Also dont masturbate too often.

Why should "natural" or "recreational" drugs be exempt from the same sceptical analysis that ordinary drugs are subject to?

This is because analytics, people love sci-fi, magic and adventure -- how successful could it be join these categories in a movie. sceptically entusiastic

Since you agree that they're trying to influence the debate, is there any aspect of let's call it 'global warming scepticism' that you think is basically a lie perpetuated by the industry to make their argument more persuasive?

It's pretty easy for say, a fossil fuel company to pay (what is pocket change to to them) a PR company quietly to spread ideas that are misleading but sound convincing right?

Also where did Inconvenient Truth say the planet would be basically dead? I don't recall that at all.

I'm not upvoting this.
Facebook is not a news source. If you're dumb enough to think otherwise, you shouldn't be allowed to go online in the first place. You're not intellectually competent enough to navigate the web.
What has this world become where we can't even differentiate between news organisations and random companies anymore?
It really pisses me off that this has to be said in the first place. Is it really that bad that we allow ourselves to be spoon-fed our favourite beliefs without any scepticism anymore?

I know how this sounds, but South Park deserves recognition for being one of the best public speakers for scepticism and rationalism of the last 50 years.

The reality is that sceptics today are targeting esjews for the same reason they have every other group of harmful cultists in the past. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a community of dedicated rationalists would be mystified and angered by the sudden rise of a new anti-rational movement; especially where that movement has been directly damaging to their own, see things like elevatorgate and prominent sceptics getting banned from conventions for wrongthink.

But why should the focus be suddenly so sharply on one group of irrationalists, to the apparent neglect of the others? Because esjudaism is the fresher and more exigent threat. Everyone in the current generation who's capable of correcting their ideas about religion, ghosts, scientology and psychics has basically already done so. Whereas esjews, like their frequent allies and ideological partners the islamists, seem to be gaining ground and converts every day. There's more opportunity and more need to change minds there than elsewhere.

Controversially I'm going to claim that 'youtube sceptics' spend a lot of their time on social media. Some of them make their living through social media. I think it's possible to understand why so many of them object so strongly to the tsunami of censorship that's devastating speech on those platforms in response to social justice hysteria; to suppression of the fictional and fascist concept of 'hate speech', to the false reports and takedowns of youtube videos, to twitter's Ministry of Truth and Safety, to reddit's constant ideological purges.

Now, why are so many of these anti-esjew sceptics white males? Well for one thing because most people in the english-speaking world are white, get over it and stop screeching about diversity. More substantially because most people are idiots. Let me explain. When you have a terrible ideology, obviously you look to stupid people for converts, but when you have an explicitly bigoted ideology, one that demonises certain groups of people while advancing special privileges for others, you narrow your focus even more and direct your propaganda efforts specifically at stupid people in the classes you're pretending to represent. You don't get many jewish friends of national socialism, and you don't get many white male esjews. It's not that these people are sitting on their throne of privilege chuckling down at the poor minorities struggling up to meet them. It's that they're a bunch of retards, but the wrong kind of retards to be esjews.

So opposition to esjudaism comprises: every intelligent and moral person in the world, male and female, black and white, gay and straight; a bunch of stupid straight white men; conservatives and other defectives; actual misogynists, homophobes and racists who imagine we're on their side.

TLDR: Sturgeon's Law.

I've seen a few of these on the sift at least, and I remember a number of us were sceptical. A lot of the time you don't want to be the party pooper that ruins it for everyone by whinging about something being fake.

I think a lot of the time people call things fake but can't quite explain why they think it is too, and I put that down to a subtle reading of things like:
- how likely is that to have happened?
- were the actors behaving within normal parameters for the context? (people hanging around with cameras or props, bears chasing people when they normally wouldn't)
- was there anything to gain out of a successful video? (associated youtube channel)
- did people hit cues and say things that were too perfect?
- if you can't see a cut, can you see an obvious place for a GOOD cut that you missed?
- how hard is it to fake?

What with humans being sociable animals and our evolutionary success is tied to interacting with other humans, I think by and large we're pretty good at spotting bullshit. It takes a very very good fake to trick the majority.

