[Winstonm]

nige1, on 2019-January-01, 18:11, said:

Some of that makes sense to me.
Rationally, there's little of which we can be certain.
For example: Science comprises currently popular models of reality -- plausible working hypotheses -- derived inductively.
With morality and ethics, we are firmly in the realms of belief.

How do you justify the morality of denying evidence-based conclusions when that denial causes harm?

[nige1]

Winstonm, on 2019-January-02, 06:50, said:

How do you justify the morality of denying evidence-based conclusions when that denial causes harm?

.
I don't. .
Does anybody?
Please would you give an example, WinstonM?

[Winstonm]

nige1, on 2019-January-02, 07:19, said:

.
I don't. .
Does anybody?
Please would you give an example, WinstonM?

Examples of How denial or disavowing of evidence-based conclusions when that denial causes harm:

Christian Scientists refusing medical treatment for their children. Jehovah's Witnesses refusing blood transfusions for themselves and their progeny. The fake meme that vaccinations cause autism. Need I go on?

If morality is part of the realm of belief, what is belief coupled with the rejection of established science? Into which realm does that fall?

[nige1]

Winstonm, on 2019-January-02, 09:13, said:

Examples of How denial or disavowing of evidence-based conclusions when that denial causes harm: Christian Scientists refusing medical treatment for their children. Jehovah's Witnesses refusing blood transfusions for themselves and their progeny. The fake meme that vaccinations cause autism. Need I go on?If morality is part of the realm of belief, what is belief coupled with the rejection of established science? Into which realm does that fall?

Yes those are relevant examples and hard to justify.
I think these people would cite selected evidence that their actions prevent harm. For example, as you point out,

in 1998, Andrew Wakefield published scientific evidence (later discredited), in the Lancet, which convinced many contemporary parents that MMR vaccines cause autism.

That is still quite a good example, however; because vaccines cause rare but severe side-effects, like anaphylaxis;
So parental decisions are about balance of risk -- not understood by all.
Unfortunately, we tend to rely on the expertise of authorities in interpreting evidence that we don't fully understand.

The history of medicine abounds with officially backed fads (e.g. blood-letting) that were debunked, much later.
In the UK, many of my contemporaries had their tonsils and adenoids removed -- ostensibly on good scientific evidence
Hence many of us are skeptics.

IMO, it's the very nature of Science that it can never be established

Morality is on an even more tenuous logical foundation.
For instance, it's hard to justify so-called Human Rights, rationally.
We are in the realm of "truths" that are "self-evident" at best.

[kenberg]

nige1, on 2019-January-03, 23:05, said:

Yes those are relevant examples and hard to justify.
I think these people would cite selected evidence that their actions prevent harm. For example, as you point out,

in 1998, Andrew Wakefield published scientific evidence (later discredited), in the Lancet, which convinced many contemporary parents that MMR vaccines cause autism.

That is still quite a good example, however; because vaccines cause rare but severe side-effects, like anaphylaxis;
So parental decisions are about balance of risk -- not understood by all.
Unfortunately, we tend to rely on the expertise of authorities in interpreting evidence that we don't fully understand.

The history of medicine abounds with officially backed fads (e.g. blood-letting) that were debunked, much later.
In the UK, many of my contemporaries had their tonsils and adenoids removed -- ostensibly on good scientific evidence
Hence many of us are skeptics.

IMO, it's the very nature of Science that it can never be established

Morality is on an even more tenuous logical foundation.
For instance, it's hard to justify so-called Human Rights, rationally.
We are in the realm of "truths" that are "self-evident" at best.

This topic could fill a whole thread.The Wakefield example both is and isn't useful. "Isn't" because the response can be "well, that was faked" and "is" because "well, science eventually corrects itself". And then we have to accept that the correction might take time, and also that there could later be a correction to the correction. The usual, and perhaps overdone, example: Whether eggs are good for us or bad for us depends on which year we are looking at. A more sophisticated example: Some very good scientists were initially skeptical of Einstein.

