Philosophical Vegan Forum

boyjenius wrote:

EquALLity wrote:He talked about this stuff recently on his show again (last episode), btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn_puUVJAYw

that is why i love Bill Maher haha

Yup!

garrethdsouza wrote:Is he anti vax and anti gmo?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7yvI0tu3Ho

I don't agree with all of what he believes about this stuff, but I think this video explains his positions.

garrethdsouza wrote:Is he anti vax and anti gmo?

I believe so, yes. He's a bit of a moonbat.

Edit:
EquALLity posted before me, I'll watch that video.

All I'm hearing is anti-vaccination propaganda in another package.

"No, we're not saying to teach creationism, that's religion, we're just advocating teaching Intelligent Design, which is another field of science!"


Doctors "don't know why" because they're not scientists. These aren't mere doctors developing these vaccines or making the recommendations on schedule or public health.

Bill Maher doesn't seem to understand the difference between doctors, who have basic practical training in how to mend bones, deliver babies, and write words on pieces of paper (and ARE in fact often told what to write by pharmaceutical companies), and scientists who understand the why and how of it, developing the treatments that doctors learn to monkey, and doing real epidemiological studies.

Some doctors, like some laymen in other fields, are smarter than others and have taken the initiative to learn more about how and why things work. There are also doctors in specialized fields who have acquired more education, and pursue research -- graduating to the honor of being real scientists. But merely having a PhD or being a general practitioner means very little in terms of knowledge.

Maher is just fear mongering, and displaying an amazing degree of ignorance about how immunity works.

His list of things, I'm going to pretend like I'm talking to Maher now.

Bill Maher wrote:I made a list just literally off the top of my head about places I don't agree with the medical establishment[...]

No, you didn't make it literally off the top of your head.

Bill Maher wrote:I've never heard of a doctor asking anybody, and no one has every asked me -- a Western doctor -- when I went to them for anything, what do you eat? What do you eat? The thing that perhaps is most influential in whatever may be wrong with us and maybe it's exacerbating it.

That's because doctors, like colleges, are running a business, so they lower their standards and criticism, because otherwise the students and patients will go somewhere else where somebody doesn't make them write essays or stop eating bacοn. Doctors are even afraid of telling people they need to lose weight.
Also, doctors are not trained in nutrition. They are largely ignorant, and only know what their mothers told them.

In terms of advice from major health organizations, they DO talk about diet, constantly, but they also make measured suggestions because they're looking for compliance.

Bill Maher wrote:they address symptoms and not root causes

Doctors do that, because they don't know the root causes. Companies produce drugs because people aren't willing to circumvent the root causes, most of which come from diet. There are many cases where root causes ARE addressed, because they're easy to address. Congenital deformations are a big one.
When the patient actually has to do or not do something, though, non-compliance makes it so difficult that most doctors just give up.

Bill Maher wrote:they're OK with things like asper-team[sic]

Yes, because sugar is even worse. The lesser of evils.

Bill Maher wrote:GMOs remember five years ago if you said I don't eat GMOs you were a nut well there's a lot of nuts now who at least want to know about GMOs

Yes, there ARE a lot of nuts now. That's a bad thing.
The guy in the middle of the panel on the left spoke up for them, and you start complaining about how you're not a starving person. Well you know what Bill? Your fear mongering is causing those people to starve, because now they're afraid of GMOs too for no good reason. And now you're using so much extra land for your food, you'll help make sure that continues.

Bill Maher wrote:oh, they overdid antibiotics [...]

Actual medical science has been cautioning over that for decades. It's consumers and ignorant doctors pandering to patient demands who did that. And, more so, the animal agriculture industry. The government has been saying "please don't do that!" for years. The regulatory bodies don't have enough power to stop these things easily against the consumer monster. The actual scientists did everything in their power to stop it, and they failed.

Bill Maher wrote:Not one country in the world does nearly the amount of surgery we do

Yes, most of them just do a lot more dying. Some others do a lot less eating themselves into the situation where they have to have surgery to not die.

Bill Maher wrote:I've heard on the news endless times two drinks a day is good for you I think no drinks a day is good for you [...]

That's not the medical establishment you moron, that's media sensationalism -- like you do.
You're right about one thing: No drinks a day is good for you. But advocating drinking has never been a real thing in mainstream medicine.

Bill Maher wrote:One word: Monsanto
You know who the ex monsanto officers are in our government there's a revolving door going on there

Nothing to do with the medical establishment. The issue with Monsanto is a political one, regarding patent trolling.

Bill Maher wrote:And and they love to also demonize things you know like the sun. Stay out of the sun completely!

UV light causes cancer. No cancer is good for you. How did you get the concept about drinking, but miss this?

Bill Maher wrote:you know uh, Cholesterol yes I'm sure cholesterol is bad in excess but you need cholesterol

Your body makes all of the cholesterol it needs. You don't need, and should not consume, any additional cholesterol. Even a small amount is very bad for you. That's probably why you make sure to eat a 'little' meat. Fucking idiot.

