Jo

Words form sentences form paragraphs. You need to be able to hold more than one thought in your head to be able to comprehend an argument. You should try it.

If your reading comprehension is really that bad, it might explain the low quality of your opinions. You should probably try working on it instead of embarrassing yourself in public.

The kinds of things that some parents bully, punish, disown and/or murder their children for should very much be hidden from them if the child chooses to hide it. It’s no one else’s business and, if the child has not yet told them themselves, breaking their confidence is an attempt to ruin their life and quite possibly end it.

This is stochastic terrorism from this fascist government, desperate for any distraction at all from their kleptocratic ways.

applied by centre left and liberals

It’s a term that originates with the left. Specifically, those who broke with the USSR over imperialist invasions, referring to those who did not. More broadly, it refers to the authoritarian left (as opposed to the anarchist left).

You don’t know what clutter is but you do have a very cool rabbit.

This is the mantra of lemmy.ml.

Tell us, how are russian and chinese cops?

It’s more of an anarchist thing, to be fair.

They’re bastards, obv. Like it says in the OP.

Good stuff, thanks.

You can check their post history? Karma doesn’t tell you anything, really. Mine went up tenfold one day just because I replied to what ended up as the top post in a top thread in a much bigger sub than those I normally post in. Some people spend all their time in big subs making short, smart remarks that get a lot of karma, others spend their time in enemy territory battling people they disagree with. Some toxic people have a lot of karma because they hang out in toxic subs.

The problem to be solved is how to order threads. Old skool bulletin boards just bump the most recently replied one to the top. Which works well on an old skool bulletin board as long as it isn’t too large, but very badly on a big site where a few big active threads can drown out all the others.

I don’t know what the solution is. But the numbers don’t mean anything without checking the context. Karma is useful for ordering threads/comments, and giving users a bit of dopamine when they get some attention. But there (probably) are better ways to do it.

If your employer would not want to lose you, think about what would make it work better for you and then talk to your manager. More days WFH, or shorter hours on days you’re in the office, or a big fat relocation package, or whatever works for you.

If they can’t/won’t help, don’t quit until you have another job lined up. Make sure they know it’s why you’re leaving.

C’mon, this is the NYPost. Their own link to the wayback machine shows the ad’s been up since 2020.

Professional bodies or academics do sometimes survey their fields, especially when it’s politically important to make a point, eg

Two thirds of economists say Coalition austerity harmed the economy

Top economists warn ending social distancing too soon would only hurt the economy

Rival schools of thought often organise letters implying that their stance is the ‘consensus’ (whether or not that claim is reasonable). Or a campaign to establish a new consensus is launched in an academic paper.

For some fields, like medicine, various organisations produce guidelines, which are increasingly evidence-based rather than opinion-based (ie they look at the evidence rather than surveying professional opinion). The guidelines are not necessarily the consensus but if there are substantial errors or omissions these are likely to be protested and, where appropriate, corrected. Consensus groups are sometimes convened to produce statements with some weight but they are vulnerable to manipulation; I know of one which reconvened after new data were available and the chair (who was well-funded by the drug company) simply expelled everyone who’d changed their minds.

So, there are some formal and informal mechanisms but it’s really very difficult to discern what ‘the’ consensus is from outside of a field (or even from outside of a very specific niche within a field). The sorts of claims you cite in your OP are often quite reasonable but they’re often also misleading (and quite difficult to prove either way). If anything important rests on the claim, you need to dig a bit (lot) deeper to find out if it’s reasonable. And, of course, bear in mind that facts change and today’s minority might be tomorrow’s majority.

Your 1% figure comes from misrepresentation of a ‘study’, pushed by Purdue and others for criminal gain.

The One-Paragraph Letter From 1980 That Fueled the Opioid Crisis

Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, starting using the letter’s data to say that less than one percent of patients treated with opioids became addicted. Pain specialists routinely cited it in their lectures. Porter and Jick’s letter is not the only study whose findings on opioid addiction became taken out of context, but it was one of the most prominent. Jick recently told the AP, “I’m essentially mortified that that letter to the editor was used as an excuse to do what these drug companies did.”

Don’t get me wrong, pain is miserable and treatment needs to be better. But around 80% of opioid addictions start with prescriptions for people in genuine pain. What percentage of prescriptees that is, I don’t know. But it’s not a trivial issue, and it is a very difficult problem to solve.