Well, first off, you, as a person of faith, fail to recognize you're talking to two separate people, so that's a start.
Secondly, as you've noted, there are many very impressive people who profess religious faith. This doesn't really change the fact that they're embracing a fairy tale, however. So, insofar as I can separate what they do from what they believe, I don't see a problem. And of course you shouldn't forget that there have been terrible things done by people of faith, as well as great things.
But really, why would you expect to be taken seriously when you openly admit to incredible beliefs? How seriously would you take someone who prayed to Mother Goose, or to Paris Hilton? The fact that your cult has been around for 2000 years (you mentioned Sunday mass, so I'm assuming some Christian denomination) is impressive, but it doesn't make you any more credible. I support your right to believe whatever you want, but if you're going to reject rationality in favor of myth and superstition, then don't expect to be taken seriously.
Love for one another, generosity of spirit, and awe in the face of nature are all admirable traits for mankind to embrace. I look forward to the day when we can do so without being driven to it with the threat of divine wrath.
Well, speaking to you as a person of faith, you seem to lack the wit to notice you're talking to two people, so that's a start. Secondly, perhaps it's a bit strong to say 'look down on,' because certainly, there are plenty of professedly religious folks who have done impressive things by any standard. But that doesn't make their absurd beliefs any less absurd, and there have been as many awful things done by people of faith as there are great things. There are folks who think Osama bin Laden has done some pretty impressive things in the name of faith.
Really, how seriously do you expect to be taken when you embrace religion? How much credence would you give one of the Branch Davidians, or a Scientologist? The fact that your whacky club has been around 2,000 years may be impressive, but it doesn't make it any more credible than any other organization that promises to give the meaning of life to all the good little followers who line up to drink the Kool Aid.
Morals, kindness, generosity of spirit and wonder at nature are all excellent qualities for mankind to embrace. I look forward to the day when we can do it without needing ancient superstitions based on divine whim.
Without getting down into the epistemology of it, of course there has to be some kind of first principles on which other beliefs are based. It's like Descartes second meditation (I think): it's possible that I'm really asleep right now, with a demon just manipulating me to think I'm sitting at my computer, typing, but if I assume the demon, how can I come to any firm conclusions about what's real and what's not? I can only proceed on the basis that the things I recognize as 'facts' really are facts.
And why shouldn't I look down on someone who holds beliefs that are no more real to me than a child's game of make believe? You'd probably regard someone who thinks a TV is magic as ignorant; why should I believe any different of someone who invokes a supernatural entity to explain the rest of the world, given that my understanding of things doesn't require it?
Every society that's ever worshiped any deity believed they were worshipping the right guy, and in the right way. So what could be more ludicrous than to watch a church, or a synagogue, or a mosque full of people totally commited to the idea that _they_ finally, of all earth's people, have finally got it all figured out?
I'm not an environmental testing expert, but would perfumes really be considered particulates? You'd have to have a pretty damn fine filter to screen out that stuff.
Who suggested that schizophrenia was some kind of mental weakness? Unlike, say, some of the milder affective disorders, where you might argue that it's a nonpathological variation in behavior, most people with schizophrenia are obviously malfunctioning. This runs the gamut from the ones with predominantly positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, aggressive tendencies) to the ones with a more negative/cognitive bias (no motivation, no feelings of pleasure or engagement with the real world).
You don't just will yourself out of real schizophrenia, and anybody suggesting otherwise is ignorant.
If your apartment is as easily broken into as your car, you might want to move. Most people, by the time they're 22, realize it's not a good idea to keep valuable stuff in your car. And if he didn't feel safe taking the stuff back to his apartment, then the proper response would have been to refuse to take them. If it were me, I'd at the very least want some kind of paper trail indicating my exact instructions, and I'd have kept my eyes on the thing until I was able to return it.
So the intern doesn't deserve to be singled out; there's plenty of blame to go around. On the other hand, though, he's still kind of an idiot.
I'm not blaming genetics for obesity--while it may play a role, as someone else pointed, it doesn't matter how fat your genes are--if you're not bringing in a caloric excess, then there's nothing to make fat out of. The obesity crisis in the US is almost certainly a product of many factors; changes in what we eat and how we spend our time probably sum it up pretty well. An epidemic of genetic 'mutation' is probably not a realistic guess.
