Ex-Vegan "Science" and Philosophical Skepticism.
07 May 2019 [link youtube]
https://www.patreon.com/a_bas_le_ciel/
Youtube Automatic Transcription
there is no philosophy more
misrepresented and more misused on the internet than skepticism and it's a great shame because there is probably no other philosophy more important for daily life and public political discourse than skepticism especially right now especially in the 21st century this video is doing something unusual for my channel although there's a lot of it going on on YouTube these days I'm directly responding to someone who wrote in to me in good faith someone who wrote in as an ex vegan this is someone who considers herself to have scientific attitudes she says somewhat vaguely that she studied medical science in university I would guess a particular profession like nursing or something she doesn't specify but you know obviously I'm gonna take her at her word she studied she took some courses but do medical science and she thinks she did have completely scientifically rational reasons to return to eating meat dairy and eggs animal products a non vegan diet the crux of her message to me though and again this comes back to both broader and narrower questions of skepticism is that in the middle of her long written comment she says as soon as you have a health problem any health problem whatsoever all questions of ethics come to an end they stop I'll quote her directly quote the truth hit me right in the face when it comes to ethics question mark you know dot dot dot ethics don't matter anymore when you lose your health I could hardly disagree more suppose I were to tell you this is my cell phone and this is my pair of headphones hey let's do for you and you know since I started plugging in these headphones to this cell phone the battery life got shorter and suppose you said to me whoa whoa whoa whoa well what what empirical evidence do you have this I say none what peer-reviewed scientific studies do you have this none what's the observational basis for this let's invoke Karl poppers philosophy of science how do you know what you think you know oh I have no basis to stand on whatsoever however this is extremely plausible right this is a this is a very large pair of headphones and they do not have any battery they do not have any internal source of electricity that are on a solar panel right the only source of electricity for these is the battery inside the phone so oh gee I started using a larger pair of headphones and it seems as if the battery life got shorter I I deal with a lot of really hostile skepticism from people on the internet when I do live streams when I talk to people on discord the sort of thing and it really is that stupid it really is like someone throwing some of at your face saying how can you possibly come to this preposterous conclusion well there are questions of plausibility and in the other hand I speak to people who identify as skeptics I had one memorable debate with the guy who's actually a medical doctor and nevertheless a complete [ __ ] medical doctor at a very very high opinion of his own intelligence and I was pointing out to him very real reasons to doubt the medical efficacy of antidepressant drugs SSRI drugs selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs to get the to get the type of drug correct and you know you're able to point to really worrying facts like well you know the original hypothesis that these drugs were built on was was that the brains the people people who actually experienced depression that they have low levels of serotonin and that has been disproven so that was the original hypothesis and that was debunked so it was debunked in two different ways one it was proven that know empirically scientifically their brains did not have low serotonin levels and then - when they did experiments inducing low serotonin levels the actual symptoms these people that were not depression not at all they actually became very aggressive very truculent and they had a higher sex drive so they had aggressive tendencies when they had low serotonin low serotonin is not associate with depression it's associate with a very different set of behaviors people who are depressed do not have low serotonin levels that's that's the original hypothesis that's been debunked then further SSRIs there are drugs that do the exact opposite which are called SSR ease so instead of a serotonin inhibitor sorry serotonin reuptake inhibitor you get a serotonin reuptake inhibitor and when you test it on depressed people it has the same outcome has the same effect so if I give you a drug that raises your blood pressure and I have another drug that lowers your blood pressure and they have the same effect on your depression that's a really strong indication that this drug is not effectively treating your depression it's a very very difficult good and this guy's whole response it was at this same level it was like well uh show me the proof show me the empirical evidence show me a statistical study the true sets drugs work and of course if you've seen on this channel I have playlists I have sources I have many videos and run pretty deep and then some of the videos I don't even talk I've just put together clips of experts who devoted decades of their life to this and they ended up having to ask the guy questions like you know look okay so this one source of just directed you to he has all these credentials university professor expert it's done twenty years of research on this like eight different peer-reviewed publications do you think he's a fraud like for what for what you to believe to be possible this guy can't just be wrong or mistaken this would have to be a fraud on an enormous level involving large-scale well-funded university research projects the American government and 60 minutes the TV show in the United States so skepticism it should be the antidote to [ __ ] but it