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Micah Mileto

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Posts posted by Micah Mileto

  1. 16 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

     

    You are wrong. This is a 100% factually correct and logical statement:

    If there were no heroin dealers, there would be zero lives ruined by heroin. Zero.

    I said nothing about cause and responsibility whatsoever, so I could not have conflated the two as you claim I did.

    Take the attitude displayed in your comment and try applying it to the example I gave about skimpy clothing. It definitely sounds like you are giving an opinion about responsibility rather than cause. I think that the application responsibility is a subjective political opinion that implies a functional wide-reaching solution to a problem. Cause is just an observation of physics - again, remember my example about a car accident between two cars being "caused" by a third car making a legal pass on a road, or that third driver being on the road at that moment because the gas station clerk took two extra seconds to count change. Was the clerk responsible for the accident? See, conflating cause and responsibility is madness.

     

    16 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

     

    The proof is in the pudding Micah. Show me one thriving city in the entire world where all drugs are legal and available and have been for a long time, and that doesn't have a drug problem.... If you do that, I will agree that what you say is correct.

    Better yet, show me such a city where all your libertarian fantasies have been actualized. Just one.

     

    I basically do not believe that one should necessarily judge a political policy using real-world examples from the past or present, because there are always too many factors to consider, so many factors that it may indeed be impossible for the human mind to consider so many factors at the same time. I think debating in this way just becomes a pretentious game of exchanging trivia. I do not want to exaggerate my abilities to judge a real life situation, and you shouldn't, too.

    For example, is it fair to say the United States is wealthy because of capitalism? The USA benefits from the exploitation of workers overseas who do not have the same rights as people within the geographical USA - wouldn't it be fair to factor-in the poverty of those workers when trying to assess the wealth of the USA? And is it not true that the rich enjoy socialism while only the poor must deal with capitalism?

     

    Also, your idea of a "thriving city" seems to be one that participates in the holocaust of modern prison, and one that benefits from the slave labor of prisoners, and many of those prisoners are there because of the drug trade, which should not be considered a crime.

    Do you believe in democracy? Imagine you went back in time and tried to convince an ancient king to institute democracy. The king would laugh and tell you the average population cannot be trusted with important decisions, and maybe he would even give you some examples of the average population destroying themselves thorough their own wishes. What would you say to that? "Oh, trust me, democracy is a good principal no matter what, it'll all work out in the future"?

  2. 9 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

     

    If there were no heroin dealers, there would be zero lives ruined by heroin. Zero.

     

    See what I already said about conflating cause and responsibility, and how that is one of the most common logical fallacies in people's thinking.

     

    Also if there were no laws against heroin, heroin could be sold at Walgreens, where it's purity would be regulated, and where other less dangerous drugs would also be offered for the same price.

  3. 17 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

    FO. The people involved appreciated it as did their families. You're fking nuts to say something like that man.

    I believe that stripping people naked like this is sexual assault. I don't care if they said afterwards that they thought it was justified - also, if they didn't think it was justified, they wouldn't want to talk to you. I believe in freedom. I think that freedom is more important than both safety and even happiness itself. Freedom is not necessarily a means of acquiring safety and happiness, freedom is important in it's own right. I think it would be more ethical to just let adults commit suicide whenever they feel like it.

     

    EDIT: BTW do you think it would be justified for the government to force everybody to take happy pills if the pills had no side-effects?

  4. 16 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

    What people who make this argument fail to realize is that the use of drugs (in the US at least) is essentially legal until the usage becomes a problem for someone other than them. People don't get arrested anymore because they were watching a football game smoking a joint and the FBI stormed the residence. At one time that could have happened in some places. Today you have to smoke a joint and get in a car wreck and injure someone. Then it becomes a problem.

    Blatantly false. You gave this line to the wrong person. If you are bothering to bring up anecdotal evidence, I have anecdotal evidence of my own. Drugs being illegal is nothing short of a holocaust.

    Legalizing drugs could very well reverse racism in the USA.

     

    You also seem to ignorantly believe that driving high on weed is anything like drunk driving. Studies have debunked that to the moon. Alcohol is still the most dangerous drug in the world, and any replacement for it would be greatly appreciated.

     

    Also, when you say that you have "been on several suicide watches", are you saying that were were directly involved in stripping people naked? If you have, then I can't even say here what I think about you.

     

    You also never actually gave any reason to believe that legalizing drugs would raise addiction rates. Nowhere in your four paragraphs is an actual argument for why people should believe that.

