> x-raying people

mmWave or X-ray?

If the police unions don’t like your laws they don’t enforce them. If they really don’t like you, they don’t show up at your house when there’s an intruder. If they really really don’t like you, they are the intruder.

Doesn’t the first one make sense though? Isn’t the refusal to enforce laws the check the executive branch, at all levels of government, has on the legislature?

I don't think so. They are supposed to set standards or make tweaks for how the law should be enforced. They aren't supposed to outright ignore it.

Just like judges are not supposed to legislate from the bench.

I think the misapplication and unequal enforcement of the law undermines the entire system. Nobody will think it's fair that they get prosecuted and some other person doesn't. Justice for all, my ass.

They let the homeopathy shit fly, not sure why they’d get involved in this. Nuke it all from orbit IMHO.

It’s far worse: Homeopathic therapy is paid for by the German health insurance system. That’s how far this bullshit goes. Public money is spent on quackery. And you can’t vote with your wallet as health insurance is mandatory here.

I used to have a similar outlook, but I have moderated it in recent years. These things should be regulated, but not banned.

You should have hardcore warnings on them (like on aus cigarrettes for example) that state clearly that studies have shown these ingredients or procedures have been shown to be no different from placebo for whatever, or have low quality/few studies. I think you should even have QR codes that link to a page that summarizes the evidence for them and links to the primary source. vitamins etc should also be clearly separated from actual medicine in pharmacies. In the case of cigarretts in Australia, this strategy has been proven to be more effective than the comparable strategy of banning marijuana (more kids in aus have tried marijuana than cigarettes now)

Banning these things can have several negative effects that probably harm the project of getting society to move away from this type of quackery.

Firstly you cannot stop people from wanting these things by banning them, so you will create a black market for them which is less safe, and also opens up a funding stream for nefarious actors.

Secondly, we should not close our minds to the fact that at some time in the future, it is a virtual guarantee that there will be some useful compound in, for example, some chinese medicine herb. if we snuff out all these practices, we deny ourselves one avenue for finding out about these compounds that we might otherwise simply not come across.

Third, banning stuff gives ammo to conspiracy theorists: "they are banning it because they don't want you to have it because they know it works and doctors will be out of business"

Go ahead and ban stuff that endangers near extinct animals, or maybe something that genuinely causes serious acute harm to a user, but generally I think its better to inform and regulate, rather than ban. You think you would be helping people but they don't want your help and they think you're trying to hurt them. Give them the info to work it out instead. Also, if some small girl wants to play an imaginary witch game with crystals, but all they crystals are banned, thats pretty sad to me.

Chiropractors should not be able to call themselves Drs. though. should straight up be a crime.

I used to have the moderated outlook, but then I saw how traditional medicine is the #1 reason for rare animals being poached. I also saw how the related disinformation drove people towards quackery like Ivermectin and Chloroquine.

If you let crazy people gives themselves titles like Doctor and open a shopfront, all legit and everything, then people will just take that kind of thing on face value.

Freedom doesn't mean the freedom to defraud and wipe out entire species.

A lot of people here are voting me down and saying that I'm totalitarian. I'm just advocating for banning some quacks from practising fake medicine. The opposite is allowing our planet's wildlife to be permanently, irrevocably wiped out in the name of old people getting erections or whatever.

Honestly, which is the more extreme position in your mind: Specicide or Regulation?

They might be voting you down because it looks like you may not have read my entire reply. I specifically noted the caveat of endangered species and a Dr. Title being used by people who should not use it as situations that probably justify a ban.

I think we likely agree on these points, but perhaps not on the surrounding ones which don't have significant harm outside of parting foolish people from their money.

I did read that bit too.

Several of my acquaintances have been recently defrauded out of thousands of dollars by phishing attacks. You know the type: you get an SMS about an $925 Amazon purchase that you made, just enter your credit card details here to cancel. That kind of thing.

Should we just let this stuff happen? Take the safety signs off and let Darwin sort them out? Why bother with those expensive tests and government approvals for medicine? Just let people figure what works and doesn't work on their own! I mean, sure, those foolish people will get themselves killed taking placebos for their cancer, but that's their own fault for getting tricked, right?

