Open Thread

Open Thread #140

Aaron "Sleazy" Elias

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59 thoughts on “Open Thread #140”

  1. I was about to post this on the vaxx thread in the previous open post, but since I see already a new on lets drop it here.

    Bret weinsteins podcast interview with Dr. Malone and Steven Kirsch. I found Kirsch somewhat annoying because he keeps interrupting and talking over the others, but otherwise I strongly recommend you watch it for a summary of well informed opinions against the vaxx.

    Reply

    3. If anyone (out of the goodness in their heart) would give some “best of” time stamps, it would be much appreciated. 3 hours is a long one and i don’t absorb much when i listen while doing other things (wish i had that ability).

    4. Check the description on the Odysee page. It contains a quite detailed breakdown, but sadly it ends at around the 2 hour mark for space reasons, it seems. Probably the key passage is “07:58 Spike protein is very dangerous”.

    5. Kirsch is absolutely insufferable. I cringed whenever he told the other people not to interrupt him when he is interrupting them all the time. After about one hour I had to stop listening to the interview. On a completely unrelated note, there is a zero-percent probability that Kirsch is a Jew.

    1. I missed this comment, but I’ll keep my response with the Odysee link online as that platform seems quite reliable.

  3. I wish to ask you for a recommendation on some books of informal and formal logic. I reread some of my debates with Sleazy and notice that I have been called out for committing logical fallacies, most commonly moving the goal post and strawman.

    I am not familiar with logics in any form, though I do have some innate understanding of logic as it is inherent in language.

    I wish to improve both my ability of forming a cogent argument and of spotting logical fallacies in my own as well as in other’s arguments.

    Recently, I have just bought a book on logic called “Formal Logic: A Philosophical Approach”. The author is Paul Hoyningen-Huene. This strikes me to be a good book from pedagogical standpoint.

    If you have ever read this book, please leave some reviews.

    Reply

    1. I studied this book and a few others. Hoyningen-Huene’s book is one of the better ones. The best one I have encountered was Kutschera’s “Elementare Logik”, next to his “Einführung in die moderne Logik”, but I’m not sure if either has been translated into English.

    2. Oh, I think they have not been translated. My German is almost nil so…Really like to learn German some days, but I have too much on my plate already. I have to learn Spanish, and if I have time, I find ways of improving my Russian

    3. Definitely worthwhile to study logical fallacies. Especially when dealing with women in my experience. The untrained debater will lose crushingly to these fallacies. But once you learn them it’s like fucking kryptonite. Very liberating.

    4. If you point out erroneous thinking to women, the most common response is them throwing a fit, distracting you, or insulting you. Some chicks (in a relationship) suddenly want to blow your dick, apparently believing that this means they are winning the argument, just like they want to engage in sex when they’ve done something really stupid, as an attempt to “make up for it”. In short, if you expect women to consistently act in a logical way, you can expect a few surprises.

    5. Do you think committing logical fallacies is quite natural? I think the mind of humans seems not to gear for logical thinking. When people say you are “logical”, like me being called that way by some monks during my recent retreat, I think they mean you are able to organize your thoughts in an easy-to-follow order, not that you are impervious to logical fallacies.

    6. Well, the fact that you are open to understand these underlying principle says a lot about you as a person. Not sure if logical fallacies are natural but I am sure they are the norm. Being a rational person is not the norm in today’s society. It makes for a difficult life.

    7. One book I can recommend for learning some basic symbolic logic is the book How to Prove It by Daniel Velleman. The book is designed to prepare people with a high school-level mathematics education to do college-level proofs in math classes. If you were to simply read the first two chapters (on logic), and do all the exercises within, you’d get pretty good at manipulating the symbols when solving symbolic logic problems.

      The book does not get into formal and informal fallacies, but from there, I would recommend a book geared toward philosophy students in which you analyze arguments using logic and determine their validity and soundness. I personally have not gone through a book like this, but I know several philosophers who would highly recommend doing something like this. You might want to look online at course websites for the philosophy departments of reputable universities and find out what textbooks are common, and just pick one.