     

    Drug decriminalization instead of legalization is stupid for multiple reasons. The government cannot use the illegal drug market to benefit it's economy. Drug users are not offered a selection of drugs which could give them the opportunity to try less dangerous drugs. Decriminalization does not solve the problem of accidental overdoses. Decriminalization still gives officers an excuse to stop people for no reason (enabling racial profiling), and it still often involves the prosecution of drug dealers who have done nothing wrong. Rehab is counterproductive because it scars your record in a background check, and there are no adequate workers rights anywhere in the world.

  5. 10 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

    It would encourage them to move north, apparently. That's the point. Did you read the article?

    What genius decided to make legal weed more expensive than illegal weed? Weed grown tax-free with plenty of American land would be as cheap as corn. Cheap legal weed would be like a fire extinguisher to the cartels. Why are you choosing to take every opportunity to blame freedom and make excuses for taking away people's freedom?

  6. 36 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

    It is legal in Oregon, Micah. I've been doing this for too long to argue with you but suffice to say legalizing pot has had unintended consequences. 

    Oregon State Police seize illegal marijuana valued at $500 million | CNN

    Do you think that legalizing all drugs in the United States would strengthen the cartels south of the border? Even if that were somehow true, I would simply say that the problem should be blamed on the government. Who's the reason why legal weed isn't cheaper than corn?

     

    Drugs being illegal is a holocaust. Holocausts don't heal overnight.

  7. 10 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

    Yeah. Then there are the Mexican cartels taking over the pot business in Oregon. A little blow back there. Not pretty, and not very well known... yet.

    I blame the immoral actions of the cartels on the freedom-hating governments and peoples who choose to keep drugs illegal. If drugs are ever legalized, it will take decades or centuries for society to reverse the damage caused by drugs being illegal.

  8. 3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

     

    Also, I don't think it should be legal to force children to learn Hebrew. In fact, I believe that a large portion of school is just pointless child abuse, financial abuse and slavery because most of the information taught at school is not useful to the careers of average people. How is it fair that I make enough money to afford an apartment, and yet the average middle schooler works more than twice as hard as me? Child labor never ended, it just got stupider.

  9. 2 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

    Drugs steal a persons freedom. Drugs take a person over and makes them a slave. That's why its important to keep them illegal. 

    That's none of your business. I don't want the government to decide what drugs go into my body. I also believe in the right for any adult to buy cyanide for the purpose of killing themself - so clearly I am not going to think addictive drugs should be illegal. I think you have the attitude of a freedom hater - the definition of a freedom hater is somebody who is always willing to accept unprovable arguments in favor of taking away people's freedom, but never willing to use unprovable arguments in favor of giving people more freedom. It is conceivable that the state could still exist even if the addiction rates got higher as a result of drugs being illegal (and you can't prove that they would). I believe in only sacrificing enough freedom to result in the minimum amount of safety necessary to protect the existence of the state - not necessarily the people inside of the state (although sometimes both interests overlap). Drugs being illegal is why I think that literally all police figures are bad people on a personal level.

     

    Again, I am not even bothering to explore the basic arguments for why legalizing drugs would lower addiction rates. And you probably already understand that legalized drugs would lower the accidental overdose rates.

  10. 16 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

     

     

    Pat, I never said that I believe freedom has infinite importance, or that safety has zero importance. All I said was that freedom is more important than safety. Think of freedom as being worth a dollar and safety as being worth a dime - a truckload of dimes is not worth less than one dollar.

     

    I believe that my position in naturally resistant to strawman arguments (like all murder being legalized) because a minimum level of safety is required for a state to enable the it's citizens to enjoy other kinds of freedoms. Compare that to somebody who would claim to believe that safety is more important than freedom - a state could technically exist without any freedom at all, so their position does not have any naturally built-in requirment of freedom.

  11. 1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

     

    Do you think your precious liberty has greater value than the lives ruined by heroin dealers? And the burden heroin addiction puts on society?

    What you say is actually a great argument against libertarianism. The ideology of selfishness.

     

    On your "lives ruined by heroin dealers" - you seem to be conflating cause and responsibility. The concept of responsibility is a subjective political opinion, and is often used as a mere a construct of practicality, not a perfect philosophical way to judge morality. "Cause" could be something like somebody who had a crime committed against them by somebody who thought their skimpy clothing was a motivation for their crime - but you can see how obviously horrible it would be to conflate cause and responsibility in that situation.  Another example: a horrific car accident happens shortly after somebody legally passed somebody else on a road - the passing of the car could have been a necessary part of the chain of events, but it would be wrong to hold them responsible in the court of law or the court of public opinion.

