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Can everyone please dial it back a notch? I understand COVID is a heated subject with strong opinions on both sides. I don't want to be deleting posts, banning people, locking threads etc, but this shit is spilling out all over the forum with arguments following from one thread to another. This is a music discussion forum which has general discussion on the side but it's sliding into a politics forum which overwhelms the other topics and drives other people away. Personally, I'd ban it altogether but that's not what people want so I haven't done it. There's countless other places online to engage in this level of discussion. The internet in general has turned into a place where it's impossible to tell what's real/satire/trolling and I'm starting to see the same thing here. If you want to disagree/debate then do it with some integrity instead of posting insults and slurs.

It puts me in an impossible situation where if I take any action I'm stifling free speech or part of some big cover-up. If I do nothing then everything devolves into shit and I'm enabling or encouraging extremist beliefs. I'm aware this forum has already gained a somewhat negative reputation for some of the stuff which gets posted here without getting deleted. It's becoming clear the "very little moderation" approach isn't working, or at least isn't compatible with the kind of forum I want to be responsible for running.

I got called out on this before so I'm going to do it in public this time: KC, I've already given you a warning and explained I've given you a chance with a 2nd account. If you continue, you will be banned again and further accounts will not be allowed. Again, you're welcome to discuss your opinions or beliefs, but you're going to have to post them in a more civil manner. You're not the only person responsible, but you are the biggest shit-stirrer.

For the trolls: please stop trolling. For everyone else: please stop feeding the trolls. Everyone please take a step back and take a breath before engaging in back-and-forth internet arguments. If things don't calm down, the only way forward is to hand out warnings/bans, or shift all these threads to a new section where everyone is free to argue amongst themselves.

Fair enough man.
It was me who bought this all back up so I suppose I'm to blame.
It wasn't my intent to cause bother or put you in a sticky situation.

I was trying to keep it civil but I can see your point of view, its gotten a bit out of hand.
No more of that.

Sorry man, and thanks a million for your efforts with the forum.
It's a great forum and I certainly don't want to cause it, or you, any harm.

There's one group of people in this world who have no chance of understanding complex things like mRNA vaccines: those with 19th century views on race 

Sure jews are not a race man, they are an ethnoreligious group.

(I'm just havin a bitta craic here by the way)

Jews of european descent are also not semites.

(Still havin a bitta craic)

I'm genuinely surprised you didn't find Rogan funny if that elicited no less than 5 lol emojis out of ya

Sorry, that last post was in response to this, I messed it up.

You might want to read my post again...

Your moronic antisemitism went uncommented but not unnoticed, but if you insist 

Nothing antiseptic about pointing out a paid gatekeeping shill.

     "antiseptic"     

Ah thats funny as fuck man.
I'm still laughing about it. Can't believe I never thought of it myself.

    

You might want to read my post again...

Your moronic antisemitism went uncommented but not unnoticed, but if you insist 

Nothing antiseptic about pointing out a paid gatekeeping shill.

     "antiseptic"     

Never seen any of his podcast but I have come across bits of his ....ahem..."comedy"..... and I remember thinking that in future, if I wanted dietry advice I would seek him out.

AI controlled autonomous weapon systems.

It doesn't get much more dystopian than that.

I know fuck all about AI.

From what I understand the idea is to have AI make decisions.

Where's the accountability then?

Who is accountable when It makes the wrong decision?

One of the big problems in this world is a lack of accountability, I can't see how introducing even less accountability is going to improve things.

Heres a question for ya man..

To what extent does ones personal discernment affect how they interpret a study?

Massively. But...

For instance, if two scientists of equal qualification and standing read a study, and draw entirely opposing conclusions, how does one decide which is right?
Or are they both right?

...that's why a well-designed study doesn't leave things open to questions of interpretation. Data can be interpreted in various ways. But a data-analysis study (typically) proposes an interpretation of available data on the basis of a shared methodology which anyone with the sufficient know-how can apply to the same data themselves.

Scientific disagreements with such a study are objective disagreements (empirical or methodological) with a given interpretation and resulting analysis of the data, not different interpretations of the study. A study that can be "interpreted" in various ways is an inconclusive study. Which exist, but then they are merely calls for more studies and that is there only meaningful conclusion: more to do.

A scientist who disagrees with the conclusions of a study will/should be able to explain, in objective empirical or statistical terms, why they think these conclusions represent either a flawed or (more often) partial analysis of the data, or (even more often) why a given conclusion is something that their analysis of the data (whether or not this analysis of the data is flawed or partial) doesn't actually bear out: a conclusion that goes beyond the evidence. Going from correlation (e.g. rise in vaccinations temporally correlated to rise in excess deaths) to causation (e.g. vaccines are causing excess deaths) is going beyond the evidence, independently of whether or not that correlation is in the data. Further analysis may find such a causal link, but that doesn't make any prior study which concluded causality from correlation any less poor scientific practice. Omitting crucial data preparation steps (e.g. not dividing excess death population into vaccinated vs unvaccinated) is one way partial analysis occurs. Perhaps most importantly, a scientific disagreement will contain a description of what should have been done or what should be done with the data instead.