Science isn't perfect but as the saying goes, apparently from Hugh Keough but popularized by Damon Runyon, "The race is not always to the swift but that's the way to bet it".

Religion presents special problems. I know little about Christian Science but I can imagine a CS saying "Yes. I realize that a doctor might be able to cure a physical problem but it will be at the cost of my soul". I think that we need to be very careful about letting the state overrule parents, whether it involves religion or not, but there are times when I think we simply have to do so. Not often, but there are times. Should we be able to compel an adult to accept treatment for his/her own serious illness? I am inclined to think not, but again there are exceptions. A person with advanced Alzheimer's, for example.

A perhaps underestimated difficulty: We do not always have the time or energy to carefully look into things or think things through. I am particularly wary of statistical arguments I was once listening to a radio debate where the two combatants were citing statistics that on the face of it seemed totally incomparable. It drove me a bit nuts, but I would fault the moderator. He needed to say "Look, the numbers you are citing might both be accurate measures of something, but it is not possible that they accurately measure of the same thing. So let's get down to where you got your numbers from and what they mean." Actually one of the combatants did say something like that, at which point the other said "Well, I don't want to throw numbers at you" and then refused to further discuss the numbers. Which presumably tells us something.


Anyway, caution is good. Otoh, we do sometimes need to act, we have to make a bid or play a card, so we have to go with the best we have. That's usually science, at least if we take some care in where we get our facts and listen to thought out skepticism.

[Winstonm]

nige1, on 2019-January-03, 23:05, said:

Yes those are relevant examples and hard to justify.
I think these people would cite selected evidence that their actions prevent harm. For example, as you point out,

in 1998, Andrew Wakefield published scientific evidence (later discredited), in the Lancet, which convinced many contemporary parents that MMR vaccines cause autism.

That is still quite a good example, however; because vaccines cause rare but severe side-effects, like anaphylaxis;
So parental decisions are about balance of risk -- not understood by all.
Unfortunately, we tend to rely on the expertise of authorities in interpreting evidence that we don't fully understand.

The history of medicine abounds with officially backed fads (e.g. blood-letting) that were debunked, much later.
In the UK, many of my contemporaries had their tonsils and adenoids removed -- ostensibly on good scientific evidence
Hence many of us are skeptics.

IMO, it's the very nature of Science that it can never be established

Morality is on an even more tenuous logical foundation.
For instance, it's hard to justify so-called Human Rights, rationally.
We are in the realm of "truths" that are "self-evident" at best.

Science, by its nature, is never settled by your apparent definition of settled; at the same time, there is no continued research by science on whether or not penicillin kills certain bacteria. So I guess science thinks that argument is pretty well settled.

It is not enough to claim competing ideas make each worthwhile. While we can never "know" to a 100% certainty about anything, we still have to make choices, and evidence-based choices are the closest to "knowing" humans can accomplish.

As Ken inferred in his post, the best we can do is place our bets, and the wise course is to bet on those things about which we have the most evidence of correctness.

All of what I post I mean as personal-level choices. If each individual were to follow these guidelines in his choices, there would be no need for a government to intervene. It is when a person or group chooses to follow a belief instead of evidence that the possibility arises that those choices can affect the lives of those outside their belief system or cause harm to themselves or their progeny. Example would be parental-decision non-vaccinated children creating measles epidemics among schoolchildren. The belief-driven choice leads to government intervention.

That a rejection of scientific evidence directly works against a small-government political view should give pause to the science-doubting libertarian.

[y66]

nige1, on 2019-January-03, 23:05, said:

The history of medicine abounds with officially backed fads (e.g. blood-letting) that were debunked, much later.

From the NYT Editorial Board (Dec 28 2018):

Quote

Legislative intrusion into the womb has a long history in the United States, and nowhere is this paternalism more forceful than when illegal drugs are part of the equation. If the country’s war on drugs functions as a system of social control, that control is doubly exercised when a fetus is involved.

