I just don’t think life by itself has any value, nor that death in itself is tragic. Life for me is valuable so much as you have the ability to enjoy it, and I think it to be the same for all sentient beings. But the reality is we are all interlinked and dependent on one another, we need to eat one another to survive. And so I don’t believe that animals dying is a tragedy in itself, I think an animal living in agony and then dying painfully is the real tragedy. We can eat them but we should have them live like kings before we eat them, in honor of their sacrifice.

Are you gonna eat all those metric tons of corn that are produced to feed the cows? Because I sure as fuck won’t.

I understand your argument but I think that it is just one way of looking at it and it is still more focused on human welfare rather than sentient life form welfare. Because of that I think the scale of meat production and the treatment is the problem. In a perfect society people would buy a cow to eat per year per 2 people in the household and we would have far more human treatment of a sentient species and they could be afforded good lives and painless deaths.

Life by itself has no value, what is valuable is to what extent that life can be enjoyed.

That’s patently false. Most of Europe does not have fluoridated water. I hate posting Wikipedia links so I won’t but only around 13 million Europeans have fluoridated water. What they do is put it in the salt, which I think is way better because anyone can choose to buy salt with or without fluoride.

I never said I dont care about poor people, I said that people who are so poor they cannot afford toothpaste are extremely rare in the US and there are many organizations that would be willing to help them when they exist. In fact I doubt someone that poor would have access to potable water anyways. It’s frankly an argument that people resort to when they don’t have one but still want to defend government imposition.

I’m not saying that you should question it because I question it. I’m saying you should question it because science still questions it, and studies are still being made. You’re basically dismissing every argument I’ve given you by simply brushing them away with strawmans instead of engaging with them. You still have not even explained why you are so opposed to the idea of people democratically choosing whether a chemical gets added to their drinking water or not. But whatever, I won’t continue to argue with you, you’re clearly entrenched in your side of the argument despite backing it up with 0 facts.

I find your way of thinking troubling, it assumes that people are not capable of understanding nuanced information and that only academics in ivory towers are qualified to understand it, which is false in most cases. From my point of view that line of thinking is what has wrought the crisis of misinformation and mistrust.

If I were to take your side I would have to believe that people need babysitting and then I would also argue that those kid of people should not be allowed to participate in democratic society. I refuse to give in to that line of thinking.

There are some people that can’t afford X thing is so tired man, it represents such a tiny part of the population who could also reach out to other resources to get what they need. That’s really not a serious argument. Again the best European countries do not fluoride their water, and these are countries that very often if not always do what’s best for the population.

Let the people decide if they want fluoride or not. More choice is better than no choice.

You’re right in that I said something wrong. There will be a revolution, but one that will only happen when human labor has no value. Until them, communism is not possible and it will simply become oligarchy with rampant poverty and technological stagnation while massive government inefficiency and corruption are rampant. There is very little wealth inequality if everyone except dear leader and his generals are rich, everyone else is equally poor. There might be huge wealth disparities in the US right now but the average homeless person has a higher quality of life than almost every other country in the world, this is only possible because capitalism has allowed for the quality of life of everyone to improve as it generates wealth.

The Chinese are the only ones that actually “get it” I think, or so it would seem, even if they are still somewhat adhering to tankie tendencies.

I really don’t think it makes any sense to consider tech billionaires automating labor as “real Marxists” but those studying Marxism and building Socialism as “fake.”

And yet they and their employees are the only ones capable of creating the conditions for communism to be real and viable. I will reinstate my point and urge you to meditate on it: Communism will not be viable until human labor has no value.

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I don’t have anything against communists. Stalinist tankies are not communists.

Yes, I’d just hate that people kind of forget that any war is inherently a human tragedy often not perpetuated by those fighting it.

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Well it is a little bit sad, they are still human beings. They have no control over where they were born and they are in a system that effectively makes it impossible for them to rebel while at the same time making it impossible for any one else to free them. It’s all around sad.

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There’s a lot of assumptions there and you know it.

We are assuming that it is being administered and tested for appropriately and regularly, which may not be true in many cases. We’re assuming that the food we consume is made with low fluoride water which may not always be true, as they could be made in a place where there’s high levels of fluoride in the water. When you account for all things they may well be overconsumption of fluoride happening. Toothpaste with fluoride is the norm already why should it be in the water at this point anyways?

Anyways, read again: I never said that it is dangerous, I said there’s concern that it may be, which is the case because there are still studies coming out and being made. Including a meta study that indeed concluded that there is an inverse relation between fluoride and IQ. I’m not talking about RFK or some tiktoker, there are actual scientists that still question and research this. Science is not this static thing where we say “oh we know that already” and move on, otherwise we would still believe the earth is flat, that the earth is at the center of the galaxy and that bloodletting is actually a good cure for a cold. Science requires that the established be questioned over and over again for us to get closer to the full truth of every single thing. Doing the opposite of that is the real anti-science. In the case of fluoride we are still not fully sure, and that’s a fact. Or perhaps I should be more clear, we are not sure that the current levels may be the safe ones.

The final and most egregious thing is that you ignored my conclusion, that this should be decided at the local level. You act like this would cause the end of the world, but there are many countries in Europe that don’t put fluoride in their water, most of them the countries that I consider being the most concerned with their populations health and well being. Finland for example doesn’t do it because people don’t want to, but it’s allowed if they wanted to. That is the way to deal with this.

And whataboutisms are not arguments, especially bad faith ones. I’m not saying for example, that we should remove naturally occurring fluoride from the water. Holy hell I’ve never even stated that I’m against fluoridation of water, because I’m not. I’m just saying, we still don’t truly know if we have it right without reasonable doubt and therefore this should be decided at the local level.

Fluoride is worth questioning though, we don’t really know for sure whether it is harmful or not and science is increasingly proving that the risks are very real and maybe not worth the benefits. We don’t know for sure yet, but I think it should be left up to the communities to decide AFTER they’ve been given the chance to review all the current studies on the subject. It needs to be an informed decision.

When the collapse happens the collapse happens. Millions will suffer but the slate will be clean for the next generation. That’s just how human history goes man, but it gets a little better every time we do this so theres’ progress!

What he wants and what he can do are very different things. And no, the worse is Hegseth and that cannot be argued. The US health system needs to be burnt down to the ground, I do not think RFK will do that but I welcome anyone who will try.

I agree on that. Very bad look when he was pushed on his past statements and his answer was “P-P-President Trump”. Looked kinda pathetic to me. But I’m taking the bad with the good. I’m hoping parents will do the right thing and vaccinate their kids and that he will focus on improving the food supply in the US and tightening regulations for ultra processed “food”.

Puertorican here. You should know that Dominicans are not necessarily well liked here, so people don’t care as much as you’d think.

Despite his takes on vaccines, he’s the one cabinet pick I like. He is focused on the toxic food environment Americans live in and don’t seem to want to acknowledge. I feel like I took crazy pills yesterday when NYT put out an article implying that weight loss had nothing to do with calories. It’s amazing all the mental gymnastics some people will do just to not be a little hungry for a while.

Vegans and vegetarians are not often more healthy than meat eaters. In fact a lot of them subsist mostly on junk food and ultra processed shit.

I dunno about their morals. For me it depends on whether they are opposed to meat because they think it’s murder (absurd notion: see op) or because they opposed the treatment of living animals in industrial meat farms, which is the real issue.

Pen and paper is still the superior way to make your first draft and anyone who disagrees is wrong.