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[Gentlefish]

HAHA FUN FACT TIME: "Natural" ingredients are anything not derived from petroleum or petroleum byproducts. Artificial flavors are those that -are- derived from petrol and petrol byproducts.

So your natural strawberry flavor could be pig anus.

[Rolepgeek]

Meh.

I think the idea behind it is that since we tend to know, by this point, whether natural ingredients are harmful for us. Artificial ingredients are, oftentimes, a toss-up, as we've seen. Since companies are rarely allowed to put in harmful ingredients knowingly, if it's all natural, there's less of a chance of getting harmful ingredients.

Nobody not in a 2 AM infomercial is peddling poison ivy as tanning oil, jesus christ guys. You're like frenzying over this shit. Some people want to avoid artificial ingredients for one reason or another. If they're telling the truth, attacking them for having it as a selling point of their product is like attacking a hot sauce company for having 'makes your mouth feel like it's on fire' as a selling point of their product; you might not be interested in that but other people might be and telling them they're stupid for that is rude and condescending.

[Rose]

Actually, no.

For example: Natural and artificial almond flavor both come from the same source, generally.

The difference is that the artificial almond flavor doesn't contain cyanide.

[Frumple]

We... pretty regularly find out new things about "natural" stuff that we didn't know about before. Harmful often enough. Folk stuff and non-systematic testing does a lot but it doesn't do everything, and to a large extent most of the newer, "artificial" stuff has been getting as much or more scrutiny worth a damn for as long as much of the older stuff has. We haven't had dedicated attempts to figure out what the hell food is doing to us, or the machinery, tools, and methodology needed to actually do it, until pretty recently.

This sentiment that seems to be being echoed here that we were somehow particularly good at finding out what was dangerous in the past is... sketchy. Lot of stuff that doesn't kill us immediately will kill us 20-30 years down the road, and humans are pretty incredibly bad at noticing that thing they've been eating for the last couple decades without apparent harm isn't actually particularly safe to eat, or all sorts of things of similar nature. And that's not even getting into stuff like what japa mentions, where something's edible or even relatively good for you but it's naturally bundle with stuff you probably don't really want in your system.

What it comes down to is that folks really kinda' need to just toss this natural and artificial shit out the window and start warning about harmful/untested ingredients, and the presence of particularly important chemicals and components and whatnot. Like allergy warnings, but a bit more wide ranging. The ingredient list itself is a good start, but something a bit more aggressive on that front probably wouldn't be amiss.

[Rose]

Yeah, but all chemicals are harmful, don't you know?

[IcyTea31]

Because the components of goodness are: Truth, Beauty and uhh...

Dang I forgot the other components of goodness.

Justice. At least in Finnish, that is; I'm not completely sure about English.

Yoink, it would appear that you do not understand the naturalistic fallacy.

We shouldn't do X because it would harm the environment.

X is good because it occurs naturally; i.e., it is not synthetic or artificial.

Semantics: that's actually the "appeal to nature". The naturalistic fallacy is an argument such as "this makes me feel happy, therefore it is good." It is an argument that uses an inquantifiable or subjective premise as an objective one. An appeal to nature is usually a naturalistic fallacy, but not always.

telling them they're stupid for that is rude and condescending.

Logic generally is, sadly. Do note, though, that 'illogical' and 'stupid' aren't the same thing, no matter what some imply.

What it comes down to is that folks really kinda' need to just toss this natural and artificial shit out the window and start warning about harmful/untested ingredients, and the presence of particularly important chemicals and components and whatnot. Like allergy warnings, but a bit more wide ranging. The ingredient list itself is a good start, but something a bit more aggressive on that front probably wouldn't be amiss.

Oh, yes. The 'no additives' tag is a bit terrible, especially when it can actually be less healthy than the competitor without it. For example, monosodium glutamate doesn't cause heart diseases, but excessive salt does. Guess what a certain Finnish meat product manufacturer did when it stopped using MSG? It added more salt to the recipe.

[Yoink]

This argument is the kind that generally goes nowhere, judging from past experience, so I won't bother with it.

Seriously guys. I can't be bothered having this argument when I'm quite certain I won't be convincing anyone anytime soon... besides, this isn't an issue I feel as strongly about as, say, the joys of alcohol or something.


