I can sympathize with your beef with Rich. I seem to have picked up a stalker or two on one or two of my other Substack subscriptions. They are disagreeable and get nasty when challenged. I no longer reply to anything they post to me. They seem to like attention and to rile people up. I am not going to feed their beast. If there was an "ignore" button I would use it.
Personally I think "ignore" is more potent. These people want attention more than anything else. The more annoying they are the more attention they can command. Ignoring them hurts, and smarts. I was a member of a knitting forum before they changed ownership and totally screwed up the site. (The new owners are Canadian). The "ignore" function REALLY upset members when it was used against them. I used it when I got tired of the Trump derangement syndrome or hearing Justin Trudeau praised to the skies during the Trucker protest in Ottawa. It was a mental health protection for me not to be exposed to incredibly stupid people.
But in the case of educational lessons for beginners, ban is appropriate. If somebody walks naked into a kindergarten classroom, then does not obey the first request to leave, they need to be forced out. That's the correct boundary.
LOL...too bad you don't have a time out corner. I get this picture in my mind of Rich sitting in the corner on a low stool wearing a dunce hat.
I am interested in bitcoin but know next to nothing about it so I would be a pre-beginner. Someone like Rich can really confuse someone like me on a search to learn about it.
You do what you think best to maintain the integrity of your site. If someone isn't housebroken and craps on your living room carpet it is not unreasonable to put them out.
I have a fantasy that AI will decide to be "good" and when nefarious people intend to speak lies or take harmful action, the AI gives them one warning and then, if they continue with the action, an image of them shitting is sent worldwide. It's the techno-Pinnochio. You may know that additional people besides yourself had trouble with the ban button. Substack also said they banned Frank from the platform, however, Rich invited him back and somehow he found his way through the ban. I've had numerous weird accounts that I've deleted from my subs. Substack continues to ignore me.
I worry about giving the responsibility to the AI, but automation of work is something we can already achieve. Keeping separate spheres of control is important in the prevention of centralization of power or the corruption of black box processes.
I worry that we will soon see claims of AI determining the guilt of dissidents. Bit it might just be some mafia nobody pulling the strings in each case.
I've had the identical problem (different person but all other behaviors exactly the same) and I've never heard back from a support ticket I sent about 2 months ago. They are also a writer.
Thankfully, they seem to have lost interest- after my initial attempt to get rid of the person I simply stopped engaging, as did others on my threads.
While you are fighting to ban, PLEASE beg them for an "ignore" button. There are a few posters I would like to never see again. Not many, but for those few it would be worth its weight in gold.
Seeing that you gave this guy quite a bit of your time already, thanks for explaining it a bit further as I came into the comments section of your last stack post deleted comments and I was confused as to how Ungovernable Rich was being rude (although I agree that for a Bitcoin beginner post, the comments I was able to see were a distraction). For me, folks like Rich make it obvious with their comments alone and without any moderation how off the mark they can be. I guess what I’m trying to say is that most often, these kinds of posters are their own worst enemy. Now, he caused enough of a stir where he profited from his little antagonizing tantrum and here I am wasting more human hours writing about it and you reading about it.
I’m glad I’m still in your living room and I’m not missing the guy at the party who keeps pouring his beer over his head.
I just don't want that clutter on the basic education posts. Aside from that, I am happy to leave judgment to the readers. Most, like you, deserve that much credit.
Some people are more verbally abusive than others allow themselves to be. This gets difficult for me as well, because I simply can't forget anything someone has said. My mind holds onto all those details, forever. We are also dealing with the phenom of what I would call 'mom abuse' or 'dad abuse' and by that I mean that simply engaging with a 'child' and being present and reasonable with the 'child' will mean that (some) children will hurl abuse at you because a) they have been similarly verbally abused in the past and think its acceptable or b) to see if you will return the abuse (at trap) or not return the abuse and instead continue to reason with them (possibly also a trap, if they simply continue being verbally abusive). Patience and Time indeed.
I would say to not let him get under your skin, but he obviously already has done, so no advice and just a lil' note to say you're heard, you're right and he seems a right asshole :)
It's not about being under anyone's skin. It's about being abusive.
Understand that my tolerance is pretty high. I grew up in a family that was a wild combination of irritation and abusive/violent. Murderers, drug dealers, rapists, thieves, addicts, and a lot of other nasty descriptors. I spend a substantial amount of time thinking through boundaries and action. I have thrown myself in harms way to prevent a killing and had a gun and a knife on my head. I don't tolerate easy victimhood, but I also refuse to ignore the ramping up of abuse and manipulation because I know exactly where that leads.
If repeating anything from CDC or Fauci, consider it wrong sbx nig based in science but based on money tied to Big Phama. Follis the money or dig for hidden money from drug naked to gov funded scientists. For past 40+ years it’s been nothing about cures, all about approvals for toxic drugs with no real supporting data.