Nor did I suggest that thinness is currently regarded as attractive only because fatness has been more common. I'd probably argue that the same force (evolution of behavior) is acting in both cases. In medieval times, when malnutrition was common, a fulled-bodied look signaled good health and the availability of plenty of food. In women, it was a sign that they'd bear healthy children. As a result, heavier people were more desirable and therefore seen as more attractive. In the modern developed world, though, malnutrition isn't a problem; obesity is. People (at some level) recognize that a 400lbs person probably isn't in good health to produce and care for offspring, and so they are regarded as undesirable relative to someone more fit. In both cases, we are driven to choose mates whose appearance indicates health and vitality. So even if the average American was 300lbs, thin actresses would probably still be favored over heavier ones.
I'm not equiped to discuss the size differences between actresses of the 1970s versus today, although there is that old anecdote about Marilyn Monroe being 'chunky' by today's standards. In this case, the difference between American then and America now is smaller, so you wouldn't necessarily see as large a change as from the aforementioned Boticelli.
you're correct, insofar as this trial pretty much destroys the notion that the tower radiation causes immediately detectable symptomology. But this doesn't assess the possible long term effects of the radiation. To play devil's advocate, suppose that the tower radiation does make you sick. These people enroll in a trial to test the effect of radiation, and because they already believe the radiation is effecting them, they're more prone to the power of suggestion than the control group, which leads them to believe they can feel it when the tower is active.
So, there's no link between radiation and short term worsening of symptoms, but this study doesn't disprove a possible longer effect. That would require a long term epidemiological study, a few of which have been done already.
I would say that because of the double blind control, it's clear that the radio signals are not causing the intensification of symptoms that patients report when they believe the signals are on--clearly, they can't tell the difference whether the tower is active or not. But this study doesn't show that long term exposure to the cell towers doesn't cause problems.
For what it's worth, I think it's all a lot of BS, but let's not overstate the evidence of any one experiment.
"If aversion to obesity isn't genetic, then why is there 'a genetic predisposition to obesity'?"
What are you even asking? The GP's point is that preferences for mate size vary by culture. As he points out, in previous times when starvation was more of a threat, heavy was more attractive than skinny (within limits, of course--as you point, even in a starving society, Jabba the Hutt is going to be pretty unappealing). Conception of what's attractive is pretty fluid, though--in the early 20th century (in America, at least) the ideal woman had a body like a teenaged boy, with minimal curves. Nowadays most men would regard that as unappealing in favor of somebody with more curves. So yes, a woman considered attractive in one time might not be so in another, depending on societal preferences, which will in turn depend on environmental factors. But this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the existence or nonexistence of a genetic propensity to obesity.
Wait, so you mean to say the author of the self-described 'best webpage in the universe' wrote an article that employs exaggeration and hyperbole to produce humor at the expense of accurate reporting? That bastard!
Maybe you should look at some of the other articles on the site. The one about proper child-beating techniques for parents should make it clear that it's intended to be taken as tongue in cheek, rather than a factual account of how to raise kids.
Have any trials been done on using the laser to fill a snide professor's house with popcorn? There could be a big market for this among the college crowd.
I guess the reasonable response would have to be that Snape is the exception to the rule (Slughorn as well, I suppose, though he's certainly displayed a certain moral flexibility that raises questions). But if I wanted to be argumentative, I'd point out that even Snape's supreme act of goodness was something he worked to conceal during his life--he didn't want anyone to know he was working to protect Lily's son. Only in death could he accept others knowing that he wasn't the bastard he appeared to be--he only becomes clearly good in death.
I'd also probably argue that seeing the Malfoys 'love' for each other as being redemptive probably only works in a story where the real villain is so purely evil that he feels no positive emotion toward even his most loyal supporters. I did like Malfoy's appearance in the epilogue; one amusing book review I read commented that if Malfoy really wanted to distance himself from the evil of his past, he probably should have named his kid 'Eddie' or 'Bill' instead of 'Scorpius.' Good stuff.
Maybe it's just personal taste, but I couldn't disagree with you more about the strength of this ending relative to the Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower books felt complete to me; we knew how the characters had wound up, and we had a sense of what lay before them, even if it wasn't a part of the story we would be privy to.
Deathly Hallows, on the other hand, left SO much unmentioned. So, fine, Harry and Ginny get married, and so do Ron and Hermione. But what about everything else? How does the Wizard world react to this second war? Does the lack of wizard regard for other forms of magical life (which was exploited to great effect by Voldemort) change? What happens to the "rounded up" Death Eaters--back to Azkaban? In short, given that Rowling's strength was in her ability to create such a huge and realized world, she really failed to provide any sense of the big picture in her ending. It felt half done.
