wissler

When I point out the fact that science does not mean "just trust the experts, they are experts", and the scientific method does not mean "peer review by the anointed institutional authorities", the typical reaction is revealing.

The same people who bemoan a failing trust in our scientific institutions are themselves furthering it, by adopting starkly authoritarian anti-science attitudes. They compound the problem by rabidly attacking anyone for daring to question, which is behavior more fitting to a religious dogma than to a science.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

Furthermore, the scenario here is where someone is informed of the risks/benefits, and they want to take part of a treatment plan you disapprove of. The first thing you do is dishonestly preemptively categorize it as crankishness, as if being different than the status quo ipso facto makes it nutty. This is revealing in itself. But on top of that is the fact that IT IS NOT YOUR BODY. So not only are you dishonest, you are grossly immoral.

As I said, this is a very complex issue, I can't hope to address all your points here but let me try to address an important one.

You are equating science with government enforcement of majority opinion. Think back to the time of Galileo. Why would you want to make this equation?

You want to think that times are different now, that the majority is wiser than it used to be. Why should that be so, exactly?

Imagine that leaders in the software industry could prescribe what languages were "safe" and what weren't. Imagine what that would do to innovation. Isn't it better to let people decide for themselves?

You fear that lack of regulation would lead to unnecessary harm and death. Yet, what of those who are intelligent enough to know the risks and wish to try new things, knowing the possible consequences? What of the cancer patient who is sure to die in 3 months, who wants to try a new experimental drug, but is legally barred from doing so? How can you justify this tyranny?

You wish to protect the ignorant from their own bad choices, but does this make them more intelligent or less? And what of those who are smarter than you, who know better than you, and who you have banned from doing things to help themselves? What of the future people who would have benefited from what they could have learned, that you prevented them from learning?

These are the types of questions you need to be asking yourself. You also need to stop pretending that fraud is allowed on a free market. It is not.

I don't think you know what scientific rigor is. If you did you'd realize it doesn't operate well under threats of force by bureaucracies.

In any case, this is a complex issue that can be examined and debated from various perspectives, but you're just coming in here to pimp the status quo, as if that's useful. Your kind has already won by a landslide, there's no particular point in bullying people who think you have made a mistake. A person with an actual scientific mindset might be curious about new ideas, not pretend they know everything, and bully anyone who comes to the table with new information.

By the way, you're making various presumptions about my view that are false. I never said anything in support of medical fraud or crackpots. And again, this is the kind of sloppy reasoning I've come to expect from your side of the aisle. Your arguments won't stand up to scrutiny, ergo you fabricate straw men. This in itself demonstrates something to suspect in your viewpoint.

You didn't merely make the bald-faced assertion, you were very rude about it with your snide "ftfy".

I've studied this stuff for years. I understand your status quo view, that thinks that good intentions are a substitute for philosophic rigor. Your view doesn't stand up to rational scrutiny, and it's holding all of mankind back.

Which is why you make moronic assertions unsubstantiated by logic or evidence.

Useful idiot.

Unfortunately, medical technology is not even remotely advancing exponentially.

Which is why we desperately need the government to get the boot off the necks of potential innovators and customers.

Because telcos are in bed with government. We don't really have a free market, it is virtually illegal to compete with the telcos. Some cities have tried and have been sued over it.

Yes the free market should decide, but we just don't have one. Net neutrality is an imperfect remedy at best, but letting the telcos run wild with artificial privilege isn't the answer either.

I always cringe when someone famous gets attacked by the political correctness Nazis -- usually the reaction by them is appeasement, which only makes the general cultural situation worse.

Some "science" is just warmed over religion.

Nothing on that page gives the impression that it's more than proposed feature enhancements (which in themselves may be wonderful of course), as opposed to a fundamentally novel approach to operating systems.

Most innovation is driven by at most a few individuals, but the bar is so high for a viable practical modern operating system that individuals are going to tend to take their innovation elsewhere.

This is not the ideal situation. Ideally, big companies like Microsoft or Apple would enable the right individuals to innovate in this area, unfortunately they are very bad at this. They do not know how to select these individuals, and even more importantly, leaving aside the rare likes of Elon Musk, the notion of radical innovation is rather contradictory to the institution of big business in our era.

" Strict libertarians are all about keeping our nose (and military) out of other people's business."

That depends on whether you're referring to Party Line Libertarian or a "libertarian" who is actually pro-liberty. Regarding the latter, liberty definitely condones coming to the defense of another person's liberty, regardless of borders.

Then what really happened here?

A Geiger counter is a simple, inexpensive device, and several should be present at all significant military installations and turned on at all times. Why wasn't that the case here?

This is rank cynicism. You are trashing his motives without any evidence whatsoever. And no, evidence that he is a bad manager is not evidence that he doesn't believe in what he says about Snowden.

It's obviously not the same thing. The volume of gold we can mine is virtually unlimited. And then there's the fact that in principle we can synthesize gold, who knows how good we may be come at it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals

It's interesting how gold is getting compared to BTC, since really it's nothing like BTC. If gold goes up in relative value, then that creates a strong incentive for creating more gold mines, which then drives the price down. In principle nothing prevents us from creating technology to efficiently mine asteroids if that's what we want to do. So, the supply of gold is very much not fixed.

This is of course very much unlike BTC, which has a fixed number of coins at around 21 million.

OK, this explains part of their plan:

http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/16/rethinkdb-grabs-8m-to-show...

What is their revenue model?

Copy our data without our consent. Lie about it to our representatives. But just trust us.

The ends do not justify the means; on the contrary, nefarious means imply nefarious ends.

It's really bizarre, and telling, that in this culture you're not permitted to suggest that mental health problems can be caused -- and therefore, remedied -- by personal choices.

It's not only bizarre, it's perverse and sick. No wonder mental issues are running rampant.

Judging from the downvotes, looks like I've run into an institutional dogma here.

To a large degree and for many people, mental health issues are something the individual can deal with on his own. To the extent that one can he should be urged to do so, not be put on drugs which we simply do not know all the unintended consequences of.

I know that is an unpopular sentiment in our culture but it's the truth.

To be more specific: often it's bad ideas and habits that lead to most mental health problems. E.g. if you sit around all day watching TV that's not good for your mental health. Everyone can choose to not do that, on their own, without drugs.

"What does he propose to do to demonstrate that some new way of treatment has greater safety and effectiveness than the way he desires to replace?"

His point is that they are evidently not safe.

There's good old fashioned self-discipline available for most people. I mean, just because you're having mental issues doesn't necessarily mean you can't step outside yourself and understand and assert self control.

"Laws are spider-webs, which catch the little flies, but cannot hold the big ones." -- Anarcharsis

Yes, you could be a brain in a vat.

That depends on whether by "could be" you mean "I can imagine it", or "I have evidence-based reasons to suppose it is possible."

The deeper problem here is the perverse incentive system built into the way our economy works.

As just one example: Ideally a person creating great code would benefit from it over the longer term, he wouldn't just put his heart and soul into something that gets handed over to someone who doesn't really appreciate it. And under that approach, he wouldn't stop working just because his assigned task was finished, he'd work on other things, since those too would reap him benefits.

Have you seen this?:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_...

Yet another example of how the government can use this information to "discredit radicalizers":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_...