthers of course.
Once you start believing NASA/Doctors/Biologists/Climatologists/Geologists or whoever are in on some vast global conspiracy of deception, it's easy to expand and merge the conspiracies.
-
I don't like societies transformed by government mandate
never been a society successfully "transformed by science"
Lead was eliminated from gasoline (and our air) by government mandate. The same goes for keeping mercury and other crap out of our water.
So either agree that it is reasonable and appropriate for the government to restrict/prohibit the usage of the atmosphere/waterways as an unlimited dumping ground for industrial waste, or go move to some communist country toxic hellhole city in China or Russia where society polluting HASN'T transformed by government mandate.
-
Here, you use the old tired fallacy of Argumentum ad populum (appeal to widespread belief, bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) - where a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many people believe it to be so.
No, he wasn't using Argumentum ad populum.
An example of Argumentum ad populum fallacy would be "Most of the general public believe global warming is scientifically controversial, therefore global warming is scientifically controversial".
He was using Argument from Authority, and as he was citing expert climatologists on an issue of climatology, he was using it in a non-fallacious manner.
The "bandwagon" says eating lead paint chips causes brain damage in children. And if you think effectively unanimous agreement of experts in a field and decades of research and thousands of peer reviewed papers and an entire planet of scientific evidence "bandwagon" is a SANE justification to reject something, then clearly your parents actively avoided the lead-paint-chip-bandwagon when you were a child.
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How's this for cherry picking: The Earth has been on a cooling trend every year since 1965.
Genuine global mean temperature data, continuous coverage from 1965 to 2013.5, no tricks or manipulation other than cherrypicking 5 dates to split it into 6 cooling trends. The graph was inspired by recent claims that warming has stopped, it's a perfect illustration of how utterly fictional that claim is.
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Does anyone have any info on what sort of tech this company is using? From the little info in the article I get the impression they are using satellite images? I'm rather skeptical that surface images can pick up elemental signals from the sea floor at substantial depth.
-
Or flip the view:
A towering bank undercut by a small church.
----------------------
In the intersection between religion and the modern world
Religion razes grandeur to the ground for 20 pieces of silver.
In the intersection between religion and the modern world
Religion refuses to budge from barren historical ground.
In the intersection between religion and the modern world
A towering bank undercut by a small church nearly kills us.
-
if 100% of vaccines are 100% safe
There is no if. There is no 100%.
"If" is anti-vaxism.
"100%" is antivaxism.
Real world data from a multitude of studies by a multitude of independent professionals show that vaccines are something like a hundred or a thousand times safer than any random food item.
There is no "if" there. There is no "100%" there. Vaccines are safer than food.
ad hominem attacks
Ad hominem means "against the person". More specifically, an ad hominem attack is an argument that someone's statement is false, or should be ignored, because the person is bad.
When the argument is "don't listen to her, she's a nasty ugly bitch", that's ad hominem.
When the argument is "she's repeating stuff that was shown to be fraudulent research, and her claims have been exhaustively proven false, therefore she is wrong" is not ad hominem.
Proving her wrong, and then concluding she's a bad person because she's wrong, is not ad hominem.
Getting angry at her after she is proven wrong is not ad hominem.
Throwing gratuitous insults at her, after she is proven wrong, calling her an ugly bitch or whatever, after she is proven wrong, is not ad hominem. Gratuitous insults certainly add nothing to a debate, BUT THERE'S NO DEBATE HERE. On one side you have data and science and evidence, and on the other side you have an irrational social movement - fear based on a fraud all flying around a rumor mill of conspiracy theories and ignorance. "Don't take your child for their routine medical checkup, I heard the doctor is a pedophile! Don't take your child to any doctor for a routine medical checkup, you don't want to risk that doctor is part of the vast secret pedophile-ring that I hear is running the American Medical Association".
Heck even the huge Wakefield thing was handled like someone who was trying to cover up bad behavior.
Your description of events is rather inaccurate.
Wakefield was being directly paid to do his "research" by a lawyer looking to file a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers.
Wakefield drew up a business plan, with figures for how many tens of millions of dollars a year could be brought in by marketing a competing vaccine
Wakefield established a contract with the medical school where he was working, requiring them to conceal the source of his funding, prohibiting them from disclosing his involvement with a pharmaceutical company.
Walkfeild established a contract with that pharmaceutical company requiring his involvement to be kept secret - secret specifically until he would be able to cash out on stock options.
Wakefield preformed "research" which, on later investigation, was found to be entirely fraudulent.
In order to publish his research the Journal REQUIRED the disclosure of things like the source of his funding and relevant business plans or involvement with pharmaceutical companies. In order to get his fraudulent study published in the Journal he fraudulently denied the existence of any financial conflicts of interest.
Countless legitimate scientists, a ton of valuable medical research money and research resources, were all WASTED trying to replicate the fraudulent Wakefield paper. It resulted in massive confirmation that the original claims were fictional and that vaccines were extremely safe. And then the specific investigation revealing exactly how Wakefield's original work was fraudulent.
And if things had ended there, all of this would be a pretty insignificant non-story. But things didn't end there.