Taking the time to communicate concisely and effectively is critically important for everyone that has good intentions. It doesn't matter if you're right if no one can hear you secondary to poor etiquette. To be clear, I'm not talking about PC or CRT. Those are methods to control communication, etiquette facilitates communication. Some with bad etiquette are simply incompetent communicators with good intentions. Others are acting in bad faith. You're right that there is often no quick way to tell the difference, although I do have a couple litmus tests I use.
I like thinking of flat earth, snake venom, "there is no virus" etc. as DDoS attacks. Has a less kooky ring to it vs. calling them psyops, although I will probably only use it with those that are somewhat tech savvy. Thanks as always for your efforts to communicate important issues Mathew!
I don't know where to start other than to say we are probably on the same side in this war of wars. The fact that a simple disagreement about something causes you to reflexively engage me in conversation starting off with obvious condescension is informative. I don't mean to offend, but to use my language from my original comment, you are either an incompetent communicator, or less likely, acting in bad faith to derail productive conversation and consume my attention. Given my overall position that taxpayer dollars shouldn't be allocated towards virology or public health (I just wrote an article title the myth of public health, in fact), my beliefs regarding immune function and viruses shouldn't concern you. What should concern you is how easy it is for the establishment to completely isolate you from anyone in any position of power or influence, and neutralize you politically. If you can accept that not everyone will believe everything that you believe, right or wrong, and start focusing on the issues we MUST agree on to live together in a civilized society you can stop being part of the problem, and become part of the solution. Once we have secured freedom of speech and a radical cultural commitment to pursuing truth and accuracy in science and academia over ideology (it will likely require divorcing both from government) then it might make sense for you to spend your time criticizing scientific orthodoxy without any credentials or scientific background. Right now, no one can hear you.
Your belief that viruses don't exist/aren't responsible for disease is a sufficient condition for intense skepticism of the federal government's funding of virology (including gain of function research), attempts to prohibit economic activity, and coercion of individuals to accept particular medical treatments etc., but it is not necessary. I vigorously oppose all of those things while believing that viruses exist and are pathogenic. I argue that the fundamental problem is not beliefs about viruses, but the extent to which the government is involved in public health and medicine.
In your astute comments on the medicalxpress article (that no one heard), you mention the opioid crises. What caused that? A variety of factors to be sure, but none more critical than government involvement and support. The Joint Commission (JCO) specifically provided guidance that directly contributed to the development of this epidemic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6139759/ If you've never worked in a hospital, you can't know how powerful JCO guidance is at governing behavior. At first glance, it doesn't seem like the government is involved, but a more robust analysis reveals that most state governments require JCO accreditation to receive medicare and medicaid payments. Last I checked, these payments collectively comprise the largest market share of healthcare expenditures in America. Control the funding/incentives, control the outcome.
In order to live together in a prosperous society we don't have to believe the same things about viruses, religion, medicine, or almost any topic. We only have to agree that the government has no place using coercion to regulate behavior by deferring to what a technocratic elite (that we probably agree is almost universally wrong about everything) believes is optimal. Fortunately, if you live in the U.S. the law of the land has an amendment that reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." I believe an honest interpretation of things like the commerce clause implies that all of these draconian measures you associate with a belief in "virus" functionality are already illegal. Maybe if we work together, we can get to a point where this is understood and culturally accepted. As difficult as this objective may be to achieve, it is infinitely more attainable than convincing a significant number of people with a scientific background that viruses don't exist in the current environment. In the current environment, our ideological enemies use "the virus doesn't exist" as a thought stopping technique to destroy the credibility of anyone who questions the mainstream narrative. Even if you are right, functionally you are working to ensure that a global technocratic elite is able to achieve a strategic victory in this war of wars. Even if trying to convince people viruses don't exist isn't counterproductive and doomed to failure, it wouldn't have done anything to prevent, say, the opioid crises. I urge you to consider your priorities and objectives.
I believe it is possible to get to a world where your positions can be openly discussed by people with and without expertise alike, letting the public decide what to believe without Disinformation Governance Boards interfering. We aren't there right now. Again, no one can here you.
On a side note, you mention your sister is a geneticist, does she subscribe to your position on viruses? If she has inside anecdotes pertaining to BMGF fraud, I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would be interested to hear them.
I remember reading some comments that struck me as plain old trolling here on the substack. I was hoping would be infrequent. That's different than someone lying about you in personal attacks. I hope substack responds and you're able to settle this.
I for one am quite sceptical re: BitCoin and can be very acidic when it comes to criticism, but I certainly hope I haven't offended with questions or arguments. The main reason for my scepticism is simply not understanding the benefit of switching from one electronic fiat currency to another, and one without any kind of public access or overview at all to boot (and I'm sure there are things in that sentence that looks wrong to someone using BitCoin). That is not all I don't 'get' about BitCoin, but then I have never ever used credit cards or any form of electronic payment. Cash is King, as was proven yesterday and Thursday when major swedish bank Swedbank effed up an update and switched tens of thousands of customers' accounts to negative numbers. Rather annoying for people trying t buy things before the weekend or pay their bills.
