ragebutt

Good luck with this one. The American idea of adjudication for crime is so utterly fucked by indoctrination from decades of propaganda for privatized prison systems. It doesn’t matter if you point out that lengthy prison sentences do nothing to serve the public good, that research shows they do essentially nothing in terms of serving as a deterrent, that encouraging rehabilitation and correcting systemic issues that lead to crime would be the thing to truly address these issues. Let alone the systemic issues abound in the American justice system; that enforcement of crimes are disproportionately skewed to impact people of low SES and minority status, that this whole system is a front to enable modern day slavery.

Ultimately these people are just bloodthirsty and this gives them an outlet for that. They are vindictive and want an outlet for revenge fantasies. Just mention sex offenders and see how they become awful right wing weirdos with violent torture fantasies out of a saw movie.

Sophie died 4 years ago though she was great

Replication as you describe isn’t done in most fields, that’s part of the “serious effort and funding” I mentioned. If I am applying for a grant to do research what do you think gets funded? Novel proposition or rudimentary replication? Funders want to be a part of glory just as much as institutions which is part of the systemic issue here.

There are researchers that aim to replicate but the numbers of them have shrunk across all fields because funders and universities are pushing for novel research.

Aside from this though one does not need to fully replicate a study to disprove it. In both the studies I pointed out people were sounding alarms for years about discrepancies in the data that in wakefields case should not have passed peer review. The lesne paper is more subtle and one could argue it still should’ve been caught in peer review. But in both cases it took ages of people saying “hey hey hey this shit is fucked” and that is the problem. In the case of Wakefield it was more decisive, in the case of lesne it was more insidious (kind of a sunk cost fallacy because the field bought into the hypothesis without verifying so hard)

It takes AGES for malfeasance to get consequences. The Wakefield MMR study (responsible for energizing the modern anti vaccination movement), published in 1998, wasn’t retracted until 2010. (He was also stripped of his license to practice medicine and has consistently doubled down since which has paid off dearly, marrying supermodels and being a literal millionaire).

The amyloid plaque hypothesis for Alzheimer’s that was based on falsified data from 2006 wasn’t retracted until 2024. This had thousands of citations, possibly tens of thousands, and the first author continues to defend the data manipulation as overblown. Essentially something like that the underlying experiments were sound, we just edited the images for clarity, there was no intent, all (8!) of my coauthors agreed to the retraction because they’re laaaaame, basically every drug made based on this hypothesis doesn’t work because of some other reason, trust me bro.

It’s very difficult to counter this. It takes serious effort to generate data contrary to the evidence presented. However, funding would help. But additionally this is something where criminal charges would be merited. Wakefield has created a world in which we moved backward for his own financial enrichment. One could argue that the children dead from measles outbreaks are in part his fault. He lost his license, sure, but this is meaningless. He is an antivax icon, he married Elle McPherson, he does podcasts and documentaries, speaking engagements, etc. he is paid far more than many doctors with none of the stress and liability. And it’s fairly clear his original intent was to discourage people from the MMR vaccine to push them towards a product he had a vested financial interest in. The antivax stuff was not his goal but it worked out because he is a sociopathic grifter.

Lesne is different. He is a scientist that is probably pushed to publish at all costs and did so. Perhaps he is honest and his manipulation was simply to improve clarity. If it was not and he was pushing to get an influential paper out then he is guilty of wasting billions in funding and tens of thousands of hours of researcher time as well as countless lives wasted doing clinical trials for treatments that were never worth exploring.

What’s a viable consequence for these people? Life in prison? This is such a huge crime against society. Similarly the Monsanto and Coca Cola ghost writing research, everything involved in tobacco, Purdue and OxyContin addiction, etc. the last one was treated as a civil matter but are these not criminal? Countless lives were destroyed

Reply to another comment regarding phones not actually being “off” when off. iphones at least since the 11 are not off when off and keep the secure enclave powered to transmit phone location

This is 100% true on newer iphones and they explicitly tell you as much every time you power the phone off. It can be disabled, but only temporarily.

This brings up that as long as the battery is sealed in the phone you’re relying on trust in the software/hardware vendors to ensure the phone is actually “off” in the traditional sense and not “off” in one of these modern “standby mode” senses where it can boot faster or something (and therefore run some process that can do something else nefarious, though tbf probably not much)

This is 100% true on newer iphones and they explicitly tell you as much every time you power the phone off. It can be disabled, but only temporarily.