Anyway, my WTF: walked into the house through the laundry door, which leads to the backyard, when something small, soft but dense landed on my head.
I immediately expected something bad; with my luck it was probably, I don't know, bird poop or some miscellaneous goop that was somehow attached to the top of the door. I prepared myself to have to clean something awful out of my hair, probably with a great deal of difficulty. So for starters I switched on the light, held my hair back and jerked my head forward in an attempt to dislodge whatever was still sitting on my head- and with a soft "thwap" sort of a sound something landed on the floor before me.

It took me a moment to figure out what it was- a gecko, almost blending in with the colour of the linoleum. It sort of sat there for a moment, leading me to briefly worry that I'd accidentally hurt it by flinging out of my hair, then came to its senses and scurried out the door into the darkness.

Okay then. Glad it survived the impact with the floor, at least.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

So, in what would be normally weird but this time is just a fairly mundane 2016, Kanye West went on a massive rant about...I'm not really sure what three shows into his concert and then canceled it, followed by cancelling the rest of his tour. And then was involuntarily hospitalized.

[Sergarr]

So, in what would be normally weird but this time is just a fairly mundane 2016, Kanye West went on a massive rant about...I'm not really sure what three shows into his concert and then canceled it, followed by cancelling the rest of his tour. And then was involuntarily hospitalized.

They should check him for radiation poisoning. Just in case. He did announce that he would run against Trump in 2020, after all...

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Glad to see we're in full paranoia mode now. This is not even remotely the first time Kanye West has publicly had what seems to be a manic episode. I don't support involuntary psychiatric treatment, but Donald Trump is not assassinating pop music stars two weeks after winning the election.

Besides, Kanye supported Trump.

[Avis-Mergulus]

I'm pretty sure that was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Litvinenko assassination and not a serious assertion that somebody would waste their time with killing Kanye West.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I know what it was a reference to, but I'm not sure if it's meant to not be serious. Sergarr did say that the US election was going to be rigged for Trump by Russian FSB agents, and seemed serious then.

[Sergarr]

I'm pretty sure that was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Litvinenko assassination and not a serious assertion that somebody would waste their time with killing Kanye West.

Yeah, it was something like that. I'm just kind of following on the tendency of... certain people to claim that they're going to eat polonium every time someone starts to criticize Putin.

Also, I thought that Kanye West has endorsed Hillary? At least, he did before the last week.

I know what it was a reference to, but I'm not sure if it's meant to not be serious. Sergarr did say that the US election was going to be rigged for Trump by Russian FSB agents, and seemed serious then.

No, see, I didn't say that. I said that there would be news about FSB agents rigging elections, not necessarily that there would be any real FSB agents doing that.

I said that because it was logically fitting within the Red Scare pre-election narrative, with media reports about "how easy it is to hack into voting machines" and constant droning about Russian influence, as a kind of "finisher" move to first, motivate the voters to vote to stop the evil Russians, and second, to further justify the post-election's Hillary Clinton's actions as a part of her hard-line stance against Russia.

Though, since (God-Emperor, King of Kings, His Utmost Goldness) Donald Trump has emerged the winner, all that rhetoric has kind of abruptly ended, or rather, took mostly to the background compared to the more important, domestic-wise, issues, like the new Republican's ultra-domination spelling potential doom for LGBT rights, and Trump's declared economic policies greatly fucking USA's economy up.

Which is kind of sad, because my whole "Plan B" for political discussions, in the unlikely case the letter T actually won, was about telling how Putin was controlling the White House and the USA's nuclear button, and how bad it would be for USA's influence and reputation.

I guess people only care about foreign politics when they don't feel like their life is threatened by the domestic ones. Should've seen it earlier, to be honest.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Semantics: that's actually the "appeal to nature". The naturalistic fallacy is an argument such as "this makes me feel happy, therefore it is good." It is an argument that uses an inquantifiable or subjective premise as an objective one. An appeal to nature is usually a naturalistic fallacy, but not always.

Well, isn't that intuitive...

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

What?

(It's for a class. I have no idea why. This is the teacher who preaches capitalism, by the way.)