loveistheanswer

>While I would trust the worldwide scientific community for covid origin theories

Which scientific community are you referring to? There are countless scientists who have been arguing against the risks of gain of function research for many years. Why are pro-gain of function scientists deathly silent now about the supposed benefits of their research?

New coronavirus pandemics like this are novel. Not because it's a coronavirus, but because of how highly adapted and highly transmissible it has been since it was first "discovered". Other such viral outbreaks in recent decades were not nearly as transmissible

Peter Daszak, member of the WHO Covid origins team, was also the project lead for the US funded gain of function research of novel coronaviruses that was going on at the Wuhan BSL4 lab.

There is historical precedent of authorities blaming local meat markets to cover up a lab leak.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak

If we have no say in whether or not scientists should be creating super viruses (a.k.a. weapons of mass destruction), I'd prefer they do so somewhere like Antarctica or on a space station, not in the middle of a city.

In order to study something, we must first define the variables.

How would you define race vs. culture?

Indeed I have read through Farrand's records of the constitutional convention, I've read many of the founders personal writings (both federalists and anti federalists), I've read many works of prominent Enlightenment thinkers, and I've studied much of the history of the oppression and censorship of the Church which helped inspire the ideal of freedom of speech.

Nowhere have I seen anything resembling "freedom of speech != freedom from consequences", except from the Church.

After all, heretics and blasphemers were indeed free to say what they wanted to say (they had larynxes, after all), but they were not free from the consequences of their speech.

Please do tell me what you think freedom of speech is, in your own words, when you are at a keyboard.

In my own words, freedom of speech is an ideal, like the ideal "that all men are created equal". This ideal seeks to liberate human kind from being systematically punished for expressing offensive ideas, because ever so many of the greatest human revelations were profoundly offensive to society at large at their inception.

"I cannot contemplate human affairs, without laughing or crying. I choose to laugh. When People talk of the Freedom of Writing Speaking or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists: but I hope it will exist, But it must be hundreds of years after you and I Shall write and Speak no more."

-John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1817

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6790

You've stated what you think freedom of speech isn't, but can you actually define what you think freedom of speech is?

It's funny how this mantra of "freedom of speech != freedom from consequences of speech" seemingly originated at precisely the same time that big tech corporations and social media mobs began punishing people en masse for lawful (but politically incorrect) speech.

It seems like doublespeak really. I.e.: "Welcome, no tresspassing"

It's like a cigarrette company saying they want to protect the health of people's lungs

How do you discern between the two?

>Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.

-Marshall Mcluhan, 1966

>create infrastructure for authentic speech.

What would that look like?

“You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula of doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity."

-MLK

>So, next time you are annoyed that you have to fix a script or you accidentally type master when you needed to type main, please just take a deep breath, change the name, and remember to reflect upon whether you have are subconscious habits or biases that work against diversity in tech.

This is an extremely privileged and dangerously ignorant point of view.

There are more people living in slavery across the world right now than ever before in human history.

Maybe we should reflect on that fact instead of simply covering up words which make us uncomfortable in a vain attempt to expiate self imposed guilt for being born with a particular shade of skin.

How do we know if turning off that setting actually does stop location tracking, considering what we know about Google's past history?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/13/google-lo...

>there is no hacking of iOS or an incredible technical prowess on the the side of China that we should all be afraid of, etc.

Claiming China (or the US, UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.) does not have incredible technical prowess and hacking abilities is silly. Though if you're simply claiming this specific example is not evidence of that prowess, I'd agree. I also agree that US companies are doing very similar types of cyber stalking, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it when we find other countries such as China doing it

>I think that another deception is that we should ordinarily be experiencing price deflation. Every day our society is getting more efficient at making things.

This is a great point.

The 3 main goals of the Fed[1] are:

1. Maximize employment

2. Stable prices

3. Moderate long-term interest rates

Maximizing employment and keeping prices stable are antithetical to the realities of automation and ephemeralization. If we want to use our automative technology correctly, we should be minimizing employmemt, and decreasing prices.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act

>China doesn't have the power to censor Western expats on Twitter,

Yes, they do, directly and indirectly.

Directly: Li-Meng Yan, the Chinese virologist who blew the whistle on covid in December 2019, but the Chinese government covered that up. She defected to the US, and published a research paper critical of the Chinese government, and Twitter banned her account.

Indirectly: How likely do you think it would be for the chinese government to renew an expats visa if they were doing activist work like the chinese activists who got dissapeared for reporting covid deaths on Github? They didn't even let a WHO investigation team into their country for almost a year

>It's what I've been told by numerous people who live in China. It's what I see on Chinese social media, and it's what Westerners who live in China are saying on Western social media.

Yep, that's how censorship works.

I'm sure you won't see too many people talking about Tiananmen Square on Chinese social media either, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Are we really going to pretend that the Chinese government hasn't been heavily censoring information which makes them look bad?

Early on in the pandemic, the Chinese covid death counts started to skyrocket, and activists within the country were using Github to make sure this information did not get 404'd. The same day these activists were dissapeared, the skyrocketing "official" chinese covid death count immediately went down to "0", where it has remained ever since. When using Google to browse the death counts by country, you can't even look at the death counts for China, the button is disabled.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/27/china-free-covid-19-acti...

>No, I don’t think tobacco and alcohol should be illegal. I do think addictively sawing off your hand should be illegal.

Why should addictively amputating your hand be illegal, but addictively killing yourself by destroying your lungs, heart, or liver not be illegal?

>Has anyone ever looked at history and figured out that humans are pretty damn awful?

Humans can be awful, and they can be wonderful.

>Facebook is just a catalyzer just like Twitter is. Every platform has their own disgusting self-centered bubbles and that’s not because of the platform.

Pretending like system design has no effect on user behavior is just silly.

>Someone will have to explain to me how is that any different than a tabloid, or even a legacy newspaper/news broadcast.

Speed, scale, pervasiveness, profitability, automated algorithmic microtargeting based on individual psychological profiles.

>The more shocking it is, the more eyeballs it attracts and the more add revenue it gets.

It's the same concept, just taken to a never before seen technological extreme.

Is there any compelling evidence that drug or alcohol prohibitions have done an effective job at protecting society?

What about the evidence that it has done the opposite, by artifically inflating the price of drugs thereby enriching criminals, gangs, and cartels?

In Mexico, we have seen how this can lead to the cartels becoming more powerful than the government.

So do you think tobacco and alcohol should be made illegal?

Hate spreads virally on social media.

Perhaps we need some "social distancing measures" such as thise you suggested to "slow the spread" of hatred on social media.

Is it not implicitly obvious that money is the incentive?

What percentage of your social network did you have to block to achieve that?

Many mass media corporations were doing everything they could to encourage the war in Iraq, including cancelling popular talk show hosts who dared to ask questions:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program

>this is the fractional reserve banking system

Seems like we may need a new technical term to replace "fractional reserve banking", because the Fed reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent a year ago.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm

I wonder if the proliferation of easily accessible porn on the internet may also be a factor. People literally have access to porn 24/7 in their pocket if they have a phone.

>Strange how the meaning of "political correctness" has shifted, since it was coined to cover the deployment of "political officers" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar )

What makes you say that? I did a word search on your link and don't see "political correctness" in there anywhere.