Reply to When the smallest doubt is treated as support of the other side

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think some people are upset they are catching heat for expressing opinions that are clearly the product of ignorance, and often malicious ignorance.

If you are going to open your mouth and claim space in the public sphere, try to inform yourself first. No shame in asking questions or not being 100% informed, but stop pretending your half-baked uninformed opinion is worthy of some special deference or respect. [/quote]

Yeah right. "Just asking questions" are words used to ridicule and silence these days. It's literally a shaming phrase.

There is also the BS about not having the obligation to [b]"enact the labor"[/b] of informing someone of why you think they are misguided.

Unquestioned loyalty and obeisance are the only acceptable actions.[/quote]

Fair point, to a limit.

Some of these things have been settled a long time ago and don’t even warrant discussion anymore. For example, if you don’t want to inform yourself why poor people are also more likely to be fat now, don’t make a stupid song about it and pretend you’re some enlightened independent. [/quote]

NP. The phrase “settled science” is used to shut down discussion, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. The use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in kids is looking now like it’s going to be one of the biggest medical scandals in recent years but for many years careers of health care providers brave enough to question the strength of the actual evidence were ruined with the use of “settled science.” And, of course, once the proponents could not keep their finger in the “settled science” dike any further, because the increasing weight of evidence started to make their mantra increasingly untenable, they went to insults and no-holds-barred harassment to try to keep the scientific discussion stopped.

The reality is that the body of evidence supposedly supporting the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children was and still is appallingly weak. That weakness is finally getting deep scrutiny in the US and abroad, but it’s happening about a decade after it should have happened and after many kids were hurt unnecessarily. And in the meantime, states have passed legislative bans, which is the wrong way to handle medical care (see abortion as another example). But we are stuck with legislative bans because proponents of what is essentially a religious belief shut down all research and discussion of scientific evidence within the scientific and medical community. That provided an opening for legislative bans whereas if medicine and science had been willing to police themselves and had been willing to admit the science was not remotely settled, I don’t think we’d be in this position of overly broad bans that shouldn’t be the business of state legislatures.

So while in theory I agree that some things should not warrant discussion, that concept alone is weaponized more often than not. [/quote]

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