I think this is worse, arguably. Don't get me wrong, Wakefield wasn't good. But this is actually worse.
Wakefield wanted to call into question a thing which, at the time, was a relatively small thing: the MMR vaccine. There was no political platform of vaccines back then, it was the fallout from his con years after that created that platform. He wanted to do that so he could sell his own snake oil cure-all for autism. He frankly didn't care about vaccines, he simply knew people were hesitant about shots and overly concerned about normalcy.
So Wakefield really was just a greedy sonuvabitch ready to capitalize on the tremendous effort parents of autistic children are ready to commit for their kids. Bad, but just selfish greed. Not trying to accelerate an already existential crisis for political maga points.
This though, climate change, is already the political platform. This is very clearly an attack on the very institutions of academia themselves. This is trying to discredit the act of collecting data and replicating experiments as real science. And there's frankly a lot to say about that topic today (p<0.05 apocalypse) but this isn't saying any of that. It's simply saying "here's a reason not to trust climate science at all". That's the argument. That's way more dangerous than anti-vax arguments. Thank God this instance was as ineffective as it was.
Silver lining, it took almost ten years for Wakefield to get caught and detracted. This didn't take long to catch at all because the guy who did it was smug about his shitty goal, in typical right winger fashion: he went and published an opinion piece on his own paper, to the surprise of even his co-author.
Had the same thought. Got sidetracked sniffing pens.
Jokes aside, any of y'all remember the scented markers for kids? Holy shit talk about grooming children for addictions. Whole classrooms of kids just sniffing chemical markers. The gas station rose vial of the kindergarten.
By positing it as the reality and not just a reality that we can actually change, you're playing defense for em. You're using their talking points.
BTW You don't have to be debating the finer points of morality to be doing something immoral. Corporatists don't debate morality either. Because they know they lose, every time. Hint hint.
No that's what got us here. Profit above all else brought us where we are, it can't bring us back. Apologies for being blunt but that's a stupid thought you shared.
At this point doing something that you're unsure whether it will make things better or worse is literally a better option than just nothing. I mean really what's the worst thing that happens? The equivalent of an oil spill? Like that's ever stopped us from doing things for profit? Why should we hold ourselves to these "better be entirely certain" standards when we never held ourselves to that standard on the way here?
This is a legitimate train of thought. "This might hurt things but I'm not sure how" simply isn't good enough. Give me a reason to be afraid to use this. Cause we're not afraid of using oil yet. Fuck it let's put a bunch of iron in the oceans. Really can't hurt things any worse than we have, can it?
Note that the guy said if it gets peer reviewed. Many people have made many claims that would've changed the world as we know it, but until it gets repeated in controlled environments it doesn't change anything.
I think it's an achievable goal for sure. There's nothing I know of that makes room temperature anything but arbitrary so it could happen. If it did, yeah it changes a lot potentially.
I mean yeah, you just said it... the researcher didn't discover a thing, they categorized it.
Which doesn't sound nearly as noble and cool does it?
Also, nothing is done "in the name of science". Science is a process of observation, not a philosophy or ideology. It isn't a religion or a monarchy. You would no sooner do something "in the name of addition" than you would for science.
I read an article, a recent one, about a kind of tree being "discovered" by some European research team. Within the article, it said the people who lived in that particular forest had known about that kind of tree for ages. They had multiple names for it, uses, etc.
Yet without any irony at all ... They attributed the "discovery" to this European researcher.
A coordinated and effective cyber attack could cripple infrastructure, it's actually a thing to be concerned about. There's a reason we banned certain Chinese chip manufacturers products from being used within government hardware. If you think there's not an actual threat you're not paying attention.
Nothing. But Weinstein produced all his movies, and Weinstein makes money every time they stream. He owns the IP, not Smith. And more are in the works. All the while Smith is downplaying his association with the guy. That kind of thing happens all over. It's just people making opportunity out of catastrophe, a very time honored tradition in human society. The fact is Smith cares more about continuing to make his money playing the same character he has since the 90s - despite a sick, disgusting rapist profiting from it every time - shows just how out of touch with the way businesses and money works that most people are. When he goes on stage and calls Weinstein a rapist gargoyle and nods along with the crowd, keep all that in mind. He's still actively working to earn that gargoyle money because it earns Kevin Smith a lot of money as well.
We like to think we're the ones in touch with reality, but realities aren't mutually exclusive. When we say wealthy people live in a "different reality" we're not saying they live in something that isn't reality. It is. For them. Not us. And understanding that is key to empowering us to change those realities.
Tech startups of all kinds are being devalued the last 12 months. The tech sector was always heavily based in speculation and so as the markets recoil, the tech sector was going to feel it the hardest. People have been predicting that for years, literally.
The reddit devaluation falls in line with all that, not really the migration at all. Guys I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Fidelity's valuation experts don't give one shit about the happiness of the users, and only give half a shit about the number of them -- which, that number comes from reddit themselves on a "trust me bro" basis, like the user counts of any service. Let me even go one step further: the louder you complain about reddit, the more important you make reddit look, the more valuable you make reddit to investors. You have to re-frame your thinking when considering markets like this: users are not customers, they're products. "Look at the reaction of all those users" is what this migration boils down to, to those valuation experts.
On the exact same note you can bet on the rising popularity of any given celebrity by the number of their detractors. See a new starlet getting hated on by everyone on Twitter? They're going to sell more albums because of it. Every time.
Edit: Just like the trolls, your best bet to change the landscape of social media is to ignore the bad actors, including the social medias themselves. Don't engage with them and don't advertise for them by talking about them. Kbin's second largest magazine is RedditMigration. You're defining this place by the continued existence of reddit. Guys: Move. On. Let it die.