Ok, I see the comment now. Yes, you seem to provide a source, but you claim that the source shows that humans are affected by prolonged exposure. Obviously that’s true, but comes with the obvious caveat that our exposure is nowhere near dangerous levels. I’m no expert, but I have some experiencing in parsing papers and trying to determine legitimacy so I’ll take a stab at what it’s saying.

In this review, it mentions that all the animals studied, problems arose when calculating the amount of fluoride measured against the body weight of the animal. Developmental toxicity occurs at ~13.2 mg/kg of body weight. A litre of water is advised to have .7 mg of flouride in the US. While some states have more or less, they’re all around there. Now, you tell how many litres of water you’d have to drink to actually reach that level of concentration in your body. I’ll give you a hint, it’s at least several times your body weight.

This review also mentions that most flouride is excreted through urine or feces, and 99% of what is preserved is found in the teeth. I didn’t read the studies on what the percentages that are excreted are, but since this review concludes that flouridated water is a non-issue, I’m gonna assume that it’s substantial enough to not be an issue when it comes to flouride buildup.

Here’s the thing though, this study is a review of other studies, why that’s relevant is because of some of the epidemiological data that’s brought up could still show that flouride is bad. However, All studies comparing populations that this review looks at have significant flaws, flaws that the review goes into. The review essentially concludes that all the epidemiological data from other studies are garbage. And rightly so, since a study trying to determine IQ between very different populations is next to impossible to make accurate.

Anyway, the short of it is that this review does not help your case. I’d say if anything, it makes it pretty clear that flouride is not an issue, and that if you’re looking for data to say otherwise, this study recommends much more substantial epidemiological research to be carried out, unlike the epidemiological data they reference in the review.

To get more on topic, I don’t believe most people would have looked more in depth at the article so perhaps they moved the goalposts when they were talking to you. That’s fair to criticize them, but then again, what you’re saying is also not entirely honest. Perhaps you didn’t mean to be dishonest, but still, that just falls under the category of “speak within your limitations”. Acknowledge that you don’t understand or can’t interpret the data. Maybe just ask for help clarifying points. Because what you had said was much too broad for the discussion you were having, and wasn’t remotely helpful, and was, for a lack of a better term, misinformation.

Honestly, the best tactic for catching yourself doing this is to assess others’ goals before attempting to comment on them. For example, don’t start with assuming that governments across the world are proactively poisoning their population. Assume the obvious and go from there. Like considering that governments want healthy populations that are good workforces and produce high quality goods in order for them to compete at the world stage for power, clout, and money. This means producing educated adults, not mindless labour drones. Thus, if there existed credible studies (because not all studies are credible, as this review and many others point out) to increase intellectual output and reduce costs of infrastructure by removing flouride from water (as you wouldn’t bother putting flouride in the water), you can bet that the government would be recommending or even forcing the elemination of flouridated water. There’s just nothing substantial to gain otherwise. Clean teeth or only so much of a positive, and governments, again, do not want a mindless population. We’re in the information age, manual labour is worth a fraction of the GDP output as high quality, educated work is.

There are a couple things that seem honest, but most of this is just rage baiting or spreading misinformation (fluoride, really? If you’re gonna talk about it being discussed you gotta bring scientific sources to the table). Like, I get it, there’re no decent places to actually discuss politics in this day in age because every space is an echo chamber, but you don’t have to actively goad people into engaging with you. Just try to act like an adult, do your research, and talk within the bounds of your knowledge. Keep in mind that the spaces you’re talking in are often echo chambers that come with some territorial behaviour, unfortunately.

All-in-all, if you want people to be nicer to you, you gotta be nicer to them. Also bring sources if you believe the audience won’t believe you.

Alright, have fun, just remember; don’t drink the Kool-aid!

