It’s one thing to have differing views, but I’ve seen enough attempted reddit migrations to be relieved that the popular communities in the fediverse so far haven’t been about crazy racist stuff or other extreme right bullshit.
I am also glad that I’m getting away from reddit’s general political shitposting, which was more left leaning. You couldn’t have any proper discourse on there, and even I with my generally more left leaning views recognized that.
I have opinions on when and how children should be allowed to access cigarettes, alcohol, and motorcycles. Are those opinions also boring, unnecessary, and entitled?
If that medical opinion wasn’t backed up by doctors and the majority of the medical community, I’d imagine that opinion probably would be.
The medical opinion backed up by doctors and the majority of the medical community used to be that alcohol for minors was fine and that cigarettes were good for you.
The medical community is perfectly capable of being wrong and prescribing societal dogma over anything else.
You’re dismissing all of modern medicine there, which IMO is even worse. Knowledge might change, but until it does, we have to follow the current state of science. Otherwise we’re back to guesswork.
No, I’m dismissing the idea that the “medical consensus” is unquestionable truth.
If questioning the medical consensus was always wrong then we’d still believe that handwashing was a waste of time, and cigarettes would probably be lauded as a way to resist the miasma.
When the consensus changed to say that cigarettes and underage drinking are bad, that didn’t overthrow the idea that handwashing is still good. And when the consensus changes to say that the modern approach to transitioning has caused more harm than help, that won’t overthrow the idea that underage drinking and cigarettes are still bad.
Questioning the medical consensus is ok, as long as you’re a medical researcher with a study to show that there’s a problem. I don’t get the feeling that you are.
Laypeople are perfectly happy to give baseless opinions on my actual field of expertise, only fair I return the favor on other fields. Also how do you propose we get a study which shows the problem if you aren’t allowed to ask the question which prompts the study until after the study is done?
Besides, when societal dogma is driving more than anything else then the only expertise you need is to be a member of that society. And nobody can deny me that qualification.
I’m in software development. If people give uneducated opinions, we all have a laugh and move on. In medicine, people die when this happens. This is not comparable.