becomes the pretext for [ __ ] and these two examples as different as they are I think really help to frame this conversation I'm having right now with uh with the next vegan now this ex vegan does have her own YouTube channel UT au jus Tia Maria who I believe is is polish um okay j'tia you claim to have scientific attitudes towards the problem and yet you're the fundamental claim you've made about your health in why you stop being vegan is that you had hormone problems you claim in year 3 your hormones were completely out of balance and you also say really vaguely that you spent a lot of money on doctors and tests right now this this suggests this implies that you actually had a medical diagnosis of a hormone problem but that's not true is it good you you're either lying or you're stating this in a misleading manner intentionally when I go to your video what you actually say you actually say that during the last few months on a vegan diet so you were vegan for three years I believe yes three years and in the last three months you started to get acne and you attributed the acne to hormonal problems and you attributed the hormonal problems to veganism you took a further step with no evidence and no reasoning and no plausible set of conditions for us would be plausibility matters whether we're talking about science or day-to-day activities and problems like okay plausibility matters you started eating I believe chicken eggs and fish meat right that was the first step you took and you felt that miraculously your acne was cured so therefore you created this rationale in your mind looking back that the the paucity of these foods the absence of these foods in your diet was the cause of a hormone problem to have no empirical basis for you evidence for you no scientific way it wasn't you didn't get a blood test showing you hormone problems right you don't you don't have a sorry we just saw a YouTube video from a young woman who went through menopause at age 21 she has hormone problems as a young woman she she's a vegan and she just had you know it's utterly changed your life is utterly devastating she went in they test their blood they said right away whoa you have a serious bone problem she had no period and what do you know she's missing she was born with a condition where basically her reproductive organs don't work properly and it's game over for her she assumed she'd be able to have kids she never will be able to that those are that's what hormone problems are like they can show up in a blood test and they can show up when the doctors examine your ovaries normal with x-ray or ultrasound whatever it's gonna be that is not what happened to you so I understand you you say you have scientific attitudes you say you studied medical science university to some extent okay quote I studied in medical university I am smart and reasonable and yet I still could not win close quote that's what you claim but this is actually magical thinking you're engaged in right acne there can be many causes for acne acne does not mean hormonal problems hormonal problems even if you have them do not mean they're caused by veganism and if your acne went away when you ate eggs and fish okay this is not plausible in this way right for that to be plausible you would have to tell me what Adam exists in fish and eggs what chemical what molecule exists there that does not exist in the vegan diet that would have this effect on you now there are some chemicals that exist in fish and eggs like cholesterol is it plausible is it well does it exclude other possibilities that cholesterol is the cure for acne would you claim that is it plausible that cholesterol is the cure for a quote unquote hormone imbalance that you made up in your own mind with evidence just because you have acne and could it be that there were other factors now again conversely if there were no other factors I mean you know again I don't know your situation maybe you were taking the birth control pill and you stopped taking the birth control pill I can they have all kinds of reasons why at one time your life you might have acne and not others but you were vegan for three years and you only had this problem with acne during three months of those three years so already in terms of signed a if I said to you oh I was using this for years and I had no problem and then all of a sudden things change that would be a different story you're treating it as if there's only one possible factor that could change your health that could give you acne so they don't receive so is it worth so look guys the real moral of the story with skepticism doesn't have to do with an attitude towards technology doesn't have to do with an attitude towards the pharmaceutical industry of modern medical science large institutions government institutions and so forth the fundamental lesson of skepticism is your attitude toward yourself it's being self-critical and self-aware step by step what your assumptions are when you're letting definitions slip when you start it off with goal posts in one position and then you change them as time went on when you've engaged in wish-fulfilling thinking self-justifying thinking to me i see this most hilariously when so-called skeptics talk about free will and determinism and they engage in all the same fallacies that true believing monotheists believe in it's just that their version of determinism is not called god they've made up a god with a lowercase letter G they attribute all the same things to this the ultimate point of skepticism is not to doubt the things of this world it is to doubt your own judgment your own process of reasoning and through that doubt to become keener keener in their keener in your observation the world teener in your observation of human nature because the sad fact is we only know and measure and understand this world using human nature as our instrument the point is not that man is the measure of all things but that you and I as fallible individuals are inexorably the measurer