If you squint, the Star Citizen logo kinda looks like the symbol for The People’s Temple

I’m curious as to which side I was taking before I submitted this discussion. Because I think it’s quite clear that I simply thought this was just another battle in the middle east sparked by land and racial tensions, and despite one side being much better equipped for extermination than the other, it wasn’t particularly notable. My language doesn’t feel pro Hamas, maybe It could be seen as pro Israeli because of that though. But I feel like that’s exactly what everyone in this thread has been pointing out, that there aren’t just two sides, and people aren’t picking between Israel and Hamas (or even Palestine for that matter).

Heck I’m not even arguing with anyone here except you, so what do you think I could possibly be trying to achieve? Let me remind you the community we’re currently discussing this in is !outoftheloop@lemmy.world .

Ah, I see. Given those numbers it’s pretty clear that Isreal is pretty much going scorched earth when it comes to Gaza. Good to know, thank you. I had just assumed the damages to infrastructure weren’t as extensive as they were.

Edit: I also hadn’t known about the active blocking of humanitarian aid, so that alongside some of those numbers really speaks volumes.

Edit 2: also no need to apologize, I mean I’m the one asking all the questions and you’re graciously taking your time to answer them. The fact that you’re splitting them makes sense to me. You’ve overall been very helpful and I can imagine that anyone that stumbles across this entire thread will likely also leave equally as informed as I have after reading most of it.

Alright, some of the side taking makes sense to me now.

Ok, from what I can tell, most of what people care about regarding the current conflict doesn’t really involve around belligerents. So I think we can safely put that on the back burner. At least for the current wave of side taking. My one question after reading most of the comments is this, how many of Israel’s violent actions against civilians directly target civilians vs targeting Hamas and have civilians stuck in the crossfire? Because I’ve heard of Hamas using civilian areas as staging grounds as an attempt to ward off enemy fire. Is Israel going and killing civilians outside of these instances?

Slightly unrelated question, are many people taking sides in the general occupation of Palistinian land, or is this newest wave side taking mostly focused on the civilians in Gaza vs Israeli force.

I was kind of under the impression that Hamas was a defacto ruling party in Gaza. Given their support (according to some in this thread) that Isreal has given to them previously to maintain Gaza, and their previous political standing in West Bank, as well as all the coverage surrounding the conflict. Perhaps I shouldn’t of over generalized by referring to Palestine. Because Gaza seems to be the only Palestinian state actually involved in this war. But then again, I’m also attempting to use the same language to describe the scenario as I see it as many of the media sources and supporters of either side do.

Would you say Hamas isn’t attempting to eradicate Israelis when convenient? Obviously they’re not as effective as Israel’s attempt to eradicate Gazans, but to me it seems like they want Israelis dead even more so than the Israelis want Gazans dead just due to the actions they have taken.

There’ plenty of reasons, most of which have to do with the human psyche and error. I imagine it’s largely due to convenience. And then one may rationalize that initial thought by assuming that most of their potential audience uses Discord anyway, so they won’t consider other options due to just how damn easy to setup and monitor their community via a Discord-like app is. They may not consider searchability, or information access at all. They may give very little weight to the fact that their entire potential community is subject to Discord’s whims. They simply may not be aware of how beneficial other options are.

Humans do not act based on reason. They act on a mixture of emotion and intuition, and only reinforce their initial position with reason, of one form on another. There is no point of attempting to apply logic to why the people (generically) do anything because of that. On the other hand, attempting to look at this scenario from why something should be done a certain way, as opposed to why it is done a certain way, has merit, as it allows us to influence a decision before it is made in the instant it is conceived.

I don’t think participation is the problem. If you think about it, you wouldn’t want just anyone to post something on a platform without first engaging in said platform. That can only have a neutral or negative effect. People asking stupid questions or people cursing out users. The act of signup ensures that the would-be poster has to signup first and rationalize their post during that process.

Therefor, the problem must be something else, it is the information gateoff (amongst other things) that makes Discord and similar apps unfavorable for community management and information distribution.