     

    Personally, I blame the government for "lives ruined by heroin", not the dealers, because the government is responsible for drugs being illegal, and legal drugs certainly could have changed the situation. That is my subjective opinion on responsibility.

  12. 56 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

     

    Do you think your precious liberty has greater value than the lives ruined by heroin dealers? And the burden heroin addiction puts on society?

    What you say is actually a great argument against libertarianism. The ideology of selfishness.

     

    Just because I said that I believe in the principal of liberty-over-security doesn't mean that I could not make the argument that legalizing all drugs would also result in more security. You seem to believe that legalizing all drugs would increase the addiction rates. You cannot actually prove that. I strongly suspect that legalization would actually lower addiction rates. And basic logic shows that legalization would lower accidental overdoses to virtually zero. Somebody who is intending to try recreational drugs could consult a medical professional on how to avoid accidental overdose and addiction. If heroin were sold at Walgreens, that heroin would be of a consistent purity. Also, a medical professional could suggest that patients try other kinds of less-dangerous drugs before they go trying harder drugs. There are plenty of drugs that bring euphoria that don't have the same level of danger as heroin. I think the fact that we don't have such safeguards is the fault of the government, not dealers. I cannot absolutely prove my ideas, but nobody can disprove them either, and I think that sometimes, the simple fact that one cannot disprove an idea is enough to embrace it because the benefit of the doubt should be given to freedom (negative rights against authority figures forcing their will onto you).

     

    And, as I just said to Pat,

     

    If one does not subscribe to the principal of liberty over security, then they may as well admit to not believing in any liberty at all. This is because there is no shortage of important-sounding arguments in favor of increasing security at the expense of liberty.

     

    EDIT: Also, I am only a libertarian socially, fiscally I believe in state communism.

  13. 6 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

    Lancie's specialty was making sure that the local authorities made drug cases that would stick and he advised those authorities on issues of admissibility. 

    Therefore, he must be well versed in that whole aspect of the law.  Last time he never told us about this. Can you believe that?

    Fun fact: plea bargains are a form of torture. This torture is being justified by the incorrect notion that the Justice system can be trusted to find the truth.

  14. 1 minute ago, James DiEugenio said:

     

    There is also no solid information that explains who developed the camera film, or how the images from the positive camera film were copied over onto negative film.

     

    BTW this may be one issue with the autopsy photos that people are overlooking - the prints and negatives are photographs of photographs, only the positives are said to be the original film coming from the autopsy. The prints in the official collection of evidence have an inferior picture quality because they come from the negatives (or "internegatives"). When the Parkland doctors were shown the autopsy photographs at the National Archives in 1988, they were only shown the inferior-quality prints.

     

    A new set of prints should be made from the positive film (unless that's already been done).

  15. 33 minutes ago, Steven Kossor said:

    As a psychologist myself for the past 40 years, I can say without hesitation that, in the field of psychology, for every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.  That makes it appear that there is no science underlying the profession and that it's more of a religious activity.  For some psychologists, it certainly IS a religious activity, but there are scientists among the flock too.  If you want to practice psychology as a religion, you can.  If you want to practice as a scientist, you can.  That's why psychology today looks more like medicine did in the middle ages (some would say it's still more art than science).  I recommend following the science, not the personalities.  The truth will out only if we continue seeking after it, and applying the principles of "the scientific method" is a good place to start.  Like the famous psychologist Frank Zappa said, a mind is like a parachute; it only works if it's open.

    Basic logic can debunk the field of psychology, in the same way that basic logic can debunk religion without the need to spend years studying it. For example:

     

    A. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

    B. The human mind is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe.

    C. The study of the human mind is almost entirely based on witness evidence.

    D. Witness evidence is unreliable and should not be considered extraordinary evidence.

     

    This is the kind of fire that can not be put out by any team of PHD psychologists.

     

    Even in your own comment there is a sign that psychiatry is bunk. You admit that you basically disagree with half of all people in your field, and all mental healthcare workers will agree with the basic notion that a person might need to switch between counselors to find which one suits them. This makes an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

    Psychiatry is a cult. A cult that steals from, manipulates, kidnaps, tortures and poisons people.

  16. 11 minutes ago, Nancy Weiford said:

    Did you have direct conversations with DSL on this?

    No, I only exchanged like two emails with him. I only told him that I was working on "The Case for an Altered Throat Wound", which was then 280 pages, and he expressed surprise that the subject would warrant so many pages. I then asked him if he had any trouble finding people who were willing to digitize his collection to files, to which he replied no.

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