In what way do the Malfoys redeem Slytherin? What we see, time and time again (the first chapter, the brief period in Malfoy Manor, and the end) we see that Lucius and Narcissa care only about their own family and are willing to sell out anyone who they have to in order to protect themselves. This certainly makes them ideal Slytherins, but it hardly seems to redeem them. Meanwhile, Draco is the only one of them with the courage of his convictions to go after Harry & Co. again and again, even though his family has lost favor (or more likely, BECAUSE his family has lost favor).
No, if anything, the last book seems to make it pretty clear that the only good Slytherin is a dead Slytherin. Which is disappointing, because you'd think if the house warranted a place at Hogwarts, at least some of the students there would have some nobility. But alas.
Okay, but what's the alternative? Forget college, go straight to work, and over time develop marketable skills? That's reasonable, but what about the fact that most employers don't even want to look at you if you haven't got a degree? What kind of options (or, once I'm hired, how much upward mobility) do I have without that little piece of paper?
One of my good friends right now dropped out of college after a year and he's gone on to be ridiculously successful, far moreso than anyone I know who actually graduated. But not everybody has his brilliance/determination/background; for those folks, not having a degree can be really crippling. So, while it may be crooked, for a lot of folks it may be the only game in town.
"It doesn't help the students, and it doesn't seem to me to help society."
Until the MAFIAA decides to make an example of UoK by suing the hell of out them for not taking sufficient measures to eliminate illegal downloading using their bandwidth, at which point the state (read, publicly funded) school will probably be fined, which certainly doesn't help them in their mission of educating students. And while the policy may be draconian, your suggestion that being able to download copyrighted material illegally is in some way necessary to the "overall positive development of the students" seems a bit far-fetched.
Don't get me wrong, I would be pissed if I went to UoK right now, but but provided that the rule is ministered with a little intelligence, I can't really argue it's unfair for them to enforce the rules, particular when the school can be held liable if they fail to do so.
...which is pretty much exactly what the article says. Because the game involves 'doing' and not 'watching' you're pretty much forced to deal with the warts firsthand. While it might be funny to watch the actors knock over cardboard graves in 'Plan 9 From Outer Space,' it would annoy the hell out of me if I went to jump onto a platform in a game and fell through it. As a result of this forced interaction, bad tends to be bad, rather than being funny.
Though I'd submit there are games that embrace the B-movie mindset. Take 'Earthworm Jim,' for example. It played well, but the concept was absurd and the game was packed with gags and inexplicable weirdness. Or 'Zombies Ate My Neighbors': great game, but with a story ripped straight for a direct to video monster flick. These would be like the 'Grindhouse' of games: executed with skill, but in the spirit of something much sillier and more low brow.
I think there was a spoof video that featured several rocks and a pair of scissors. Not only did that not blend, but after about 10 seconds the scissors punched a hole in the side of the blender and went flying out. Of course, they might not have been using the official Blendtec blender, so this is purely speculative.
To be fair, though, one of my friends has tons of people on her Facebook page, and when I called her on it, she pointed out that a lot of random classmates/friends of friends/desperate guys sent her friend requests, and she would rather take the low cost step of adding them as a friend, rather than rejecting them and generating ill will. I guess you could classify that as insecurity, but personally I think it's a normal social reaction, given that it takes pretty much no effort/energy/thought to add someone as a friend.
And to be fair, I didn't mention the possible subsitution effect that might be produced by broadly eliminating bacteria of a certain sort. For example, there was a paper published recently (Annals of Internal Medicine, I think) that found that since the use of Pneumococcal vaccine became common in a particular Inuit population, the overall rate of infection has decreased, but the rate of infection with a more serious serotype often requiring hospitalization has gone up. Killing off the annoying, but moderately nasty bug has opened a niche for a new, potentially nastier one to come in. There's probably still a positive offset in terms of infection prevented (particularly due to the herd effect) but it's still an unintended, harmful side effect.
So, yeah, we're in agreement: no magic bullets for this one.
Slashdot Mirror
We have to fight the enemy in Second Life so we don't have to fight them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here!
ACTUAL bad guys learning and practicing their horrific murder skills in a virtual environment?
