We can always use more case studies of insanity that aren't religion, right?
Well, Miracle Mineral Supplement is my new go-to example for Bad Things happening to people with low epistemic standards. "MMS" is a supposed cure for everything ranging from the common cold to HIV to cancer. I just saw it recommended in another Facebook thread to someone who was worried about malaria symptoms.
It's industrial-strength bleach. Literally just bleach. Usually drunk, sometimes injected, and yes, it often kills you. It is every bit as bad as it sounds if not worse.
This is beyond Poe's Law. Medieval blood draining via leeches was far more of an excusable error than this, they had far less evidence it was a bad idea. I think if I was trying to guess what was the dumbest alternative medicine on the planet, I still would not have guessed this low. My brain is still not pessimistic enough about human stupidity.
Another angle on this is that it isn't about humans in general, it's about some of the most gullible humans.
That aspect of things became salient to me when I read a man complaining about the women who get involved with prisoners-- even those who have been convicted for murder. It's so unfair when some ordinary guys get no female attention at all. I suddenly realized that he was talking about a very small proportion of women. The vast majority of women aren't chasing prisoners.
Tolkien's Sindarin (and, IIRC, Welsh) have two plurals, one for more than one and another for everything in a class. I am very envious. My ideal language would have a bunch of plurals-- the two from Sindarin, plus "a noticeable minority" and "the vast majority". I might even split "everything in a class" into "all we have seen" and "all by nature".
I am constructing an artificial language (just for fun; also it isn't going to be finished any soon) with three grammatical numbers: singular, plural (can be any number, zero and one included) and class plural for everything in the class. I have invented this independently of Tolkien not for practical reasons, but just for sake of elegance, as it better suits my desire to have the grammar work in part like set algebra.
Having grammar rules that enforce expressing the number more precisely than we are used to (e.g. different grammatical numbers for one vs. t... (read more)