Several years ago, at the beginning of 2016, on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe forums, there was a thread about driverless cars. All the skeptics were going on about how great it was going to be, how it will be here in two years, five years at the most, how we will overcome all the “small” problems by 2017, maybe 2019 at the latest, blah, blah. And at the time, I had told them, well, you may want to hold on a while, its not quite as easy as you think. And how was that met? By a barrage of insults, of you ridiculous troll, what do you know about anything, if you wouldn’t be so ignorant and just learn, can we just block this guy moderator, on and on it went… (typical skeptic fare).
That thread was viewed 117,000 times. There was exactly ONE person who was adamant that their time frames were wrong, that we still have a long way to go. And boy, they sure didn’t like that. Looking back now at the litany of nonsense the skeptics spewed kind of makes me laugh now. Its the same nonsense you see here at TSZ every day. Now, in 2020, some of the most ardent skeptic cheerleaders have reluctantly finally started to admit, ok, yea, you was right, it was a a lot harder than we all said.
That site is propagated by a whole host of computer programmers, professors, tech experts…and not ONE of them was even close in their predictions. And me, oh I am just a dumb rice farmer, what do I know.
Well, I knew one thing, that’s for sure. And that is, that when someone calls themselves a skeptic, and then starts preaching about all they know about the world, take that with the largest grain of salt you can find. Skeptics are a cult. They don’t think for themselves, they team up with some club narrative, and go around chanting, we are skeptics, rah, rah, close your mind and believe. Its pervasive. It spreads to academia, and to the church leaders like Degrasse Tyson, Shermer, Krauss, Coyne, the Novellas, and out it goes. Rarely do we get the chance to see just how closed minded and simply wrong these preachers are, because they will never admit it. But the driverless cars in five years evangelists, its one easy example where you can see how nutty their group-think is. And how empty their cult actually is of dissenting voices that actually think.
I guess the main reason is that, if a person is actually curious and actually free thinking about the world, they would never, in a million years, label themselves a “skeptic.”
J-mac brought up evolution in response to my one-liner about the failure of ID in perfecting the system. But for that to be relevant, there would need to be some kind of genetic system, with differential replication.
Not a talking point. A position against the anti-vaxxer bullshit. When people understand what vaccines are about and how they work they have to be pretty much angered by the anti-vaxxer misinformed imbecility.
I doubt that Louis Pasteur, or any other of those who saved so many lives when they developed vaccines, ever wrote for the huffington post.
Don’t be an idiot phoodoo. Vaccines might not be not 100% safe, but they’re much much much safer than the alternative. Horrible deaths have been prevented, and the anti-vaxxer movement will bring more of those horrible deaths. I’ve seen a few of those already. It’s not pretty.
Well, I’m a skeptic… of “evolution” as you well know. Also a believer in God. Also a free thinker, liberal, and progressive. Only not of the fake kind. Why do you think others own those labels?
At midseason, flu vaccine yields 45% protection in US, 58% in Canada
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/midseason-flu-vaccine-yields-45-protection-us-58-canada
There is contradiction here, no?
What do yah mean???
For once (apart from the ‘no true Scotsman’ of ‘fake kind’), I agree with you. People take far too much umbrage at the name of this site, or the associations of the term. I don’t think it was ever intended that the Skeptical Zone should exclude scepticism of mainstream science. Far from it.
I have to agree pretty much entirely here. There will indeed always be ambiguous situations, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, rapidly changing situations beyond reasonable anticipation, etc. I suppose there could be a sort of driving Turing test, to see if the software can handle such situations as well as an experienced human driver, but of course experienced human drivers die in traffic accidents all the time. But humans are perceived to have accidents (that is, circumstances beyond their control), while I think the public will always blame driverless accidents on the software and sue the manufacturer.
I also agree that vaccination effectiveness varies with individuals, and having a vaccine is half the battle, herd immunity is the other half. Both are required to protect a community. It’s probably coincidence that symptoms of autism show up about the age when MMR vaccines are administered, but parents want to blame something, and that idiot Wakefield gave them a target.
Finally! We agree on someting… 😁
You made my day, flint!
Thank you!
BTW:
The only little problem I have with vaccines is that identical twins, who were vaccinated at different times, because one of them was sick (flu or something) the latter is less likely to develop autism, but it’s not enough to make a claim, as there aren’t enough documented cases I know about…
I’d like to congratulate you phoodoo for being right. Once.
