AJJ

Sure, and we should give the violist our kidneys for 9 months and the woman should under those circumstances *not* abort the baby.

So is leaving the violinist to their fate. So is allowing the abortion to take place. Some might take *those* as murder.

The vulnerability to illness that some have is not your doing either, which is what makes the analogy work.

Good article here which describes that sort of thing: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/pandemic-science

As if lockdowns mean little more than being deprived of restaurants and nightclubs. It strikes me that the “cost-benefit analysis” is precisely what i...

I’m not American, I don’t read that news. And to be fair, given the whole “affect” and “effect” thing and not understanding what “begging the question...

So like a sneak you’ve written this is a way that suggests those deaths are occurring in Texas and Idaho, when it’s really across all of the US. Aroun...

I asked where you’re getting these figures from. They aren’t found on the Worldometers website. You posted an article about ICU beds that does not con...

Yeah, it’s a mess.

Oh, and you thought “to beg the question” in this context meant to *raise* a question, didn’t you?

Perhaps 400 Covid deaths per day still seems like a lot, but Texas has a population of 29 million. England has a population of 56 million and around 1...

Where are you getting those figures from? The Worldometers website has 3 day averages of around 400 and 40 daily Covid deaths for Texas and Idaho resp...

The final summary at the end of the Discussion section seems plain enough; but there’s always the problem of being unable to evaluate these studies wi...

I agree with this.

No, my understanding is this (https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-few-vaccines-prevent-infection-heres-why-thats-not-a-problem-152204): I haven’t ...

I have criteria for arguing well and I consider someone stupid when they fall far short of it. I think I often overstate the extent to which people do...

I get the impression that many peoples’ definition of stupid is “person who thinks enough opposite things to what I think”.

Regarding transmission, I think people can take care of themselves. It’s always been so that the number of cases hasn’t reflected the amount of illnes...

I don’t know how they *should* use them. I’m arguing that they *can* be used to inform a decision to decline the vaccine. I keep bringing up young chi...

Maybe it wasn’t intended that way but it is tendentious, just as speaking solely of the vaccine’s potential harms is, and so suggests your view is not...

This is more of what I’m referring to as fear masquerading as reason. Here’s John Ioannidis, a highly respected researcher in epidemiology, saying tha...

It isn’t correct to lump teenagers and the very young in with people with medical conditions when you say this. This is from the JCVI’s recent judgmen...

A wonderful example of a reluctant evolution in understanding.

A few quotes from an interesting article: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/pandemic-science “John P.A. Ioannidis is Professor of Me...

It’s interesting that the writer of this NY Times article seems to accept what I believe are most peoples’ reasons for not getting the vaccine and dec...

I suppose “noumena” could cover it as well. But in that case I think there would have to remain things that can only be experienced indirectly by any ...

And on each view I expect there’d remain things we can only experience indirectly, like electrons.

I think either there’s an entity which is conscious of everything, which we’d call God (and we in principle could experience “extra” things too); or t...

I hadn’t heard of Stove’s Gem, but at a glance what I referred to isn’t that argument. Hart isn’t saying we can only know things within a limited fram...

Maybe, but then you’d have to ask if there are things not available to the alien’s consciousness. If there are, in what meaningful way do these things...

The writer/philosopher David Bentley Hart has written a bit about consciousness being fundamental to reality, i.e. God’s consciousness. He points out ...

And so I’m not going to deny that we were always going to experience hospital crises. But in the UK we now have another one in the form of massive wai...

The greatest thing about Twitter (and other online media) is that it can show you how dreadful an “expert” can be at thinking. Once you truly witness ...

Hospital overflow fears were driven by the unreliable death estimates made by Imperial College, whose model - according to Johan Giesecke (one of Swed...

I don’t find it too egregious. I’ve encountered lots of people, some of whom have the same opinion as me and they too have encountered lots of people....

To be honest, I don’t even know that rhetoric isn’t used in academic writing. The rhetorical expression “almost everyone” means “of those who I have e...

Here’s the interview with Sunetra Gupta I referred to: https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubles-down-sunetra-gupta-interview/ Here’s an article refer...

Since we’re not writing for academic journals I consider it fine to use rhetoric in argument.

Expressions like “virtually everyone” and “almost everyone” are rhetorical, not technical.

Not certain, no. But from what I’ve seen, from an empirical perspective the argument against lockdowns is very strong: known to be incredibly destruct...

The dubious predictions weren’t a reason not to lockdown, but they also weren’t a good reason *to* lockdown.

I misunderstood what you said (the “question begging bit”). I didn’t argue that though.

If you weren’t taking what I said that way then don’t say anything. If someone else does they can tell me, and I’ll tell them they’re arguing poorly. ...

So we’re seeing numbers 2 and 3 from you now, from my post about poor argument. You’re beginning to get upset (accusing me of being cavalier about mil...

You can look also at the way the virus behaved in different contexts. The Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta said some time ago that despite differin...

The acknowledgment of their harms is appreciated. However, I do find the view that they were entirely unnecessary compelling. The initial scare was a ...

I’m reasonably sure. I like arguing and I want to do it well. I’ve changed my mind about large issues before and I listen in particular to people who ...

You can consider it rhetorical, but equally I just don’t accept that a person can be good without being able to think. And judging by the way most peo...

Something else I wonder is this: LBC radio got a caller once who had voted for the UK to leave the EU. He cried down the phone (“What have I done to m...

Consider it: you’re not a good person.