      As your skills with logic improve, I’d encourage you to sit there and analyze the arguments given by journalists and politicians, if you want some examples of poor reasoning. And of course subjecting your own writing or thought process to this critique is kind of the point.

    8. I dated one woman who was would always try to start a “debate” with me about some pointless social issue every time she had a drop of alcohol, but it was nearly impossible to do so, because she constantly committed the “straw man fallacy.” The reason for this was that she was incapable of understanding what I actually said, and what she thought I said was often the opposite of what I meant.

      I also dated a woman who was well aware of logical fallacies and cognitive biases, a formidable opponent in debates, and an anti-feminist for what it’s worth. As well as women who, by profession, have to use logical reasoning.

      But it’s one thing to know how to make a logical argument; it’s another thing to remain level-headed enough to not allow your emotions to rule your thoughts and actions in debates or in life in general.

      Psychologists have found differences between the genders in emotion regulation:

      Age and Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation Strategies: Autobiographical Memory, Rumination, Problem Solving and Distraction
      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27425806/

      Also, check out this abstract (I don’t have full access to the study, so it’s difficult for me to draw a conclusion on it):
      Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal
      https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1368430207088035

      “Behaviorally, men and women evidenced comparable decreases in negative emotion experience. Neurally, however, gender differences emerged. Compared with women, men showed (a) lesser increases in prefrontal regions that are associated with reappraisal, (b) greater decreases in the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responding, and (c) lesser engagement of ventral striatal regions, which are associated with reward processing. We consider two non-competing explanations for these differences. First, men may expend less effort when using cognitive regulation, perhaps due to greater use of automatic emotion regulation. Second, women may use positive emotions in the service of reappraising negative emotions to a greater degree.”

      I would like to add a third non-competing explanation of these differences: Women are better actors. A woman might be absolutely furious, but capable of acting like she is being cool and rational. I imagine there are a variety of reasons for this, but probably one big factor is that she learned from an early age that a good portion of the population could overpower and kill her, so she had to learn to “act” like everything was cool to effectively de-escalate situations with Tyrone or with dad. And this ability of course gives women an advantage when it comes to survival and passing on her genes. As does the example of the woman who fucks Stone Age Chad after provoking him into a rage – she gets to have his baby instead of being clubbed to death by him.

    9. You left out the killer introductory sentence of the second paper: “Despite strong popular conceptions of gender differences in emotionality and striking gender differences in the prevalence of disorders thought to involve emotion dysregulation, the literature on the neural bases of emotion regulation is nearly silent regarding gender differences.” I really wonder why this is the case. I surely can’t have anything to do with the cult of political correctness that has taken over academia, which first wrecked the humanities and afterwards turned the sciences into SCIENCE!.

    1. The article states that this 26-year-old guy died after getting the vaxx but “for unknown reasons”. See, the vaxx is clearly not to blame here. It’s a total coincidence. Obviously, it’s a conspiracy theory to believe that the vaxx is harmful. I mean, what if he had been among the 0% of perfectly healthy young adults who died of Covid? Wait, I think I need to refresh my knowledge of this part of the “Countering Covid Fake News” handbook.

    2. Recently, four B.A. pilots died of the vaxx. I think we will see more of that, i.e. stewardesses and pilots dropping dead in air. This will be the stuff of disaster movies.

    3. @aaronsleazy re: the four British Airline pilots

      I saw that too and was trying to find info.

      I did see some Reuters “fact-checking” saying that it’s debunked about the part how British Airways is in crisis talks with the British government about mandated vaccines.

      Link: https://archive.is/Htx3G

    4. The claim about British Airways being in crisis talks is based on a supposed leak. It has not been officially confirmed and I don’t think it ever will. It does not sound implausible to me, though. Also, the four deaths are real. We can now of course speculate about the cause. Yet, it is a very strange coincidence that they had all been recently vaxxed. Also, take into account that pilots need to be in good health, which makes the vaxx the likeliest cause. Lastly, keep in mind that when Covid started, everybody who died, even it was in a traffic accident, was counted as a Covid death because it was politically expedient. Now the opposite happens and the mainstream goes to great lengths to minimize the number of deaths connected to the vaxx.