Today, with some notable exceptions, the nation is reacting to the opioid epidemic by humanizing people with addictions — depicting them not as hopeless junkies, but as people battling substance use disorders — while describing the crisis as a public health emergency. That depth of sympathy for a group of people who are overwhelmingly white was nowhere to be seen during the 1980s and 90s, when a cheap, smokable form of cocaine known as crack was ravaging black communities across the country.

News organizations shoulder much of the blame for the moral panic that cast mothers with crack addictions as irretrievably depraved and the worst enemies of their children. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and others further demonized black women “addicts” by wrongly reporting that they were giving birth to a generation of neurologically damaged children who were less than fully human and who would bankrupt the schools and social service agencies once they came of age.

The myth of the “crack baby” — crafted from equal parts bad science and racist stereotypes — was debunked by the turn of the 2000s. But by then, the discredited notion that cocaine was uniquely and permanently damaging to the unborn had been written into social policies and the legal code.

Hospitals that served indigent women began drug testing newborns and reporting the findings to authorities who placed children in foster care or held them in hospitals for months — sometimes based on inaccurate drug tests.

Prosecutors leveraged the myth to expand the war on drugs into the womb, charging pregnant women with serious crimes — child abuse, distributing drugs to a minor or even assault with a deadly weapon.

The Supreme Court of South Carolina took it one step farther, agreeing with the state attorney general at the time, Charles Condon, in “his assertion that a viable fetus is a person,” The Times wrote in 1998, and that “a woman who uses illegal drugs while she is pregnant can be charged with neglect, manslaughter, even murder.” Mr. Condon took pride in referring to the fetus of a crack user as “a fellow South Carolinian.”

Today, that war on the womb targets even legal drugs like antidepressants that also pose no danger to the unborn. All women who use such drugs are vulnerable. But — as during the crack epidemic — poor women are the most vulnerable.

[nige1]

Winstonm, on 2019-January-04, 09:44, said:

Science, by its nature, is never settled by your apparent definition of settled; at the same time, there is no continued research by science on whether or not penicillin kills certain bacteria. So I guess science thinks that argument is pretty well settled.

To ease communication we should try to use words with agreed or dictionary meanings. WinstonM's penicillin argument works both ways: As bacteria develop penicillin resistance. new antibiotic variants need to be developed.

Winstonm, on 2019-January-04, 09:44, said:

It is not enough to claim competing ideas make each worthwhile. While we can never "know" to a 100% certainty about anything, we still have to make choices, and evidence-based choices are the closest to "knowing" humans can accomplish. As Ken inferred in his post, the best we can do is place our bets, and the wise course is to bet on those things about which we have the most evidence of correctness.

WinstonM is right in normal circumstances To choose wisely, however, we need to understand and weigh-up evidence. That can be hard, even impossible, in real-life and in real-time. Then we have to rely on intuition, guesswork or authorities. Authorities can be biased, sometimes against our interests.

Winstonm, on 2019-January-04, 09:44, said:

All of what I post I mean as personal-level choices. If each individual were to follow these guidelines in his choices, there would be no need for a government to intervene. It is when a person or group chooses to follow a belief instead of evidence that the possibility arises that those choices can affect the lives of those outside their belief system or cause harm to themselves or their progeny. Example would be parental-decision non-vaccinated children creating measles epidemics among schoolchildren. The belief-driven choice leads to government intervention.

Government intervention isn't always benign. e.g. Groundnut mountains, Opium wars, War-time experiments on soldiers and prisoners, McCarthyism, US destruction of South American democracies and so on. The beliefs of main-stream bodies often seem less evidence-based than peripheral groups like Vegetarians, Gun-control advocates.

[nige1]

@y66 There seems to be some consensus that cocaine is bad for unborn babies and their mothers.

