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lil_devil
New Member
Canada
17 Posts |
 Posted - 06/21/2002 : 15:57:18
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hiya guys... you gotta think though
this well documentated stuff is made by who?
who are these so called authorities?
this implies that you are blindly trusting reports whatever their source
(without questioning) as the truth ? this is not skepticism , this is faith in whoever says they know it all ..
or says ehem! WE are the lead authority on this therefore you shall believe! government is called this way because they GOVERN
and say ..make it black or white or else!
tv radio and the web was made to influence in the first place.
what if i told you i own a diablo
lamborghini and that i helped develop the turbo engine with my father and an inventors group in italy on a joined collaboration contract? can you prove the contrary? remember you will never have access to my files, now .......prove me wrong :)
i bet if i met the surgeon general he would offer me a cigarette. :P
Cant feel it.. cant see it..
cant conclude from it , No one can shown ME it is or not so.
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
 Posted - 06/21/2002 : 17:10:14 [Permalink]
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First you don't have to open a new topic every post. Yo can reply with a topic by clicking on the reply to topic link at the bottom or top of the page.
quote:
hiya guys... you gotta think though
this well documentated stuff is made by who?
who are these so called authorities?
The conclusion that smoking can cause cancer has been reached by many, many different scientists independently. Even those scientist, who were paid by the tabak industry, to tell us that smoking is completly harmless only decades ago, now admit this.
quote:
this implies that you are blindly trusting reports whatever their source
(without questioning) as the truth ? this is not skepticism , this is faith in whoever says they know it all ..
or says ehem! WE are the lead authority on this therefore you shall believe! government is called this way because they GOVERN
and say ..make it black or white or else!
tv radio and the web was made to influence in the first place.
It is not blind trust in whoever claims to be an authority. It is trust in the scientific and medical community to not make a worldwide conspiracy against smokers.
I don't see how the government figures into this. The warning from the surgeon general is based on the collective findings of the world-wide scientific community. Do you think that the gouvernment controls them all?
I see some truth behind the idea that radio and tv have popularized to be used as propaganda tools, but this theory does not hold with the internet. Not only is it fairly well documented how and why it was created (the mass medium aspect was more of an accidental development), but it also does not lend itself to centralized manipulation. In fact the internet is the censors worst nightmare since anyone can voice his opinion.
Skepticism is not beliving or disbeliving all claims. It is choosing the most likely alternative based on the evidence present.
What alternative is more likely? That all those independent studies were manipulated by some conspiracy involving millions of people who have managed to keep silent and who can't possible profit from their deceit, OR that smoking does indeed cause cancer?
quote:
what if i told you i own a diablo
lamborghini and that i helped develop the turbo engine with my father and an inventors group in italy on a joined collaboration contract? can you prove the contrary? remember you will never have access to my files, now .......prove me wrong :)
I would think, without looking it up, that the names of the inventors of the turbo engine are acessable from some reliable sources. So this claim could be verified.
The claim about the lamborghini would be harder to verify.
Without extensive work I could not disprove that you have an Lamborghini in your garage anymore then I could disprove that you have an invisible pink unicorn in it.
But as before I would go with the most likely scenario i.e. that you don't own one.
quote:
i bet if i met the surgeon general he would offer me a cigarette. :P
I have no idea who the current US surgeon general is. Since the warning does not represent his personal opinion but the one of his office, there is a chance that he just could do that. I have known doctors who smoke.
quote:
Cant feel it.. cant see it..
cant conclude from it , No one can shown ME it is or not so.
What would it take to convince you? Making a study yourself? Personally oducting a large number of smokers?
Working in the x-ray department of a local hospital gave me some insight in the problem and turned me of smoking forever. But those experiences don't count as scientifical evidence. I had to take the doctors' words for what the dark patches on the photos mean. I also had no way of knowing, if there in deed was a causal connecting, even if I accepted a corealation between smoking and lung-cancer.
You don't have to experience everything for yourself in order to accept it. I am for example willing to believe in the existence of New York City without ever having visited it, simply because a conspiracy pretending that New York exists is less likely.
Skepticism is more then just doubting everything.
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 06/21/2002 : 19:11:53 [Permalink]
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No cross posting is allowed for obvious reasons. But in case they are not obvious let me spell a couple out.
1. They waste space
2. A discussion gets scattered across several different topics confusing everyone.
 @tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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