uziq
Member
+492|3422
if he's all out on a limb by himself, why has canada just approved psychedelics for medical use? it's a huge frontier of research now, you idiot. i have cited you any number of research groups at world-leading universities. david nutt must sure be a busy man if he's singlehandedly driving a trend in western medicine. how about you stop talking such fucking claptrap, there, chap?

you could run a simple query on a research search engine and find hundreds, if not thousands, of separate first authors researching and publishing on this topic. but, as we well know by now, the dilbert brand of 'research' involves hastily googling something and pasting the first news link or wikipedia.

I think consulting with the wide scientific community is probably a better way to run a country than basing policy on what Cicero would have done.
and who could possibly disagree? well done, brainiac. i don't think you could find anyone who would approve of the corruption, venality, ineptitude and dithering of the current conservative leadership. like trump's USA, we found ourselves with the worst possible leadership for a serious matter of this kind. (nevermind that the reason such a bunch of clowns got into office in the first place was on the back of precisely the sort of politics that YOU advocate for: churlish, hurly-burly nationalistic-xenophobic bollocks; surprise surprise they're not wizened scientists; but i digress.)

as usual your over-reach on a valid point is legendary. pointing out that the UK ignored the science at its peril is not the same thing as going off, once again, 'on a limb all by yourself' and making this about 'humanities hipsters and noble scientists'. your desire to reduce everything to a BA/BSc culture war is genuinely bizarre. and, evidently, you're not in support of all forms of scientific expertise, are you? the scientific expertise on drug harms is clear.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Except its a very clear example of Eton/Oxford humanities prats fucking things up against crystal clear scientific advice - 3-4 times in a row - with 150,000 deaths the consequence.

Now we discover how much time they spent partying and travelling while people were dying on their doorstep.

You'd think people would look at the evidence and say 'never again'.


Why are you so interested in psychedelics being used to treat medical conditions? Do you have a medical condition?
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
if psychedelics helps people with their suffering, why would i want them arbitrarily to be banned and put on a 'do not touch' shelf? do you take an excessive interest in what people should be allowed to take as treatments for their cancer or dementia? no? isn't the more valid question why you're so invested in arguing til blue in the face against the scientific consensus on this topic? a weird constipated little moralist, aren't you?

i can follow you that it's a problem of an elite governing without any expertise or sense of social responsibility. yes, they often are all products of the same insular, privileged schooling. but, again, this isn't a problem of 'humanities knowledge vs. scientific knowledge'. that is fucking so inane, dilbert. none of the SPADs or politicians in charge of this thing are explicitly recalling or invoking their 'humanities training' when they lead a country.

you know, if you had developed at all after university, you would surely stop thinking in this weirdly straitjacketed way in which everyone is defined by 3 years of reading between 18-21. that's not how most human beings form or develop as intelligences. you sound a lot like that certain sorry sort who is forever talking about and cashing in on their reputation in high-school, frozen in time.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Pretty sure that if a researcher can find a real therapeutic use for any substance from teak to moon dust they'll get it approved without bother.

Why do you get so excited when recreational chemicals get approved for treating sick people?
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unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

Finding a positive use for a chemical in terms of treating horrible ailments and easing human suffering should be enough cause for celebration. You just sound like "ooh, chemical, spooky" rn.
uziq
Member
+492|3422

Dilbert_X wrote:

Pretty sure that if a researcher can find a real therapeutic use for any substance from teak to moon dust they'll get it approved without bother.

Why do you get so excited when recreational chemicals get approved for treating sick people?
pretty sure that's not the case and literally a bunch of medically useful chemicals have been banned, at the UN level and enforced majorly with the clout of the conservative-moralizing US of A, for fucking decades, dilbert. i mean, most of these drugs, like LSD, started out in the first place as research chemicals being developed by major labs (sandoz, merck) and then had their medical research banned as part of the 'global war on drugs'. duh.

here's a mad thought: if a chemical has been found which can help depression in 'sick' people, and doesn't post any health risks to the user, chances are it will eventually filter down to the consumer level too in some form or another. are you familiar with this recent phenomenon called 'the legalization of weed'?

isn't it funny, a known compound, THC, with known medical benefits to researchers ... wasn't approved 'without bother' for generations?

you dumb fuck

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-11 06:40:37)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
by the way, if you like popular nonfiction bestsellers written by investigative journalists, the best one this year is on the sackler family and purdue pharma.

because, you know, public health policy is so scientifically guided.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/ … dden-keefe
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

here's a mad thought: if a chemical has been found which can help depression in 'sick' people, and doesn't post any health risks to the user, chances are it will eventually filter down to the consumer level too in some form or another. are you familiar with this recent phenomenon called 'the legalization of weed'?

isn't it funny, a known compound, THC, with known medical benefits to researchers ... wasn't approved 'without bother' for generations?
Once again therapeutic drug use and recreational use are two different things.
I'm sure no-one really cares if the active constituents are filtered out and put in a pill.