I hope you don't feel like that I'm pushing anything onto you. I'd like to just present the facts. I wasn't vegan until I turned 33, so I'm certainly not judging or trying to give out this information in order to put anyone down or elevate myself. I'm not trying to troll, I'm not trying to out-do you. I'm also typing this with limited time, so apologies if some of it sounds frank. (The videos below do a better job than me anyway).

1) A proper plant based diet makes it 8 times less likely for cancer cells to grow. There is a reason why 3rd world countries (that have largely plant based diets due to poverty) don't get cancers us westerners have. Also the #1 killer in the western world is cardiovascular disease, in the US alone one person dies every 8 seconds from it. Which is around 400, 000 people a year.

I know you're sceptical. I was too. So here's some actual science from actual doctors, who have come these conclusions on proper peer reviewed and non biased / industry funded research:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rNY7xKyGCQ2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZtPGyLaiHE1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYTf0z_zVs03
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XVf36nwraw4


2)Vegans aren't anti-choice, they are pro life, pro planet. The actions of people eating animal products goes way further than a person choosing to eat something(sure they are typically ignorant of the consequences, as most of pre-vegans were too). When a large portion of the planet chooses to eat animal products it effects everyone, because it's destroying the planet through global warming, deforestation, dumping of animal agriculture waste and so on. It kills more animals than just ones being brutalised in cages. It will eventually kill us too. To me it seems like a bad idea to destroy the only place in the universe that we can currently live.
So by eating animal products you're really making a choice for you, for me, for my hypothetical grandchildren, and of course for the animal that almost certainly wants to keep being alive. So as a vegan I'd like you refrain for making choices that impact my life, and I'm standing up for the voiceless animals who would certainly object to your choice too.

3) As you (hopefully) saw in at least one of the videos above, there is nothing in meat which cannot be obtained from a plant source (and without all of the bad stuff that comes with meat).



Your idea of a farm with humanely raised animals is a good start, but it's just not practical, the earth isn't big enough to meet demand. It's also still highly unethical as you still kill the animals at an early age in order to harvest their flesh.

You have a picture of two dogs in your avatar. I'm sure if someone decided to schedule their lives to end early for any reason, let alone to eat them, you'd find that pretty immoral right? You no doubt treat your dogs very well, but that doesn't make it OK to kill when they reach adolescence. If I said I wanted to eat your dogs (I don't of course) then any reason you came up with applies still to any farm animals that you currently feel fine with eating.

The animals also aren't stupid and they're aware of what's going on. My grandparents owned a massive farm with cows/pigs/rabbits/chickens and crops as well. They were living very comfortable lives as far as farm animals go, but they did not like it when you approached them, they knew what was waiting for them.
When you see typical farm animals that are truly free this is what they look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIF3BYBXZWA
They behave like pets, even cows kick a ball around.

Also cows milk is only created for when the cow is pregnant. Even if the cow is living in cow utopia, if it is getting milked then that's milk that should have gone to a calf. It was most likely artificially impregnated, and also most likely bought from someone that breeds female cows, and kills the male cows (since you only need one bull to harvest the semen).
When you really think about it, even the best treated animals are being breed and used to make someone money as the primary goal. That is immoral.



So what it really comes down to is taste. The ethics, the environmentalism, the health don't play a role in the debate at all, and hopefully one of those things is important to you, perhaps all 3.

Being animal product free isn't as hard as you think, it's as simple as swapping out a few ingredients here and there. It's not all about eating broccoli and kale. You'll still be eating burritos, burgers, pizzas, pastas, curries etc. Just slightly different and before you know it, you'll barely know the difference, and eventually prefer them that way.

And this is probably the part I found the hardest to believe myself, but once I knew about it, veganism became the easiest thing in the world. Taste is completely influenced by the foods you eat, because of brain chemistry. I thought I could never stop eating two things: cheese and chocolate. After about a month of not eating them (and yes it takes a little bit of effort towards the 3 week mark) you will break the dopamine effect in your brain and you'll never want to eat them again. I can eat vegan cheese and dairy free chocolate, but it does absolutely nothing for me these days. This is coming from someone that wouldn't eat regular chocolate, I had to have the good stuff, everyday. The cravings get pretty intense at the 3 week mark, I won't lie, but then one day you realise you've not had the cravings for several days.
When it comes to meats, even if they are well done, all I can smell is oil and blood. Eggs all I smell is sulphur. I find all of that quite repugnant and I see them for what they really are, rather than what my dopamine recepters tell me.