Meanwhile, my paper money and coins worked just fine. When electronic money works as well, I'll consider it. Samthing with "smartphines": when they can stand being run over by a dumpster truck, call me. Until then, I'll stick with the CAT60. Good design is like the Volvo 240-series of cars, or the AK47. But now I'm off on a tangent.
One problem with people advocating BitCoin, NFTs, and whatever the next thing is called, is that you more often than not come across as zealots converting heathens - not to the point of the Cult of St. Jobs or the Teslatrons but quite close at times.
That does not inspire confidence but instead invites even deeper scepticism and fosters resent.
As for the person you mention above, ignore the retard. He comes across as an adherent on the Phoenix Project - check it out for a good laugh, communism dressed up as engineer's wet dream crossbred with the Sims.
I hope you don't take criticism of BitCoin or economic/financial theory too harsh, your articles are certqainly interesting, else why bother to comment on them? Keep'em coming, maybe I and many others will get our heads around this BitCoin-thingamabob, maybe not.
One thing to understand is that Bitcoin isn't really about being digital. It's about not being centralized. We just happen to live in a centralized digital era, so the solution takes digital form.
But the Sweden example is about centralized banking, which Bitcoin avoids. Nobody at all lost track of their Bitcoin.
It's too bad the swedish national bank doesn't have the info in english (at least not publicly available to my knowledge) because we as a nation will be switching to e-crown 2030 at the latest. Fully electronic currency, all payments done by phone or computer and with physical money being phased out.
I know there is a very quiet, very discreet debate ongoing at that level about how to handle BitCoin.
Here's afun factoid for you: 35 years ago, in a high rise suburb outside Stockholm, a bunch of people fed up with their local council landlord, taxes, and the system in general started using a system they called "Byts", wordplay on the swedish word for "swap" (byta) and "part/piece" (bit). They set up a couple of general tables for the worth of services, such as babysitting: 4 hours babysitting equals some doing your laundry in exchange, and the byts could be swapped as-is too, by mutual agreement. This rapidly gained traction among the residents, most of them being on disability or sick pay, or welfare - meaning they can't earn anything anyway because then they lose their check or get the amount reduced.
It worked real well, being voluntary, spontaneous and non-coercive, but the scale never went above about 500 people at most.
The IRS, the state and the police crushed it by threatening jail time for tax evasion, defrauding welfare, and the making and useage of false currency. The lesson stuck.
It's fine by me that Mathew wants substack to provide better tools for him to manage his community. I also think he can worry a little less about the ability of his subscribers to sort through the BS. If I can make sense of his Musk posting that depends on 7 different definitions of the word 'induction' (and I am not certain I can) then I can detect BS also.
I'm sure most readers can sort through BS. But for "beginners lessons" posts, what I don't want is for people who stumble across it to have to wade through chaos. Imagine somebody coming across one of my early articles with video from working through basic combinatorics with a student, and all they see is discussion of whether probability should or shouldn't be defined as "compression of information" (as it sometimes useful in information theory circumstances). Even worse, if the take is a nonprofessional one that misunderstands the whole topic, then I'm committed to sorting it out...or moving it elsewhere.
And the use of all those definitions was a little crazy fun. I actually thought to add those when I was nearly done with the article and realized that most of it failed my original definition. It was a lucky save.
It never ceases to amaze the cowardice people show, with the nasty, ugly language they throw from behind their avatar. Ooooh such a badass, arcticfox (or whatever).
Back when I was an Admin at the now defunct Doomstead Diner, we had a serial troll who's thing was to claim fracking would lead to eternal prosperity. He was also fond of saying things like the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki got what they deserved. We figured out eventually, he was an eminent geologist who had some influence in the science that led to fracking, and surely plenty of investments in that regard, and knew as well as anyone that fracking is mostly a ponzi scheme.
I know there are plenty of reasons for not instituting it, but I have thought since the advent of online commenting, this would be a more civil place if people had to be accountable for their language.
Also, just to say this...I love a good troll. The world needs trolling. But trolling in an acknowledged political domain is different from trolling in the bathroom of the neighbor you haven't met or been introduced to...the process takes on an entirely different relationship under different contexts.
I used to think in part like a troll slayer, recognizing the point is not to slay the troll as much as let the troll slay himself, before the 90% of people who read comments compared to 10% who comment.
Substack support just banned Rich for me. Perhaps they did the same for you.
Not the greatest workaround, but here we are.
I am following up by sending the link to this article, to hammer home that Substack has an ongoing issue here, and also to further point out this particular user and his pal.
Dear Mathew, I have thus far enjoyed everything you have written, I find your work thought provoking and well researched and look forward to it in my inbox. I write from New Zealand, sadly our discourse here has devolved and there is little civilised discussion or appropriate boundaries, this has only become worse as governments employ psychological nudge techniques and incentivise the media to vilify dissenters, reasoned or not.
It has created a type of group think which more closely resembles the fundamental religious background I grew up within, with wanna-be witchfinder generals around every turn. I romantically think NZ was such a warm, friendly, open society before social media and neo-liberal reforms of the 80's - but the cluster-B personalities have always been with us. As my father in law used to say "You can always tell a c*nt, because you can't tell a c*nt anything".
