Cryptozoology and Pseudoscience

sci101 · 2012-05-25T18:07:10.730905+00:00

I'll add the giant panda to your list of species that were described for multiple decades before being formally classified.

I do take issue with one particular aspect of your analysis:

because the thick jungles there have still barely been explored. It's not like North American wilderness, which makes Bigfoot just laughably impossible to be hiding out.

North America has a vast, very sparsely populated wilderness into which very few people ever set foot. Of those that do, most rarely leave the trails. I'm all for hearing skeptical arguments against bigfoot, but a lack of space in NA to hide out in isn't a valid one.

Full disclosure: I really want bigfoot to exist.

ReneXvv · 1 day

You would need a lot of them to produce significant cooling, but yes. And don't forget that you're feeding them electricity to get that conversion from heat to light, so as a cooler I'm guessing they're not very efficient compared to a standard AC unit.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

Allowing videos of me getting raped and abused at 11 (or photos of my daughter getting raped at 11 works too) to be legally and publicly available without my consent

They already are available. The current prohibition doesn't prevent them from being disseminated.

I fail to see how your idea is easier to implement or any more realistic.

It's easier and more realistic because all it involves is to stop prosecuting dudes who download kiddie porn, rather than somehow convincing pedophiles to oust themselves and report for therapy.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

Oh, were you abused by being in child porn?

What if I had been? Would my one subjective data point convince you of the merits of my argument? If so, you are an idiot.

I'm not pretending to speak for how victims feel. I'm saying that how they feel objectively matters less than the physical, ongoing abuse of new victims.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

So... you do disagree, then?

To be clear, I never advocated a government-run child porn distribution program.* Legalization doesn't amount to a government takeover, just a cessation of prosecution.

I think your idea for therapy has merit, except for:

in an environment where the patients aren't treated like devils and demons

The biggest obstacle to any reform is the intense hatred basically everyone feels for pedophiles. Allowing them to "treat" themselves, without having to reveal to anyone else their shameful sexual predilections, seems like a more realistic option to me.

*One of those surreal reddit sentences, where you're like, "am i really typing this?"

God_Wills_It · 3 days

I'm not saying that child porn is equivalent to drugs. I'm saying that the way society has chosen to deal with both (outright prohibition) simply doesn't work, in either case, but we keep doing it anyway because of an underlying moral panic.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

They are continually abused just knowing those photos are out there somewhere.

Sorry, but no. The abuse a child suffers during the production of child porn is NOT the same as any shame or embarrassment they might feel about its distribution after the fact. Totally different orders of magnitude. If a some amount of past victims' shame can dramatically reduce future victimhood, then it's worthwhile.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

There are other approaches with more common sense than "legal child porn".

And those are? Legalization (of possession, NOT production) has been shown empirically to reduce abuse rates. What is your alternative? The current approach is not working.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

It's not a perfect solution, but it's far and away the best I've heard. I mean, think about this critically. We have empirical evidence that legalization substantially reduces abuse. Show me another approach that can claim the same. The current one is not working.

It's not at all clear to me that a past victim's right to privacy ought to trump a future victim's right not to be abused. Do you disagree?

God_Wills_It · 3 days

I'm seriously considering this guy is pedo

... aaaaand there it is. Thanks for demonstrating why well-meaning people steer clear of this debate and let the moral panic take over.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

When you start labeling things as "fucking evil," it's clear that you are in the grips of a moral panic. Don't worry, you're in very good company. The wars on drugs and terrorism have similar rationales and are similarly impervious to empirical evidence.

Do you or do you not want fewer children to be abused? The evidence indicates that legal child pornography does that. On what moral or ethical grounds can you then argue against it?

God_Wills_It · 3 days

To create child pron it means children were abused at some point.

There's a vast quantity of such porn in existence. The harm to those children has been done. Why not allow their abuse to at least have some positive outcome, in the form of less child abuse?

If it's simulated child porn then isn't it pretty much legal where people can just imagine whatever they want is really happening?

Laws vary. In the US this is true, but in the UK and Australia (for example) people have gone to jail for possessing cartoons. The existence of such laws (criminalizing cartoons of child abuse) is further evidence that moral panic, not reason, is ruling this debate.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

Your argument is based on moral panic, not evidence. In countries where Vindictive29's idea has been implemented, child abuse has decreased.

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/child-porn-consumers-safe-from-prosecution-in-the-czech-republic

Bottom line is that nobody chooses to be a pedophile. They can't help their urges. If you criminalize the least harmful option available to them, they branch out to the real thing -- basically, the exact opposite of your argument.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

don't fuck kids.

OK, obviously. But what about looking at kiddie porn to get off? I'm guessing you're opposed to that too, since the overwhelming majority of people are. But what if it was the case that looking at kiddie porn actually decreased the incidence of child sexual abuse? That's what the Czech Republic found when they legalized possession (not production) of child porn.

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/child-porn-consumers-safe-from-prosecution-in-the-czech-republic

Problem is that we, as a society, can't have a rational conversation about this topic, because moral panic takes over immediately. But the fact is that we would be much better off continuing to prosecute the production of child porn while looking the other way when it's consumed -- fewer children would get abused. But again, facts don't matter in a moral panic.

God_Wills_It · 3 days

Yes. Nobody chooses to be a pedophile any more than they choose to be gay (or straight). Anti-pedophilia treatments (short of chemical castration) are about as effective as "pray out the gay" treatments -- not very.

IranRPCV · 4 days

"There's a lot of students who, for a lot of reasons, didn't complete high school but who have come back to school at a different point in their lives," said Emily Stone, dean of student-support services at Pleasant Hill's Diablo Valley College. "They could very well be ready to be a college student but need the financial aid."

No, there are NOT "lots" of high school dropouts that are ready to go succeed in college. There are, however, LOTS of barely accredited institutions ready to admit students with no chance of graduating, take their money, and leave them with two decades of loan payments.

College is not a universal panacea for America's employment problems, and it's not for everyone.

cruise02 · 16 days

I ask this in interviews. The most interesting aspect is how many candidates recognize that they need to do a depth-first search, but are convinced they must first transform the board into a tree structure to do so.

Ezekiel3721 · 17 days

Really? "Officially" this time? I thought it had "officially" begun at least a half dozen times over the last year.

Fuck this fear mongering blog.

da5a · 18 days

I built my cats this lo-tech version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGBN9kYDtGc

possiblywrong · 24 days

Relative term, I suppose. :p

possiblywrong · 24 days

Clearly part of the problem is cultural.

What frustrates me is that there's a large, vocal subset of the population who insists that it's ALL cultural, and will denounce any peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary as "bad science" because it contradicts their very pleasant, egalitarian beliefs.

possiblywrong · 24 days

You have to understand, the US is an incredibly conservative country. We have an educational attainment model that's been remarkably fixed since the dawn of the industrial era, and attempts to reform it to actually accomplish something for the students meet with fierce opposition along the lines of "it was good enough for me, it's good enough for them!"

possiblywrong · 24 days

Read Graham's article. His thinking is that in the US secondary education is basically an elaborate ploy to keep adolescents out of the workforce, with no real goals to achieve. He likens it to jail, or (kingly) court, where the lack of real objectives makes people obsess over status and appearance.

I have heard that this is much less true in other countries.

possiblywrong · 24 days

As it is, however, I think it would be ridiculous to argue that the problem is NOT primarily social.

Why is that ridiculous? Because it's offensive? What if it happens to be factually correct? I'm just wondering why you have dismissed this idea outright.

possiblywrong · 24 days

I read too much into your comment. Humblest apologies and good day to you.

zachm

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zachm

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