• @Godort@lemm.ee
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    16626 days ago

    Im almost positive that Andrew Wakefield has caused more harm to modern medicine than any other person in the last 200 years.

    • @ameancow@lemmy.world
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      3025 days ago

      I’m getting tested for autism as an adult next week. If it turns out I am, who do I contact from the Autistic community? Or does a representative contact me? I don’t want to mess this up and I have a costume ready and everything.

      • @AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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        1525 days ago

        I tried to think of a witty response to your funny joke but I’m apparently too tired for that, so instead, I’ll wish you good luck for next week, and the weeks that follow it; getting a diagnosis as an adult is often cathartic in the short term, liberatory in the long term, and in between those points is a long period of introspective untangling a web of messy feelings and possibly internalised ableism. I wish you the strength to endure and to emerge with a better understanding of who you are, regardless of the outcome of the assessment.

          • Jesus fuck, you need kinder people in your life. I hope you find affection at every level of your needs. Proud of you for seeking growth and self awareness. I have high hopes for you and best wishes.

      • @Samvega
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        525 days ago

        Can you tell me your secret? I’ve been waiting 8 years for an adult diagnosis. It doesn’t really matter in the sense that I know I’m some flavour of ND, though. And I work in education, and people around me have been pretty accepting.

        • @ameancow@lemmy.world
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          25 days ago

          Secret? I don’t even know if I am neurodivergent, I am getting tested to figure it out, I have taken a dozen online tests of various efficacy and they all come up “borderline” so I am getting a professional diagnosis. It may also be a very strong case of CPTSD mimicking the effects of autism and/or ADHD.

          Otherwise, I have been struggling my whole life with things that should be a lot easier for me, and if I DID have a secret, all my best successes and largest achievements have been a result of pushing myself out of my comfort zone and pushing into more challenges, not listening to my reasoning because my reasoning is flawed, our brains just tell stories to explain how we feel and those stories don’t necessarily have to make sense, it’s just stories to make you feel like the world makes sense. It doesn’t.

          Understanding nuance of people’s feelings and emotions was always hard for me, so I pushed myself to lead more, to be a team leader or a project leader, and put an emphasis on instead of retreating from giving everyone personal attention, I leaned in harder always and have always made a policy to listen and genuinely be compassionate to others and exercise empathy.

          I also pushed myself to do more public speaking and leading lectures, MC’ing social events, and giving speeches when appropriate.

          In my last job I was afraid of failure because I have been laid off so many times in the past, so I paid careful attention to that worry about messing up, and every time I had that worry I did the exact opposite of what my gut was telling me. I got laid off from that job as well anyway, because that’s how business is now, but not before becoming a general manager and well-liked by hundreds of people.

          The number of times I’ve put myself in trouble by resisting the “Safe” route is not insignificant, but each of those times has been easily navigated and more than rewarded by the successes which were a result of speaking up when I would normally keep quiet.

          So your secret should be to value yourself. Even if you don’t feel it, act like it. Pretend you are valuable and important and people will treat you like you’re valuable and important.

          • @dan@upvote.au
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            425 days ago

            This is a great comment but I think by “secret” they meant in terms of getting an appointment for a diagnosis, since they’ve been unsuccessfully trying to get one for a while.

            • @ameancow@lemmy.world
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              25 days ago

              Gotcha, remains to be seen… doctor hasn’t been very affirmative with me about what exactly we’re doing next week, I assumed from his language it would be a diagnosis/test but they say frequently it’s all “more complicated” than we tend to think, so the reason some people might have a hard time getting a diagnosis is because particularly as you get older a lot of conditions and symptoms kind of blend together and make certainty much, much harder, and it is sometimes more efficient to just focus on managing the symptoms no matter what the underlying cause may be.

              I guess I’ll find out and try to update others as I go through the process.

        • @mokus
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          225 days ago

          I’ve got an appointment in a few months. No idea if you’re in the US but, if so, the secret is the same as everything in American health care - money, debt or navigating insane bureaucracy to get insurance to cover it. And, in my case, also traveling a long way to a place that does adult evaluations and scheduling the appointment nearly a year in advance.

        • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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          225 days ago

          Apparently you haven’t been vaccinated enough. Double up on your shots and you’ll make it fir sure

  • FuglyDuck
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    7926 days ago

    There’s a correlation between wearing socks and athlete’s foot. Socks cause athletes foot, clearly, and so we shouldn’t wear socks when wearing shoes.

  • It’s because there is no punishment for spreading false information. These cunt celebrities and politicians spread their fucking lies and if they are found out, they make an empty apology that reaches 1% of the people that they lied to, and it’s all forgive and forget. Fuck all of that. Every anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-education cunt out there needs to be strung up from the societal rafters. They have to be made an example of. At the bare minimum they should be doing tours helping to correct the lies they have spread, spending time on social media and running commercials like fucking community service hours. There has to be a punishment for this shit.

    • EleventhHour
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      1226 days ago

      I’m curious as to how that law would be written and what it would look like in practice.