😉
When you have a traffic accident, there is generally an individual who you can blame, and whose actions you can evaluate and judge. If it is an autonomous vehicle, that is not the case, and instead you may have 10, 50 or a thousand, or 10,000 people who could be at fault.
Take the accident I showed on youtube, of the Tesla just slamming right into the back of a street sweeper on the highway. Who is to blame? The software developer, the hardware developer, the auto company, the person who named the technology, the person who decided to release the technology when it wasn’t ready…
The guy is dead and there are a lot of people at fault. If you can’t hold people responsible for their actions, that becomes a big problem.
You’re describing the internets.
Any particular words you had trouble with?
Flint,
Wakefield ended up on the “Conspira-sea” cruise as its ‘biggest name’, rubbing shoulders with all manner of purveyors of flakery.
My own family had a bit of a set-to over our third child. My wife (a biochemistry graduate like myself) initially resisted the vaccine. I wasn’t best pleased.
Rereading the ‘Conspira-sea’ piece, I enjoyed this:
Sounds familiar …
She obviously had a reason for resisting the vaccine.
But if you read the mainstream media, there could never be ANY reason for resisting vaccines. “Vaccines are God. Anyone resisting vaccines is clinically insane. You should have vaccines for breakfast everyday. And at least two for dinner. Heck through in a few vaccines into your drinking water everyday. All hail the vaccine!”
Provide a list of legitimate reasons to avoid vaccines then.
Citation please.
You talk like an anti-vaxxer. Provide the list I asked for and we’ll see, right?
Could you provide a citation from a legitimate authority where it is claimed that vaccines are 100% safe?
If you google ‘are vaccines 100% safe’ the first link that comes up is this:
https://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/detection/immunization_misconceptions/en/index2.html
And the second is this:
https://www.livescience.com/57488-vaccine-safety-numbers.html
So, once again an ID proponent states a claim that nobody actually makes and then bashes down that strawman.
I don’t expect you to actually provide evidence that 100% safety is claimed, you seem not too keen on backing up your statements with actual evidence as demonstrated in that thead.
Are you asking me, or Allan Millers bio-chemist wife?
Answer or not, it’s up to you. Provide those citations where it’s claimed vaccines are 100% safe. Or not, it’s up to you.
Did Allan Millers bio-chemist wife make claims in this thread and OP or was that you?
Remind me on what basis you claim that the FBI uses PSI ‘all the time’? Or run away. It’s up to you.
When you ask stupid questions, you are unlikely to get an answer.
First Allan’s wife (a bio-chemist) had reservations about their child getting vaccines. Oh, that’s interesting, don’t you think (not you think, don’t people who think think?) . Gee let’s try to understand why!
Second, you then go off on a tangent about anyone saying vaccines are 100% safe, and then you say the first link you found on Google (you figured out how to use Google, congratulations) takes you to a site about the six most common misconceptions about vaccines. Well, that was really fascinating, thank you for that oh so meaningless diversion. I only point that out to emphasize why your questions are so stupid, and unworthy of answers.
One still is left to wonder if you are claiming they are safe, they aren’t safe, or if you are just trying to walk on some dumbass tightrope of your own making. I won’t investigate any further to figure out which it is.
Now, if you would like to know about what the FBI does, maybe you can apply to get a job there. If, instead, you were hoping that you could try out your new found Google skills, and find out everything about the FBI through your first ten search results, and sit in bewildered fog wondering why you can’t find out everything they do online, well, again, you have just made another dumbass tightrope, that I am not going to play with you on.
But in conclusion, so the listeners aren’t too confused by your confusion, if vaccines were 100% safe, then probably not very many educated bio-chemists would have a problem using them. If they aren’t 100% safe, then it should be easy to find out just how unsafe they are. Instead we have your lame attempts at learning Google. Ho hummm. Another day in Omagainland.
Yes, she was influenced by all the pseudo-scientific bullshit floating around at the time. Particularly one vegan friend (not that there’s anything wrong with veganism per se) and her sister (a doctor, but one who has variously espoused astrology and crystal energy… ***). Wakefield’s research has been discredited and he’s been struck off. A study of 650,000 found no difference in autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated kids. Though I would be interested to see stats on the relative occurrence of complications from viral encephalitis in the two groups.
I think you are exaggerating for effect, comme toujours. Smallpox and polio are pretty much a thing of the past; vaccines are not useless. Tuberculosis is returning, due to reduced coverage.
