I'M SORRY ELIZABETH THAT WE COULDN'T CONNECT AND YOU FELT THE NEED TO BLOCK ME

I'm an animal. You're an 'animal communicator'. Why couldn't we get our discussion on?

Even if I don't believe in it, I was interested in your World-View, and where you draw the line between animals with souls and animals without souls. There is no consensus on this between those that believe in souls. When did animals evolve souls? Fascinating line of query in my opinion...

But the moment I said I was a scientific materialist, this evidently triggered you, because you started talking about all the terrible animal cruelty done in the name of science. I didn't agree with this combative tone and wondered why nice people like you go there and suddenly turn a discussion into a debate about the evils of science.

So what if I don't believe in souls? I could be wrong. It is reasonable to ask reasonable questions, no?

This is what all scientists look like. They will destroy the Universe.

You boasted about also being a Reiki Master, so perhaps you can work on healing your brain delusions that the scientific method is flawed and evil. And also why you felt the need to block me when I was not abusing you or being rude; I'm pretty sure I was being my version of nice. I was merely asking questions about your beliefs. I assumed that you were very knowledgeable in them and wouldn't have a problem answering my reasonable questions.

I'd show you the transcript of our discussions but can't since I was blocked with no warning. These types of conversations go the following ways in my experience:

A - Blocked
B - Abuse from the other party that hopefully I don't join in on...
C - Initial difficulties or misunderstandings are rectified and we move on with some great discussions and it's fine for us to agree to disagree
D - Admission from both parties that none of us have all the answers then some great discussions

There are many skeptics like me that end up refusing to have discussions about unfalsifiable claims. But where's the fun in that? We are all humans and are all wrong about many things. One of the guidelines in the emergence manifesto is: we are all deeply flawed & deluded. It's just an inevitable conclusion by applying critical thinking to our brains. If you don't learn critical thinking, then there's a higher chance you'll fall for scams. No one wants to fall for scams, right?

In order to improve, I demand that others challenge all my crazy ideas! Leave no insanity healing crystal stone unturned! No individual has all the answers and we have a problem if we can't have civil discussions with others that have very different world-views. I do accept that many don't pick up on my absurdist tone. Those with empathy and a good theory of mind don't usually have trouble even over the Internets.

I might be mis-remembering but I think my last words to Elizabeth were: Peace love harmony humility kindness. If anyone reading this ends up blocking or un-friending me or casting the first stone, then I'm sorry we couldn't make a connection, but try and remember these 5 words and have a read of The Emergence manifesto.

In summary, how are my Emergence cyber-love bomb points going? Do I get negative 100 every time someone blocks me? It could take a while to reach my total of 1 billion cyber-love bombs...

A HERD OF UDDER COWARDS!

http://www.bandt.com.au/media/a2-milk-to-sue-the-abc-over-the-checkout

Hey A2 milk, threatening to sue Our Aunty (Australia's public broadcaster) really shows you to be the scamming milk maids you are so close to being!

(and why don't you use some of your milk money to fix your crappy website)

Leave ABC alone! If your science is tight, then why would you care about The Checkout giving their reasonable opinion that your milk is over-priced and no healthier for you than regular milk?

But holy cow, your science is very mixed BS (or CS really). Anyone with any training in how to pull the leather over people's eyes can see your ads and marketing for what they are. Trumped up claims preying on parent's concerns about their kids digestion.
So the milk recipe is: 

1) Start with preliminary science nowhere near consensus.
2) Release a product to try and be ahead of the curve while you wait for the science to be tightened up. (except it may not be) 
3) If you've successfully hacked our flawed brains, our confirmation bias and tendency to confuse correlation with causation will make some believe that your product works and anecdotal evidence will convince you even more fervently that it totally 100% works with your loyal cult-like followers who believe in your product. 
4) And suddenly you have a business to protect from the 'evil people' and you can't back down for fear of losing the mortgage on the milking sheds.

Do you think you're the first 'likely to be BS' business model to do all this? There is a similar pattern with Chiropractic associations who sue skeptics with no money just to shut them up.

Photo: A2 CEO Geoffrey Babidge

Are you going to threaten to sue everyone who doesn't agree with your business model based on unethical but not illegal trickery? Can I expect a letter from your ambulance chasers as well? (I know I'm a small target but I can dream... Maybe I need to give all my assets to my wife or something in case some coward shamsters do decide at some point in the future that I'm worthy enough to be threatened)

If people want to buy your milk and you make no outrageous health claims, knock yourself out. But don't sue our public broadcaster. I don't really understand what you could possibly gain unless you all have extremism spectrum disorder and feel you must protect your ideology and business model at all costs.

You won't shut up the ABC. I'm going to use an argument from popularity, but far more people care about keeping the ABC than your milk infused with special snakecow oil.

Go and milk yourselves instead of taking us all for a cow ride around the pasture then milking us for money....

Photo: A2 Chairman David Hearn

TELEPATHETIC HOMEOPATHETIC PREPARATIONS FOR A COLONOSCOPY WITH BONUS COFFEE ENEMA

WARNING: If you have a sensitive disposition towards differences of opinion, straw men caricatures, mild ridicule and Star Wars references, then please take some of your personalised homeopathic preparations before reading on.