Somewhere, Jack Thompson just got a chubby.
"So why should you look down on people of faith?"
Well, first off, you, as a person of faith, fail to recognize you're talking to two separate people, so that's a start.
Secondly, as you've noted, there are many very impressive people who profess religious faith. This doesn't really change the fact that they're embracing a fairy tale, however. So, insofar as I can separate what they do from what they believe, I don't see a problem. And of course you shouldn't forget that there have been terrible things done by people of faith, as well as great things.
But really, why would you expect to be taken seriously when you openly admit to incredible beliefs? How seriously would you take someone who prayed to Mother Goose, or to Paris Hilton? The fact that your cult has been around for 2000 years (you mentioned Sunday mass, so I'm assuming some Christian denomination) is impressive, but it doesn't make you any more credible. I support your right to believe whatever you want, but if you're going to reject rationality in favor of myth and superstition, then don't expect to be taken seriously.
Love for one another, generosity of spirit, and awe in the face of nature are all admirable traits for mankind to embrace. I look forward to the day when we can do so without being driven to it with the threat of divine wrath.
Well, speaking to you as a person of faith, you seem to lack the wit to notice you're talking to two people, so that's a start. Secondly, perhaps it's a bit strong to say 'look down on,' because certainly, there are plenty of professedly religious folks who have done impressive things by any standard. But that doesn't make their absurd beliefs any less absurd, and there have been as many awful things done by people of faith as there are great things. There are folks who think Osama bin Laden has done some pretty impressive things in the name of faith.
Really, how seriously do you expect to be taken when you embrace religion? How much credence would you give one of the Branch Davidians, or a Scientologist? The fact that your whacky club has been around 2,000 years may be impressive, but it doesn't make it any more credible than any other organization that promises to give the meaning of life to all the good little followers who line up to drink the Kool Aid.
Morals, kindness, generosity of spirit and wonder at nature are all excellent qualities for mankind to embrace. I look forward to the day when we can do it without needing ancient superstitions based on divine whim.
Without getting down into the epistemology of it, of course there has to be some kind of first principles on which other beliefs are based. It's like Descartes second meditation (I think): it's possible that I'm really asleep right now, with a demon just manipulating me to think I'm sitting at my computer, typing, but if I assume the demon, how can I come to any firm conclusions about what's real and what's not? I can only proceed on the basis that the things I recognize as 'facts' really are facts.
And why shouldn't I look down on someone who holds beliefs that are no more real to me than a child's game of make believe? You'd probably regard someone who thinks a TV is magic as ignorant; why should I believe any different of someone who invokes a supernatural entity to explain the rest of the world, given that my understanding of things doesn't require it?
Every society that's ever worshiped any deity believed they were worshipping the right guy, and in the right way. So what could be more ludicrous than to watch a church, or a synagogue, or a mosque full of people totally commited to the idea that _they_ finally, of all earth's people, have finally got it all figured out?
I'm not an environmental testing expert, but would perfumes really be considered particulates? You'd have to have a pretty damn fine filter to screen out that stuff.
Who suggested that schizophrenia was some kind of mental weakness? Unlike, say, some of the milder affective disorders, where you might argue that it's a nonpathological variation in behavior, most people with schizophrenia are obviously malfunctioning. This runs the gamut from the ones with predominantly positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, aggressive tendencies) to the ones with a more negative/cognitive bias (no motivation, no feelings of pleasure or engagement with the real world).
You don't just will yourself out of real schizophrenia, and anybody suggesting otherwise is ignorant.
If your apartment is as easily broken into as your car, you might want to move. Most people, by the time they're 22, realize it's not a good idea to keep valuable stuff in your car. And if he didn't feel safe taking the stuff back to his apartment, then the proper response would have been to refuse to take them. If it were me, I'd at the very least want some kind of paper trail indicating my exact instructions, and I'd have kept my eyes on the thing until I was able to return it.
So the intern doesn't deserve to be singled out; there's plenty of blame to go around. On the other hand, though, he's still kind of an idiot.
I'm not blaming genetics for obesity--while it may play a role, as someone else pointed, it doesn't matter how fat your genes are--if you're not bringing in a caloric excess, then there's nothing to make fat out of. The obesity crisis in the US is almost certainly a product of many factors; changes in what we eat and how we spend our time probably sum it up pretty well. An epidemic of genetic 'mutation' is probably not a realistic guess.
