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I didn't see that. If you check your source by reading the reviews on the page you linked to, you'll see that Medique 10133 Alcalak Sugar Free Tablets are not, in fact, sugar-free. The label on them says "May contain sucrose."
Okay, so even if Medique doesn't count, I gave three links containing cheap sugar-free antacid tablets, including two brands. I don't see how this is a market failure; the product is clearly available for a reasonable price.
I know what a garage would behave like if it contained a benevolent God
Do you, though? What if that God was vastly more intelligent than us; would you understand all of His reasons and agree with all of His policy decisions? Is there not a risk that you would conclude, on balance, "There should be no 'banned products shops'", while a more knowledgeable entity might decide that they are worth keeping open?
If God is more intelligent than me and I don't understand his reasons, that proves too much. It could just as well be that God is evil, and the things that he does that seem good just seem good to me because they are evil on a level that I can't understand.
If you believe in G-d then you believe in a being that can change reality just by willing it
OK, so by that definition...if you instead believe in a perfect rationalist that has achieved immortality, lived longer than we can meaningfully express, and now operates technology that is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic, including being involved in the formation of planets, then - what label should you use instead of 'G-d'?
I'd probably have to invent a name for it. Or I might use the term "godlike being", implying that the being has some, but not all, characteristics in common with what people think of as God.
Where?
I posted the link on this page already. Unless you're trying to insinuate that because the link doesn't work, the product was discontinued.
If so, you should have done a search, which would have found that the product was not discontinued and they just reorganized their site so that URLs now include the directory /products/: http://www.planetrx.com/products/sunmark-sugar-free-extra-strength-calcium-antacid-orange-creme-80-chewable-tablets
They are also available at Wal-Mart for $5.65. Here is a different brand for $3.49, and a different brand, different flavor for $6.40 for 100 tablets.
That does not mean you are making "excuses in advance".
What empiric standard would you use to classify things as making excuses in advance?
I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that "I can respond to any claim he's likely to make" isn't it. I'm not sure there is such a thing at all, short of having your idea be outright unfalsifiable.
Empirically I don't find this to be the case. I think most skeptics do have believes of anticipation that various paranormal effects won't happen. At the same time bring a skeptic in situations where his beliefs about the domain might reasonably get challenged they might make excuses in advance.
People have their personal probabilities in regard to how strongly they hold anticipatory beliefs. It's not all or nothing.
Most people don't use probability for their beliefs. They use mental processes such as the availability heuritistic, that doesn't correspond directly to probabilities.
See Dennet's Belief in Belief and Sagan's Garage Dragon for more info.
Neither Dennet nor Sagan are a psychologist or have similar experience with working with beliefs in other context. If you use their discussions that are essentially about ontology as being discussions about how humans reason you are going to make mistakes.
At the same time bring a skeptic in situations where his beliefs about the domain might reasonably get challenged they might make excuses in advance.
I can guess that if you were to meet a flat-earther with the intent of engaging with his ideas, you would start thinking of what things he might show you and why those things wouldn't actually demonstrate a flat earth. That does not mean you are making "excuses in advance".
"He's probably going to show me how ships disappear on the horizon, but I know that is affected by air refraction." "Oh, you're just making an excuse in advance."
Or, you know, find other gender-related things to not accept. When I was looking for a copper rod (to cut into some pieces for electron microscopy), the sellers looked at me like I was weird or something. Later, the guy who cut it for me didn't want my money on account of me being female (but I threw it at him and escaped). And before that, the lady in the pawnshop where I tried to pawn it to get some urgently needed money to commute to work, was completely thrown (I guess they didn't want copper much). All of these occasions were rather outside my comfort zone, but I do not see why I should not have done it.
Presumably you were buying a copper rod because you needed a copper rod, and you had no choice but to be gender-noncomformant if you wanted one. It's not as if you had an option to pick gender conformant scientific equipment and non gender conformant scientific equipment and deliberately picked the noncomformant one.
Also, there's a difference between being considered unusual and being considered socially weird.Last time I ran into someone riding a horse on a city street I'm pretty sure I stared at him for a while--but that was because you don't see many of those, not because I thought that someone who rode a horse in the 21st century was violating a taboo.
In response to
Open thread, Jul. 04 - Jul. 10, 2016
I periodically do things to get out of my comfort zone. I started years ago before a friend introduced me to LW where I pleasantly discovered that CoZE was recommended.
This write-up is about my most recent exercise: Do a Non Gender-Conforming Thing
I chose to have my nails painted. Having painted nails requires low enough effort that I have no excuse not to and, wearing them out in public is just out-of-the-ordinary enough to make me worry about how people will react. After getting them painted, I realized why girls say "My nails!" a lot after a manicure and worry about screwing them up. It took work to paint them and chipping them makes them look like shit. Can’t let that happen to me!