The Cocaine article in Wikipedia said:

Cocaine is known to have a number of deleterious effects during pregnancy. Pregnant people who use cocaine have an elevated risk of placental abruption, a condition where the placenta detaches from the uterus and causes bleeding.[57] Due to its vasoconstrictive and hypertensive effects, they are also at risk for hemorrhagic stroke and myocardial infarction. Cocaine is also teratogenic, meaning that it can cause birth defects and fetal malformations. In-utero exposure to cocaine is associated with behavioral abnormalities, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular malformations, intrauterine growth restriction, preterm birth, urinary tract malformations, and cleft lip and palate.[58]

A more blatant war on the womb paradigm might be the fad for unnecessary hysterectomies.

[Winstonm]

nige1, on 2019-January-04, 14:06, said:

Quote

To ease communication we should try to use words with agreed or dictionary meanings. WinstonM's penicillin argument works both ways: as bacteria develop resistance., new varieties of penicillin need to be developed.

You are right that bacteria evolve, but your argument does not refute the basic established science that antibiotics can kill bacteria.

Quote

To choose wisely, we need to understand and weigh-up evidence. That can be hard, even impossible, in real-life and in real-time. Then we have to rely on intuition, guesswork or authorities. Most authorities are biased, sometimes against our interests.

No system is perfect; however, isn't it better to search for knowledge rather than throw up our hands and attribute unknowns to magic?

Quote

Government intervention is rarely benign. e.g. Groundnut mountains, Opium wars, War-time experiments on prisoners, McCarthyism, US destruction of South American democracies, and so on and so on...

Again, this does not address the argument that the need for government intervention can be created at times by faith-based choices that affect others.

[kenberg]

y66, on 2019-January-04, 09:52, said:

From the NYT Editorial Board (Dec 28 2018):

Quote

The myth of the "crack baby" — crafted from equal parts bad science and racist stereotypes — was debunked by the turn of the 2000s. But by then, the discredited notion that cocaine was uniquely and permanently damaging to the unborn had been written into social policies and the legal code.

This surprises me. I was under the impression that pregnant women should forego cigarettes and alcohol, and I just assumed that if crack, or powdered, cocaine was not mentioned it was because everyone thought that this was too obvious to require saying. I recall that at some point it was said that maybe the effect of crack on the fetus was not as bad as at first thought and that it was possible to partially correct the damage, so maybe that's what is meant by debunking. I have also assumed that, for example, injection of heroin by a pregnant woman would be bad for the unborn child.
Mostly I don't get what the editorial is advocating. I would think that a serious legal effort to prevent pregnant women from using cocaine is justified. They are disagreeing? I am fine with not demonizing addicts, but they seem to be saying that it's no big deal if a pregnant woman wants to take cocaine. As I say, this surprises me. Perhaps I misunderstand, perhaps I am just wrong and no harm is done, but really I don't get it.

[johnu]

Fake outrage from GOP

They are shocked, shocked I tell you that somebody would describe Dennison accurately.

Quote

After newly sworn-in Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) pledged to “impeach that motherf**ker,” referring to President Donald Trump, during a progressive rally Thursday night, Republican lawmakers on Friday immediately turned up the outrage machine.

I have no association with Rep Tlaib but I'm pretty sure she was off her game. What? No mention that Dennison is a psychopath, pathological liar, Russian puppet, etc?

GOP Clutches Pearls Over Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s ‘Foul Language,’ Shrugs Over Trump’s

Quote

“You’ve had very foul language used,” said House GOP chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), whose dad, former Vice President Dick Cheney, in 2004 told Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to “***** yourself” while the two were on the Senate floor for a group photo.

Nothing more fake than this coming from ultra right fringe political infighter Liz Cheney.

[johnu]

Trump Repeats False Claim That Trade Deal Results In Mexico Paying For His Wall
I'll bet you didn't know this. Mexico is paying for the wall. If Mexico is already paying for the wall, why is Dennison shutting down the government and why do American taxpayers have to pay for the wall?

