Just pointing out something I recently learned that others may not be aware of -- most bottled water also has fluoride added. iirc water labeled as "distilled" cannot contain additives (or at least fluoride), but most of the "spring water" and other variants you'll find at the store do have those additives.
That sounds like a child's argument - "it's not fair!".
It's basic public health logic - is it a net benefit to the population to add fluoride to the water supply and at a suitable price point or is there a more effective method to achieve the desired outcome?
Meanwhile, we have toxic tyre pollution being released into the very air that we breathe which has no known benefit to the population's health and has been shown to lead to heart/lung problems and early deaths. Is that fair?
> is it a net benefit to the population to add fluoride to the water supply and at a suitable price point or is there a more effective method to achieve the desired outcome
What if I don't care about that outcome if it means my water supply is tainted with a chemical I have no desire to ingest? Is it incomprehensible to you that somebody may not be particularly concerned with a statistical decrease in cavities for people that can't be bothered to brush their teeth if it means being force-fed a potential neurotoxin?
I could as easily respond that if you don't care about my fundamental freedoms then I don't care what you think. That said, I personally find the concern about fluoride overblown.
"Public health" isn't an excuse to ignore individual rights. It's a justification for investment and outreach, nothing more. The alternative rapidly gives way to a dystopian nanny state.
I can't see how anybody's freedom is infringed by adding fluoride to public water in those areas where it is lacking. What specific freedom are you talking about?
I can see the argument about freedom vs public health in things like tobacco usage, but there's very strong data that tobacco is carcinogenic and so it's hardly a dystopian nanny state for tobacco to be restricted (e.g. minimum age). Similarly, it hardly infringes freedom if there's minimum standards for food hygiene even though you may personally enjoy dysentry, food poisoning etc.
There's a world of difference between a dystopian nanny state and just ignoring public health issues that would typically affect the poorer segments of society.
To be honest, it seems like a disingenuous argument that anti-fluoride people make about it infringing their freedom when they don't seem concerned about removing fluoride from those supplies that naturally have higher levels.
You seem more like you're performing for an audience then engaging in good faith. You're also making faulty assumptions - I generally support the addition of fluoride to pubic drinking water systems despite the fact that I can sympathize with those who object to it.
My comment about freedoms was not in reference to fluoride. It was in response to your blanket dismissal of anyone who doesn't "care about public health" whatever that's supposed to mean. "Public health" as you're using the term appears to translate to "it's for your own good". Then your earlier statement reads as a blanket justification to run roughshod over other's freedoms while mocking them for objecting.
Your logic can be summarized as X is often harmful to people who choose to do it therefore restricting voluntary participation in X does not infringe freedoms in an objectionable manner. Hopefully you can see the absurdity when it's laid out like that.
> there's very strong data that tobacco is carcinogenic and so it's hardly a dystopian nanny state for tobacco to be restricted
The argument isn't "specific thing makes this a dystopian nanny state" it's "particular philosophy rapidly leads to a dystopian nanny state". They're quite different claims.
Children aren't generally viewed as having full freedoms so the associated age restrictions don't seem particularly relevant to this conversation. That said "public health" is hardly the only possible justification for restricting tobacco sales to minors.
> Similarly, it hardly infringes freedom if there's minimum standards for food hygiene even though you may personally enjoy dysentry, food poisoning etc.
The imposition of food hygiene standards generally serves to bring stability and security to the market by regulating something that end consumers can't easily judge for themselves but which nonetheless can harm them. Notice that restaurants generally remain free to serve undercooked items to customers but they must go out of their way to make the customer aware of this fact. Despite your dismissive misrepresentation of my views I do in fact view the restrictions on raw milk as a fairly severe violation of freedoms despite the fact that I have no personal interest in consuming it.
> There's a world of difference between a dystopian nanny state and just ignoring public health issues that would typically affect the poorer segments of society.
I hope you're having fun knocking down these strawmen. Investment and outreach isn't ignoring.
> it seems like a disingenuous argument that anti-fluoride people make about it infringing their freedom when they don't seem concerned about removing fluoride from those supplies that naturally have higher levels.
You finally managed to point out something interesting. So a question. If non-potable water is treated and a byproduct is left behind is that a problem? Note that in this hypothetical there was no intent other than accomplishing the goal (ie making the water potable) at a reasonable price point. Are you entitled to water of a specific purity level, or merely potable water, or something else entirely?
Now what if the byproduct was left behind intentionally (ie the option to remove it existed and was trivial) but it was nonetheless a byproduct of a particular treatment program and treatment of some sort was genuinely necessary?
I think there is a fundamental difference between intentionally introducing something and failing to remove something, and the motivations matter because they can set precedent for future actions.
You seem a bit confused with your little rant there (there's so many wrong-minded ideas that I can't be bothered to explain why they're wrong) and you haven't answered my clear question:
> I can't see how anybody's freedom is infringed by adding fluoride to public water in those areas where it is lacking. What specific freedom are you talking about?
