|
The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 34,046
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 35 minutes, 30 seconds
|
|
48 > 1
--------------------
|
shivas.wisdom
בּ



Registered: 02/19/09
Posts: 13,487
Loc: Turtle Island
Last seen: 1 hour, 50 minutes
|
|
Do you think only one Canadian reported injury? The study I referenced examined 11 “recently exposed” - tested within one month of returning from Havana - and 14 “remotely exposed” - tested 1-19 months after returning from Havana. So what's the sweet spot between 25 and 48 where it suddenly becomes real for you?
Also, no comment on being wrong about non-political Canadian brain injuries being global headlines? Just going to keep throwing shit at the wall by being wrong about 48>1 too?
I'll ask again: what would you consider evidence that embassy workers in Havana were injured, without an immediately apparent cause?
--------------------
|
Brian Jones
Club 27



Registered: 12/18/12
Posts: 12,455
Loc: attending Snake Church
Last seen: 6 hours, 5 minutes
|
|
https://www.smerconish.com/exclusive-content/havana-syndrome-and-the-bad-science-behind-it
I'm not saying this is the interpretation to believe, or that that article even reaches a definite conclusion. But the author indicates that suggestion was frequently provided to the victims before the symptoms occurred. Maybe some of the cases are real with sinister causes and others are not. I don't know.
-------------------- "The Rolling Stones will break up over Brian Jones' dead body" John Lennon I don't want no commies in my car. No Christians either. The worst thing about corruption is that it works so well,
|
shivas.wisdom
בּ



Registered: 02/19/09
Posts: 13,487
Loc: Turtle Island
Last seen: 1 hour, 50 minutes
|
|
I think it's important to note that the Canadian study I referenced hasn't been mentioned as one of these flawed/weak studies - and if you compare the studies, the Dalhousie university one is much greater in scope than the US counterparts.
I think the most significant, with regards to the mass suggestion conclusion, is that a dog was also affected:
Quote:
10. Neuropathological findings in an exposed dog:
An exposed dog belonging to one of the diplomatic families developed changes in behavior during their time in Havana, specifically aggression and epileptic seizures. Consequently, he was euthanized in Ottawa on September 2018. Sections from his brain were processed and analyzed by independent experts in the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine and Weitzman Institute for Science (Rehovot, Israel).
[Medical mumbo jumbo follows...]
But for sure, even medical experts can be wrong. There hasn't been any confirmation of cause - only a series of educated guesses. The conclusion of the study I reference (pesticide exposure) has also been challenged. The mystery illness cluster from New Brunswick has been similarly challenged - even without the additional political implication, these kind of medical problems don't always have clear solutions and sometimes end up being nothing at all.
Still, we shouldn't allow political prejudice to influence our opinion of health issues, and I think that's clearly at play here.
--------------------
|
The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 34,046
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 35 minutes, 30 seconds
|
|
Quote:
shivas.wisdom said: Do you think only one Canadian reported injury? The study I referenced examined 11 “recently exposed” - tested within one month of returning from Havana - and 14 “remotely exposed” - tested 1-19 months after returning from Havana. So what's the sweet spot between 25 and 48 where it suddenly becomes real for you?
Also, no comment on being wrong about non-political Canadian brain injuries being global headlines? Just going to keep throwing shit at the wall by being wrong about 48>1 too?
I'll ask again: what would you consider evidence that embassy workers in Havana were injured, without an immediately apparent cause?
I’d never seen any news programs discussing those Canadian brain injuries, nor seen US Congress pass unanimous bills appropriating funds for victims, nor had military spokespeople condemning these injuries with thinly veiled accusations of state sponsored terrorism.
It doesn’t matter what id consider evidence, I’m not deciding which medical stories merit airtime, or the legislative authority of US Congress, and the latter is not deciding legislation based on medical necessity, clearly.
It boils down to this: the evidence is scant, and I have no reason to take the US government or their media lackeys word on it when it’s clear they’d present incriminating evidence on those parties if they had any, which prompted the Senator’s frustration that I linked pages ago. You wanna be mad because I’m not paying enough respect to the 1%ers who may or may not have gotten brain damage before, during, or after visiting Cuba, okay. Has anyone even died lol? There is zero proportionality to this story and that alone should be raising alarms. If it’ll make you feel better, just know that my heart goes out to all people everywhere who are injured unjustly, either physically or mentally. There, now we can stop pretending I’m some cold hearted sociopath who wants Cuba to torture people without recourse because it allows me to take a rhetorical position opposed to the United States’. I feel like this is the argument racists make when I tell them to stfu about FBI crime statistics. “Oh you don’t care about the black people being shot, how terrible!” No I’m just aware of how certain stories are elevated to pursue certain agendas, like the local news ignoring widespread death at the hands of corporations to instead spotlight black on black violence to subconsciously convince the general public that their main concern should be black people. I simply don’t see the point in entertaining this story at all because one, all the supposed victims come from a place of privilege, my dismissal isn’t harming them at all, and two, there’s a clear pattern of lies and bad science at play throughout the timeline of this story. I’ll do the same thing when I see that a politician’s house was vandalized by anarchists or a cop claims some black teenager was charging at him or the OAS declares election fraud when a leftist party wins an election. I’ll continue to make these assumptions because they’re safe assumptions, and because it serves no purpose to take these peoples’ word on it. There are exceptions, there are times where I’ll make these assumptions and they’ll be wrong, but this is the risk you take in a world where most of the media you consume is designed to bend your will towards a goal you’d not otherwise seek. These parties don’t need my help manufacturing consent for their agenda and no matter how many different ways you try to frame it, your trying to find the needle of truth in this haystack only serves to validate that agenda. there is no point to me weeping for these injury victims, they’re gonna get all the help that is available on this planet to recover, they don’t need apostles for sympathy crusading through the Internet. They’ll be fine.
--------------------
Edited by The Ecstatic (11/05/21 10:03 PM)
|
shivas.wisdom
בּ