Let’s look at the attitudes one may encounter towards the modality of homeopathy or any other treatments promoted as alternative or complementary. Mentioning the H-bomb word 'homeopathy' has been an emotional trigger and was the beginning of the end for 2 of my blocked Facebook-tionships. (Can anyone think of a better portmanteau for Facebook relationships? I'll give you credit)

Some possible labels to apply to people about homeopathy: (labels are useful constructs for groups in my opinion but obviously shouldn't be used to put everyone in a neat little box. We are all much more complicated than that.)

1. Denier: Homeopathy is complete and utter BS. There is nothing to see here. Move along. Move along. It should immediately go the way of trepanation, the White Australia Policy and Gary Coleman. Anyone who believes is either ignorant or stupid or deluded or all of the above like a Gungan from the planet Naboo. The worst homeopathic extremists are about as likable as Bill Cosby doing an impression of Jar Jar Binks.

2. Scientific skeptic: Plausibility strongly suggests that homeopathy is unlikely to have an effect above placebo. More studies than you can poke a hirsute Naturopath at agree that it has no beneficial effect. It may still have a very tiny effect above placebo, but a tiny effect is very different to the claims made by your typical Dr Quinn water-medicine woman. It is basically unethical to give out placebo medicine no matter what kind of ‘healer’ you are. It is pretty much inconceivable that further study is going to yield positive results so no further money should be wasted. Homeopaths, like WWE wrestlers, should just admit that they engage in entertainment and recommend that anyone actually sick should go to a doctor; then keep doing it if people will still pay for it. We still read horoscopes with similar disclaimers at the bottom, so perhaps their business model would not be pile driven into the mat like Stone Cold Steve Austin. (we all agree that astrology is just a bit of fun, right?)

I prefer my wrestling to be in jelly or custard

3. Fluffy moderate: Homeopathy is probably BS but just leave them alone unless they are threatening you with a gun loaded with homeopathic bullets. You’ll likely get nowhere challenging believers so don’t bother. Devote your energy to being positive in the hope that the homeopaths that eschew medicine will slowly come round to accepting the benefits of science-based medicine when they really need it. It’s also often a fluffer moderate’s responsibility to pull deniers and believers apart as they usually get along about as well as James Packer and David Gyngell. (I thought that the elites were supposed to all collude. I know, it must have been play fighting between Packer and Gyngell to convince us that they are actually in competition. Their puppet masters even told them to look really comical. Well played.)

2 of Australia's richest men

4. Extremist moderate: The Universe consciousness collective is full of wonder and mystery and the mystic energy radiates from the Heavens down into our chakras. If homeopathy works for some people why take away their healing from them just because you don’t believe in it? Water is the most mysterious molecule of them all, so why claim that it couldn't have memory? Science is arrogant and claims to know everything about everything but it knows next to nothing. Reality is subjective and what works for others may not work for you. Being negative all the time makes baby Gaia cry and chuck tantrums; then we end up with more earthquakes and hurricanes. One should reflect back positive vibrational energy at all times and they will be rewarded due to the karmic principle that binds all our souls as a single life-force.

5. ‘Benign’ believer: Homeopathy helps me with my ‘symptoms of life’. Big pharma shouldn't get all my money. There is something to placebo medicine that the establishment haven't worked out. But when I actually get ‘proper’ sick, I’ll go and see a doctor. Others are entitled to their own views and they don’t annoy me unless they are being nasty to me. Live and let die, I mean live.

6. Dangerous true believer: Conventional medicine is BS. Big Pharma and Big Farm and Big Food and all the 1% elites are making us chronically ill with toxic food then dispensing treatments just to maximise their profits. Homeopathy proudly sits outside this hegemony and there is a mountain of evidence that it works. Homeopathy can even immunize against measles. People that diss homeopathy are blind and asleep and sheep. They are being critical to try and put the competition out of business. I have heard about homeopathy scientists being gagged by the elites from releasing their positive results. The extremist Western medicine believers haven’t seen what we've seen: real people getting real help from homeopathy. If more people embraced homeopathy, the world would be healthier and happier.

No prizes for guessing which camp I have pitched my deluxe 4-bedroom air-conditioned tent in.

I think that 2: scientific skepticism should be compatible with everything reality-based that works. It’s often also beneficial to throw in a little 3: fluffy moderation as the spoon full of sugar to make the medicine go down.

From my very personal experience, scientific skeptics are not always the easiest people to get along with; partly due to their internal conflict between how rational they would like their brains to be and how irrational their brains actually are.

They will also often appear just as a-hole, absolutist-thinking deniers unless you have a lot of time on your hands to hear their ‘rants’; for it usually takes something like 10 times as many words to fully explain a concept with all the required nuances for the detailed skeptical point of view. Most people want the short version and can feel spammed if a kind skeptic tries to explain everything that is required in order to form their opinion. And if that kind skeptic also sprinkles in Skynet and "Oh Sam" jokes; listen to them and consider what it would take to change your mind...