> They found a technicality on which they could arrest her, so they arrested her because they wanted to arrest her
If by technicality you mean correctly identifying that the judge intentionally adjourned the suspect's court proceedings and directed them through a non-public exit in order to evade a lawful deportation of a domestic abuser who had already been deported once, yes, it was a "technicality". The short form would be to acknowledge the judge intentionally interfered with a lawful deportation, which is a crime, thus the arrest.
Hold up, all that stuff is completely unattested (and would have to be facts tried before a jury anyway). ICE does not have the power to decide on whether someone is a "domestic abuser" or whatever. They were just serving a warrant.
But more: What if the suspect was in court on an immigration concern? The judge would have been empowered to enjoin the deportation, no? You agree, right? That's what courts do? In which case, wouldn't the ICE agents be the ones guilty of "obstruction" here?
The point of the Rule of Law is that you don't empower individuals to make decisions about justice, ever. You try things before courts, and appeal, and eventually get to a resolution.
Trying to do anything else leads to exactly where we are here, where one arm of government is performatively arresting members of another for baldly partisan reasons.
>Hold up, all that stuff is completely unattested (and would have to be facts tried before a jury anyway).
I mean, it was going to be attested until the judge decided to adjourn his proceedings and push him out the back door to avoid ICE. He's charged with domestic abuse.
>But more: What if the suspect was in court on an immigration concern?
Based on my limited understanding of immigration law I'd agree that there's probably a valid mechanism for the judge to legally intervene in the deportation to let the immigration concern be addressed -- but that isn't what happened here. The defendant was there for a criminal charge of domestic abuse and the judge essentially canceled his hearing and snuck him out the back to prevent ICE from executing a legal order to deport someone who is here illegally and has already been deported once before.
>The point of the Rule of Law is that you don't empower individuals to make decisions about justice, ever.
That's why the judge is being arrested, because she as an individual skirted legal process to interrupt a lawful deportation (allegedly).
>For this administration specifically, the thing that has always existed wasn't an issue that demanded these actions the last time they were in office, just 4 short years ago
Immigration and border security were maybe the #1 policy front for Trump in 2016 -- am I missing something here?
>An economically viable solution to this problem would be simply force companies to pay all laborers, foreign or domestic, legal or illegal, a living wage
Do you think that the law has a cut-out to allow for paying illegal immigrants less than minimum wage? This is like solving the murder rate by making murder illegal -- it's already illegal to employ these people and pay them below minimum wage.
Yeah, but maybe we should deploy the national guard to make sure its happening. Even that would be a better use of our resources than rounding up a bunch of desperate people in a dragnet that might catch the innocent.
Like these people are victims of a system which is exploiting them. Treating them even more like shit isn't going to make the world a better place. Target the exploiters.
I fail to see how the lack of a perfect quantifiable metric of merit logically flows down to "stop admitting Asians because we have too many"? Whatever the university's method of determining merit is, it should be applied to everyone equally, and racially discriminating because one group historically performs well is indefensible imo
I know this comment is totally innocent but it does kind of bum me out to be at a point in time where instead of addressing our impact on the environment directly, we're trying to make computers that can talk to dolphins so we can tell them to stay out of the way lol
You don't tend to hear about it and not that there isn't still progress to be made, but there has been tonnes of progress on fisheries interactions with protected bycatch species. For ex the infamous dolphin problem in the eastern tropical Pacific purse seine tuna fishery is down 99.8% from its peak to the point populations are recovering, despite the fishery intentionally setting on dolphin schools to catch > 150,000 t of yellowfin tuna per year.
Pelagic gillnets are probably the gear that still have the most issues with dolphin bycatch, and acoustic pingers that play a loud ultrasonic tone when they detect an echolocation click are already used to reduce interactions in some fisheries.
One of the things I think is amazing is that people will say “here’s a way to make the world better” and others will react with “it’s so sad that you propose making the world better instead of making it perfect”. I think it’s great.
>I have songs I'd love to compose in my head, but it would be totally impractical for me to go through the hundreds/thousands of hours of training that would be needed to realize these songs in reality. Nor am I particularly motivated to pay someone else to sit there for hours trying to compose what I am telling them.
So the alternative is that you'll pay a tech company instead -- to use their model trained on unlicensed and uncredited human works to generate a mishmash of plagiarized songs, the end result of which nobody will ever want to listen to?
>Yet no one with all his mind can deny that ai makes writing code faster, not necessarily better but faster, and games at the end are mostly codes.
It's actually quite easy, and not uncommon, to deny all of those things. Game code is complex and massively interwoven and relying on generative code that you didn't write and don't fully understand will certainly break down as game systems increase in complexity, and you will struggle to maintain it or make effective modifications -- so ignoring the fact that the quality is lower, there's an argument to be made that it will be "slower" to write in the long term.
I think it's also flat wrong to say games are "mostly codes" -- games are a visual medium and people remember the visual/audio experience they had playing a game. Textures, animations, models, effects, lighting, etc. all define what a game is just as much if not more than the actual gameplay systems. Art is the main differentiating factor between games when you consider that most gameplay systems are derivative of one another.