This brings up that as long as the battery is sealed in the phone you’re relying on trust in the software/hardware vendors to ensure the phone is actually “off” in the traditional sense and not “off” in one of these modern “standby mode” senses where it can boot faster or something (and therefore run some process that can do something else nefarious, though tbf probably not much)

I think whether mass shooters are mentally ill is debatable on a case by case basis, some obviously yes, some less obviously.

But what I’m saying is this point is moot because even if 100% of mass shooters are “mentally ill” and that is the driving force behind their culpability the individuals saying “we need better mental health care in this country” in the wake of gun violence are so full of shit and obviously using the topic for misdirection with no intention for meaningful change. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that mental health services have been systematically defunded year after year for decades, very often by the same individuals who clamor the same.

I’m torn on the idea of arming leftists in the current climate. I don’t disagree with you there. I live in a somewhat rural area that is heavy Trump and the right wingers are heavily armed. I don’t blame a trans person for arming themselves to defend themselves in an area like this, and my post history reflects as much.

That said there is a difference between arming yourself and actively contributing to increasing the amount of arms in the world. And what made it interesting is you claimed this is an ethical and moral issue. If your friend worked to only arm leftists that would be an interesting take. I doubt this is the case though. I am assuming they are like any capitalist based on your first line - anyone’s money is good enough.

To answer your question as others have said the hammer has a utilitarian purpose, as do knives, as does dynamite. With the exception of something like skeet shooting guns sole purpose is to rob the consciousness of a living being. I do not believe that the sport outweighs the risk. There are far less dangerous ways to hunt, we’ve banned things like lawn darts for less when the danger outweighs the utility. America just has a raging hard on for guns because of military fetishism

No, I think systemic issues need to be addressed of course. But I think in America, as someone who has worked in mental health for decades, the use of “mental health” in the wake of large scale violence is exclusively a scapegoat because there has almost never been meaningful action behind it. Overwhelmingly in almost (if not) all states since 2008 mental health programs have seen massive budgetary cuts year after year after year.

And this begets the point that “mental health” is a weasel word for treating systemic issues. Frankly even if you increased the budgets of Medicaid and community mental health programs 10 fold I don’t believe mass shootings would be impacted much in terms of rate. The systemic issues that create these conditions - wealth inequality, racism, quality education access, quality healthcare access, etc would essentially all remain and take generations to resolve even if you forced fixes tonight. The rot goes deep. Almost any therapist who works in community mental health programs will tell you that most of their clientele suffer more from lack of resources than mental health disorders

what a stupid mindset. Show me a time someone managed to kill 20-50 people in a span of 15-30 minutes with a bow, let alone a knife, let alone a laymen that didn’t have military training.

As an aside the goal does not have to be to solve the problem definitively. It can be to make the problem markedly better. If mass shootings with body counts in the above turned into mass stabbings, which are obviously traumatic and horrible but typically have fatalities in the single digits (often only 1-2), is that not a tremendous improvement? It is of course still very worthwhile to address systemic factors that lead to violence, but making violence less severe is worthwhile as well.

At the moment of death you make a gurgling sound (unless you get like, splattered or whatever) and then it suddenly goes black like the end of the sopranos because your consciousness shuts off. Well it’s not really that, it’s inconceivable, it’s nothingness, it returns to the state prior to being born. Your consciousness is not magic or mystical, it’s merely an illusory byproduct of very high quality stimulus processing and extremely intricate nervous system for sensory input coupled with the capacity for short and long term memory. There is no magic moment of reconciliation unless self induced through social conditioning (eg religious guilt) and people like Trump and musk ultimately win by having a life of hedonistic excess with no repercussions while the rest of us slave away for a half day off and an aliexpress trinket here and there.

(sorry for spoiling a show that ended 18 years ago)

“He has good morals and ethics”

How could he possibly if he has devoted his life to creating weapons? What’s his response if and when his guns are used for violence, be it murder, suicide, armed robbery, etc? Even if he is “small time” for “enthusiasts” of the “sport” it is only a matter of time until this occurs. How does he reconcile this? That it’s not the guns fault? Just the glamorization of them, the obscene amount of them, the fact that they are readily available, pushing it onto “mental health”, or some other scapegoat that allows him to escape accountability for facilitating mortal violence.

I hope your friend goes out business and his entire industry collapses.