*** This, incidentally, is an example of an ad hominem. 🤣 It does not mean ‘insult’ as commonly supposed.
Poseur! 😉
Allan Miller,
Well, then it should be fairly easy to find just exactly what the risks of vaccines are, in pure, unbiased manner. But as Allan, I think you would admit, that is not quite the case.
As our silly fool Omagain has inadvertently shown, when one looks on Google, to find ALL of the potential risks, one is most likely to end up on a World Health Organization site telling you about all the dangers vaccines DON’T have, rather then clear information telling you about the dangers that DO exist. Gee, I wonder how that happened??
Is the question “Why Skeptics Are So Full Of Hot Air?” going to be addressed at some point? Is “an opinion I disagree with must be incompetently mocked to make it go away” the answer?
phoodoo,
Yet I (also a biochemist) don’t. It’s a stand-off, in qualification terms. (I couldn’t possibly say who got the better marks! 😃)
You said that that claim was being made. I asked you who was making that claim.
Your dissembling is noted.
What are those dangers? Where are you getting your information from?
First hit
I certainly wouldn’t go to an anti-vax site for that info. Because what they would fail to tell you are the risks associated with non-vaccination. It’s a big internet problem, that any old tosh can be rendered in a plausible font and swallowed whole on equal footing with gold-standard research.
All treatments carry a risk. When I had a knee op it took a long time to bring me round after; I got the feeling there was some concern. People die on the operating table all the time. The risk is far higher than the vaccine-autism risk (indistinguishable from zero) – but we don’t see ‘anti-anaesthetic’ sites springing up. Certain causes just seem to develop legs – particularly if a juicy conspiracy can be woven in.
Are vaccines 100% safe phoodoo? If not, why? Do you have reasons?
I don’t think nor do I claim that vaccines are 100% safe. I’m interested to know who is claiming that, you say the ‘mainstream media’ is making that claim, well, citation please?
*Fixed that for you.
When YOU ask questions, you are unlikely to ever get any answers from me, that is true. But that is your own doing, because of your repeated abuse of privileges here.
phoodoo,
“Why skeptics are full of hot air” is the title of phoodoo’s OP. I presume it would answer “why are skeptics so full of hot air” at some point. Skepticism isn’t a lifestyle. You can only be skeptical of something. You can be skeptical of evolutionary theory. Phoodoo is skeptical of evolutionary theory. Is phoodoo thus full of hot air?
“A 2014 University of Minnesota study that examined autism rates in children from the Hmong, Latino and Somali communities found that both Somali and white children had autism at higher rates than the overall population’s rate of 1 in 48. For Somali children, the rate was 1 in 32, and for white children, 1 in 36.”
“Oct. 21, 2010 · The prevalence of autism and PDDNOS (with learning disability) was 0.98% (18 ⁄ 1836) in the Somali group and 0.21% (232 ⁄ 111 555) in the group of children of non-Somali origin (p<0.001). The increased prevalence remained and was now between four and five times higher in children of Somali background.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com › …
Why Autism Seems to Cluster in Some Immigrant Groups – Scientific American
Dec. 7, 2017 · (Of the total population, about 1,000 children are Somali and 31 of those children have autism .) …”
How do you explain this paradox?
My favorite, genetics:
“Between 20 and 100 genes are involved in autism, and some people have a genetic susceptibility, says Dr. Roberts, a developmental pediatrician.”
Studies have shown that among identical twins, if one child has autism, the other will be affected about 36 to 95 percent of the time. In non-identical twins, if one child has autism, then the other is affected about 31 percent of the time.
ASD as low as 36 as % among identical twins ?
What if the idantical twins are girls ???
I don’t think I really need to spell it out… Genetics is a marvelous…😉
https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-facts-and-figures
No. Dumb people hijacked those labels. Are you not thinking freely? Do you not support liberty? Do you not like progress?
This is different than ‘no true Scotsman’. Just an observation that those that hijacked those labels are in fact most often doing the opposite.
Autopilot is not a completely autonomous system. I say the driver in the car is responsible for not paying attention like a driver texting slamming in back of another car.
In the case of a car billed as completely autonomous. Which kind of fault are we talking about, legal? Tesla and the owner of the car seem first in line. All the other people you named , not seeing culpability unless they were knowingly negligent, each component might do what it is designed to do but the world is full of unknown and human errors.
In that case the driver, if he was aware of the limitations of Autopilot and if he was not his father for letting him use the car without instruction of Autopilot.