Bill Maher wrote:Fat, you know they'll tell you one week fat and then it's carbs

Again, this is not the medical establishment. This is fucking morons like you in the media, giving any number of quacks and buffoons with crackpot notions of nutrition a spotlight.


Sorry, but Bill Maher is an idiot.

asper-team https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92r1oOul0kM

and about drinks, alcohol is a recognized carcinogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_a ... carcinogen
http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/caus ... fact-sheet

garrethdsouza wrote:asper-team https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92r1oOul0kM

Looks like a great channel! Upbeat presenter, quick dialogue, science positive, lots of nice illustrations, good animation.

brimstoneSalad wrote:No, you didn't make it literally off the top of your head.

How do you know that?

brimstoneSalad wrote:Your body makes all of the cholesterol it needs. You don't need, and should not consume, any additional cholesterol. Even a small amount is very bad for you. That's probably why you make sure to eat a 'little' meat. Fucking idiot.

Not according to him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG7W5Bb-ZA8

Bill Maher wrote: Sorry, but Bill Maher is an idiot.

You can't just call him an idiot because he is wrong about this topic. What about all the intelligent things he has said? Do you know his other positions and ideas?

EquALLity wrote: How do you know that?

It would have involved a lot of flexibility, and an arrangement of mirrors, to be able to make a list off the top of his own head.

EquALLity wrote: Not according to him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG7W5Bb-ZA8

I didn't see anything that contradicted it. He made a joke, before he knew what Duchovny was talking about.

EquALLity wrote: You can't just call him an idiot because he is wrong about this topic.

This isn't just one factual error, it's a broad array of errors, covering numerous topics, and a thought process which is both ignorant and surprisingly arrogant (while pretending not to be).

Ignorance is no crime, but wow is he ever arrogant about it, and that's what makes him an idiot. He has a public platform, he should take more care than what he does to be accurate.

EquALLity wrote: What about all the intelligent things he has said? Do you know his other positions and ideas?

I have rarely heard him say anything intelligent, and nothing simultaneously intelligent and original. The only time he has said anything intelligent that I've seen has been him echoing others. He tows the liberal line on a lot of topics (which is informed by more intelligent people), but he's just a parrot at best. The Republican party is a target rich environment, and it's easy to criticize them without being intelligent yourself.

The issue is, you don't get credit for accidentally being right occasionally, or parroting people who are right now and then along with all of the crackpot stuff you come up with.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, so is every idiot accidentally right about some things. It is what percent of the time a person is right compared to wrong that matters, and in that regard his filter is broken in some terrible way. Even if somebody like him never has an original thought, if that person is at least very reliably able to convey correct and intelligent opinions of others, and remove all of the noise and filter out the quacks, that would deserve some credit. Maher can't even do that.

Bill Maher is like TJ. If they reach their audience, that's fine, but they're clowns. I think you're giving them too much credit.
There are much more intelligent people to learn from. Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and the late Hitchens, to name four. Peter Singer and... I'm drawing a blank. Anyway, there are better people to learn from, who are more consistent and with better arguments, whether that is for atheism, or ethics.
The clowns are the intellectual equivalent of junk food; empty calories.

brimstoneSalad wrote:It would have involved a lot of flexibility, and an arrangement of mirrors, to be able to make a list off the top of his own head.

That just sounds like speculation. How do you know that?

An arrangement of mirrors?

brimstoneSalad wrote:I didn't see anything that contradicted it. He made a joke, before he knew what Duchovny was talking about.

He said he doesn't serve steak (I'm assuming that's just meat in general); it doesn't look like he goes out of his way to consume meat. And then he made a joke about a situation when he would consume meat, if vegetarian options aren't available and he wants food.

brimstoneSalad wrote: This isn't just one factual error, it's a broad array of errors, covering numerous topics, and a thought process which is both ignorant and surprisingly arrogant (while pretending not to be).

Ignorance is no crime, but wow is he ever arrogant about it, and that's what makes him an idiot. He has a public platform, he should take more care than what he does to be accurate.

How is he arrogant about it?

brimstoneSalad wrote:I have rarely heard him say anything intelligent, and nothing simultaneously intelligent and original. The only time he has said anything intelligent that I've seen has been him echoing others. He tows the liberal line on a lot of topics (which is informed by more intelligent people), but he's just a parrot at best.

A parrot at best? Then why does he support many of his positions with logical reasoning and facts?
Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybH66U72xd0

UPDATE:
Here are some more-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkHo91jeh50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiMS4FvNX_g

brimstoneSalad wrote:Even if somebody like him never has an original thought, if that person is at least very reliably able to convey correct and intelligent opinions of others, and remove all of the noise and filter out the quacks, that would deserve some credit

Why just some credit? Even if he isn't actually coming up with these arguments himself, as long as he understands them and can explain them well, what is the problem? And he's right more than he's wrong.

About originality, see 5:45 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLeAXR0yp0w
Unless you think he's lying, but why would you think that?