Registered: 02/19/09
Posts: 13,487
Loc: Turtle Island
Last seen: 1 hour, 50 minutes
|
|
"It doesn’t matter what id consider evidence,"
I think you don't want to answer the question 'what would you consider evidence?' because you arrived at your current conclusion using political prejudice, and there isn't any way for you to backtrack at this point.
It's pretty obvious you've let your political prejudices guide you here, considering you didn't even put in the cursory effort necessary to know it wasn't just one person affected before confidently posting "48 > 1" in dismissal.
This has never been about your casual dismissal harming others. It's about holding ourselves to our own standards - but considering you "think advancing the ball is a good thing even if you have to bend your own rules to do so", I doubt you actually have any.
--------------------
|
The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 34,046
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 35 minutes, 30 seconds
|
|
No shit I let my political prejudices guide me to my conclusions, I’m not omniscient and I don’t trust the US government or the corporate media to disseminate evidence objectively.
Either way, state department officials with the best healthcare on the planet don’t need my sympathy, so on the off chance that this isn’t a deliberate lie to antagonize America’s enemies, there is nothing lost, so I’m not going to lose sleep over it.
--------------------
|
shivas.wisdom
בּ



Registered: 02/19/09
Posts: 13,487
Loc: Turtle Island
Last seen: 1 hour, 50 minutes
|
|
I took some time to think about why this discussion is getting so heated, because it doesn't really make sense to me. My friends tell me that I have a tendency to miss the trees for the forest - my thinking is organized around patterns, and doesn't leave much room for exceptions to the rule - and so I think the problem is one of perspective.
For an analogy, let's consider rolling through a stop sign. In general, this is an unsafe act - but there is a significant difference between doing this when there is heavy traffic, versus doing this in the middle of the night when the roads are empty. Many people will look at the specific situation and conclude that sometimes it's okay to bend the rule. I, on the other hand, don't see much value in this - there is always a possibility my perception will be wrong, and so it's not a habit I want to form.
So you're looking at the specific situation of being prejudiced against claims made by the US gov't towards their traditional 'enemies', whereas I'm looking at the general situation of allowing prejudice to form our beliefs.
This is then exasperated by my belief that the means must reflect the ends, and your belief that the ends can justify the means. Because of this, using prejudice to form a belief (the means) can be justified by you if it brings us to a reasonable conclusion (the ends) - but not by me.
And this is the apparently unbridgeable chasm we're grappling with - so I'm going to preface this by making it clear that I agree with much of your conclusions regarding the validity of Havana syndrome. What I disagree with is how you reached those conclusions.
There are two things in particular that you demonstrated in this thread: (1) dismissing evidence without actually examining it, and (2) not having a standard of evidence that would change your belief.
We're not robots - to be human is to have bias - but prejudice is something more. Bias means that I have an inclination for or against a belief - prejudice means that I have a preconceived belief that is not based on actual experience or reason. I'm biased towards anarchism, and so I have an inclination to believe the pro-anarchist position - but because I'm aware of my bias, I make sure to listen to the anti-anarchist position rather than just dismiss it outright - this is how you avoid bias turning into prejudice.
It's completely reasonable to be initially suspicious of the Havana syndrome claim - but your out of hand dismissal of purported evidence and inability to express a reasonable standard of evidence suggests that your belief is based on prejudice, rather than reason or evidence. Forming prejudiced beliefs - even if they got you to the correct destination this time - is not a habit we should allow ourselves to fall into, for down that path lies dogmatism. Hopefully this makes my being so upset over an apparent nonissue more understandable.
--------------------
|
The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 34,046
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 35 minutes, 30 seconds
|
|
I hope I didn’t give off the impression that I don’t get your perspective, because I do. And I completely understand why my point of view troubles you because it is a slippery slope. But like I said, there are no stakes in me dismissing this story. US diplomats are in no danger of losing their healthcare because a communist on the internet doesn’t believe them.
--------------------
|
The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 34,046
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 35 minutes, 30 seconds
|
|
--------------------
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,847
Last seen: 1 hour, 42 minutes
|
|
That's literally the subtitle of the article. "But maybe it still is"
|
The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 34,046
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 35 minutes, 30 seconds
|
Re: Havana Syndrome [Re: Kryptos]
#27625813 - 01/20/22 12:59 PM (2 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
Well they can’t say for sure.
Perhaps they’re firing the lasers from teacups in orbit. We just don’t know.
--------------------
|
Brian Jones
Club 27



Registered: 12/18/12
Posts: 12,455
Loc: attending Snake Church
Last seen: 6 hours, 5 minutes
|
|
Is it just me or did the first paragraph say they ruled it out, and the second paragraph said they can't rule it out?
-------------------- "The Rolling Stones will break up over Brian Jones' dead body" John Lennon I don't want no commies in my car. No Christians either. The worst thing about corruption is that it works so well,
|
Kryptos
Stranger

Registered: 11/01/14
Posts: 12,847
Last seen: 1 hour, 42 minutes
|
|
Dude, it's the CIA. It's like, Schrodinger's cat but with unlimited government-funded drugs.
|
The Ecstatic
Chilldog Extraordinaire


Registered: 11/11/09
Posts: 34,046
Loc: 'Merica
Last seen: 35 minutes, 30 seconds
|
Re: Havana Syndrome [Re: Kryptos]
#27626717 - 01/21/22 07:12 AM (2 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
Now the Senate is mad that the CIA isn’t being CIA enough
--------------------
|
|