"They should have known better."

Maybe my position can be clarified a bit better: We both want to minimize this problem and stop it from happening. My argument is not that we should ignore the problem, my argument is that banning these things is not the most effective solution.

My view is that we are likely to have a greater impact on stopping this problem by using tactics other than banning them.

I'm sorry to hear about your aquantances phishing attacks. There are parallels to be sure, but Phishing attacks are a clear deception, and everyone upon being phished will agree that they have been done wrong by, so it is easy to make these illegal; you don't create a black market for people who want to go out and get phished anyway. Unfortunately the same is not true of people who purchase quack therapy. Most will continue to think that their money was well spent.

>> Freedom doesn't mean the freedom to defraud and wipe out entire species.

I appreciate this statement. But this statement is contrary to the modern Christian view. The modern evangelical Christian view is that God made Man to do whatever he wanted with the earth. That's the basic justification for wiping out species or strip-mining or polluting the air or the water. "Freedom" is a concept that was meant to imply freedom from imprisonment, torture, harm or oppression. Not the freedom to demolish anything in sight. Or the freedom to con other people. They use "freedom" like it's an end-run around morality.

I deny that you describe the modern Christian view. The Christian view is that God made the world, and that humans are sub-rulers of it, but not owners. They are taking care of the property of another. They are not free to trash it.

Agreed on all points (especially about chiropractors calling themselves doctors). One major driving force behind quackery seems to be the ability to assert that it's banned because it works so well it would put pharma out of business. But as we've seen from the dire warnings and non-banning of Ivermectin, these things can now burst into mass poisonings in a matter of days, much faster than any regulatory body let alone public messaging campaign can keep up.

yes this is true and a good point. It is hard to account for active disinformation campaigns. I think it is generally safe to assume they won't be as extreme as those for ivermectin in most cases.

One counterpoint is that not banning things could increase general public trust in the regulator which could make disinformation less effective.

But not taking action against something harmful could also make the regulator look like they're not doing their job.

I'm not in favor of banning anything (pot smoker, drinker, and big fan of the Darwin Awards here). I don't think bans accomplish much besides increasing demand and black market crime around the forbidden thing. But I still have no idea how you stop grandma from eating horse paste when she hears on facebook that it cures covid.

Agree with most of those, but I think herbal medicine may have some merits and should not be flat out banned. I mean tons of modern day medicine is plant derived...

At least two of those are not the quackery that you think they are, but rather should be a tool in the toolbox. Why should we throw out the historical knowledge behind natural medicine entirely?

You'll find that if you do a survey, other people will also say some of them are not bullshit, but they won't agree with you on which two those are. That's the problem.

>Acupuncture

Acupuncture is FDA approved for the treatment of certain types of chronic pain (and, I believe, asthma). It's not entirely bullshit.

Doctors can, and do, prescribe medications for off-label uses even if there is no proof that they work. Using acupuncture for an off-label use is the same thing.

Yes it's one thing to see a chiropractor for back pain or posture, quite another to believe that spinal adjustments can cure disease or infection.

> While I know chiropractice is filled with quacks, some of it genuinely helps people

That could be the Placebo effect, but my opinion is very much biased by my experience of quacks, it's sad to see older people fall for what quacks write.

> The only solution is education.

My friend's sister is a nurse, so I thought he'd be more educated about it. Turned out that he's terrified of it now from her stories about blood clots.

Sure but not old people fall for it. Some are skeptical of quackery because they are either better educated or experienced enough to have the intuition they’re being led on. Others don’t and their gullibility will make them victims in many other areas. Education is the only possible help they could get. Banning whatever quacky things will only make them more desirable.

People say the same kind of thing about all of the others. "Traditional herbal medicine does help some people." isn't a good argument if it doesn't help most people and is downright harmful in a significant fraction of the cases.

That last statement is also true for western medicine. Im not equating the two in no way btw but farmaceutucals have had their bad apples and caused lots of harm as well (definitely more good than harm, im not questioning that part). I wouldn’t personally reach out for chinese herb conctions but if some people swear by it let them have it.