    7. It’s getting beyond ridiculous. With stories like this I suspect that they are trial balloons to see how stupid people really are. I don’t recall reading anything about trials with “mixed and matched” vaxxes. The idea itself is completely unscientific, so I wonder who came up with it. I bet that if you follow they money trail, you end up at the Gates Foundation, some US agency, or Big Pharma.

  6. So… They just suicides McAfee today. On the same day that it came out that Google was funding the Wuhan lab.

    Crazy stuff.

    Reply

    2. I just saw that, too. It’s crazy indeed. Regarding Google, I don’t think that this angle is entirely correct. Instead, my hypothesis is that the US government is using private companies to get involved in shady business. The Deep State essentially hides behind Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and others. It is certainly more plausible to assume that than believing that there is some kind of spontaneous synchronization between those companies.

    3. That definetely makes sense now that you said it. I’m fact now that you mention it I’m surprised others haven’t thought of this yet.

      I generally follow all these people who talk about the tech oligopolies and the general theory was that they’re like a hive mind you seem. They’re all in San Francisco and all think a like so that’s why they do all these moves at the same time.

      But that never jived with me fully. It was never a good enough explanation. I think yours makes a lot more sense.

    4. The “hive mind” theory does not make sense because those organizations move in unison. There is apparently never any kind of miscommunication or disagreement. The benefit of the approach I mentioned is that the Deep State can do whatever it wants, such as engaging in large-scale censorship with regards to, for instance, Covid or black-on-white crime. They can push any agenda they want, in either direction. This means censorship and suppression on the one hand and promoting expedient causes on the other. Think of homosexuality, the destruction of the family, BLM, the sanctification of Fentanyl George, peaceful protests, or the glorification of sluts. It really is quite convenient.

      This way, the narrative can be that things just kind of happen, you know: hive mind and all that, when in fact there is large scale orchestration going on. A particularly important case in point is Andrew Anglin who had his domain seized. Well, you can add every right-winger who got kicked off all banks, crowd-sourcing sites, and payment processors, like magic. Somehow Google just did it, as if laws didn’t matter, just like PayPal or banks can apparently just decide to shut down your accounts, and so does the entire financial system, apparently. Now Google is the scapegoat, or the banks are. Had Obama come out and said that we need to suppress everybody online who isn’t an ultra-leftie by taking their web domains, deleting links to their work from search indexes, kicking them off Amazon, and making it impossible for them to send and receive money, the average normie might have started to pay more attention that he is supposed to.

      By the way, Germany is very open about their use of NGOs to finance the radical left. Billions of euros every year are used for some imaginary “Fight Against the Right”, and all the money goes to leftist organizations, NGOs, newspapers, websites, you name it. Of course, the government isn’t political. It’s a mere coincidence that all those outlets push the wake mainstream narrative hard.

    1. I like the reference to Epstein. McAfee knew what’s up. Too bad he found such an unfortunate end. It also illustrates that the U.S. Deep State has tentacles all over the (Western) world. I know that this is highly speculative, but think about who has more to gain by killing McAfee. It probably wasn’t Spain.

      Keep in mind that McAfee died at the age of 75. If you are half as awake and active as he was at that age, you can consider yourself very lucky.

  8. How have those here, who have not gotten the jab (i.e. the Covid vaccination) dealt with pressure from family, friends, co workers to get the jab?

    I’m pretty much getting pressure – while it’s not “trust the science”, it’s all sorts of other regurgitated reasons I hear from my circle about getting the jab.

    Latest person pressuring me has resorted to saying “I have a microbiology degree [from 20 years ago] so they know more than me and the vaxx is safe. Don’t be a conspiracy theorist.”

    May have to look at buying a black market vaccine passport….

