Penn & Teller said these exact things before

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by Ornthoron.

Cue the debate about when videos should actually be duped. I'm with the 'straight away' crowd. So...

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Penn-Teller-Explain-Cups-Balls

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by Hybrid. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

>> ^rellik:

This is a dupeof
http://videosift.com/video/Penn-Teller-Explain-Cups-Balls
Ooof! The probie dethrones Arvana. Nice!

This is a *dupeof

http://videosift.com/video/Penn-Teller-Explain-Cups-Balls

>> ^swedishfriend:

joe rogan is watched by over a billion people every ufc event (yes over a billion people watch each UFC event). He still does stand up and he is a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, had a great part on one of the best sitcoms of all time, News Radio. He is an open cannabis user (brave for media personality). He is teh roxxors.


He's also a moon hoaxer, i.e. he thinks the Moon landings were faked. Unless he's retracted those statements and admitted he was very wrong(some time later) after being completely dismantled and destroyed by Phil Plait, of Bad Astronomy fame, on I think it was Penn & Teller's radio show. He made a huge fool of himself; I can only hope he's learned something from that experience.

>> ^blankfist:

Really? Having a conversation with you is like:
"I like my steaks rare."
"Oh, you like them when they're hard to find?"
"What? No, rare as in I like them less cooked and bloody."
"So you agree you like them when you cannot find them. I agree to that."


I have the same feeling, only you're the one who always thinks "rare steak" means they're hard to find.

I do not know how to respond to this. First, I wont look at any sources you posted because, as you ignored my main points, I ignore yours. I made the point about reasonable and unreasonable people---not about people smoking even though they know smoking is bad.

>> ^blankfist:
@<A rel="nofollow" class=profilelink title="member since May 3rd, 2010" href="http://videosift.com/member/Lawdeedaw">Lawdeedaw. Posting on the internet. You're doing it wrong. <IMG class=smiley src="http://static1.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/wink.gif">
"Libertarians like voluntarism?" Yes. Yes they do. Read up what the term means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism

You said, "...reasonable enough to make choices for themselves..." And then you said, "...I think they knowingly make bad decisions..."

>> ^blankfist:

And lastly, many items corn-based are not soda products. It is a food that goes into many products---including the making of corn on the cob.

"I think where the danger comes in with corn is that much of the corn grown now in North America is going into making high fructose corn syrup," Dawson says. "So it's not that corn per se is bad, but it's the sweetener made from corn that gets into many of the foods that Americans are probably consuming too much of, and we now see that showing up as obesity and heart disease and potential for type 2 diabetes."

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, your cognitive dissonance shows every time you make an ad hom attack. This is progress!

Ad hominem would be me saying you're wrong because you smell bad. I explained why you were wrong about what I myself said, and wondered aloud if you were being this obtuse just to annoy me, or if you really were that bad at reading comprehension.

>> ^blankfist:
I'd agree that it's false that "all types of intervention" will raise costs. I never asserted that.

Good! So you agree that single payer is a superior way to reduce cost without compromising quality, right?

>> ^blankfist:
See that? That's affirmation of my statement. So you both agreed and disagreed that government intervention in the medical industry raises costs. Now, who's being obtuse? You're holding two belief systems, NR.

I agreed that in the hypothetical situation you described, it would do the hypothetical thing you described. I didn't agree that the hypothetical situation is an accurate description of the health care system in the US. It's not. In fact, I would go so far as to say that nowhere in the world have they made an unfunded mandate that required treatment of hangnails. Did I not make that clear in my last comment? Do you not understand the difference?

I was trying have a conversation with you about principles and values rather than start an argument over basic facts about what our system is, and why it produces the results we see. Largely because I know you won't accept information from me as being authoritative, except apparently when I agree with you.

Why not respond to what I actually said? Namely, that you can fix the cost problem you raised by taking more aggressive steps on intervention. Also that there may be a moral problem with giving people the market freedom to choose between, say, a religious hospital that self-imposes a "save the poor" mandate that has to charge more to cover those costs, and a mercantile hospital with a more market-friendly "pay-up or die" policy that can charge less for procedures.

Libertarians like voluntarism? Speak for you and myself maybe, but like religous people, leave out the masses of libertarians who do not like to volunteer.

You said, "...reasonable enough to make choices for themselves..." And then you said, "...I think they knowingly make bad decisions..." Wow, is that insane or what? Reasonable would mean they make bad decisions based on incorrect info but try to make the right choices. Unreasonable means they just f-ing do it regardless.