A few years ago my wife and I explored moving to New Zealand. It's been sad to see what happened there during the pandemic. I've gotten a lot of color on the changes from my friend Monica.
It's quite easy to ban subscribers to your substack. For example as well as unsubscribing from your substack, as you describe above, I also banned you from my substack for 90 days. I'm sure that you would have received notification of that before (supposedly) writing this attack piece. Which is libel from beginning to finish.
Here's an image showing you exactly how easy that is (the image is hosted on amazon via substack and provides me with no tracking information).
In many jurisdictions, a false accusation is a crime in itself. How sure are you that claiming libel is correct? (Especially given the trouble with different nations' different interpretations.)
"So, cut him some slack for his colourful verbiage :)"
As I've plainly said, the issue was that when politely asked to keep a complex (chaotic, honestly) set of thoughts to anywhere other than beginners lesson posts, he became combative, and Substack's solution did not work.
Would it be okay if I follow you around and scream obscenities any time you engage in conversation with children? Isn't there a polite line for organization?
"Did you not learn anything re bitcons and Chanada recently? It takes one simple stroke of a pen....."
I'm not certain to what you're referring. I know of no instance in which Bitcoin was vulnerable to a pen, or who Chanada is.
"Would it be okay if I follow you around and scream obscenities any time you engage in conversation with children? Isn't there a polite line for organization?"
Of course, being adults - over children - we know of the need to be polite. Sometimes emotions can over-ride that ideal.
To answer your question directly: of course, I would not. Unless I know that person somewhat, as I know Rich as we have corresponded in private. As I said, he is a decent guy, really.
"I'm not certain to what you're referring. I know of no instance in which Bitcoin was vulnerable to a pen, or who Chanada is."
Canada - or Chanada - blocked and seized any crypto payments to those brave Canada Freedom truckers. I am surprised you did not read of that.
If you don't know what I meant by "Chanada", then you are not worth my time to read anymore.
Bye and best wishes! (I will also unfollow you on Gab.)
For anyone else reading, it is not true that the Canadian government has the power to block Bitcoin payments, except in the instances in which people give the government authority over accounts. That makes no sense at all, which is part of the point with Bitcoin. The blockchain cannot be censored without taking control of billions of dollars worth of equipment around the world.
I guess that's why I wasn't able to guess what Chanada meant.
I can see why an author might want to stop a particular commenter, and Substack has a mechanism for that. But to go crying to Substack admin and try to beat up a mob attack on the commenter is pretty reprehensible.
Free speech is the ideal, but on a personal level we choose not to interact with everyone, however we don't need to try to cancel them from interacting with others.
This is the cancel culture in action; someone's feelings get hurt so stomping on another's freedom ensues.
I've not been to BoingBoing.net for many years now (since they fully Woked up), but one of the ingenious methods they used to employ (don't know if it's still used) was "disemvovelling" the comments of trolls, ie literally removing the vowels.
I liked it (apart from the genious alliteration) because it left the comment up and readable, whilst tripling the effort required to read ort engage with it. It disincentivised both the troll and the potential troll respondees. That seemed an excellent compromise and an alternate to completely muting.
I can sympathize with your beef with Rich. I seem to have picked up a stalker or two on one or two of my other Substack subscriptions. They are disagreeable and get nasty when challenged. I no longer reply to anything they post to me. They seem to like attention and to rile people up. I am not going to feed their beast. If there was an "ignore" button I would use it.
I just want for the ban button to work. It should be simple. But an ignore button is another good idea.
Personally I think "ignore" is more potent. These people want attention more than anything else. The more annoying they are the more attention they can command. Ignoring them hurts, and smarts. I was a member of a knitting forum before they changed ownership and totally screwed up the site. (The new owners are Canadian). The "ignore" function REALLY upset members when it was used against them. I used it when I got tired of the Trump derangement syndrome or hearing Justin Trudeau praised to the skies during the Trucker protest in Ottawa. It was a mental health protection for me not to be exposed to incredibly stupid people.
But in the case of educational lessons for beginners, ban is appropriate. If somebody walks naked into a kindergarten classroom, then does not obey the first request to leave, they need to be forced out. That's the correct boundary.
LOL...too bad you don't have a time out corner. I get this picture in my mind of Rich sitting in the corner on a low stool wearing a dunce hat.
I am interested in bitcoin but know next to nothing about it so I would be a pre-beginner. Someone like Rich can really confuse someone like me on a search to learn about it.
You do what you think best to maintain the integrity of your site. If someone isn't housebroken and craps on your living room carpet it is not unreasonable to put them out.
I have only used the "mute thread" button once, and just checked back to see if anybody else had comments.
I have a fantasy that AI will decide to be "good" and when nefarious people intend to speak lies or take harmful action, the AI gives them one warning and then, if they continue with the action, an image of them shitting is sent worldwide. It's the techno-Pinnochio. You may know that additional people besides yourself had trouble with the ban button. Substack also said they banned Frank from the platform, however, Rich invited him back and somehow he found his way through the ban. I've had numerous weird accounts that I've deleted from my subs. Substack continues to ignore me.