Then I challenged some friends to do it and gave these suggestions:
I think breaking arbitrary societal conventions and expanding comfort zones are positive things so I'm challenging a few people to try it and post a picture or video. Bonus points for a write-up of how you felt while doing it and any reactions from observers.
(Those who live in Berkeley are playing on easy mode.)
(People challenged may totally already do these! The list was limited to my imagination and ideas I could find. The idea is to get out of your comfort zone so feel free to get creative...)
Exercises I came up with:
Ideas for men:
Get a manicure/pedicure (it's basically a massage)
Wear (traditionally feminine) jewelry
Carry a purse
Play a “girly” pop song loud enough for others to hear
Order a fruity alcoholic beverage
Get your nails painted
Wear a feminine outfit (or at least a pink shirt or something)
Read/ask about fashion or some other traditionally feminine topic
Ideas for women:
Wear a masculine outfit. (I feel like women have to try a bit harder than guys here)
Don’t shave your legs for a week
Don't shave your armpits for a week
Wear a tie
Give a guy a compliment
Ask a guy on a date
Don't wear makeup for a week
Don't wear a bra for a week
Read/ask about sports or some other traditionally masculine topic
My thoughts so far: It’s still weird for me to see my own hands. It takes me a second to recognize them as my own. “And how pretty they are!”
I'm already hypervigilant in public but we were in public in a new area and I was more hypervigilant than normal. I had to fight the urge to keep hiding my fingernails in the grocery store. I was worried that our hosts at the Airbnb we're staying at would be weird about it...
Now I'm caught between not wanting people to see my nails at all and not wanting to see them all chipped (it's hard taking proper care of them!). I'm conscious of my dad seeing this. I do weird enough things that my model of people in my tribe reacting is "John doing another thing..."
I need to get rid of them before we visit our friend’s parents so that way I don’t make a weird first impression. A lot of the discomfort has more to do with being misperceived or miscategorized. For instance, one time after getting my haircut, my shirts was covered with hair, so my friend lent me her Pink Floyd T-shirt to wear. I wasn’t defying social norms by wearing a Pink Floyd shirt, but that was not the kind of thing I would usually wear so I felt extra-aware of the potential for being perceived a certain way based on how I was dressed. Likewise, if I smoke a clove cigarette or cigar, which I do once every six months with a certain friend, I would be horrified to be falsely labeled a regular smoker.
I'll have to try this again when I'm in public more frequently to give it a fair shake.
Meta-Communication: I'm also getting out of my comfort zone because I'm not sure this is the right place for this type of post or if these kinds of posts are welcome.
Cross-Posted and editing from my Facebook. Feel free to follow me there!
This write-up is about my most recent exercise: Do a Non Gender-Conforming Thing
3) Nazism would have been unexceptional if it had been an ancient religion instead of a modern government. Why can't modern Nazis disavow ancient Nazi practice in favor of some true essence that makes sense in modern terms?
Just highlighting this point.
Why can't they? Well, see this old post.
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(Responding to old post)
This has another problem that other people haven't mentioned so far: it's not really possible to trace a terrorist attack to a specific cause such as lack of a particular security procedure. This means that Rational Airways will cut out their annoying security procedures, but the release they will make you sign will release them from liability to all terrorist attacks, not just to terrorist attacks related to them cutting down those security procedures. That's a bad deal for the consumer--the consumer wants to avoid intrusive searches, finds an airline which lets them avoid the searches by signing a release, but the release also lets the airline hire known serial killers as stewardesses as well as not search the passengers, and you can't sue them for it because the release is all-encompassing and is not just limited to terrorism that would have been caught by searches.
Furthermore, then all the other airlines see how Rational Airlines works and decide to improve on it. They get together and decide that all passengers will have to either submit to being stripped fully naked, or sign a release absolving the airline of responsibility for terrorists. The passengers, of course, sign the releases, and the result is that the airlines never have to worry about hiring serial killers or any other forms of negligence either. (Because not screening the stewardesses for serial killers saves them money, any airline that decides not to do this cannot compete on price.)
Later, some smart airlines decide they don't actually need the excuse and just say "there's an unavoidable base rate of terrorism and we don't want to get sued for that" and make everyone, period, sign a release acknowledging that before getting on the plane (and therefore absolving the airline of all responsibility for terrorism whether it is part of the base rate or not.)
Even later, another airline decides to just make its customers promise not to sue them for anything at all (whether terrorism, mechanical failure, or other) before getting on the plane.
Similar things happen in real life, like insurance companies that won't pay if you have a preexisting condition (regardless of whether the preexisting condition is related to the condition you want them to pay for).
In fact, let me add a comment to this. Someone may be willing to assume some risk but not a higher level of risk. But there's no way to say "I'm willing to accept an 0.5% chance of something bad but not a 5% chance" by signing a disclaimer--the effect of the disclaimer is that when something bad happens, you can't sue, which is an all or nothing thing. And a disaster that results from an 0.5% chance looks pretty much like a disaster that results from a 5% chance, so you can't disclaim only one such type of disaster.