Once again, why is therapeutic use of recreational and party drugs such a hot topic for you?
Are you living in hope recreational use will be legalised?
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Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

by the way, if you like popular nonfiction bestsellers written by investigative journalists, the best one this year is on the sackler family and purdue pharma.

because, you know, public health policy is so scientifically guided.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/ … dden-keefe
Jews gonna jew, what do you expect?

Anyway, I thought you were in favour of everyone having access to all the drugs they wanted, without the pesky govt being involved.
Now we learn drugs are bad, strange.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
nope. have never said any such thing. i've advocated for drugs laws based on scientific/medical, prudential reasoning, rather than the christian-conservative moral crusade and hangovers from the culture wars of the 1960s/1970s, the nixon era and barbara reagan. which seems eminently sensible to me, considering as, you know, we're just now discovering that drugs which have been considered 'class A', the worst of the worst, and banned even from scientific research, worldwide, for the last 4-5 decades by UN decree are now ... revealing themselves to be incredibly, incredibly good at treating a host of illnesses.

just think how many broken veterans we have left to suffer with PTSD, how many depressed worker ants we have ground to dust, because we - literally arbitrarily - decided that MDMA and LSD were 'evil sinful' drugs because ravers and hippies liked them.

Are you living in hope recreational use will be legalised?
you really seriously don't understand. any middle-class (white) person can procure and take drugs to their heart's content. i don't know anyone, nor any drug dealer, who has ever been arrested for their proclivities. nada. and i know a lot of people who take/have taken drugs. it is simply not a concern for me. any drug i want is a website URL or a whatsapp message away. the legality of it has never crossed my mind. what would i possibly be hoping for that would make a material difference to my life? i have never, ever advocated for cocaine to be made legal, for instance, as i see ultimately no societal or health benefit in it. and yet i used to use it? my own personal choices were never part of my argument, dilbert.

it's odd, isn't it, though, that the people who do argue most passionately for decriminalization of 'harmful' drugs, beyond arguments of putative medical benefits, such as heroin and cocaine ... are drugs-rehab workers and careworkers. those who see first hand that the law's approach to these drugs makes people's lives and suffering measurably worse, and helps not a thing. people who have a realistic assessment, i would say, of the fact that for as long as there's poverty, suffering, broken people, etc, in society, there will be a demand for heroin, crack cocaine, etc. i'm all in support of any calls for reform that have a tangible benefit to society and help to shape a society that is more compassionate, more evidence-based, more reasonable, you can be sure of that. then again, i'm not hysterical about 'druggies' like you are.

a more pertinent question, again, is why you, the Man of Science, is so invested in maintaining a status quo that rides roughshod over all scientific understanding. why wouldn't you want to live in a state that applies rational thinking and scientific evidence-based reasoning to ANY area of law? forget about drugs for a second. living in an irrational state governed by morality sounds awfully like religion to me. aren't you meant to be a ferocious atheist knight?

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-12 02:32:54)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
MDMA and LSD are harmful though, thats the 'scientific understanding', do I have to pull up all the brain scans and show Nutt's 'peer-reviewed' papers come full circle and are compared with his own shitty data again?
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
they are dramatically less harmful than alcohol, dilbert. this is the scientific understanding, which is why both are being trialled or approved for medical use. if they were intrinsically physically damaging, they wouldn’t be.

do i need to pull up an MRI scan of a brain on alcohol? alcohol is neurotoxic, brainiac. LSD is almost completely non-toxic.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
Reading a book "Becoming a Social Studies Teacher". It has a list of effective and ineffective teacher archetypes. One of the ineffective teacher archetypes is "Mr. Hitler: Yelled a lot, no classroom management, boring"
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
RTHKI
mmmf mmmf mmmf
+1,736|6707|Oxferd Ohire
Lol. I'd say high school had a teacher like that but he threw chairs and erasers so boring isn't quite the right word. Throwing the chair was the last I recall of him.
https://i.imgur.com/tMvdWFG.png
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
I had a teacher my freshman year who threw a chair at the wall in order to get our attention. He looked like Dustin Hoffman.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Anyway, back to books.