If you want to hold Tesla responsible, then it only seems fair to also give Tesla credit each time when the system was used per instruction it saved a life or injury.
In that case, those responsible both paid a heavy price.
Should I mention the case where the pediatrician had reservations about vaccine for my son (probably 18 months old or so, at that time)?
What does that even mean? You get credit for not killing people, so then what? What if your system fails, and it kills a family of five. How does that credit work?
We are not talking about praise, we are talking about legal responsibility. That can extend to a lot of people, when it is technology, rather than a person making the decision that kills people.
So if people take short cuts, or rush a product to market, or hide flaws, then many many people can be involved. Likewise, those flaws can cause many deaths, not just one.
Also consider, you have a car, that is supposed to be autonomous. Can you work on that car? Can you alter it? Can you replace parts? Can the manufacturer try to void responsibility if you change the oil?
The questions are not going to be easy.
Yea, well, I don’t know that I have firm opinion about vaccines, but at the very least I think it is problematic that you have to dig quite deeply to find out all of the risks and benefits to make the most informed decisions. This sort of publicity campaign that goes on, in which sources try to just say-look its a good idea, do it-is sort of preying on the stupidity of the general public to just trust authority without questions.
the impression I get from your comments and evasiveness in backing up your claims is that you do have a firm opinion about vaccines.
How deep do you need to find out the risks and benefits of vaccines? Is it deeper than one needs to go to find info on the risks and benefits of any other drug/treatment/therpy? How deep does one need to dig to find info on the risks, benfits, and quality control of dietary supplements?
I find the info is quite easy to find so I’m not sure why you have such difficulties. Perhaps you could elaborate on what you find so difficult about finding out info on drugs and vaccines…although I think there is little to no difference between the two categories.
Not sure what you are getting at here. Do you mean like the publicity campaign alerting the public to the highest death rate, from influenza, of children in ten years?
I would consider such public service annoucments an attempt at overcoming the stupidity of people not preying on it. What would a predatory stance on stupidity of the general public gain them? Children die of influenza because of a lack of vaccine coverage not from getting the vaccine.
I don’t think that’s true at all. I often hear about risks of vaccination. Deep digging is not needed. But, in most cases, the benefits vastly outweigh the risks.
I guess I should not leave my comment about the pediatrician hanging there.
Whenever we took our young son to the pediatrician, he broke out crying when the doctor entered the room. But on the one occasion, he did not break out crying, and instead started to have a conversation. So the pediatrician decided to postpone the shots, so as to not put him back into that crying state.
phoodoo,
Yeah. If only there was some way to hold manufacturers accountable for defective products, dammit! How about we invent one and call it “product liability“?
How do you feel about having a potentially deadly air-bag (290 dead and counting) foisted on you without your consent?
There’s a case to be made that the risks of drugs and vaccines are far more readily reviewable than those for other products. Nutritional supplements come to mind…
Or ketogenic diets…
Toast. Absolutely no-one is talking about toast. It contains loads of free radicals, which are really bad for one. It’s free radicals that are targeted by antioxidants, such as those found in miracle foods like … um … blueberries. Toast and blueberry jam’s OK I suppose. But buy my book: Stop Eating Toast, a snip at $12.99.
not to mention the benzo[a]pyrene! Don’t see any warnings on my bread wrapper about this potentially carcingenic compound. All that propaganda about bread being a healthy food is, obviously, meant to prey on the stupidity of people.
Great, can you show me the webpage?
This page
CDC recommendation for MMR
gives the risks for MMR vaccination. I found that page with a web search for “mmr vaccine”. You can try similar searches for other vaccines.
WTF? In that link you provided you see a clear and concise and exhaustive list of the possible side effects and dangers of vaccines?? Yea right.
I think you are just proving my point that the information is not easily accessible, or you just thought I wouldn’t call your bluff.
Ridiculous.
Neil Rickert,
I like this one, when it talks about who SHOULDN’T get that vaccine:
Oh yea, that’s really clear!
I sure am glad that spelled that out for the public. Now you know all you need to know about vaccines!
I don’t know where you start to look for info on vaccines or medications but I usually read the label/insert provided with the vaccine or medication for whatever particular information you are interested in.
for example the MMR II vaccine:
https://www.fda.gov/media/75191/download
As typical with these inserts there are provided references you can obtain to further educate yourself.
Yea, that’s my point.