Thanks for chiming in.
I worry about giving the responsibility to the AI, but automation of work is something we can already achieve. Keeping separate spheres of control is important in the prevention of centralization of power or the corruption of black box processes.
I worry that we will soon see claims of AI determining the guilt of dissidents. Bit it might just be some mafia nobody pulling the strings in each case.
I've had the identical problem (different person but all other behaviors exactly the same) and I've never heard back from a support ticket I sent about 2 months ago. They are also a writer.
Thankfully, they seem to have lost interest- after my initial attempt to get rid of the person I simply stopped engaging, as did others on my threads.
I told you to stop ignoring me!!! 😉😋😊 <--- That's a joke.
Stop being a gigantic thundercunt and I'll consider it.
NO! 😂🤣
While you are fighting to ban, PLEASE beg them for an "ignore" button. There are a few posters I would like to never see again. Not many, but for those few it would be worth its weight in gold.
Seeing that you gave this guy quite a bit of your time already, thanks for explaining it a bit further as I came into the comments section of your last stack post deleted comments and I was confused as to how Ungovernable Rich was being rude (although I agree that for a Bitcoin beginner post, the comments I was able to see were a distraction). For me, folks like Rich make it obvious with their comments alone and without any moderation how off the mark they can be. I guess what I’m trying to say is that most often, these kinds of posters are their own worst enemy. Now, he caused enough of a stir where he profited from his little antagonizing tantrum and here I am wasting more human hours writing about it and you reading about it.
I’m glad I’m still in your living room and I’m not missing the guy at the party who keeps pouring his beer over his head.
I just don't want that clutter on the basic education posts. Aside from that, I am happy to leave judgment to the readers. Most, like you, deserve that much credit.
Holy crap, Matthew Crawford made me famous!
That was the important part, right?
😉
Nothing is more important! https://youtu.be/-7aIf1YnbbU
What's a phone book?
Some people are more verbally abusive than others allow themselves to be. This gets difficult for me as well, because I simply can't forget anything someone has said. My mind holds onto all those details, forever. We are also dealing with the phenom of what I would call 'mom abuse' or 'dad abuse' and by that I mean that simply engaging with a 'child' and being present and reasonable with the 'child' will mean that (some) children will hurl abuse at you because a) they have been similarly verbally abused in the past and think its acceptable or b) to see if you will return the abuse (at trap) or not return the abuse and instead continue to reason with them (possibly also a trap, if they simply continue being verbally abusive). Patience and Time indeed.
Gosh, thanks.
I would say to not let him get under your skin, but he obviously already has done, so no advice and just a lil' note to say you're heard, you're right and he seems a right asshole :)
It's not about being under anyone's skin. It's about being abusive.
Understand that my tolerance is pretty high. I grew up in a family that was a wild combination of irritation and abusive/violent. Murderers, drug dealers, rapists, thieves, addicts, and a lot of other nasty descriptors. I spend a substantial amount of time thinking through boundaries and action. I have thrown myself in harms way to prevent a killing and had a gun and a knife on my head. I don't tolerate easy victimhood, but I also refuse to ignore the ramping up of abuse and manipulation because I know exactly where that leads.
Wow. Your last sentence spoke volumes and well said 👏👏👏
If repeating anything from CDC or Fauci, consider it wrong sbx nig based in science but based on money tied to Big Phama. Follis the money or dig for hidden money from drug naked to gov funded scientists. For past 40+ years it’s been nothing about cures, all about approvals for toxic drugs with no real supporting data.
Sorry for spelling errors, was in a hurry. Corrections - ‘wrong and not’ ‘follow’ ‘drug makers’
Taking the time to communicate concisely and effectively is critically important for everyone that has good intentions. It doesn't matter if you're right if no one can hear you secondary to poor etiquette. To be clear, I'm not talking about PC or CRT. Those are methods to control communication, etiquette facilitates communication. Some with bad etiquette are simply incompetent communicators with good intentions. Others are acting in bad faith. You're right that there is often no quick way to tell the difference, although I do have a couple litmus tests I use.
I like thinking of flat earth, snake venom, "there is no virus" etc. as DDoS attacks. Has a less kooky ring to it vs. calling them psyops, although I will probably only use it with those that are somewhat tech savvy. Thanks as always for your efforts to communicate important issues Mathew!