The problem is that some people swear by pangolin scales and rhino ivory.

Some of the techniques some chiropractors use are legitimate (whether or not the theories they believe about the techniques are), but the best thing to do is find a science-based physical therapist who also uses those techniques.

I once went to a chiropractor with a bad lumbar.

She started off x-raying my back to check if something was really bad (it wasn't), then did her little grappling knee chiropractor thing (which felt good), then proceeded to use an electric massage hammer to loosen up the muscles. After a couple of treatments, my back was back to normal.

I found a stomach exercise program, and the extra training combined with much better awareness of the symptoms, which I think I got out of the whole affair, has kept me well since.

I understand why you are saying what you are saying, I was there once too. But I think you're underestimating something. The chiropractor who treated me spent most of her time helping people with back pain. You could hear she had a pretty well-informed idea of what was wrong with my back, probably because she had seen hundreds of backs like mine before.

And if you actually study what doctors and physical therapists are doing, a lot of it is 100% in the quack domain. For instance, they see one symptom and then immediately jump to a conclusion about it. I don't blame them. When I see people developing software, I can't say most of them are being very scientific either.

Your therapist needs to have a good idea what's wrong with you, and effective means of getting to it. The actual theory they have in their mind is less important. I'm not religious or spiritual, but I believe my decision to go try the chiropractor was rational.

I'm sure there are plenty of ineffective doctors/therapists and plenty of effective chiropractors.

I believe a genuinely scientific doctor wouldn't merely use heuristics and would use actual science and personal examination to determine the best way to treat someone's problem. I believe some who may who title themselves "chiropractor" possibly may be good at accurately diagnosing and resolving people's back issues, but with a chiropractor you take on additional risks, like risk that your chiropractor happens to be one of the many who believe all diseases stem from spinal problems and can be treated through spinal manipulation, along with many other pseudoscientific, untrue beliefs.

It seems the best professional would be someone who titles themselves a doctor and attempts to be scientific and empirical, without believing anything about spinal issues causing all diseases, but who otherwise fits the description of the chiropractor you saw.

It's true that someone with a false, unscientific theory may end up more effectively treating particular patients than someone else with a true, scientific theory, but someone who's both effective and has a true, scientific theory will surely be superior to the alternatives. I see no reason why a scientific doctor can't specialize in back pain, use x-rays, use the devices you mention, etc. I believe many do.

Perhaps at that point it merely comes down to semantics of the title they use and the school they went to, but the pseudoscientific associations are so historically strong that it seems like it'd be a red flag that anyone would want to consider themselves a part of that profession in the first place. At the very least, you'd think they'd want to "fork" it and take the good parts and leave the bad parts.

If I couldn't seem to find a doctor who meets those criteria I describe above, I'd possibly consider trying to find a chiropractor who seems to use a science-based approach, but only if I had no other choice.

Well... chiropractors are fairly scientific when it comes to straightening out your spine. They have a lot of science (anatomy) and training, and at least the ones I've tried have done it pretty well.

Curing, say, asthma? Yeah, maybe not so much.

You can't know whether your symptoms might have eased without any treatment at all...

It's semantics, but I hope that you mean that, in an ideal world, those things wouldn't exist. There's nothing ideal to me about living in a global totalitarian nanny state.

It's also not completely black and white. For example, the "science" behind homeopathy is absurd, and the medication is literally just water. That doesn't mean it can't be effective at treating someone's malady as a placebo, though. Little children with a sore throat may refuse to nap until they get "medicine".

Many adults also struggle with accepting inaction as the best course of action. If paying someone to stab them with little needles lowers their blood pressure during a stressful time, then perhaps it was worth it?

For someone to find the wiki, read it and then attempt to solve their problem in a rudimentary fashion gets you towards the tail end of the bell curve. They might even follow up with you if you have questions.

Nah, is super easy to find the Arch wiki and the install instructions, Arch users will push you hard to it so is impossible not to find it, maybe you might find some honest person though to explain the downsides too.

All this just makes it clear to me that we need a time standard which addresses all the problems and of ISO8601. It’ll be painful until it’s universally adopted, but once it is we’ll be in timekeeping heaven.