And he even takes on the left, like in his criticism of political correctness and Islam.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Bill Maher is like TJ. If they reach their audience, that's fine, but they're clowns.

I don't think they're that similar. Does Bill Maher make straw-mans?

brimstoneSalad wrote:There are much more intelligent people to learn from. Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and the late Hitchens, to name four.

The four horsemen.

EquALLity wrote: That just sounds like speculation. How do you know that?

An arrangement of mirrors?

It's just really hard to see the top of your head, to write a legible list. Can you put a piece of paper on your head and use it as a desk to write something legible? Maybe it's not as hard as I assume. I still doubt that he literally did that.

EquALLity wrote:He said he doesn't serve steak (I'm assuming that's just meat in general); it doesn't look like he goes out of his way to consume meat.

My thought was that he doesn't go to more trouble to avoid it, because he thinks he needs a little cholesterol, so he might as well eat it when it's inconvenient to find something else. His notion is "A little bit is good for me". Really, not eating it, and just waiting, would be better; he's hardly at risk of starving. Anyway, there are few places you can't order something better than a hamburger.

EquALLity wrote: How is he arrogant about it?

It's the way he says it, and frames it like he's being reasonable and open minded, and he ignores criticism and will not accept correction. And makes proclamations like denying being an anti-vaxxer. Like Intelligent Design proponents advocating "skepticism" of evolution deny advocating creationism.

EquALLity wrote: A parrot at best? Then why does he support many of his positions with logical reasoning and facts?
Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybH66U72xd0

That wasn't exactly logical reasoning or reliable facts. Many are flatly wrong (every president we've ever had was not Christian), and he's both cherry picking and building a straw man argument against the conservatives' position.
Most of that was him joking around.

Like I said, though, the GOP is a target rich environment. It's not hard to mock, but even in trying to do so, he makes a number of mistakes.

EquALLity wrote: Why just some credit?

Because he's not exactly contributing anything useful to the intellectual discussion. He's a clown. He may be a good clown, and I don't want to downplay the importance of clowns, but he is also an idiot.

EquALLity wrote: And he's right more than he's wrong.

I don't think that's true, but even if it were, a hit rate of only slightly better than 50% is nothing to be proud of.

EquALLity wrote:About originality, see 5:45 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLeAXR0yp0w
Unless you think he's lying, but why would you think that?

His original idea is to let them mind their own business, and fight their own wars?

EquALLity wrote: I don't think they're that similar. Does Bill Maher make straw-mans?

He does. But to be fair, Maher is at least a much better clown than TJ. Both more entertaining, and a little less obnoxious.

brimstoneSalad wrote: It's just really hard to see the top of your head, to write a legible list. Can you put a piece of paper on your head and use it as a desk to write something legible? Maybe it's not as hard as I assume. I still doubt that he literally did that.

Oh, that was just about his misuse of the word literally? I thought you were suggesting that he was lying about coming up with that list off the top of his head.

brimstoneSalad wrote: My thought was that he doesn't go to more trouble to avoid it, because he thinks he needs a little cholesterol, so he might as well eat it when it's inconvenient to find something else. His notion is "A little bit is good for me". Really, not eating it, and just waiting, would be better; he's hardly at risk of starving. Anyway, there are few places you can't order something better than a hamburger.

It didn't sound that way, but whatever if you meant that^.

You wrote:That's probably why you make sure to eat a 'little' meat.

brimstoneSalad wrote:It's the way he says it, and frames it like he's being reasonable and open minded, and he ignores criticism and will not accept correction. And makes proclamations like denying being an anti-vaxxer. Like Intelligent Design proponents advocating "skepticism" of evolution deny advocating creationism.

So what if he frames it like he's being reasonable and open minded? He's just mistaken about that.

When did he ignore criticism? When did he not accept correction?

So what if he denies being an anti-vaxxer? He's just anti flu vaccine. It makes sense that he doesn't identify that way, because with that movement comes the "vaccines cause autism" ideas etc. And even if he was an anti-vaxxer, he'd just be wrong. That doesn't make him arrogant.

brimstoneSalad wrote:That wasn't exactly logical reasoning or reliable facts. Many are flatly wrong (every president we've ever had was not Christian), and he's both cherry picking and building a straw man argument against the conservatives' position.
Most of that was him joking around.

Like I said, though, the GOP is a target rich environment. It's not hard to mock, but even in trying to do so, he makes a number of mistakes.

Hm, ok, fair. I think these are better examples (I added them in an update, but it was after you wrote this response).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkHo91jeh50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiMS4FvNX_g

brimstoneSalad wrote:I don't think that's true, but even if it were, a hit rate of only slightly better than 50% is nothing to be proud of.

Why do you think it's so low?

brimstoneSalad wrote:His original idea is to let them mind their own business, and fight their own wars?

In this specific situation.

brimstoneSalad wrote:He does. But to be fair, Maher is at least a much better clown than TJ. Both more entertaining, and a little less obnoxious.

He also talks about more relevant things, and is better on issues like animal rights.