Nor did I suggest that thinness is currently regarded as attractive only because fatness has been more common. I'd probably argue that the same force (evolution of behavior) is acting in both cases. In medieval times, when malnutrition was common, a fulled-bodied look signaled good health and the availability of plenty of food. In women, it was a sign that they'd bear healthy children. As a result, heavier people were more desirable and therefore seen as more attractive. In the modern developed world, though, malnutrition isn't a problem; obesity is. People (at some level) recognize that a 400lbs person probably isn't in good health to produce and care for offspring, and so they are regarded as undesirable relative to someone more fit. In both cases, we are driven to choose mates whose appearance indicates health and vitality. So even if the average American was 300lbs, thin actresses would probably still be favored over heavier ones.
I'm not equiped to discuss the size differences between actresses of the 1970s versus today, although there is that old anecdote about Marilyn Monroe being 'chunky' by today's standards. In this case, the difference between American then and America now is smaller, so you wouldn't necessarily see as large a change as from the aforementioned Boticelli.
you're correct, insofar as this trial pretty much destroys the notion that the tower radiation causes immediately detectable symptomology. But this doesn't assess the possible long term effects of the radiation. To play devil's advocate, suppose that the tower radiation does make you sick. These people enroll in a trial to test the effect of radiation, and because they already believe the radiation is effecting them, they're more prone to the power of suggestion than the control group, which leads them to believe they can feel it when the tower is active.
So, there's no link between radiation and short term worsening of symptoms, but this study doesn't disprove a possible longer effect. That would require a long term epidemiological study, a few of which have been done already.
I would say that because of the double blind control, it's clear that the radio signals are not causing the intensification of symptoms that patients report when they believe the signals are on--clearly, they can't tell the difference whether the tower is active or not. But this study doesn't show that long term exposure to the cell towers doesn't cause problems.
For what it's worth, I think it's all a lot of BS, but let's not overstate the evidence of any one experiment.
"If aversion to obesity isn't genetic, then why is there 'a genetic predisposition to obesity'?"
What are you even asking? The GP's point is that preferences for mate size vary by culture. As he points out, in previous times when starvation was more of a threat, heavy was more attractive than skinny (within limits, of course--as you point, even in a starving society, Jabba the Hutt is going to be pretty unappealing). Conception of what's attractive is pretty fluid, though--in the early 20th century (in America, at least) the ideal woman had a body like a teenaged boy, with minimal curves. Nowadays most men would regard that as unappealing in favor of somebody with more curves. So yes, a woman considered attractive in one time might not be so in another, depending on societal preferences, which will in turn depend on environmental factors. But this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the existence or nonexistence of a genetic propensity to obesity.
Wait, so you mean to say the author of the self-described 'best webpage in the universe' wrote an article that employs exaggeration and hyperbole to produce humor at the expense of accurate reporting? That bastard!
Maybe you should look at some of the other articles on the site. The one about proper child-beating techniques for parents should make it clear that it's intended to be taken as tongue in cheek, rather than a factual account of how to raise kids.
Have any trials been done on using the laser to fill a snide professor's house with popcorn? There could be a big market for this among the college crowd.
I guess the reasonable response would have to be that Snape is the exception to the rule (Slughorn as well, I suppose, though he's certainly displayed a certain moral flexibility that raises questions). But if I wanted to be argumentative, I'd point out that even Snape's supreme act of goodness was something he worked to conceal during his life--he didn't want anyone to know he was working to protect Lily's son. Only in death could he accept others knowing that he wasn't the bastard he appeared to be--he only becomes clearly good in death.
I'd also probably argue that seeing the Malfoys 'love' for each other as being redemptive probably only works in a story where the real villain is so purely evil that he feels no positive emotion toward even his most loyal supporters. I did like Malfoy's appearance in the epilogue; one amusing book review I read commented that if Malfoy really wanted to distance himself from the evil of his past, he probably should have named his kid 'Eddie' or 'Bill' instead of 'Scorpius.' Good stuff.
Maybe it's just personal taste, but I couldn't disagree with you more about the strength of this ending relative to the Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower books felt complete to me; we knew how the characters had wound up, and we had a sense of what lay before them, even if it wasn't a part of the story we would be privy to.