Quote

The president also claimed he can declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and just spend money to build a wall he promised Mexico would pay for.

Why doesn't Dennison declare a national emergency so that the government shutdown will end?

Quote

“It’s not true,” said Monica de Bolle, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, of Trump’s claim. “What it really is is American consumers paying higher prices for stuff. So it’s the American consumer who’s paying for the wall, if you want to look at it that way. It’s just total crazyland, and it’s only going to get worse.”

Quote

During the campaign, he promised a “great, great” wall made of reinforced concrete that extended so far underground that it would be impossible to tunnel underneath. In recent months, he has said the wall could just be steel slats ― which would be the “bollard fencing” that was developed during President Barack Obama’s administration.

And so high it would blot out the sun.

[Winstonm]

I'm actually glad that evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr. have made themselves clear that they are always behind Individual-1, regardless - that decision is so hypocritical that it signals the beginning of the end of their influence as they die off and can find no replacements.

[y66]

The point of the NYT piece isn't that pregnant women can smoke crack cocaine without damaging the health of unborn babies or that 1980s era drug use wasn't a serious health problem. It's that the NYT and the mainstream media took a study of 23 babies, for which the conclusions turned out to be incorrect, and blew the story out of proportion resulting in racist-fueled hysteria + legislation by Congress that mandated a 10-year sentence for anyone caught with 50 grams of crack when to get a similar sentence, a dealer would need to be caught with enough of the powdered version of the drug to fill a briefcase + court decisions like one by the Supreme Court of South Carolina that agreed that pregnant women could be drug tested by hospitals without their consent, and arrested and charged with neglect, manslaughter, even murder (no problem apparently with consuming legal drugs like alcohol which can lead to fetal alcohol syndrome for which the effects are far more serious than the effects of fetal crack exposure).

From wikipedia:

Quote

Early studies reported that people who had been exposed to crack in utero would be severely emotionally, mentally, and physically disabled; this belief became common in the scientific and lay communities.[1] Fears were widespread that a generation of crack babies were going to put severe strain on society and social services as they grew up. Later studies failed to substantiate the findings of earlier ones that PCE has severe disabling consequences; these earlier studies had been methodologically flawed (e.g. with small sample sizes and confounding factors). Scientists have come to understand that the findings of the early studies were vastly overstated and that most people who were exposed to cocaine in utero do not have disabilities.[1]

No specific disorders or conditions have been found to result for people whose mothers used cocaine while pregnant.[2] Studies focusing on children of six years and younger have not shown any direct, long-term effects of PCE on language, growth, or development as measured by test scores.[3] PCE also appears to have little effect on infant growth.[4] However, PCE is associated with premature birth, birth defects, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other conditions. The effects of cocaine on a fetus are thought to be similar to those of tobacco and less severe than those of alcohol.[5] No scientific evidence has shown a difference in harm to a fetus between crack and powder cocaine.[6]

[kenberg]

Cracks not good for people. After reflection I'll leave it at that. Far be it from me to, as the Times Editorial put it. intrude into anyone's womb.

[y66]

David Chase on ‘The Sopranos,’ Trump and, Yes, That Ending

I know it's over but I miss that guy.

[cherdano]

Guys, I just want you to know:
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange lives, or has ever lived, in a basement, cupboard or under the stairs. (According to his counsel.)

Be safe out there!

[kenberg]

Me, I never heard of no Julian whatshisname. And Russia? Hmm, trying to think where I might have heard that. In the 1950s I saw this movie. Ingrid Bergman was really great, she played some princess or something, and there was this song, Anastasia, tell me who you are, are you someone from another star. I think they mentioned some fictional country with a name something like that, maybe on this other star, but it was all about 1915 or something. Ingrid B was great. Oh yeah, I said that. And Paul Mana-something? Nope. Beats me, I'm D and D on that.

[y66]

An emotional rescue