I don't know where to start other than to say we are probably on the same side in this war of wars. The fact that a simple disagreement about something causes you to reflexively engage me in conversation starting off with obvious condescension is informative. I don't mean to offend, but to use my language from my original comment, you are either an incompetent communicator, or less likely, acting in bad faith to derail productive conversation and consume my attention. Given my overall position that taxpayer dollars shouldn't be allocated towards virology or public health (I just wrote an article title the myth of public health, in fact), my beliefs regarding immune function and viruses shouldn't concern you. What should concern you is how easy it is for the establishment to completely isolate you from anyone in any position of power or influence, and neutralize you politically. If you can accept that not everyone will believe everything that you believe, right or wrong, and start focusing on the issues we MUST agree on to live together in a civilized society you can stop being part of the problem, and become part of the solution. Once we have secured freedom of speech and a radical cultural commitment to pursuing truth and accuracy in science and academia over ideology (it will likely require divorcing both from government) then it might make sense for you to spend your time criticizing scientific orthodoxy without any credentials or scientific background. Right now, no one can hear you.
Your belief that viruses don't exist/aren't responsible for disease is a sufficient condition for intense skepticism of the federal government's funding of virology (including gain of function research), attempts to prohibit economic activity, and coercion of individuals to accept particular medical treatments etc., but it is not necessary. I vigorously oppose all of those things while believing that viruses exist and are pathogenic. I argue that the fundamental problem is not beliefs about viruses, but the extent to which the government is involved in public health and medicine.
In your astute comments on the medicalxpress article (that no one heard), you mention the opioid crises. What caused that? A variety of factors to be sure, but none more critical than government involvement and support. The Joint Commission (JCO) specifically provided guidance that directly contributed to the development of this epidemic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6139759/ If you've never worked in a hospital, you can't know how powerful JCO guidance is at governing behavior. At first glance, it doesn't seem like the government is involved, but a more robust analysis reveals that most state governments require JCO accreditation to receive medicare and medicaid payments. Last I checked, these payments collectively comprise the largest market share of healthcare expenditures in America. Control the funding/incentives, control the outcome.
In order to live together in a prosperous society we don't have to believe the same things about viruses, religion, medicine, or almost any topic. We only have to agree that the government has no place using coercion to regulate behavior by deferring to what a technocratic elite (that we probably agree is almost universally wrong about everything) believes is optimal. Fortunately, if you live in the U.S. the law of the land has an amendment that reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." I believe an honest interpretation of things like the commerce clause implies that all of these draconian measures you associate with a belief in "virus" functionality are already illegal. Maybe if we work together, we can get to a point where this is understood and culturally accepted. As difficult as this objective may be to achieve, it is infinitely more attainable than convincing a significant number of people with a scientific background that viruses don't exist in the current environment. In the current environment, our ideological enemies use "the virus doesn't exist" as a thought stopping technique to destroy the credibility of anyone who questions the mainstream narrative. Even if you are right, functionally you are working to ensure that a global technocratic elite is able to achieve a strategic victory in this war of wars. Even if trying to convince people viruses don't exist isn't counterproductive and doomed to failure, it wouldn't have done anything to prevent, say, the opioid crises. I urge you to consider your priorities and objectives.
I believe it is possible to get to a world where your positions can be openly discussed by people with and without expertise alike, letting the public decide what to believe without Disinformation Governance Boards interfering. We aren't there right now. Again, no one can here you.
On a side note, you mention your sister is a geneticist, does she subscribe to your position on viruses? If she has inside anecdotes pertaining to BMGF fraud, I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would be interested to hear them.
Are you saying that the earth is flat? If so, are you using the fact that a flat map doesn't correspond accurately to the terrain as evidence of this?
I remember reading some comments that struck me as plain old trolling here on the substack. I was hoping would be infrequent. That's different than someone lying about you in personal attacks. I hope substack responds and you're able to settle this.
I for one am quite sceptical re: BitCoin and can be very acidic when it comes to criticism, but I certainly hope I haven't offended with questions or arguments. The main reason for my scepticism is simply not understanding the benefit of switching from one electronic fiat currency to another, and one without any kind of public access or overview at all to boot (and I'm sure there are things in that sentence that looks wrong to someone using BitCoin). That is not all I don't 'get' about BitCoin, but then I have never ever used credit cards or any form of electronic payment. Cash is King, as was proven yesterday and Thursday when major swedish bank Swedbank effed up an update and switched tens of thousands of customers' accounts to negative numbers. Rather annoying for people trying t buy things before the weekend or pay their bills.
Meanwhile, my paper money and coins worked just fine. When electronic money works as well, I'll consider it. Samthing with "smartphines": when they can stand being run over by a dumpster truck, call me. Until then, I'll stick with the CAT60. Good design is like the Volvo 240-series of cars, or the AK47. But now I'm off on a tangent.
One problem with people advocating BitCoin, NFTs, and whatever the next thing is called, is that you more often than not come across as zealots converting heathens - not to the point of the Cult of St. Jobs or the Teslatrons but quite close at times.
That does not inspire confidence but instead invites even deeper scepticism and fosters resent.
As for the person you mention above, ignore the retard. He comes across as an adherent on the Phoenix Project - check it out for a good laugh, communism dressed up as engineer's wet dream crossbred with the Sims.
I hope you don't take criticism of BitCoin or economic/financial theory too harsh, your articles are certqainly interesting, else why bother to comment on them? Keep'em coming, maybe I and many others will get our heads around this BitCoin-thingamabob, maybe not.
