shlant

I appreciate you stepping in to be the perfect example of the kind of thinking I'm talking about. People like you are the real enemy of progress and we are very thankful that you are so politically irrelevant.

this is not a serious rebuttal.

> they're arranged by Democratic Party insiders using spam farms

Ah yes, the tried and true "they are paid protestors" shtick. Yawn.

> The reason they're called "No Kings" is because nobody knows what that's supposed to mean.

It's very simple - Trump acts like a king, wielding his power however he wants while ignoring any checks and balances. People are very much against that for obvious reasons.

> because Democrats support oligarchs.

curious what your thoughts are on Elon Musk and DOGE

> trying to figure out different ways to yell "fuck Trump."

Yea there's no reason why anyone would have legitimate issues with Trump as a president.. He certainly doesn't provide new ones on a daily basis

> Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.

I'm not commenting on whether it's radical, just that if they had the choice between something like the ACA and nothing, many in these groups would rather have nothing. In fact, many would argue (as they would against other things they consider "incrementalism") that anything less than their demands would actually be detrimental somehow. Very much in opposition to "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". This is exemplified in the whole M4A "force the vote" nonsense.

wealth is pretty good at being a vehicle for other things humans value

if it's not perfect, it's useless or destructive is a pretty common perspective in left-wing groupthink. Some examples are how everyone to the right of a left winger is a republican/fascist/etc or that it's Medicare 4 All or nothing.

> It's a natural consequence of capitalism

Adam smith was hostile towards monopolies (which your link refers to - nothing to do with price fixing although the conclusion is the same) and his critiques being very apparent throughout Wealth of Nations. This is a common opinion with proponents of free markets.

So what specifically about capitalism makes this a "natural consequence"?

what immediately came to mind for me is something like gastown. If that is the case I think I'd agree with the auther and a parallel from pre-AI would be "using kubernetes for personal projects is a waste of time" - so much time and resources spent on something that is way overkill and in many ways just would get in the way of just shipping something, anything and then going from there.

I wonder how people (like yourself) would would feel about "un-watermarked AI-generated CSAM is illegal, but watermarked is not". Or is is your first argument irrelevant and the second one is what actually matters to you?

> Also, now that it's legal to own and consume content featuring realistic depictions of sexualized children, do you think that will lead to fewer or more children getting abused?

I'm not sure. Is the intuition that it will lead to more? because I think there are data-based arguments to the contrary.

when I read your first sentence, I was expecting what followed it to refute that argument but it didn't. Or are you saying lolicon does harm someone?

people who complain about modern art almost always know essentially nothing about art. Usually heavy overlap with those that complain about anything that is different from what they like/grew up with

no, you should go off of the preponderance of evidence. Why would we choose a report from a single country?

> The fact you won't deny it does say a lot, actually.

Yea I know you think everyone is a paid shill. Very rational, very reasonable.

> And for the last time, the existence of conspiracies in this case has been proven.

nope. Conspiracy theorists were wrong about essentially every single thing during the pandemic (as they are with almost everything).

> We know guys like Fauci deliberately misled the public because he has admitted it in writing several times.

writing in a diary at a time when information was still very much coming in and nobody really knew what was the most likely source is not a conspiracy, but keep digging!

> China cannot ever, for any reason be responsible for doing anything bad

Nope didn't say anything like that. All I said was that the motivations of China does not prove or disprove either idea about the origin.

> Before anyone goes further with you, please confirm you do not yourself get grant money to do scientific research, nor have you in the past?

You can't see that this is perfectly in line with conspiratorial thinking? You think everyone who has disagreed with you are essentially "paid shills"?

I'm good. I can see this is not going to be productive.

> there should be a trail of intermediate hosts and adjacent infections that there is zero evidence of.

just because we are missing a link does not mean it doesn't exist. Christians use similar arguments to try and disprove evolution.

> thats not representative of sarscov2. People in the same household could fail to spread infection.

so you think a single person in the lab was infected (with no evidence), and then right as they were contagious, went straight to the wet market and on the way, infected not a single person related to the lab or degrees of separation from it? this is the case you are making?

> There were early cases outside of the wet market.

no there aren't

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454?referrer...

> Id sooner believe it was a sleight of hand to cover for a terrorist attack.

that's because your way of thinking is conspiratorial and so you assume malintent with very little evidence

> But it is awfully strange

Lazy, anti-science, conspiratorial way of going about it

> When the wuhan Lab leak happened in 2019 most of my direct and indirect mainland china contacts were more or less 100% sure that this was intentionally leaked by the regime

oh well then I guess if your personal contacts were 100% sure then case closed

> I am not the user you responded to, but you are making a fairly egregious logical error. China is an authoritarian, autocratic state. It will never permit any incriminating evidence to surface.

you aren't saying anything here. "well the evidence could have been destroyed because China doesn't want it exposed" is not an argument for or against a lab leak. In fact, you and most people in these threads arguing for lab leak theory aren't providing evidence at all - you are just doing the classic "well isn't this weird"

> I find it odd that you would cite an American intelligence report right after implying that America is authoritarian and autocratic. You can't have it both ways.

I'm not sure if you just aren't engaging with what is being said or are not reading the full post - he only shared that link IN RESPONSE TO you appealing to intelligence services. Read again:

"I don't think intelligence services are equipped to do this. >>>BUT if we go by who has the better data<<<"

He is saying "well IF we ARE going by intelligence services because YOU made that argument, then what about this?"

do you realize that the entirety of the "evidence" you have presented is just hearsay? Slack messages and a diary? Seriously?

> The evidence it came from the Wuhan lab is overwhelmingly strong to the extent that anyone who believes otherwise should be suspected of motivated reasoning.

the irony

you get (rightly) downvoted for just saying nonsense.

> You can find reputable sources for either theory.

I get so tired of hearing this rationalization. It's anti-science. Not all evidence is equal and the preponderance of evidence is heavily skewed to it being zoonotic.

this is one of the leaps of faith I allude to in my top level comment - just because a bad actor is involved and would be incentivized to cover something up, doesn't mean that the lab leak theory is correct. Those two ideas are not connected.

A really easy knockdown for this kind of argument is - why did they close down, sanitize, and dispose of all animals and items at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market? If your argument is that a coverup points to the source, why wouldn't that mean the wet market was the origin?

almost nobody who understands the science and how viruses spread gives more credence to the lab leak theory over a zoonotic source. There are huge leaps of faith required by the lab leak theory that don't hold up against slight scrutiny. People will get into the weeds about "furin cleavage sites" etc. when none of that argumentation is necessary to determine the most likely source.

this feels very thought-crimey to me, but I think I'd have to actually see that chats to really decide. Like is she making plans/asking for advice? is she just talking about her feelings exactly as if it's a diary?

it's crazy how normalized spending 1k+ on a phone has become. I can't imagine paying that for a phone that is almost identical in features I care about to something 1/3 the price.

> All economic activity is a key driver to climate change

what a pointless thought-terminating cliché

> You're clearly imposing a self-serving moral judgement on other people.

Just because you are the wrong side of morality does not mean they are incorrect

your infinitesimally rare edge case is not a negation of the comment you are responding to. Also I don't think there is even any good evidence that some people have genetic heritage that means they can only eat animal foods

> That doesn't invalidate the first category even though most people in the category are in the latter.

so you solved obesity then! people just need to make better choices! Glad we have you here solving the worlds greatest mysteries

wow you figured it out! but wait.. if it's that easy why is obesity such a huge issue?