And lastly, many items corn-based are not soda products. It is a food that goes into many products---including the making of corn on the cob. I would agree with this video 100% if corn only made fucktose corn syrup, as I call it. But corn does not just make fucktose... Still, I agree with this video 95%! I want these bailouts, handouts, or cornjobs to end!

>> ^blankfist:
@<A rel="nofollow" class=profilelink title="member since April 27th, 2007" href="http://videosift.com/member/chilaxe">chilaxe, Libertarians don't like meritocracy. Libertarians like voluntarism. That is, they want people to do whatever they want as long as they don't hurt others.
I disagree that the masses aren't reasonable enough to make choices for themselves. I think they knowingly make bad decisions because the positive aspects of those decisions are higher than the negatives, or they make bad decisions because of other circumstances like comfort or the notion of getting ahead quickly, etc. Whatever the reason, people don't need an intelligent society designer guiding them. Common sense is enough to tell you breathing smoke isn't particularly healthy.
And cigarettes aren't 100% bad for you. If you mean they are damaging to health, well certainly that's true, but so is metabolizing food as it causes cell damage and just about everything else we do. But cigarettes don't automatically cause diseases like cancer or emphysema, and they don't necessarily cause health problems that require medical attention. In fact a lot of that is probably genetic. This is anecdotal, I know, but my grandmother smoked every day of her life and just recently passed away at 94. She also ate greasy foods probably with loads of trans fats.

"Also, the more controlled society becomes, the more people get uncomfortable with it, so it doesn't seem like the modern world is very likely to experience a slippery slope 50 years down the road based on small increments of increased control that make sense in the present day."

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, you contradicted yourself. You said this claim was utterly and completely false: "It's been proven that government intervention in the medical industry has driven the cost of medical care up." Yet, you immediately agreed that "forcing hospitals to treat every person that comes into the hospital" increases costs.


Sometimes blankfist, I think you are obtuse on purpose, just to aggravate me. Lately though, I think you just lack the mental capacity to have rational conversations.

What's completely and utterly false is the assertion that all types of intervention will always raises costs. What's also utterly false is that our medical cost inflation is a result of government intervention.

What I agreed with is that your completely hyperbolic, shortsighted, hypothetical example of an intervention would likely lead to hospitals raising prices.

That's why the smarter thing to do is make sure everyone has insurance, and subsidize it for people who can't easily afford it. Even better would be to go to single-payer. We've even seen the UK cut costs down to nearly nothing by completely nationalizing medical care, while maintaining a quality of care that often exceeds ours.

PS: Politifact has rendered a verdict on Obama's committments about withdrawal from Iraq: Promise Kept.

Your video, Penn & Teller: Bullshit! - Soft Drink Tax, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^blankfist:

I know we're all largely atheists on here, but the predominant number of hospitals tend to be created by churches. Why? Because as much as we may despise dogma, these followers do sometimes hold the belief of taking care of their fellowman. This includes people with life-threatening illnesses.

Churches can do good works. I love the things they usually have to say about social justice, even if I have a fairly skeptical view of the type of reasoning they use to conclude there's a moral obligation for it.

That's why I want the nation I live in to set up a system that formalizes that universal moral obligation to provide care for those who need it.

It's why I'm happy the nation I live in has gotten 90% of the way there.

>> ^blankfist:

It's been proven that government intervention in the medical industry has driven the cost of medical care up.

Utterly and completely false. Virtually every country everywhere has a much higher degree of government intervention into the health care market, and literally every single country in the world's health care costs are less than ours per capita.

The kind of intervention matters a lot.

>> ^blankfist:
By forcing hospitals to treat every person that comes into the hospital, people tend to use it as a welfare clinic and come in with hangnails and common colds. They can then refuse to pay for the service which drives the costs up. That's fact.

Increases costs...but also increases the number of people alive at the end of the day, no?

Let's look at this situation another way, and see if you don't understand it better. Should paying patients have a right to choose between paying full price, and getting a discount on their treatment, so long as they give the doctor permission to let a poor person die?

Of course, the smart thing to do here would be for everyone to have insurance, and feel free to see doctors for a small co-pay when they first get sick and get a simple, cheap treatment rather than wait (because they can't afford an appointment with the doctor) until they're at death's door and need radical and costly treatment to save their life.

>> ^blankfist:
If you ordered food at a restaurant, then refused to pay, would it be fair for the government to stop that restaurant from refusing service to you?


If food cost thousands of dollars, and could only be prepared by a small number of highly-educated people, and someone came into a restaurant already unconscious and minutes away from death...yeah, I think it'd be fair to say that restaurateurs have a legal responsibility to save a life first, and haggle over payment later.