Now of course you can be unhealthy vegan, and eat all of the oreos, chips, and dairy free chocolate you want. That's up to you, either way the planet and animals don't care which way you go about it

You only answered half my question. The answer that proves this?

Nice anecdote. I assume by your smiley face that you know anecdotes are not proof of anything except an individuals experience.

In normal usage of the terms, denier and sceptic are synonymous. Although I do agree that there should be a distinction along the ways you've said.

It is lazy stone age thinking. You're not going to get anywhere if they're a roadblock and you don't spend the time convincing them otherwise. Do you really want to leave your fellow man behind? I think you should strive to put him on a better path. (I mean sceptics/deniers as a group - not on an individual level).

And which point and answer would that be? It's pretty clear you're wrong. You're moving into delusional territory.

Health happens to be my area. Condoms are only >98% effective in lab settings. My numbers are from longitudinal studies. In other words, it reflects the average user's results. They are not from anti-sex education organisations. Go look them up - there are lots of studies. Interestingly condom's have similar rates (80% to 90%) of stopping HIV transmission for exactly the same reasons. Even lower in some studies.

Don't be a snob. Education is the path forward. Your lazy abandonment of people because they disagreed with you is stone age thinking.

Anthony Giddens addresses sceptics in his book "The Politics of Climate Change": "Yet the sceptics do deserve and must receive a hearing. Scepticism is the life-blood of science and just as important in policy-making. It is right that whatever claims are made about climate change and its consequences are examined with a critical, even hostile, eye and in a continuing fashion."

Note: Anthony Giddens is very much not a sceptic and his book is an analysis of how to better achieve real action on climate change.

While I am 100% on board with the "carbon bad, not carbon good, global warming = real, made by man and a real prick of a problem" message, the biggest fault made by people like Maher etc in prosecuting their case to the "sceptics" is reliance on bad information.

For example, the sums have been done on solar and wind, and generally speaking, wind is only borderline viable for supporting a society (and that's only if you don't add the cost of some form of buffering/storage). Solar, particularly home roof grade, is fucking awful, and essentially a waste of time compared to tracking mass production arrays. In terms of energy to build/install/maintain/remove, it barely pays for itself. Solar thermal is also more efficient (helios arrays etc), but the two best bang for buck technologies for producing massive amounts of power at a very low carbon cost are nuclear and hydro.

And they are two technologies that people seem to want to get rid of. Germany shuttered it's nuke capability after Fukushima (and added more coal capacity). Italy's solar market has fallen in a heap, France is almost carbon neutral only because it is predominately nuke powered. One of the original climate change warriors, Dr. James Hansen of Nasa, is fully supportive of nuclear power, and get's constantly lambasted by green types because they do not want nuclear power to play a part.

Refutation of solid science and willful ignorance is not solely the province of people who deny climate change, and it's no less deplorable.

I'm fairly conflicted.

The issue with having an assassination program with virtually no oversight, run by a government whose people are all too willing to ignore the collateral damage it brings to foreigners is pretty obvious. You could argue that terrorists target the US because of genuine grievances (past blowback particularly from intervention during the Cold War motivated largely by opposing a communist threat over any moral considerations). From there you could argue that if only the US avoided foreign intervention, in time it would no longer be a terrorist target and have no need for such morally questionable action as using drones with significant civilian casualty risk.

I'm sceptical of this argument. For one I think the espoused goals of many terrorist organisations are often a sham. They may start as violent reactionaries to some genuinely held grievance. But mature organisations initiate a conflict with the US because notoriety brings financial support and more fighters which in turn improves their ability to project power, which is their ultimate goal. So I don't see US disengagement as a solution because terrorist attacks and beheadings of its nationals will continue to politically galvanise the US into action. At that point having being disengaged beforehand (lacking intel, ability to target leadership with drones) is just a disadvantage.

