This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I happen to agree with a lot of what he says, but it's tough to debate you on this topic, because you didn't actually say anything. Your post is a lot of heat, and very little light.
Why do you consider him a grifter? What's his grift? Why do you consider a presidential candidate with the name Kennedy to be a "random person on the internet"? From my point of view, he identifies corporate and government corruption with great accuracy, and speaks well against it.
If you have the ability to do the "first-person epistemics", then please enlighten the rest of us, so we can be less "gullible". But you've made no claims, contradicted no claims, and only asserted your perceived superiority to the kind of people who may agree with the things that RFK says.
If you have anything of value to say, I encourage you to say it.
Yes fair call, it was an opinion and I don't spend any time justifying my belief. Part of it is weariness, I forget the name of the rule but it's a lot more effort to rebut systematically someones claims which they can just throw out relentlessly.
Also, I can do this work and highlight exaggerated claims but I will be proxying my trust to others, researchers etc. I haven't overseen large clinical trials or analysed the statistical evidence first hand. I have to eventually accept that large vaccine trials are done authentically and with sufficient power to detect higher rates of adverse events, or that the knowledge of mercury in the body is sufficiently progressed to give some assurance of safety. I acknowledge various incentive structures within medicine and assign priors that aren't 100% belief for any source. But the point is not how I can know I'm 100% right, it is that among the epistemic challenge I can assign likelihood to consensus view and RKJ view and because RKJ does a lot of sophistry (selective quoting), insufficient statement of details of statistics, study design etc, it's easy for me to weigh up that he seems not to be oriented to truth and so the things he says get low trust.
In short, RKJ doesn't do all the things I try to do myself in terms of epistemics (mainly acknowledging limits of his knowledge and expertise), so I apply a Kantian rational skepticism for alternative explanations. The one that fits very well is conspiratorial thinker and grifter.
Also, the grift is precisely by occupying a place that is already popular and additionally has some merit. Anti-establishment is nothing new, he just harvests it for clicks. There's nothing even controversial or courageous about stating these things in your bubble. The courageous thing to do would be to acknowledge the limits of your knowledge but the incentive landscape doesn't encourage it.
I'm happy to examine some of his claims if you have any you'd like to interrogate.
There's a long history of studies showing that tobacco products are perfectly safe. Those studies had a critical flaw however, they were funded by the same industry that stood to profit from the sale of tobacco.
If you apply this logic to the modern pharmaceutical complex, including the lobbying and legal apparatus, as well as the research and publication apparatus, I think some concern is at least warranted. Why exactly do we trust the pharma companies not to corrupt the science in the name of their own profit?
Oh I agree the pharmaceutical industry is corrupt in many ways and increasingly suspect but there's a lot of good stuff written on this already. I don't think RKJ adds to this scholarship because he makes unsupported claims.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link