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.
Why the same thing would count as “built into the language” if expressed in one word but not if expressed in two? After all, spelling conventions for separating words are partly arbitrary -- a language might have stuff like “severalsheep”, “allsheep”, etc.
It's a question of what's obligatory. Admittedly, this doesn't have to be handled by what's a single word. In English, you have to introduce nouns with 'a' or 'the'. I'm not sure how valuable this is-- many, perhaps most, languages don't have that feature, but in English, you're stuck with indicating whether something you're talking about is especially important.
In the same spirit, you have to make an effort to avoid indicating a person's gender.
In English, you can say "men do x" or "women do y" without a built in obligation to indicate... (read more)