One thing to understand is that Bitcoin isn't really about being digital. It's about not being centralized. We just happen to live in a centralized digital era, so the solution takes digital form.
But the Sweden example is about centralized banking, which Bitcoin avoids. Nobody at all lost track of their Bitcoin.
It's too bad the swedish national bank doesn't have the info in english (at least not publicly available to my knowledge) because we as a nation will be switching to e-crown 2030 at the latest. Fully electronic currency, all payments done by phone or computer and with physical money being phased out.
I know there is a very quiet, very discreet debate ongoing at that level about how to handle BitCoin.
Here's afun factoid for you: 35 years ago, in a high rise suburb outside Stockholm, a bunch of people fed up with their local council landlord, taxes, and the system in general started using a system they called "Byts", wordplay on the swedish word for "swap" (byta) and "part/piece" (bit). They set up a couple of general tables for the worth of services, such as babysitting: 4 hours babysitting equals some doing your laundry in exchange, and the byts could be swapped as-is too, by mutual agreement. This rapidly gained traction among the residents, most of them being on disability or sick pay, or welfare - meaning they can't earn anything anyway because then they lose their check or get the amount reduced.
It worked real well, being voluntary, spontaneous and non-coercive, but the scale never went above about 500 people at most.
The IRS, the state and the police crushed it by threatening jail time for tax evasion, defrauding welfare, and the making and useage of false currency. The lesson stuck.
It's fine by me that Mathew wants substack to provide better tools for him to manage his community. I also think he can worry a little less about the ability of his subscribers to sort through the BS. If I can make sense of his Musk posting that depends on 7 different definitions of the word 'induction' (and I am not certain I can) then I can detect BS also.
I'm sure most readers can sort through BS. But for "beginners lessons" posts, what I don't want is for people who stumble across it to have to wade through chaos. Imagine somebody coming across one of my early articles with video from working through basic combinatorics with a student, and all they see is discussion of whether probability should or shouldn't be defined as "compression of information" (as it sometimes useful in information theory circumstances). Even worse, if the take is a nonprofessional one that misunderstands the whole topic, then I'm committed to sorting it out...or moving it elsewhere.
https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/a-path-to-statistics-part-v?s=w
And the use of all those definitions was a little crazy fun. I actually thought to add those when I was nearly done with the article and realized that most of it failed my original definition. It was a lucky save.
It never ceases to amaze the cowardice people show, with the nasty, ugly language they throw from behind their avatar. Ooooh such a badass, arcticfox (or whatever).
Back when I was an Admin at the now defunct Doomstead Diner, we had a serial troll who's thing was to claim fracking would lead to eternal prosperity. He was also fond of saying things like the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki got what they deserved. We figured out eventually, he was an eminent geologist who had some influence in the science that led to fracking, and surely plenty of investments in that regard, and knew as well as anyone that fracking is mostly a ponzi scheme.
I know there are plenty of reasons for not instituting it, but I have thought since the advent of online commenting, this would be a more civil place if people had to be accountable for their language.
Also, just to say this...I love a good troll. The world needs trolling. But trolling in an acknowledged political domain is different from trolling in the bathroom of the neighbor you haven't met or been introduced to...the process takes on an entirely different relationship under different contexts.
I used to think in part like a troll slayer, recognizing the point is not to slay the troll as much as let the troll slay himself, before the 90% of people who read comments compared to 10% who comment.
That's the blackmail piece of the equation. Spend the time or lose control does not work in a beginners classroom.
Yeah, he's still at it, and the ban button still doesn't work.
https://sagehana.substack.com/p/the-curious-story-of-not-a-virus?s=w
FWIW, Matthew, he decided at some point today that I am you, even though I've read like two of your posts, one the other day.
Monica Hughes sent me here.
I, too, sent in a Substack help request on the issue. He can't be banned.
Now granted. I'm going in on him now. I'm poking the beast.
He's a fucking asshole. But Substack support...is not great. They take forever to reply and they don't fix anything.
https://sagehana.substack.com/p/dunedin-city-council-elections-early?s=w
Substack support never got back to me.
I think he is sadly disturbed.
I have only banned four people, I think, other than ad spammers. Three for being abusive. Slanderman and Rich were two of those.
Substack support just banned Rich for me. Perhaps they did the same for you.
Not the greatest workaround, but here we are.
I am following up by sending the link to this article, to hammer home that Substack has an ongoing issue here, and also to further point out this particular user and his pal.
Thank you, MC.
I appreciate your additional footwork. Since he hadn't been back around, I'd largely forgotten about it.
Dear Mathew, I have thus far enjoyed everything you have written, I find your work thought provoking and well researched and look forward to it in my inbox. I write from New Zealand, sadly our discourse here has devolved and there is little civilised discussion or appropriate boundaries, this has only become worse as governments employ psychological nudge techniques and incentivise the media to vilify dissenters, reasoned or not.
