wisedupearly wrote:

Thommo wrote:
Most people who ride horses do not die from riding horses. This is not the same as saying you cannot find anyone who died from riding a horse.

Not a smart argument. Riding a horse is not thought of as stupid.
Road accidents killed some 33,000 in America last year. Driving a car is not thought of as stupid.
Driving a car with a blood alcohol level of 0.24 is stupid.
Buying and taking illegal drugs from strangers is stupid. People know already that there is some risk of sudden death.
People like engaging in risky behavior. Excessive drinking, poor eating habits, lack of exercise are also known to be risky behaviors.
Such people do not value themselves.

More people drive automobiles than ride horses, which helps explain why equestrianism is not touted as deadly. At least, these days. Automobiles travel at much higher average speeds than horses do. In the old days, people used to die regularly from the disease of horse theft. Have some respect for the practice of statistics, because theft is stupid. There are stupid things that people do which you apparently have no knowledge of, allowing you to choose random fallacious arguments instead without apparent shame. By all means, continue to reiterate shamelessly your previously-debunked assertions. It's one of the stupid things that some people do. The fact that it doesn't lead directly to harm is one of the interesting observations one can make about dangerous (and stupid) stuff people do as they try to hurt other people while claiming that they're trying to fix things.

wisedupearly wrote:

Thommo wrote:
Most people who ride horses do not die from riding horses. This is not the same as saying you cannot find anyone who died from riding a horse.

Not a smart argument. Riding a horse is not thought of as stupid.
Road accidents killed some 33,000 in America last year. Driving a car is not thought of as stupid.
Driving a car with a blood alcohol level of 0.24 is stupid.
Buying and taking illegal drugs from strangers is stupid. People know already that there is some risk of sudden death.
People like engaging in risky behavior. Excessive drinking, poor eating habits, lack of exercise are also known to be risky behaviors.
Such people do not value themselves.

Look, we can all say things. You have shown that you can also say things. This is all that you have managed to establish. The rest is circular, shallow pap.

The is a massive difference between dying in a car accident and OD'ing.
With driving you have some chance of your skill and attention making a difference between success and failure. Does not always work out that way. Sometimes the drunk or crazy driver kills you. But you got in the car with the expectation that your skill could make a difference. Same thing with horse riding.
Me? Never taken flying lessons so for me to attempt to fly a helicopter solo would be terminally stupid. I can have no expectation of competency. It would be suicide.
Buying and taking illegal drugs is beyond the average guy's skill to know what is good and what is fatal. Terminally stupid.

wisedupearly wrote:
Buying and taking illegal drugs is beyond the average guy's skill to know what is good and what is fatal. Terminally stupid.

I don't even think you know how illegal drugs work. Ever tried some? All you'd know from that experience is how illegal drugs work on you. The average guy does not exist, particularly with respect to unspecified illegal drugs, so you can't do experiments on him.

Gosh, I wish I had a knowledge of exactly how everything in the world works just by having some cosmic experience of exactly how everything in the world works. Based on your output, you are not that guy.

wisedupearly wrote:Sometimes the drunk or crazy driver kills you.

And sometimes a bowling ball gets tossed from a highway overcrossing, goes through your windscreen, and kills you instantly. Knowing which overcrossings to avoid is beyond the average guy's capabilities. Oops, wait. That bowling ball was probably tossed by a drug addict. We'd better keep bowling balls out of the hands of drug addicts.

wisedupearly wrote:The is a massive difference between dying in a car accident and OD'ing.

Not for the purposes of your argument, there isn't. Your argument is that people who take illegal drugs don't value themselves because it might harm them. A person driving a car might also experience harm, but they do it anyway. Both are doing something that might harm them because they value something more than their own safety, so therefore they don't value themselves.

Yes, I felt stupid writing that, but it is your argument after all.

With driving you have some chance of your skill and attention making a difference between success and failure. Does not always work out that way. Sometimes the drunk or crazy driver kills you. But you got in the car with the expectation that your skill could make a difference. Same thing with horse riding.

People don't typically take drugs with the expectation of harming themselves. You have some chance of your skill and attention making a difference between success and failure. Does not always work out that way. But you take drugs with the expectation that you skill could make a difference.

Me? Never taken flying lessons so for me to attempt to fly a helicopter solo would be terminally stupid. I can have no expectation of competency. It would be suicide.
Buying and taking illegal drugs is beyond the average guy's skill to know what is good and what is fatal. Terminally stupid.

Not true at all. A person typically taking the sorts of drugs you're talking about know far more about them than the average person. Heck, a person wouldn't even know how to take some of them unless they received instruction. If you'd talked to anyone who took some of the drugs you're talking about, you'd know this. People who are into drugs are, not surprisingly, into knowing about drugs. This, of course, completely ignores illegal drugs that don't have fatal side effects, but since you've already made it pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about, I won't add insult to injury.

wisedupearly wrote:

Thommo wrote:
Most people who ride horses do not die from riding horses. This is not the same as saying you cannot find anyone who died from riding a horse.

Not a smart argument. Riding a horse is not thought of as stupid.

What on Earth are you talking about? That wasn't remotely the meaning of what you're replying to, which said nothing about something being considered stupid or otherwise (not that what you find stupid or non-stupid is of the least relevance anyway, and you're clearly projecting your opinions as though they were facts here by this weasel of the passive voice).

You committed a really egregious commission of the fallacy of cherry picking - you were defending your claim that "Drug abuse is likely to kill the user.", this is a simple, empirical claim that is flat out false. You did this by pointing to two people who had died of drug abuse (on an occasion on which more of the drug abusers survived than died, for goodness sake) and ignoring the literally millions and millions of cases where the abuser does not die.

Since this is a very, very low grade kind of error and so far from rationality I explained this in a couple of ways, both directly, by explaining what you had done and linking to an explanation of the informal fallacy and then by example, showing another neutral situation in which the deaths of a small subset of a group of people does not justify claims about the whole.

It honestly beggars belief that you can really have missed that point, and to then criticise the point you've missed as "not smart"?

It's very simple, if you want to defend your claim that drug abuse is likely to kill the user, go ahead, but this kind of nonsensical smokescreening and throwing insult in place of argument isn't going to fool anyone, and it's not going to make you look rational.

-----

Incidentally, anyone who wants to take the drugs to horse riding comparison a bit more seriously may be interested in this:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 12255.html

I'm not making a case one way or the other about which drugs should be legal or illegal, there are arguments on both sides. But nonetheless accurate statistics and getting basic facts right is commendable. One can certainly say that the benefits of different activities like recreational drug use and horse riding differ, but it does appear to be true that the risks of some drugs are very comparable - in the case of a number of substances horse riding is substantially more dangerous or comparably dangerous. It is also almost exclusively a recreational activity in the modern era.

SafeAsMilk wrote:
This, of course, completely ignores illegal drugs that don't have fatal side effects, but since you've already made it pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about, I won't add insult to injury.

And how pray tell does the average teenager know which of the recent illegal drugs will kill them?

wisedupearly wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:
This, of course, completely ignores illegal drugs that don't have fatal side effects, but since you've already made it pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about, I won't add insult to injury.

And how pray tell does the average teenager know which of the recent illegal drugs will kill them?

By talking to other average teenagers, possibly ones from whom they are getting drugs?

wisedupearly wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:
This, of course, completely ignores illegal drugs that don't have fatal side effects, but since you've already made it pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about, I won't add insult to injury.

And how pray tell does the average teenager know which of the recent illegal drugs will kill them?

Trial and error.