So the distinction between "different interpretations" and "scientific disagreements" is very much an extension of the distinction between "opinion" and "hypothesis": different interpretations are expressed in opinions; scientific disagreements are expressed in testable hypotheses (ultimately testable, to be precise, since sometimes a hypothesis is based on observations which are not yet available or even possible, e.g. as with something like the Higgs boson: hypothesized in 1964, finally observed in 2012, technologically speaking not even observable for most of the interim).

If you want to look into a case study of how much of a cluster-fuck this all is when it comes to epidemiology, read up on the history of demonstrating that smoking is carcinogenic. And, especially, the history of the kind of resistance this conclusion was met with after it had achieved scientific consensus, including from "renegade" scientists, many of whom were being paid handsomely or just wanted the attention.
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Ah fair play man, thanks a million.
Thats all very reasonable.

I've been overestimating my own discernment, and underestimating the amount of flim flam.

Christ it's a minefield.
It's almost as if one would require some type of training or qualification to navigate it safely.

Re. Smoking.
Tobacco leaves are hairy and sticky.
As such, they are prone to picking up airbourne particles.

As a result, if the tobacco you are smoking is grown near, say, an industrial area it will contain more carcinogenic compounds than tobacco grown in a cleaner environment, which I imagine should be taken into account in scientific studies.

I've convinced myself Amber Leaf is grown on top of a spotlessly clean mountaintop somewhere and nobody will convince me otherwise.

I do often wonder what type of gom falls for these charlatans.

No need to wonder, they'll make a point of letting you know

I know one person IRL whos fallen into this general sinkhole. Its quite sad to see him slowly isolate himself as people one by one grow tired on the endless shite and weird superiority attitude that comes along with alot of this shite.

Read a study recently where people who believe in this nonsense do feel "superior", as in they have knowledge the rest of us don't have.
It feeds into a humans need to feel special or validated i think. I was like that when I was younger. Id play music to impress people. Not i play it for the enjoyment it gives me.
I know I'm on a tangent here but I firmly believe the ones getting caught up in this need to learn to appreciate themselves as they are, ask themselves where they want to go and start doing positive things to achieve that. Instead of looking to blame someone or something. Anyway tangent over.

I don't disagree with this either.

But just for fun, and because I'm a bit of a dick .......

Do you not think you have knowledge that they don't have, which in turn makes you feel superior? 

From what I've read, and Christ I don't know what or who to believe any more, there is a large increase in all type cancers globally over the last few years.

Shake the processed food, sedentary deliveroo lifestyle, fucking vapes and explosion in obesity tree and see if there's a correlation. Nothing happens in isolation.

I get ya man. And I don't disagree with ya one bit.
Those fucking vapes, I'm a smoker myself and I wouldn't touch the fucking things.

Didn't we always have a high rate, if not the highest rate of cancer in the EU, even before the vaccine?

Yeah, we did man.

I'm not saying for a minute there was no cancer around here pre vaccine.

All I can tell ya is its gone out of hand the last few years.

From what I've read, and Christ I don't know what or who to believe any more, there is a large increase in all type cancers globally over the last few years.

Thats why I'm trying to understand the science.

The antivax/COVID restrictions group are looking for vindication. That they were right all along. They need someone to be held to account or fall on their sword. Stats and data are being cherry picked to try and conjure up this person/people. COVID was varying degrees of shit for everyone. There's no shame in admitting that while the powers that be didn't get everything right, they did more good than harm. They were never going to get it perfect. There weren't, as Simon Harris said, 18 previous COVID events, and doctors, immunologists etc had to adapt in a swiftly changing environment. The problem is people are unable to accept and admit that they were wrong.

It was a shit time for everyone. Nobody enjoyed it. I just think everyone should put it in the rear view window instead of trying to find "gotcha" pieces of (mis)information.

I see your point of view there man and I don't disagree with most of it.

In the last 5 years around me there has been a literal explosion of cancer.

All types, all ages.
Maybe its radon, maybe its the water, maybe its maybeline. I don't know.

What I do know is it coincided with the vaccine rollout.
I don't know that the vaccine caused it, thats what I'm trying to get to the bottom of.

My brother in law, perfectly healthy, took the vaccine and ended up in hospital a week later on a heart monitor.
When he bought It up that it should be reported as a vaccine injury he was as good as mocked.

Those are just two of the reasons why I'm intrested in this.

Something  isn't right.

As I said before, it isn't about I'm right, you'r wrong, with me.

It's genuine concern.

It would appear you are correct man.

I was duped, I did let my emotions get the better of me and failed to do my due diligence.

You'r like spock ya cunt.

I concede that point, and do so happily, with a little bit of my faith in humanity restored.

Thanks man.

Man.

The point here is'nt whether the vaccines do, or do not cause misscarriage.

The point is that Fauci thought they did, and still went out in public and said they didn't.

I'm sorry man, but that is by any metric, and this is not a word I use often, evil.