misrepresented and more misused on the internet than skepticism and it's a great shame because there is probably no other philosophy more important for daily life and public political discourse than skepticism especially right now especially in the 21st century this video is doing something unusual for my channel although there's a lot of it going on on YouTube these days I'm directly responding to someone who wrote in to me in good faith someone who wrote in as an ex vegan this is someone who considers herself to have scientific attitudes she says somewhat vaguely that she studied medical science in university I would guess a particular profession like nursing or something she doesn't specify but you know obviously I'm gonna take her at her word she studied she took some courses but do medical science and she thinks she did have completely scientifically rational reasons to return to eating meat dairy and eggs animal products a non vegan diet the crux of her message to me though and again this comes back to both broader and narrower questions of skepticism is that in the middle of her long written comment she says as soon as you have a health problem any health problem whatsoever all questions of ethics come to an end they stop I'll quote her directly quote the truth hit me right in the face when it comes to ethics question mark you know dot dot dot ethics don't matter anymore when you lose your health I could hardly disagree more suppose I were to tell you this is my cell phone and this is my pair of headphones hey let's do for you and you know since I started plugging in these headphones to this cell phone the battery life got shorter and suppose you said to me whoa whoa whoa whoa well what what empirical evidence do you have this I say none what peer-reviewed scientific studies do you have this none what's the observational basis for this let's invoke Karl poppers philosophy of science how do you know what you think you know oh I have no basis to stand on whatsoever however this is extremely plausible right this is a this is a very large pair of headphones and they do not have any battery they do not have any internal source of electricity that are on a solar panel right the only source of electricity for these is the battery inside the phone so oh gee I started using a larger pair of headphones and it seems as if the battery life got shorter I I deal with a lot of really hostile skepticism from people on the internet when I do live streams when I talk to people on discord the sort of thing and it really is that stupid it really is like someone throwing some of at your face saying how can you possibly come to this preposterous conclusion well there are questions of plausibility and in the other hand I speak to people who identify as skeptics I had one memorable debate with the guy who's actually a medical doctor and nevertheless a complete [ __ ] medical doctor at a very very high opinion of his own intelligence and I was pointing out to him very real reasons to doubt the medical efficacy of antidepressant drugs SSRI drugs selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs to get the to get the type of drug correct and you know you're able to point to really worrying facts like well you know the original hypothesis that these drugs were built on was was that the brains the people people who actually experienced depression that they have low levels of serotonin and that has been disproven so that was the original hypothesis and that was debunked so it was debunked in two different ways one it was proven that know empirically scientifically their brains did not have low serotonin levels and then - when they did experiments inducing low serotonin levels the actual symptoms these people that were not depression not at all they actually became very aggressive very truculent and they had a higher sex drive so they had aggressive tendencies when they had low serotonin low serotonin is not associate with depression it's associate with a very different set of behaviors people who are depressed do not have low serotonin levels that's that's the original hypothesis that's been debunked then further SSRIs there are drugs that do the exact opposite which are called SSR ease so instead of a serotonin inhibitor sorry serotonin reuptake inhibitor you get a serotonin reuptake inhibitor and when you test it on depressed people it has the same outcome has the same effect so if I give you a drug that raises your blood pressure and I have another drug that lowers your blood pressure and they have the same effect on your depression that's a really strong indication that this drug is not effectively treating your depression it's a very very difficult good and this guy's whole response it was at this same level it was like well uh show me the proof show me the empirical evidence show me a statistical study the true sets drugs work and of course if you've seen on this channel I have playlists I have sources I have many videos and run pretty deep and then some of the videos I don't even talk I've just put together clips of experts who devoted decades of their life to this and they ended up having to ask the guy questions like you know look okay so this one source of just directed you to he has all these credentials university professor expert it's done twenty years of research on this like eight different peer-reviewed publications do you think he's a fraud like for what for what you to believe to be possible this guy can't just be wrong or mistaken this would have to be a fraud on an enormous level involving large-scale well-funded university research projects the American government and 60 minutes the TV show in the United States so skepticism it should be the antidote to [ __ ] but it becomes the pretext for [ __ ] and these two examples as different as they are I think