It doesn’t take long to get used to the basic format. 20211024T090755, etc.

More effort was put into expressing meaning when people weren’t constantly stimulated. There’s still meaning today, but I can’t help but feel it’s shallow and unappreciated by reader and writer alike.

I don’t really understand the whole trans thing and why it’s suddenly become the job of the whole world to reinforce someone’s self conception. Lots of people have body dysmorphia and think they are morbidly obese. Some will even go so far as to buy XL clothing and larger toilets because they think they need them. But they aren’t obese, and nobody is expected to treat them like that.

For the sake of one group, we’re expected to accept an ideology and we’re now supposed to use language to fit within the boundaries of this ideology. Anyone who expresses skepticism can expect to be fired, harassed or simply brow beaten into lip service on the premise that being skeptical is hateful and bigoted. This isn’t how you gain acceptance, it’s merely compliance. It creates a culture of lip service, resentment and subversion.

I don’t hate the trans crowd. I simply think the notion of gender is baseless and the tactics many of their activists use are misguided and obnoxious.

First of all it is sad to see a comment like this under yet another throw-away account. Just say what you want, using your regular account. The worst that can - and possibly will - happen is that you get shadowbanned in which case you just create a new account.

There are a number of current theories around the woke phenomenon, of which the "trans movement" is but one exponent. Vivek Ramaswamy (writer of "Woke, Inc." [1]) sees it as an outgrowth of a corporatist agenda which is meant to channel public outrage - which was turning against them, viz. Occupy Wall Street - towards shallow social causes to draw away attention from a corporate power grab. James Lindsay (of New Discourses [2], Cynical Theories [3] and the grievance studies hoax fame) sees it as the latest iteration of a Marxist-inspired agenda intent on domination or, lately, as a deflection manoeuvre by the ruling class to try to steer society away from the second enlightenment where the marketplace of ideas will become a reality. Vladimir Putin - yes, the Russian president - compares it [4] to the ideology which led the Bolsheviks to hijack the Russian revolution for their own purposes.

All of them are right, in their own ways. Corporations have jumped on the woke train, often using it to deflect attention away from whatever nefarious activities they're up to. There is no doubt about the fact that its proponents lean strongly to the left in their political opinions and favour Marxism or one of its many offshoots over other ideologies, nor over the fact that they're intent on injecting their ideology into all aspects of society - just like the Bolsheviks did in Russia after the revolution.

Whether what we're dealing with here is an astroturfing movement created to drain the public of the will to resist, a new religion running amok, an aggressive political movement intent on domination or a combination of such I do not know, I suspect this actually depends on whom of the 'woke' you ask. What I do know is that the more people get drawn in to this movement, the more true grief it will cause, both for the people who are deluded into assuming whatever identity is being foisted upon them as well as for society at large.

It is time to speak up, time to speak out against this divisive ideology which only serves to keep the public angry and confused, this ideology which tears apart communities, which threatens to dissolve whatever semblance of cohesion we have left in society. It is time to realise this has nothing to do with race, sexual orientation, ethnic background, nationality, skin colour, religious affiliation or whatever other identity category might be brought to berth. It is a power grab, pure and simple, by any mean necessary and no matter the cost to those who are being used as tools, as 'useful innocents' (or, more often, 'useful idiots') [5].

[1] https://www.vivekramaswamy.com/wokeinc

[2] https://newdiscourses.com/

[3] https://newdiscourses.com/books/

[4] https://www.dailywire.com/news/putin-warns-wokeness-is-destr...

[5] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/08/22/useful-idiot/

Same reason we don’t have stone masons in every town nowadays. Too much time, too much material, not enough customer volume. Can’t operate with today’s (lack of) disposable income and material availability being diluted by an increasing population.

The standard of living has gone up IMHO bc of increased efficiency in the face of dwindling resources. We don’t all live in stone mansions with servants, but a nice apartment built to code as cheaply as possible with electricity, AC and a roomba is by some measures a better life than anyone on the planet had 100 years ago. As a builder, you make more money too.

There's actually way more disposable income today than even 100 years ago. We just spend it on things that didn't exist before like car insurance and iPhones.

