Thoth

Do you mean this literally (anyone should be able to say what they want while they are on their own property) or metaphorically (people should only be able to use offensive terms for a group if they belong to that group)?

This is also why no slur for white people in America could ever be nearly as offensive as the N-word. Throughout American history, whites haven't been mistreated severely enough on the basis of their race for there to be any background of racism for a slur to target. I do not deny that individual whites have been discriminated against on the basis of race, but collectively, they have not experienced pervasive, continuous, traumatic discrimination like blacks have.

The power of racial slurs is analogous to that of psychoactive drugs. These drugs have no inherent per se power to induce changes in cognition, but rather derive their effects from acting on the neurochemical receptors in the brain which they target. Similarly, racial slurs have precisely as much power as the racial histories which they target. The N-word, and I will not type it although I do not object to your use of it, is powerful only because people used that word while they were being racist.

Okay, thank you.

I understand and respect science in the abstract. However, contemporary mainstream 'scientists' exemplify the scientific method about as well as contemporary law enforcement embody civic virtue, i.e., generally with at best a detached, professional devotion devoid of enthusiasm for their profession's aforementioned nominal ideals, and with an indeterminable but certainly high rate of abject miscarriage. Revering the Platonic ideal of an institution does not imply mindless, blithering trust in any incarnation of that institution.

I never suggested that any ruling elite were out to get me, nor anything comparable to that. You baselessly projected onto me your belief that anyone who raises points which could feasibly engender views even remotely skeptical of mass vaccination against Covid-19 is a hyper-conspiratorial lunatic, thus betraying a deficiency in both reading comprehension and recognition of novel viewpoints.

I would not do that, but thank you for your input.

I accepted this debate about scientific racism yesterday, but I'm now questioning whether or not this is allowed as a debate topic under DebateArt's Code of Conduct. What, precisely, exceeds the boundaries of permissible argument in this context?

I, being a 22-year-old with no underlying conditions except perhaps some excess adipose tissue, am unlikely to experience long-term detrimental effects from Covid-19. I already had Omicron in January, and my symptoms were indistinguishable from those of a normal cold. I regret having opted for double-vaccination last year, if only because I now oppose mass vaccination for those outside high-risk groups.

A new study by experts shows that experts are always right, experts say.

There are two important concepts here of which I've never seen anyone demonstrating understanding.

One, the vaccine that's injected into your arm is a manufactured product, rather than a scientific abstraction, so it's meaningless to say anything like, "The vaccine is safe," or, "The vaccine has been subject to peer-reviewed studies demonstrating its safety and efficacy." Which 'the vaccine?' Which dose from which bottle on which shelf of which model made by which manufacturer?

Two, if an approach to determining safety is purely statistical, it logically cannot establish whether or not something is safe over a longer time period than that studied. Regardless of how powerful your supercomputer is, how professional your researchers are, or how well you design the trial, it's a contradiction to say that you studied a vaccine's safety profile for a few months or years and then express confidence that it won't cause problems 20 years down the line. Nobody knows enough about the vaccine's precise interactions with the human body to be certain of that, and this is before you recall from the previous paragraph that there is no 'the vaccine' or 'the human body.' This is the rotting foundation at the bottom of modern medicine, and much of modern science too. If we studied the safety of smoking cigarettes as we do with Covid-19 vaccines, we'd conclude that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, since that only happens many years after initiation of habitual smoking.

I suppose you could argue that problems like these are inherent to technological society because we can't possibly understand every detail of every technology and its consequences, but my skepticism remains. I never thought I'd see the left effectively bootlicking Big Pharma, but here we are.

I doubt that you would recognize them unless you have an uncommonly deep knowledge of serial killers.

But what did you sell it at?

It's the club I use to beat my opponents over the head with during debates.

See how clearly I demolished my opponent in this debate because of his attempt to shift the burden of proof to me.

My father was apparently childhood friends with a future serial killer. For privacy reasons, I won't specify which.

I don't know what you mean by "crash gambling games," but if I did, I'd probably agree with it.

Sitting around being depressed because when my first full-load semester starts on Monday, I will most likely be deprived of that privilege for much of my typical week.

Under the traditional paradigms of economic analysis, Bitcoin is most certainly a bubble. However, I have been tempted to give it the benefit of the doubt since there is really no historical precedent for the economic behavior of cryptocurrency. Now consider the definition of an economic bubble: "An economic bubble is trade in an asset at a price or price range that strongly exceeds the asset's intrinsic value." This raises what is to me the core unanswered and perhaps ultimately unanswerable question about cryptocurrency trading: What is the intrinsic value of a Bitcoin?

My answer is: Once upon a time, the intrinsic value of a Bitcoin was commensurate with the computing power and electrical power used to mine it. But now that there are alternative cryptocurrencies which improve substantially on Bitcoin in one or more major facets: essentially nothing. Any apparent intrinsic value that Bitcoin has is actually retained momentum from being the first cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin serves one practical purpose, which is allowing individuals worldwide to transfer money without the encumbrances of currency exchanges, transaction fees, and administrative overhead. Some hardcore advocates will extol the glories of Bitcoin as the most secure and anonymous means of payment available. It may once have been that, but these days that cannot be considered likely because Bitcoin has become mainstream, with all of the regulation and monitoring that entails.

However, Bitcoin is currently traded primarily as a means of speculation, which has enormously inflated its price. Eventually, the market will correct itself by popping this bubble. Then currencies more suited to actually being used a means of payment, such as Ripple, will take hold. Ripple is the only major cryptocurrency I can recommend speculating on, but even then, the hopeful investor should regard Ripple not as investment but gambling, and therefore never play with more than they can lose.

I'm not Muslim, but I will gladly admit that I love to listen to their religious audio. (I wouldn't call Qur'an recitations or du'as "music.")

I don't have much experience with this sort of game, but I'd still like to sign up if you all don't mind.