    Reply

    1. I don’t have that issue as I come from a family of (anti-leftist) scientists, and they’re not in a hurry to get the jab. On the same token, was just watching Chris Martensen interview a scientist on the subject (his latest video I think). And he started off the video with how… he noticed a funny peculiarity… All the scientists and medical doctors he knows are in no hurry to get vaccinated… but hey, it might just be a coincidental thing with the ones he knows.

      Here’s the video link:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjMZvpmuaKY
      Description:
      Dr Geert Vanden Bossche has two things; a very long career in industry vaccine development and a theory that these vaccines — as configured and rolled-out — represent a gigantic mistake.

    2. I think it’s better not to be confrontative. The topic recently came up in a conversation with colleagues. They were basically boasting about having gotten vaxxed and asked which one I had gotten, pistol-to-the-chest style: “Which one did you get, Michael?” I then said that I won’t answer this question and that this is highly sensitive data. To my great surprise, this completely shut them up. One mumbled, “Yeah, we really can’t ask this kind of question.”

      Alternatively, you can say that you didn’t get an appointment yet. The point here is that eventually, people will just stop pestering you. This is another way of deflecting unwelcome questions, i.e. you pretend that you’re on-board with the agenda. A nice twist is to say that you are not part of a risk group and that it would be egoistical of you to try getting jabbed when there are still so many unvaxxed elderly out there.

      By the way, several of my colleagues have had side-effects after the vaxx. Some had to call in sick, taking one or more days off. One had to spend one day in a hospital and got monitored due to an “adverse reaction”. None of this seems to deter the vaxxers. Also, I have a hunch that at least a few of the vaxxers are only putting on a show and play along, just as some people pretend to be fully onboard with the diversity agenda, yet manage to weasel themselves out of all supposed commitments with plausible deniability.

    3. Thanks for linking the video. However, Bossche is saying that vaccination in the long run might lead to more resistant virus strains. I see that about half of the population is anti vaxx but I still haven’t heard an expert claiming that vaccination is unsafe to the point that catching COVID is preferential to getting vaccinated.

    5. “Thanks for linking the video”. I only linked it for the comment at the start.

      Namely that medical professionals and scientists tens to be far more skeptical of the vaccine than the average person. I don’t know what that says, but there is something to it.

    6. I’m hoping to get to the point where so many have been vaxxed, the masks are off and no questions are asked. That way we will just blend in.

    7. I had that conversation with several people today, especially since I have been sharing this (peer reviewed) study that was published yesterday.
      https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/693/htm

      PArt of the abstract reads:
      “Currently, we see 16 serious side effects per 100,000 vaccinations, and the number of fatal side effects is at 4.11/100,000 vaccinations. For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination. Conclusions: This lack of clear benefit should cause governments to rethink their vaccination policy. ”

      I have a strong hunch that this is an underestimate. In addition to the podcast I shared earlier, and other reputable scientists voicing concerns, I have had an astonishing amount of anecdotal evidence of people who either were vaccinated, or know someone who has, reporting mild to strong side effects. Everyone seems to know at least a few cases. Three of my employees got the AZ jab recently, one came down ill for a couple days, another is still working but feeling ill right now.

      Close acquaintances who are working in vaccination centres in Buenos Aires have also told me anecdotal stories of side effects. There is even a policy in place, that Astra Zeneca is given to younger healthier people, while the russian Sputnik is reserved for more elderly or at risk population since it seemingly works better and has fewer reported side effects.

      Thankfully, in my country there has not been too much pressure to get a jab since there is a scarcity of vaccines, so the issue of vaccine hesitancy has barely come up yet. Argentina is notorious for having badly botched its vaccination scheme, politicians here putting too much faith in very few well-connected local pharmaceutical bosses.

      They rejected Pfizer and went all in for Astra-Zeneca, which was supposed to be produced here with a local industry partner, and even paid for a zillion doses in advance that failed to arrive in time. Putin helped out somewhat sending a few million doses of Sputnik in the mean time, and some chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm were thrown in there too.