What do you consider "disposable income"?

Car insurance is legally mandatory if you drive a car. If your income is predicated on being able to commute by car (as it is for many Americans, though hopefully a trend toward remote work will ameliorate this somewhat) then your insurance is no more optional than your gas.

People also talk about smartphones as though they're a luxury item, but for most intents and purposes owning one can be viewed as required. Tons of services, including your bank, require a cell phone for authentication, if not to use their services at all. Everyone from your boss to your spouse has an expectation that you can be reached most if not all of the time. I try to avoid being reachable at all times, but this is a luxury I can afford because I'm relatively well-off and technologically adept, and I still can't get around 2FA requirements for everything.

So like, if that stuff is bought with "disposable income", is rent?

Disposable income in the US is at record highs, both at the median and average, inflation adjusted. It has not gone down.

And the median and average for disposable income is a lot higher in the US than in Europe. US disposable income is only comparable to the most affluent nations of Europe: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland.

Americans waste an enormous amount of money on consumer garbage. Until recently it was very common for households to have $150-$200 / month cable or satellite TV plans. It's still common, just slightly less so thanks to Netflix etc. $200-$300 family smartphone plans are common.

Americans also flip in and out of cars frequently, losing huge sums of money doing it. And they buy ridiculously over-priced new vehicles, which they keep for relatively short periods of time.

I wasn't aware this was a technical term, but if we insist on this usage, the post I'm responding to is even less meaningful, because this is drawing a pedantic distinction between money that's tied up in expenses and thus, at any rate, not money that the relevant party is really making decisions about

I mean do you really want to compare my disposable income with my great grandparents? They'd hit me up side the head if they knew how much I blow on weed a month and random bullshit like latex Halloween costumes. To them eating out was a luxury they could afford maybe once or twice a year. I eat out like every other day.

Our standards are way higher these days cause the truth is we're all spoiled.

You keep saying disposable income (money after taxes) when you mean discretionary income (money after necessary expenses such as rent, bills, transportation and food).

Laymen versus technical. If I'm talking to a random person on the street I'm gonna say disposable. But yes I mean discretionary. My discretionary income is still huge. Well over 50% of my paycheck. It's also not even fair to say though because it's still my choice to have upgraded my living situation. Sure I'm locked in now but I could sell my house and downgrade at any time and my discretionary will go up.

Unfortunately, your confusion is endemic of the problem with government statistics using disposable income as an indicator of prosperity, and is even being quoted by others in this thread. Indeed, you likely googled "historical disposable income" to back up your statement - which is exactly the problem with using the incorrect term.

I wont make the comparison to 100 years ago (as you did) because that was a period of time including 2 world wars and the great depression., But adjusted for inflation, people generally have LESS discretionary income now than they did in the 60s. Again, this is hard to corroborate with official poverty statistics due to changes in the cost of living (and conversely, the provision of benefits such as food stamps), which are frequently petitioned to be amended.

Over 12% of americans have such low discretionary income they have to rely on food banks - a figure comparable to the 1970s.

10x more people in the UK are accessing emergency food from food banks than they did 10 years ago.

It is a terrible state of affairs, to be honest. Please dont use disposable income :)

I'm not confused lol. In America homes are just bigger now than they used to be. You can still go small though. No one said you had to take on a huge mortgage. That's why discretionary is a bad metric to use.

I see, so people are in poverty because their houses are too big...

Maybe you should check your privilege. Your 50% discretionary income is FAR from the norm.

Median income is less than 45k (gross - this means before tax, etc) - than means 50% of the population earn LESS than that. 25% earn less than 24k. 10% earn less than $9k...

These people cant afford a small house, let alone a big one...

you are privileged.

No one cares about your little opinions

The reality is you are spouting crap about people being poor because (apparently) their houses are too big (??), while also not knowing (VERY) basic economic terms. I was just giving you facts.

Honestly, your lack of awareness is quite astounding - but it appears that you are overentitled as well as privileged, so that kind of makes sense.

Im sorry you care so much about my opinion.

Or investors are trying to mitigate potential damage to share prices if Tesla doesn’t improve their image.