I also don't see a government other than the US capable and willing to rally a group of nations and take a leading role against a group like ISIS. It's fair to say that the US invasion of Iraq was largely responsible for destabilising an authoritarian government under Saddam that would have prevented the emergence of a Sunni group like this. But then, imagine if Saddam was still in power in reaction to the Arab Spring and the result was a situation like Syria today. It is all too possible that a similar group would have emerged in a power vacuum not caused by US intervention.

My point is, I agree it is horrible to see civilians being killed by drones and having to live under the constant terror of attack but I don't see a better solution. In fact it seems that drones are probably the solution with the least risk of civilian casualty. There is a reason why the Yemeni/Pakistani government tacitly support them even while publicly disavowing them.

Of course I would like to see them used more judiciously but I am sceptical that this is feasibly possible. I do not doubt that the CIA/Pentagon who run the program are familiar with blowback and the risks of inciting attacks on the US through the killing of innocents in these strikes. It is possible incentives for 'results' may lead to their overuse at the expense of civilian lives and the long term cost. Maybe more openness would be best. Then again more openness would serve as a rallying cry for existing terrorist organisations.

@ChaosEngine I can see how you would feel like this is preaching to the choir (much like he accuses Fat Fred Durst of doing), but there are still good reasons to support this type of dressing down. You have to consider who the audience is for this video. As I see it, there are 3 possibilities: FFD and his followers, fellow sceptics and atheists, and the general public. While, ostensibly, this video aims at all three audiences, it is only the latter where you can hope for any movement.

If FFD is the only voice talking to teenage kids and incurious adults, then more of them will follow him. This video offers a counterpoint and if it influences just one or two otherwise unswayed people to think more deeply about religious claims, rhetorical logic or the scientific process, then it is a win.

@Trancecoach - respectfully leaving this discussion based on the following:

"You are actually going a long way to make my point that those who are "believers" in climate change are missing the value and indeed necessity for ongoing skepticism"

I don't understand how you can say that after i was the person that investigated the source of the first link you gave out. You hadn't even bothered to look into it, so i did, and you can say with a straight face that i'm a "believer" who has lost his scepticism?

You didn't even check completely through the second lot of links you posted, because the one i did check (on YOUR ultimate recommendation) ended up being written by a guy who saw climate change as one of mankind's top 10 problems. You've shown yourself twice now to be using sources that you haven't even fucking looked at, evidenced by a half hour investigation by me! You didn't even put a half hour into it!?

I remain open to evidence that climate change is not a man-made concern, or that it is not a concern. I'm not going to sit here and relay exactly how each of us think the scientific community works. You can read how it works on the scientific method and scientific consensus pages i linked earlier, anyone can. It's not open for debate; there is an overwhelming majority of scientific evidence in favour and there is not enough and not significant enough scientific evidence against. It isn't a coincidence that ~99% of the research points in one direction, and it isn't some conspiracy.... that isn't how science works. It's not perfect, a lot of shit science gets through because it's so hard to read and so relatively few people want to trawl through shite, but that's why it's better to look at the consensus - what is the AVERAGE opinion of ALL the clever people? It's a community that i consider incorruptible - because even if you paid off 10 research centres, there's still millions of individual scientists, individual institutions, so many people dedicated to keeping it pure because we know that's the only way we get the most from it. And ... the science and maths speaks for itself, the models are not "just models" as the moron associated with your latest link says. They are the best representations we have and they do represent parts of physical reality, and by using carefully considered techniques we can extract information about things. The alternative is to consult a Ouija board!?

By the way, nice 240 page pdf document for me to refer to. I didn't ask for a single link, i asked for a single point about which we were in disagreement... usually papers are cited to reinforce a point. You don't just cite something and go "there you go, read all of that, whatever you see that agrees with me; that's what i'm talking about!"

Ok, i think i'll take your advice this time round I've not even read his reply so i think i'll not even bother.

At the moment, i'm sceptical that he's even got that qualification if that's what he's said. Even in a basket weaving subject, i'd expect a better ability to reason and identify bad sources from good. Sadly, because of subjects like that, we have a lot of highly qualified idiots who have been encouraged to speak their mind like experts.