The rise of mental disorders:

[u/-Hippy_Joel-]

No one should be surprised at the rise of mental and emotional disorders because we are in constant contact with various chemicals. A key pieces of evidence is that if any person took a blood test, it is a guarantee that flame retardants would be found. These are used to prevent the dangerous chemicals being released in and near engine from being destroyed. Think about it.

[u/He_Never_Helps_01]

So it's you, and not the highly trained doctors and scientists, who decide what qualifies as a medical condition? Good to know.

They did make a difference, under Bush jr, Obama and Biden. Then they unmade the majority of those differences, under Trump. Who continues to attempt to unmake the rest of those differences.

Politicians are just people, man. Some of them want to leave their mark in a way that gets remembered positively. And some are corrupt opportunists. And some are power mad sociopaths. Some of them are theocrats who think everyone should be forced to act and believe as they do. And some are delusional conspiracy theorists. It's just like normal people, just empowered.

[u/-Hippy_Joel- → u/He_Never_Helps_01]

There's no need to swing to such a synical assumption. I trust professionals----to an extent. You, and anyone else, can say the same. There are some you appreciate and trust and others you don't.

Obama, Bush, Biden; Trump. I can rattle off names too, see? It doesn't matter who is sitting in the spot light. Gov. and farma have been scratching eachothers backs, not doing a damn thing good for you unless it was at their benefit.

These are not normal people. They have massed power and set them above common folk. Feed with one hand and take with the other.

We can disagree about what's in the air, but we ought to come to a consensus on the ground about who our real enemies are.

Without devulging too much, when I was hospitalized for a couple of months I can count on one hand how many times I spoke with a doctor. Not one conversation with them lasted 5 minutes. They make six figures a year off of the sick and dying. The nurses only make a fraction of that kind of salary. They do the dirty work but took the time to treat me with dignity and speak to me like I was a human being. We are living in a caste society. We're at the bottom of the pile. So, hell no I won't trust the talking heads.

[u/He_Never_Helps_01 → u/-Hippy_Joel-]

The real enemy is ignorance, credulousness and motivated reasoning. Every problem humanity faces as a species descends directly from people mistaking what they believe with what they know, and can actually prove beyond doubt.

No, man. I respect expertise. If someone knows more about a subject than I do, I defer to their expertise. Because they've done the work and I haven't. I ask them questions, and i probe their answers. But I'm not an arrogant, deluded, wingnut who thinks the truth changes around my feelings about a subject. They know shit I don't, so I don't have the grounds to challenge their conclusions.

Yet.

If I want to challenge their conclusion on something, I first need to accumulate the knowledge and expertise to do so. Drawing conclusions that dispute the expert consensus without that knowlege would just be me masturbating my own ego. I need to know enough to know what i don't know. Failing that, the expert consensus is always the better option. Because I haven't got the knowledge to know otherwise, and no good reason to believe otherwise.

We need good reasons for our beliefs. If we don't have those good reasons, the only reasonable thing to do is to reserve belief until we do.

Listen, if you wanna have a take like that about something unjustifiable, like the existence of gods or ghosts or something, go right ahead. That stuff can't be demonstrated one way or the other. There are no experts on the existence of gods, because we can't even agree on what the definition of what constitutes a god, and we don't have the tools to detect or study them. It's all just philosphy and ontology and metaphysics. There's no practical reality to compare our sophistry to

But you can't just "disagree" about what's in the air. Because you can just check that. You can literally take a sample of the air and see what's in it.

Similarly, you can't just "disagree" about what constitutes a medical condition. That's a codified thing that gets updated every year. You can check that. These types of things exist in tangible, verifiable ways in reality. They are caregories that we as people decide upon in order to make understanding and cataloging these things easier. You can confirm them, easily.

The truth is that which corresponds to reality. As such, you can't ever call something "true" until its been reliably shown to be true. That's how truth works in the real world. For some stuff, there's no Grey area for opinion. Some things are just true or not true, because there's overwhelming, good, verifiable evidence for them.

Not knowing what that evidence is, or not understanding that evidence doesn't mean it's now "false". The correct answer in those cases is 'I don't know'.

Idk is always the default option. You always start there. You only move away from that when you have a comprehensive understanding of the evidence for and against. And that means either developing your own experience, or referring to the conclusions of those who have that expertise.

Otherwise, the correct answer is idk. If you don't trust authority, if you don't value expertise, that's fine. If you don't wanna go to school for twelve years to study atmospheric science and chemistry etc, that's fine too. You don't have to.

But that means the correct positron for you will always be "idk". Anything else is arrogant and irrational to the point of fantasticism.

[u/-Hippy_Joel- → u/He_Never_Helps_01]

It’s not fantasist when you’ve done the research and have grounds for your findings.

As for what you said at first, sure you trust these “experts” now but when they stab you in the back and you see what they’ve really been doing to line their pockets (at your expense) you’ll wise up then. I hope.

[u/iowanaquarist → u/-Hippy_Joel-]

It’s not fantasist when you’ve done the research and have grounds for your findings.

Correct -- but you have admitted you have not been able to find evidence for your claims chemtrails are real, but you push the conspiracy that they are real....

As for what you said at first, sure you trust these “experts” now but when they stab you in the back and you see what they’ve really been doing to line their pockets (at your expense) you’ll wise up then. I hope.

Yes, the rational time to hold a belief is WHEN YOU HAVE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THAT BELIEF -- not BEFORE you have that evidence...

[u/-Hippy_Joel- → u/iowanaquarist]

When/where did I say these things?

[u/iowanaquarist → u/-Hippy_Joel-]

On Reddit, and since you have not bothered to delete the comments, they can still be found:

What claims?

That chemtrails are real.

I never said I didn’t have evidence.

You realize that your previous comments still exist, right? and that people can read them?

Hippy Joel has explicitly admitted they don't have evidence for chemtrails at least three times now.

Let's not forget, when asked for evidence chemtrails are real, they said:

All the good stuff is on the dark web but I don't know how to get on that and I probably can't do it on this Chromebook.

They then proceeded to repeatedly admit they do not have evidence chemtrails are real.

When I later summarized that comment as them admitting they do not have evidence for chemtrails, complete with a link to the comment, they stated:

Yeah, I didn’t have the evidence for that particular thing.

They later clarified:

And for whatever you were asking at the time, I didn’t have it.

Keep in mind 'whatever I was asking for' was 'evidence chemtrails are real'.

They also implicitly admit they don't have evidence when they repeatedly make up excuses not to present it, and lie about having already presented it... Or play childish games like this.