      • Ideally, you wouldn’t have to write a law for it, and the people would be held accountable by others. That’s a BIG wish, though, and I’m a realist–it’ll never happen. Instead, if it were written into law, it would have to be done the same ways that libel and slander laws are written, and there would have to be a criminal trial for it. I understand that up front that seems like a lot of extra work for the courts, but if the punishments were severe enough, then hopefully we would see an outright reduction on it.

        Some precedent for it would be libel laws as previously stated, false advertising laws, and public health laws like what Germany has instituted (NetzDG) that required social media to remove false health information within 24 hours.

        And just to make it clear, I don’t want to infringe on anyone’s right to free speech, but just like libel and slander laws, when that free speech damages others, then it has to be curbed. The scientific evidence is there for things like the mask mandate and the efficacy of vaccines, we just have to prove it in court and punish those who are guilty of spreading that false information.

        • @Cosmicomical@lemmy.world
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          426 days ago

          I’m all in favour of this, and I try to do keep people accountable for what they say, even though I often end up getting insults for it. But to judge in court someone for spreading lies you would need to know the objective truth, and setting truth into stone would compromise science’a ability to propose radical new ideas.

          I think there are ways to do this without compromising science, though. But they are all susceptible to the 50% attack, made famous by cryptocurrencies. If you rely on a community to certify what truth is, you are exposed to a potential attack where a powerful enemy buys more than 50% of the network to make them say their lie is true and the actual truth is a lie. I don’t have a solution for that yet.

          • I’m not saying that the idea is perfect by any stretch, but we also can’t be beholden to what ifs. If we give up before we try because we might see failure down the line, then we might as well just start drinking bleach to cure our illnesses. Science can be proven. Mask mandates weren’t a hypothesis. Vaccine efficacy isn’t a hypothesis. If we get to where people in power are buying facts and we can no longer prove a truth in court, then we are beyond “mis-information” already.

  • @GluWu@lemm.ee
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    6426 days ago

    I’m collecting vaccines like infinity stones. I’m going to unlock complete autism.

  • Refurbished Refurbisher
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    4826 days ago

    hbomberguy did a fantastic video debunking these claims. Now if only the antivaxxers would actually watch it instead of staying in their own bubbles.

    • @kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      426 days ago

      I’d say it is ,at least partly, an education problem.

      Sure, education is less likely to correct a deeply engraned false belief, but education is one of the most effective tools to prevent the lies, misinformation, and manipulation from taking hold in the first place.

      However, like most preventative measures, it will take a long time to see results.

    • @Facebones@reddthat.com
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      125 days ago

      My friends family is a bunch of trumpers, she’s apolitical and vaguely socially liberal.

      At her graduation party, they hung up a HUGE Trump banner. It wasn’t already up, they put it up before most people started showing up. Fucking insane.

  • Flying Squid
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    3626 days ago

    Can we convince people that Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy and RFK, Jr. cause autism?

    (I don’t believe there’s anything actually wrong with being autistic, I have multiple autistic people in my family. I just think that would be amusing.)

    • @OpenStars@discuss.online
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      1126 days ago

      Steps:

      1. be (usually born) rich
      2. have an agenda
      3. use your wealth to accomplish it
      4. lie, cheat, steal, do whatever you have to in order to “win”

      Did I leave anything out? :-P

      • @mokus
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        125 days ago

        If the quacks don’t do it the worms will

    • BarqsHasBite
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      626 days ago

      Can we convince people that Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy and RFK, Jr. cause autism?

      Not autism. They cause death.

      • @pivot_root@lemmy.world
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        926 days ago

        For the idiots who avoid vaccinating their kids because “it causes autism,” death is preferable. Consider that they would rather take that risk than be put in a situation of having to parent a neuroatypical child.

        • WideEyedStupid
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          26 days ago

          This is what always got to me the most. Even if vaccines caused autism, wouldn’t that be preferable to your kid dying? Like, what the fuck is wrong with these people.

          • Flying Squid
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            626 days ago

            If their child isn’t perfect (by their standard of perfect), it’s worthless.

            Narcissistic parenting.

    • FuglyDuck
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      426 days ago

      (I don’t believe there’s anything actually wrong with being autistic, I have multiple autistic people in my family. I just think that would be amusing.)

      there’s probably a less tenuous correlation there, though. just saying. Granted, correlation is not causation, but, eh… yeah.

      • Flying Squid
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        226 days ago

        I know, but imagine all of these people in this ludicrous panic suddenly thinking Wakefield is the culprit for autism…

  • I don’t care if these anti vax idiots kill themselves, I care that they are killing people with weakened immune systems or children that are either too young to get them or they didn’t vaccinate them. This is all 100% the fault tRump and Russian propaganda, it’s sad soo many fall for it.

    • @LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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      425 days ago

      survival of the fittest is doing its thing, even if innocent people go down as victims of stupid people, such is life and death.