Spike - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57095247-spike

Useful to know how the Wuhan-flu response played out, ie very badly at every level starting with the stinking Chinese and their coverups  and onward through the British PM etc. Cummings comes out of it relatively well.
We have no chance against a serious pandemic or an actual war.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
oh god. dilbert has now read two pandemic cash-in books commissioned in a hurry by wily editors. he practically has a PhD in epidemiology. we’re never going to hear the end of it.

also it’s frankly amazing that you’re citing a member of the SAGE board claiming that ‘herd immunity doesn’t work’ and we should ‘aim for suppression’. it’s farrar and his colleagues who sold the herd-immunity strategy to the government when trying to deal with the first wave … lmao. i’m sure he covers himself very neatly in his little saving-the-world-if-not-for-you-meddling-kids book.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-22 00:40:21)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Really? According to this guy SAGE never put forward herd immunity, Patrick Vallance did without any discussion.

Apparently the SAGE meetings have minutes, I guess that will settle it.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collectio … ruary-2020
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
you should bear in mind that any books written by insiders are doing a fair amount of reputation laundering and historical course-correcting.

it sounds like your farrar bloke has a god complex. no wonder you find an automatic sympathy with the basic thrust of his argument – even going so far as to whitewash dominic cummings as ‘the most reasonable bloke’. dominic cummings is an intellectual magpie with strange deluded ideas about assembling a ‘justice league’ of autistic scientists and big data scions to run society. he is full of shit.

it’s been disputed just what went on in SAGE the whole time. an ‘independent SAGE’ formed alongside them to make their own recommendations due to the lack of transparency, confused messaging, and contrary strategies. independent SAGE had plenty to say for talks of ‘herd immunity’ too.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/may/opi … irus-wrong

Last Thursday, when pressed by Kirsty Wark on BBC’s Newsnight about why the community test, trace and isolate strategy in tackling the pandemic was abandoned as a policy on 12 March, Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), was commendably open and honest: “I do not remember the truth of that [what Sage said] on 12 March … [but] testing has been critical for every country that has controlled the epidemic … in retrospect it was [a mistake] … we should have been testing earlier.”
whoops. your bloke 'forgot' the truth. very useful when pressed. didn't they have the minutes handy?!?

it seems the main ‘primary source’ for your guy’s book is his own email Outbox. because, of course, as every historian and reporter knows, people’s own private communications are not subject to selective readings, excisions and redactions …

dilbert: i’ve read two books and can quote ‘countless scientists’! how weird you don’t read anything that’s, you know, peer-reviewed though or relies upon public data. i guess it’s much better to form a view of the pandemic from books presented as political thrillers.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-22 03:58:26)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

Dilbert_X wrote:

Apparently the SAGE meetings have minutes, I guess that will settle it.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
apparently your guy couldn't even remember when asked about it 2 weeks later, which is encouraging.

so he was publicly unaccountable, vague and deferring when asked at the peak of the crisis ... but now has it all laid out in an 'i told you so' narrative for his book. neat-o!

where were the minutes then?

to be clear, between january and march of that year at least 3 members of SAGE are on the public record mentioning herd immunity. they couched it in safer-sounding terms, following a major backlash from 'independent' academics and letter-writers, but it was clearly an idea being mooted (and subsequently bruited) within the SAGE meetings. there are public statements in the media from whitty, valance and dr david halpern on this. so your guy's book would seem to be simplifying things that he himself was not available to clarify with any certainty at the time. how very encouraging.

dilbert: i don't trust fauci. i selectively don't trust the WHO when i can blame them for anything. i implicitly trust everything this guy says, though, because it reinforces my own prejudices.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-23 03:54:29)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

Dilbert_X wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Apparently the SAGE meetings have minutes, I guess that will settle it.
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uziq
Member
+492|3422
Dilbert Knows Best. lmfao. let us know which political thriller or bestseller you pick up next.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I think we should all say one nice thing about Dilbert a week. Shooting shoes are pretty cool for competitive shooting. If I was a competitive shooter, I might have shooting shoes too.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
just think, if he had a humanities degree he would have been trained to be able to read a book with a modicum of critical distance.

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