We got a melting-pot that took on a life of it's own. We got the news media hyping an insignificant "research study" based on an insignificant patient sample, a paper which had not yet been confirmed (and which would turn out to be fraudulent). And in the melting pot we got parents of autistic children DESPERATE for any explanation why their kids have autism. And in the melting pot we got the kooks whom no one usu
<Jenny McCarthy>
My child didn't eat a tuna steak 5 minutes before he was diagnosed with autism!
</Jenny McCarthy>
-
It seems there's a portion of the population that will compulsively latch onto hear-say and pseudoscience nonsense and conspiracy theories, no matter what we do. Maybe we should just accept that. Just deal with it and make the best of things.
I've got this totally scientific evidence that autism is caused by the ink in lottery tickets. The ink doesn't affect adults, but the chemicals stick to your fingers. Then when you touch your kids the chemicals get absorbed through their skin and disrupt their developing brains. My kid was perfectly healthy one morning, and at a routine checkup that afternoon my child was diagnosed with autism! And the only thing that happened in between was that I bought lottery tickets and hugged by child! You can't imagine how devastating that is to a parent, unless of course you're a parent who bought a lottery ticket and immediately had their child diagnosed with autism.
Have the so-called "scientists" tested the lottery ticket ink? HELL NO! The government rakes in millions of dollars on lottery tickets! Scientists all want grant money (our money taken in taxes!) to do their research. And is the government going to give them money if the government doesn't like the results of that research! OF COURSE the scientists are going to be biased and tow the government line.
I am not anti-lottery-tickets.
I just want to reduce the ink and reduce the toxins. Lottery tickets are fine when the government proves that that new ink ensures no children will get autism.
If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want their kid to have autism, or whether they'd choose to pass up on a lousy lottery ticket, well duh they'll pass up on the lousy lottery ticket.
What parent would ever knowingly risk giving their child autism? It's unthinkable! It's just not worth the risk.
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Now will somebody please explain to me why people shouldn't listen to this particular celebrity but we should all listen to and shout hosannas to the rogue's gallery of celebrities James Cameron got to spout off in his global warming movie.
Because the percentage of scientists who say anti-vax is nonsense is within a rounding error of 100%,
and because the percentage of scientists who say global warming is real and serious is within a rounding error of 100%.
(Not that I know jack squat about James Cameron's movie, but the question was why one celebrity voice would be credible while another would not be. A celebrity who doesn't speak French, but who accurately recites a French dictionary, is backed by the full credibility of that dictionary.)
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The tone was intended to be playfully humorous. I called you a "dick" for the sole purpose of invoking the "right and a dick" thing in a self-referential manner. "Whistling innocently" was my best effort to hang a guilty-of-mischief hat on it.
C'est la vie, c'est la internet.
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No, I'm pretty sure the use of zealots here refers to those who are so fanatically devoted to their position that they'll inevitably drive people away from the truth, due to their overbearing assholishness.
Calling people "overbearing assholes" makes you a total dick.
FWIW, it is possible to be right without being a dick about it.
::whistles innocently and wanders away::
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I know nothing about the merits (or lack of merits) of a "European schedule" vs any other schedule, but reading your post all I can think is...
People are screaming that flowers attract fairies and fairies are eating children's brains, to which you reply:
"Just plant European bushes outside the schools. European flowers don't attract fairies."
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And Democrats are quick to paint distorted pictures of Republicans, because it serves their political gain.
Distorted picture? Seriously? Republicans fought a major legislative war to ... literally .... take food out of the mouths of hungry children. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, feeding children in poverty through no fault of their own, Republicans wanted to slash it by $40 billion, and did slash it $9 billion. I could go on and on about the appalling impact of other Republican policies, but that right there, literally fighting to take food out of the mouths of hungry children, is so wildly egregious to establish the Republican model of compassion. Taking food out of the mouths of hungry children. Taking fucking food out of the mouths of hungry children. At that point, virtually the only way to "paint a distorted picture" would be drag in Nazis or something.
The evidence that Republicans have compassion is easy to find, look at their donations to charity.
I've seen the figures, and they don't support your claim.
Republican tax deductible giving is indeed higher, but you and I both know that tax deductible doesn't equal charity. Charity is giving to benefit other people, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, treating the sick, donating to research to cure diseases for the benefit all mankind, and so on.
A group of people buying themselves a clubhouse is tax deductible if you call the building a "church", hiring people to run that clubhouse and preform services for themselves is tax deductible if you call those services "religious services". But you and I both know that any money that goes towards buildings or goods or services for oneself is not charity. If someone gives $300 to their church, and only 3% of the church budget goes to feeding the homeless, then that's really only $9 given to charity and (tax deductible but non-charitable) $291 dollars buying a building and services for oneself.
The money given to buy themselves a church and buy themselves religious services cuts into disposable income, it cuts into the money Republicans give to charity.
Republicans have higher tax-deductible giving, but lower charitable giving.
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How perceptive of you, picking up on the subtle persecution.
Yep, because 6 and a half days a week the Slashdot community is wall-to-wall Odin worshipers.
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