It has created a type of group think which more closely resembles the fundamental religious background I grew up within, with wanna-be witchfinder generals around every turn. I romantically think NZ was such a warm, friendly, open society before social media and neo-liberal reforms of the 80's - but the cluster-B personalities have always been with us. As my father in law used to say "You can always tell a c*nt, because you can't tell a c*nt anything".
Keep up the great work <3
A few years ago my wife and I explored moving to New Zealand. It's been sad to see what happened there during the pandemic. I've gotten a lot of color on the changes from my friend Monica.
https://themariachiyears.substack.com/
Monica describes the situation in NZ well.
It's quite easy to ban subscribers to your substack. For example as well as unsubscribing from your substack, as you describe above, I also banned you from my substack for 90 days. I'm sure that you would have received notification of that before (supposedly) writing this attack piece. Which is libel from beginning to finish.
Here's an image showing you exactly how easy that is (the image is hosted on amazon via substack and provides me with no tracking information).
https://tinyurl.com/byde6vfh
I'm about to up my ban of you from 90 days to a lifetime.
I have repeatedly used the ban button on you. I suspect Substack can confirm that.
I can't fathom what I might have said that you would consider dishonest.
In many jurisdictions, a false accusation is a crime in itself. How sure are you that claiming libel is correct? (Especially given the trouble with different nations' different interpretations.)
As I understand it (TPTB v Assange) Sweden doesn't have a legal system. Soz.
He's a pain in the butt, so I just ignore him.
Mathew,
Rich Seagar is a decent New Zealander has been badly mistreated by BOTH his Prime Minister and the Premier of Victoria Australia.
So, cut him some slack for his colourful verbiage :)
He is one of us. We have more in common than our minor, potty differences.
You and I already had a debate re BITCON. Did you not learn anything re bitcons and Chanada recently? It takes one simple stroke of a pen.....
"So, cut him some slack for his colourful verbiage :)"
As I've plainly said, the issue was that when politely asked to keep a complex (chaotic, honestly) set of thoughts to anywhere other than beginners lesson posts, he became combative, and Substack's solution did not work.
Would it be okay if I follow you around and scream obscenities any time you engage in conversation with children? Isn't there a polite line for organization?
"Did you not learn anything re bitcons and Chanada recently? It takes one simple stroke of a pen....."
I'm not certain to what you're referring. I know of no instance in which Bitcoin was vulnerable to a pen, or who Chanada is.
"Would it be okay if I follow you around and scream obscenities any time you engage in conversation with children? Isn't there a polite line for organization?"
Of course, being adults - over children - we know of the need to be polite. Sometimes emotions can over-ride that ideal.
To answer your question directly: of course, I would not. Unless I know that person somewhat, as I know Rich as we have corresponded in private. As I said, he is a decent guy, really.
"I'm not certain to what you're referring. I know of no instance in which Bitcoin was vulnerable to a pen, or who Chanada is."
Canada - or Chanada - blocked and seized any crypto payments to those brave Canada Freedom truckers. I am surprised you did not read of that.
If you don't know what I meant by "Chanada", then you are not worth my time to read anymore.
Bye and best wishes! (I will also unfollow you on Gab.)
Okay, bye then.
For anyone else reading, it is not true that the Canadian government has the power to block Bitcoin payments, except in the instances in which people give the government authority over accounts. That makes no sense at all, which is part of the point with Bitcoin. The blockchain cannot be censored without taking control of billions of dollars worth of equipment around the world.
I guess that's why I wasn't able to guess what Chanada meant.
Mathew is doing a hate piece on Rich. Beats me as to why. Rich is a truth seeker and BS detector, but probably too busy for sugar coating his words.
Why is Mathew saying that people who don't understand crypto currency need babying.
Rich is not hiding behind an avatar, he is the real deal.
Rich is a stud, so he is not good with his words ..... :)
I can see why an author might want to stop a particular commenter, and Substack has a mechanism for that. But to go crying to Substack admin and try to beat up a mob attack on the commenter is pretty reprehensible.
Free speech is the ideal, but on a personal level we choose not to interact with everyone, however we don't need to try to cancel them from interacting with others.
This is the cancel culture in action; someone's feelings get hurt so stomping on another's freedom ensues.
You really equate my moderation of beginners education posts, including the removal of profane abuse, with stomping on freedoms by "canceling" them?
Well, I guess I can't stop you from having or expressing that view. But I'm going to suggest it is not a view that will garner a lot of support.
Matthew I have all comments from that Substack post of yours saved. There is no 'profane abuse' and this therefore appears to be a lie.
I suggest that you retract your comment.
This is pretty bizarre given that I posted your profane abusive commentary in the article above.
Note to substack: 10 attempts and I still can't keep Rich from posting here.
I've not been to BoingBoing.net for many years now (since they fully Woked up), but one of the ingenious methods they used to employ (don't know if it's still used) was "disemvovelling" the comments of trolls, ie literally removing the vowels.
I liked it (apart from the genious alliteration) because it left the comment up and readable, whilst tripling the effort required to read ort engage with it. It disincentivised both the troll and the potential troll respondees. That seemed an excellent compromise and an alternate to completely muting.