      • Flying Squid
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        625 days ago

        That is a complete misunderstanding of how evolution works. This does not weed out the people who are not genetically immune from a disease. If civilization died and measles came back in force in two generations, it would be just as deadly as it was before vaccines were developed. Because this does nothing to genetically change humanity’s ability to fit into an ecological niche.

    • @Rediphile@lemmy.ca
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      225 days ago

      I’m ok with them harming some innocent people in the process of killing themselves. Greater good.

  • UltraMagnus0001
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    2126 days ago

    All the information available to us now and yet all people care about is if someone the Internet likes them.

    • @ameancow@lemmy.world
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      125 days ago

      While I hate what the internet is becoming because of AI, and I dread what’s going to come from the better systems down the road, and all the people who will be utterly lost as they fall in love with their phones, I am wondering if just maaaybe these LLM’s will be able to satisfy some people’s desperate craving for attention and acceptance with simulated social circles and virtual supportive communities and give people at least some kind of outlet or if nothing else keep them out of the way while the rest of us make progress.

  • @magi
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    2126 days ago

    Can I have the smart autism please

    • @feedmecontent@lemmy.world
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      2026 days ago

      Only if you’re smart anyway since autistic people have the whole distribution of capability represented. Then being smart isn’t enough. You also have to be resilient, lucky, and privileged (not enough systemic factors outside of systemic ableism to wash you out in a psychological and logistical pincer attack), and also lucky again to get past the many societal filters that block most autistic success and create the illusion of some unicorn like uniqueness in all visible versions of autistic success.

    • Sure, make sure to go back in time so that you aren’t overestimulated in your environment, don’t get bullied until you suffer an anxiety disorder, and have someone inspire interest in you for something capitalist society pays well for.

  • @exanime@lemmy.world
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    1525 days ago

    … but you know what will eventually die? People who do not believe in vaccines

    Too bad they will take many with them because of their wilful ignorance… but eventually the problem will correct itself

    Someday I hope to live in a society where confidently saying something idiotic is shameful as crapping your pants in public or realizing you have a bugger hanging off your nostril

    • @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      525 days ago

      It’ll take a really deadly disease for that to happen. Smallpox and the plague could kill over 50% of the population in an area they hit. No one had vaccines (though some portion would have had incidental previous exposure to cow pox, which became the first vaccine, but I wouldn’t guess that all survivors had been previously exposed to cow pox). Note that that’s 50% of the total population, it’s not just looking at those who were confirmed to be infected. Nothing that currently exists (considering treatment options, since the plague does still exist) comes even close to that, so don’t hold your breath that they’ll go extinct from catching easily preventable diseases that they chose not to prevent.

      And personally, I think shame isn’t a great teaching tool and is a mechanism that leads to people doubling down on incorrect beliefs rather than correcting them as well as attacking new ideas that conflict with currently accepted ideas. I’d like to see a society where being willing to admit you were wrong is respected and where everyone can appreciate that whatever they currently believe, reality is likely more nuanced and complex than their model of it suggests, if it’s even on the right track at all.

      • @jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        225 days ago

        And personally, I think shame isn’t a great teaching tool and is a mechanism that leads to people doubling down on incorrect beliefs rather than correcting them as well as attacking new ideas that conflict with currently accepted ideas.

        I don’t really get this about people. Someone told me I should eat less meat and I went, “Yeah, you’re right” instead of doubling down into shame insanity.

        I probably do it sometimes without realizing it.

        • @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          225 days ago

          It does depend on the way it’s said. Some people think aggression or condescension helps convince others when it might be more likely to make the person rather be wrong than agree with them. People like that can say a few words and increase resistance to their beliefs even if someone later presents them in a less offensive way. And unfortunately, Russian troll farms (and others wanting to sow division and discontent) know about this and lean into it.

          It also makes a difference if you already feel that way. Like if you have a bad habit and know it but just have trouble stopping or reducing it, it’s easier to agree when someone points it out vs if you’re in denial about it and want reasons to continue.

          Though I should have said some people because it doesn’t apply to everyone. Once you’re aware of how you might react to that, you can adjust. Personally, I’m of the mind that if what you think is true, then it can’t hurt to challenge it or follow other lines of thought that contradict it, and if what you think isn’t true, then it’s better to realize that.

          I want to be right about everything, but in the sense that I will change my positions over time to align with my current experience and knowledge, not in the sense that I insist that what I’ve previously said is true. What past me believed is irrelevant, only current me matters, and future me will likely think current me is an idiot about some things, and then I’ll die later (or sooner, who knows) and it won’t matter either way.

    • @Welt@lazysoci.al
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      124 days ago

      Having a bugger hanging off your nostril isn’t shameful, it’s weirdly impressive

  • Hello_there
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    1526 days ago

    One of my high school acquaintances posted on Facebook that Peppa the Pig causes autism.
    I like that conspiracy theory much better, despite how illogical it is that watching a cartoon pig can cause a neurological disorder.

  • @Reygle@lemmy.world
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    1525 days ago

    And the tech school I got a degree from now hosts courses on “Reiki healing” and “Crystal healing”. America is fucking doomed.