Deathly Hallows, on the other hand, left SO much unmentioned. So, fine, Harry and Ginny get married, and so do Ron and Hermione. But what about everything else? How does the Wizard world react to this second war? Does the lack of wizard regard for other forms of magical life (which was exploited to great effect by Voldemort) change? What happens to the "rounded up" Death Eaters--back to Azkaban? In short, given that Rowling's strength was in her ability to create such a huge and realized world, she really failed to provide any sense of the big picture in her ending. It felt half done.
In what way do the Malfoys redeem Slytherin? What we see, time and time again (the first chapter, the brief period in Malfoy Manor, and the end) we see that Lucius and Narcissa care only about their own family and are willing to sell out anyone who they have to in order to protect themselves. This certainly makes them ideal Slytherins, but it hardly seems to redeem them. Meanwhile, Draco is the only one of them with the courage of his convictions to go after Harry & Co. again and again, even though his family has lost favor (or more likely, BECAUSE his family has lost favor).
No, if anything, the last book seems to make it pretty clear that the only good Slytherin is a dead Slytherin. Which is disappointing, because you'd think if the house warranted a place at Hogwarts, at least some of the students there would have some nobility. But alas.
Okay, but what's the alternative? Forget college, go straight to work, and over time develop marketable skills? That's reasonable, but what about the fact that most employers don't even want to look at you if you haven't got a degree? What kind of options (or, once I'm hired, how much upward mobility) do I have without that little piece of paper?
One of my good friends right now dropped out of college after a year and he's gone on to be ridiculously successful, far moreso than anyone I know who actually graduated. But not everybody has his brilliance/determination/background; for those folks, not having a degree can be really crippling. So, while it may be crooked, for a lot of folks it may be the only game in town.
"It doesn't help the students, and it doesn't seem to me to help society."
Until the MAFIAA decides to make an example of UoK by suing the hell of out them for not taking sufficient measures to eliminate illegal downloading using their bandwidth, at which point the state (read, publicly funded) school will probably be fined, which certainly doesn't help them in their mission of educating students. And while the policy may be draconian, your suggestion that being able to download copyrighted material illegally is in some way necessary to the "overall positive development of the students" seems a bit far-fetched.
Don't get me wrong, I would be pissed if I went to UoK right now, but but provided that the rule is ministered with a little intelligence, I can't really argue it's unfair for them to enforce the rules, particular when the school can be held liable if they fail to do so.
So, the innocent have nothing to fear? That's completely reassuring.
I wonder that myself, particularly because UoK is a state school. But IANAL, so who knows?
...which is pretty much exactly what the article says. Because the game involves 'doing' and not 'watching' you're pretty much forced to deal with the warts firsthand. While it might be funny to watch the actors knock over cardboard graves in 'Plan 9 From Outer Space,' it would annoy the hell out of me if I went to jump onto a platform in a game and fell through it. As a result of this forced interaction, bad tends to be bad, rather than being funny. Though I'd submit there are games that embrace the B-movie mindset. Take 'Earthworm Jim,' for example. It played well, but the concept was absurd and the game was packed with gags and inexplicable weirdness. Or 'Zombies Ate My Neighbors': great game, but with a story ripped straight for a direct to video monster flick. These would be like the 'Grindhouse' of games: executed with skill, but in the spirit of something much sillier and more low brow.
I think there was a spoof video that featured several rocks and a pair of scissors. Not only did that not blend, but after about 10 seconds the scissors punched a hole in the side of the blender and went flying out. Of course, they might not have been using the official Blendtec blender, so this is purely speculative.
To be fair, though, one of my friends has tons of people on her Facebook page, and when I called her on it, she pointed out that a lot of random classmates/friends of friends/desperate guys sent her friend requests, and she would rather take the low cost step of adding them as a friend, rather than rejecting them and generating ill will. I guess you could classify that as insecurity, but personally I think it's a normal social reaction, given that it takes pretty much no effort/energy/thought to add someone as a friend.
And to be fair, I didn't mention the possible subsitution effect that might be produced by broadly eliminating bacteria of a certain sort. For example, there was a paper published recently (Annals of Internal Medicine, I think) that found that since the use of Pneumococcal vaccine became common in a particular Inuit population, the overall rate of infection has decreased, but the rate of infection with a more serious serotype often requiring hospitalization has gone up. Killing off the annoying, but moderately nasty bug has opened a niche for a new, potentially nastier one to come in. There's probably still a positive offset in terms of infection prevented (particularly due to the herd effect) but it's still an unintended, harmful side effect.
So, yeah, we're in agreement: no magic bullets for this one.