      That may start to change now, now elections are coming and local pols are desperate to get whatver vaxx they can get their hands on (polls have found a correlation between vaccination status and willingess to vote for the incumbents, seemingly). AZ shipments have started arriving in the last months, and today they announced a deal with chinese labs (chinese vaccines seem to be some of the worst performing ones, as evidenced by countries like Chile and Seychelles, that vaccinated a large % of their population with them and are suffering massive outbreaks). Russias Sputnik has started local “production” (mostly bottling the end product, apparently).

      Discussions with students and colleagues thus far have been polite and understanding. In a recent meeting with one of my department bosses at the university, I brought up the issue. He was very understanding, and assured me that our institution would not mandate compulsory vaccinations for staff unless forced by the government.

      With my family, not so much. At a recent virtual family meeting my sister mentioned that I could apply for a vaccine since I am an educator (part-time university prof), to which I replied I had no intention of getting any. She got a kind of smug smile on her face, the kind you see reserved for flat earthers.

      My parents, to their credit, are not pressing the issue, even after having been quite scared this whole time (both have increased risk factors), in spite of my best efforts to educate them on relative risks and myths about covid. Both got their first dose of Sputnik, so they are seemingly calming down somewhat.

    8. @GLS

      I am also hoping for my contry to keep botching the vaccine supply until such time that the negative side effects are more widely known in the mainstream, so compulsory vaccination will not be instituted.

      I have some hope this will happen, the MSM only took a little over 18 months to start taking the Wuhan lab origin hypothesis seriously, now that Trump is no longer in office they may be less blind and pick up on this sooner. There are some signs that this is happening already.

    9. Good point about Wuhon. I’ve thought about not wearing the mask, being ambiguous about the vaxx, and seeing the results. The protocols for enforcement in the US are sketchy at best. It all just sounds like bullshit intimidation tactics. Zero backing from the US Constitution.

    10. “Zero backing from the US Constitution.”

      While legally correct, there are plenty of laws, both state and federal, that have zero backing on from the US Constitution. I think it’s time to acknowledge that the way going forward will be a widening gap between the “de facto” and the “de jure”. The left has been doing this forever, because they have no moral compass. Look at sanctuary cities, migrant policies in general and of course gun control.
      The right will start doing it, too, once the barriers of entry become incredibly low, due to technological progress. Think 3D printing and BTC.

      Where does it all end? Very simple: The discussion will become moot. The US constitution will become irrelevant. Imagine a discussion in 1980, where two parties argue if “Mein Kampf” should be banned. One side comes from a free-speech perspective and argues against banning, the other comes from a “government has to protect its citizens protect from harm” perspective and argues for a ban. However, while de jure, in certain countries the discussion is still there, it is de facto moot, given that today pretty much anybody can download a copy of the book online and for free.

      Technology will fix this.
      I’d be very surprised if 10-20 years from now we still have politicians, to be honest.

    11. I guy a knew in another department about in his 50’s got the jab. He had diabetes and was having a lot of feet issues, I think he got jabbed in fear of having complications in the event he contracted the coof. Well, he suddenly dropped dead in his hoke about a couple months ago and no one has been able to tell me the cause of death. Seems quite suspicious, so there’s some more anecdotal evidence for you.

    12. I know more people who have had adverse reactions than I know people who actually got the wuflu.

    13. Same here. I know about a dozen people who had side effects, including people needing to take days off or even getting hospitalized as a safety precaution. All those are people who were very forthcoming about it. I did not even have to ask and I’m sure that if I asked around, I’d easily get a few dozen such reports.

    14. Technology will fix this.
      I’d be very surprised if 10-20 years from now we still have politicians, to be honest.

      I agree with this as a general point, about everything really.

      History is just a big cycle of ideologues and movements trying to/pretending to solve issues through politicking, whereas in the end technology solves the issue and makes them moot.

      In fact, someone even noticed that movements get the most fervor right before an issue is solved by technology so they can take credit for it.

