[Mumitroll]

Originally Posted by BetoJR

Actually, I have. I'm a post-doc undergraduate

er, its either post-doc or undergraduate.. not both at once. PhD is a graduate degree.

with a thesis on the way to be published sometime next year (related to extrapolation algorithms used to determine best policies toward developing areas in my country, in diversely afflicted areas like health care, housing, nourishment, etc.). Does that make me a better person?

dont know. give a link to your thesis, i can read and say what i think.

Right. And, by nerves, you actually include the doctor's determination to keep going even after a good portion of patients dies at his/her hands, huh?

yes. basically, by "nerves" for a surgeon i mean disregard for human life.

Are you sure you're not guilty of the same mistakes of spouting absolutes?

yes. feel free to try and find absolutes in my statements.

Oh, this has turned into a debate club, all of a sudden? Okay...

well, it depends on your level of arguing. if you can produce logical, clean, sound arguments, then there probably isnt much I can do about them. on the other hand, if you are inaccurate and sloppy, its easy to attack from all kinds of perspectives.

Honestly, does a person's problem only turn important enough to warrant concern when it affects a large amount of people?

yes. with a few preconditions. 1) the "problem" is not illegal. 2) the "problem" does not affect the person's well-being and does not make them socially dependent (i.e. freeloading off parents until 30+ years old). 3) the "problem" does not physically hurt anyone (the person him/herself, or anyone close to him/her). 4) the "problem" is not known to commonly escalate into something that results in 1) 2) or 3).

given that, i'm liberal enough to say that the "problem" actually isnt one, but rather a matter of personal freedom of choice.

and, to repeat it again: e.g. homosexuality would already fail at 1) in various countries. being obsessively addicted to e.g. MMORPG games or model railways is a case for 2). various nasty things fall under 3). and lots of things potentially can be 4).

I'm not even gonna dignify your last point, as it turns this discussion pretty close to infantile name-calling. I'm not here for that shit. So I'll pretend you didn't write that, okay?

i neither called you names nor used any cursewords. it is your personal problem if you take a simple factual statement ("for couples that only have sex once a month it is not an essential element of their relationship") as an offense.

As for the other studies that prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'd love to see 'em. As I recall, they're always taken at close-cropped intervals of time. So, not much interest, there. Also, funny you should start relying on other's studies or opinions, when you made quite a point of my doing so, earlier...

please be accurate. a study is a somewhat valid argumentation tool if it is done by a serious institution and is independently confirmed. the above Durex/Kitamura study is for example basically confirmed by other studies such as

http://api-net.jfap.or.jp/siryou/ken...f/C071_S18.pdf
http://www.wordpress.tokyotimes.org/?p=914

a personal opinion on the other hand is typically not a very valuable argument, unless you are an expert in the question at hand, with years of experience/professional education.

Okay, and that's something most doctors say, right? Funny how suddenly it's okay to trust studies and majorities, isn't it?

its something i can confirm from my own - and hearsay - experience

as opposed to the what "most economists" say point in the economy thread or what "most psychologists" say point earlier in this thread...

And whatever advances were brought by such recluses would have been gotten anyway, by some other mean, even if at a later time.

lol, with that logic you can dismiss all science and all people devoted to science at once. it "would have been gotten anyway". at a later time. like 5000 years later. doesnt matter much though, does it? i mean the Sun is still going to be there for another 4-5 billion years... oh wait it was those science people who figured that out

Humanity is resilient and more often than not, different people arrive at the same conclusion (or a close proximity of it), even when separated by great distances - be they physical or not. But this really isn't the place for it.

if those people are actually good enough to get there. look at all major achievements in theoretical science in history. most of them were done by people who barely cared at all about their social life. for obvious reasons: e.g. if you spend your life on women, you are not going to do anything significant in science.

That's your position. Again, you take a stand contrary to what most clinics would.

what is a "clinic" stance? the stance of the chief of staff? that of its sponsors? dont make me laugh.. the only stance that is worthwhile is the consensus of people doing serious research in this field. i am yet to see any paper proving that homosexuality is not a physiological/medical condition. if there were one it would surely be a major bomb. there wont be one though. the reasoning for this is actually fairly simple: if you state that homosexuality is not physiological but rather entirely defined by the experiences that person has had, it is sufficient to find merely one counterexample - where the person cannot remember any trigger experiences making him sexually like men, but still inexplainably "feels like it". i'd daresay you'll find not one but many thousands of such counterexamples.

Homosexuality is not normal? Not a regular fixture of everyday life? Wow, we must live in different planets, then.

on most of the planet, it certainly isnt. it may be a tolerated exception in some places (and not tolerated in others) - but its far from being normality.