really help to frame this conversation I'm having right now with uh with the next vegan now this ex vegan does have her own YouTube channel UT au jus Tia Maria who I believe is is polish um okay j'tia you claim to have scientific attitudes towards the problem and yet you're the fundamental claim you've made about your health in why you stop being vegan is that you had hormone problems you claim in year 3 your hormones were completely out of balance and you also say really vaguely that you spent a lot of money on doctors and tests right now this this suggests this implies that you actually had a medical diagnosis of a hormone problem but that's not true is it good you you're either lying or you're stating this in a misleading manner intentionally when I go to your video what you actually say you actually say that during the last few months on a vegan diet so you were vegan for three years I believe yes three years and in the last three months you started to get acne and you attributed the acne to hormonal problems and you attributed the hormonal problems to veganism you took a further step with no evidence and no reasoning and no plausible set of conditions for us would be plausibility matters whether we're talking about science or day-to-day activities and problems like okay plausibility matters you started eating I believe chicken eggs and fish meat right that was the first step you took and you felt that miraculously your acne was cured so therefore you created this rationale in your mind looking back that the the paucity of these foods the absence of these foods in your diet was the cause of a hormone problem to have no empirical basis for you evidence for you no scientific way it wasn't you didn't get a blood test showing you hormone problems right you don't you don't have a sorry we just saw a YouTube video from a young woman who went through menopause at age 21 she has hormone problems as a young woman she she's a vegan and she just had you know it's utterly changed your life is utterly devastating she went in they test their blood they said right away whoa you have a serious bone problem she had no period and what do you know she's missing she was born with a condition where basically her reproductive organs don't work properly and it's game over for her she assumed she'd be able to have kids she never will be able to that those are that's what hormone problems are like they can show up in a blood test and they can show up when the doctors examine your ovaries normal with x-ray or ultrasound whatever it's gonna be that is not what happened to you so I understand you you say you have scientific attitudes you say you studied medical science university to some extent okay quote I studied in medical university I am smart and reasonable and yet I still could not win close quote that's what you claim but this is actually magical thinking you're engaged in right acne there can be many causes for acne acne does not mean hormonal problems hormonal problems even if you have them do not mean they're caused by veganism and if your acne went away when you ate eggs and fish okay this is not plausible in this way right for that to be plausible you would have to tell me what Adam exists in fish and eggs what chemical what molecule exists there that does not exist in the vegan diet that would have this effect on you now there are some chemicals that exist in fish and eggs like cholesterol is it plausible is it well does it exclude other possibilities that cholesterol is the cure for acne would you claim that is it plausible that cholesterol is the cure for a quote unquote hormone imbalance that you made up in your own mind with evidence just because you have acne and could it be that there were other factors now again conversely if there were no other factors I mean you know again I don't know your situation maybe you were taking the birth control pill and you stopped taking the birth control pill I can they have all kinds of reasons why at one time your life you might have acne and not others but you were vegan for three years and you only had this problem with acne during three months of those three years so already in terms of signed a if I said to you oh I was using this for years and I had no problem and then all of a sudden things change that would be a different story you're treating it as if there's only one possible factor that could change your health that could give you acne so they don't receive so is it worth so look guys the real moral of the story with skepticism doesn't have to do with an attitude towards technology doesn't have to do with an attitude towards the pharmaceutical industry of modern medical science large institutions government institutions and so forth the fundamental lesson of skepticism is your attitude toward yourself it's being self-critical and self-aware step by step what your assumptions are when you're letting definitions slip when you start it off with goal posts in one position and then you change them as time went on when you've engaged in wish-fulfilling thinking self-justifying thinking to me i see this most hilariously when so-called skeptics talk about free will and determinism and they engage in all the same fallacies that true believing monotheists believe in it's just that their version of determinism is not called god they've made up a god with a lowercase letter G they attribute all the same things to this the ultimate point of skepticism is not to doubt the things of this world it is to doubt your own judgment your own process of reasoning and through that doubt to become keener keener in their keener in your observation the world teener in your observation of human nature because the sad fact is we only know and measure and understand this world using human nature as our instrument the point is not that man is the measure of all things but that you and I as fallible individuals are inexorably the measurer