      Think feminism “liberating women”. It’s just a complete coincidence that women won the fight right when air-conditioned offices and office jobs were created. Apparently women were fighting to leave the home and “work the same jobs as men” for millennia, but coincidentally it happened right about the time when office jobs were created…

    16. “To give you an idea about how bad the situation in the industry already is, ask yourself why today’s software is so bloated.”

      I started running Linux MINT on the same machine I used to have windows on. Booted from a SSD.
      I’ve never heard the fan engage even once, whereas with windows running on THE VERY SAME MACHINE, it was turning itself on every 20 minutes.
      Unfucking believable.

    17. It is unbelievable what an piece of crap Windows is. Then again, I’m rather happy about the fact that Bill Gates has been one of the masterminds behind the vaxxing campaign and not some geek in the Linux community.

  9. First we had a problem with bridges collapsing because the diverse cast that built them considered mathematics to be a tool of the patriarchy. Now entire apartment buildings collapse:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/i-heard-screams-massive-search-underway-after-miami-condo-building-collapse
    You can literally watch civilization move back in time. Wait what will happen when we no longer have a critical mass of people who can maintain the existing infrastructure.

    Reply

    1. Apparently Paraguay’s First Lady’s family is among the missing.
      Just 2 weeks after Paraguay announced they’re looking into adopting BTC as legal tender, too.
      Anybody wanna pay in EUR for Saddam’s crude oil?

    2. “Wait what will happen when we no longer have a critical mass of people who can maintain the existing infrastructure.”

      Can we do some math here?

      Say 40% of the western world get the jab. Say 5% of those die because the spike protein fucks up their response to Corona this autumn.
      Think that’s enough in terms of critical mass?
      How many among those are relevant for maintenance?
      Is 5% death rate too much? Is it too little?
      How many critical maintenance people do we have in the world?

    3. I don’t know the number but a back-of-the-envelope calculation would start with all people in relevant fields and divide this number by two or three to get those that are really competent. In software engineering, I’d argue that if the best ten percent in any company were gone, the lights would go out very quickly as the skill gap between someone competent and the run-of-the-mill average and essentially useless coder is shocking.

      To give you an idea about how bad the situation in the industry already is, ask yourself why today’s software is so bloated. We are at a point where most coders are unable to write basic code. What they instead do is look for existing third-party libraries and try making them work with their code. Those people are referred to as “glue programmer” and they constitute the vast majority in industry. Instead of writing a function with five lines, they import an external library with plenty of additional dependencies and try to hammer a square peg into a round hole. It is mind-boggling. Well, if you’ve ever wondered how a tab in Chrome can consume 1 GB of RAM, here’s your answer, i.e. too many people barely know their craft.

    5. To give you an idea about how bad the situation in the industry already is, ask yourself why today’s software is so bloated. We are at a point where most coders are unable to write basic code. What they instead do is look for existing third-party libraries and try making them work with their code. Those people are referred to as “glue programmer” and they constitute the vast majority in industry. Instead of writing a function with five lines, they import an external library with plenty of additional dependencies and try to hammer a square peg into a round hole. It is mind-boggling. Well, if you’ve ever wondered how a tab in Chrome can consume 1 GB of RAM, here’s your answer, i.e. too many people barely know their craft.

      Funny thing is I never connected the dots until you mentioned it here lol. Even though I’ve wondered about that for years. But guess I’m ready to get the explanation now, as I’m at the point where I’m studying precisely this thing.

      I was just reading at how much slower frameworks and libraries are compared to the raw language. It’s shocking. But I get why people would do that now that I’m studying frameworks. It’s so much easier to “glue stuff together” as you say. You don’t even need to understand how stuff works.

  10. Did someone heard about the new series on Netflix called sexlife?
    Married former party girl and whore meets an ex lover and is emotionally confused. Asks herself because of bored marriage if that’s all her life has to be.

    Honestly nothing new, but it seems Netflix didn’t have any better ideas and it will push really hard for the life Model to be a hoe

    Reply

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