#+title: Text Retired From Common Misconceptions File

Reason and faith and/or science and religion can be compatible with each other -No, they are completely incompatible with each other and they will NEVER be able to work harmoniously with each other. Faith is the antithesis of reason, and religion is an outdated guide for human survival and false hopes for the humans that lived hundreds to thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Intelligent Design -To the contrary, it would be more accurate to label life as being *unintelligently* designed. Indeed there does exist intelligent life like humans and other smart animals. However, life and evolution do not care about pain or suffering. ...
Fortune Cookies -I know that this is actually an ingenious capitalist gimmick to generate revenue that originated from the United States instead of China, but I don't like the idea of reading false "fortunes". Personally, I think it would be better to sell "Wisdom Cookies", cookies containing words of philosophical wisdom, something that would be more useful.
"Women and children" -This phrase appeals to emotions since women and children are widely believed to be exceptionally innocent, but it ignores the reality that anybody who suffers aggression or misfortune never deserved to receive it in the first place, regardless of whether they are male or female, young or old.
Scholarships that give awards for pointless activities and essay prompts that don't have any meaning and don't move humanity forward.
Stuff that promotes economically-worthless, intellectually pointless knowledge, majors, and underwater basket weaving courses in college -...
Stereotypes exist for a reason -This is true for some stereotypes, and false for other stereotypes. Some stereotypes have absolutely no basis besides false widespread media / popular culture references. In order for a stereotype to be considered "true", it must be supported by empirical statistical evidence. But even then, significant statistical evidence does not and could never prove a stereotype true for everybody of a certain population (unless the results tested to 100% for a high-quality sample that accurately represents the entire population, but this will probably never happen).
The Guinness Book of World Records -...
'cis'/'cisgender' -Gender does not exist, so nobody is 'cis' or 'cisgender'.
LGBT -Homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism are three very different things, so much so that there should be two, maybe three, distinct movements for them. Transgenderism should be definitely be considered a separate movement because it isn't related to sexuality. Regarding bisexuality, a lot of bisexuals aren't gay enough to gain support from gay communities, are less likely to come out to people that they know, have a different culture, and are facing different enough issues to be deserving of separate recognized movement.
How so many 'modern' websites use bulky headers, big text, clutter, auto-play videos that follow you as you scroll, and low-information density formats that make it harder to find the information that people actually want to see.

* Nostradamus Was Not A Real Prophet
Nostradamus predicted this, and this, and this... -Nostradamus's predictions are so vague that a connection between anything in the centuries that has passed since his death.
- He mentions three antichrists in his phony prophecies and it is only a coincidence that one of them, "Hister", was similar to "Hitler". If there is supposed to be a third antichrist, then why did the world reach its most prosperous stages in the decades after World War II?
- And if he is claimed to have prophesized a minor local event like the 9-11 terrorist attack, but not more major events like European colonization of the world, the Industrial Revolution, Napoleon's regime, World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the population explosion, the Great Recession, any major genocides, etc?
- Not only are his prophecies extremely vague to describe stuff that people have made connections with, but there are many major world events that don't have any mentions in his prophecies.
- Anybody could write an extremely vague piece of text that purportedly claims to represent the future, and anybody could find some random arbitrary connections between the text and what has already happened. This is the same reason why most connections that can be drawn from analyzing religious text are meaningless. People can do the same thing with the Bible, the Koran, or any other phony religous text as further examples.
- Nostradamus mentions the name of old world countries, but not names of any new world countries or east asian countries. This is a reflection of his eurocentric view of the world and his inability to have predicted with explicit names of any of the future new world countries.
- Nostradamus claimed that he was able to make his predictions by simply looking at a pool of water. Unless he had some set of supernatural powers, there is no way anybody could stare at water and use that as a rational way to predict the future.
- If his predictions were true, people would understand what they mean before the events that supposedly model the predictions actually happen, but they don't.
- When his prophecies are translated to other languages from 16th century french, a lot of them are badly translated, and some of them are purposely translated badly to better fit events that they supposedly model. This is also the same problem that many religious texts have. If religious people were truly concerned with getting what they believe would be the most accurate meanings out of their bogus texts as much as possible, then they should commit to learning the original languages that they were written in and read them that way.
- His predictions don't mention any major changes in technology. They are all nonsensical gibberish just as much as the world's main religious and mythological texts.

** OTHER INFORMAL FALLACIES
- There are passages from the Bible that are consistent with modern science (regarding the water cycle & ...), and they reaffirm that the Bible is true -This is a Cherry Picking Fallacy (AKA Texas Sharpshooter). The guy that approached me with these cherry-picked facts ignored all the passages in the Bible that are not consistent with modern science, including evolution, geology, physics, history, archaeology, sexology, epistemology, etc.
- Even though documentaries are often informative and pleasing to watch, don't they often have the potential to project Anecdotal Fallacies? In Lauren Southern's Borderless Documentary, it would have been beneficial if we had statistical information about the migrants to support the testimonies of the migrants featured in the film.
- Using only one example (how McDonalds served their coffee too hot when the elderly woman accidentally spilled some on her lap in 1994) to prove that Capitalism is bad: One Example Fallacy. This is just one example, and not only that, but it's also cherry-picked too.
  - Fun fact: There is no incorrect temperature for coffee (as long as it remains liquid, I guess).
  - Other fun fact: Most people drank their coffee in the 70's out of crappy stove-top percolators that served it near boiling.
  - One more fun fact: Starbucks also brews at 190. It typically cools if it has time to sit on the warmer but yeah. Pretty much any barista or coffee folks will say 190 is correct for any kind of hot brew, so around 190 is actually an ideal point for coffee.
  - Final fun fact: It actually costs more money to heat coffee up to a higher temp than a lower temp - probably millions of dollars of electricity per year for a big chain like McDonalds -- Obviously they did it to sell more coffee, unless you think they paid extra to burn people, which of course you do because you're dumb.
  - It was because McDonald's ran ads saying that their drive through coffee would still be hot when you arrived to work. McDonald's had been warned about serious scalding hazard, which they ignored.
    - McDonalds wrongly assumed people aren't gonna drink the coffee right away when they order by drive through. They thought they would get home first and then drink it.
    - They didn't want the coffee to be cold.
    - They were wrong, and maybe they should be asking this when you order.
    - But if they hadn't stupidly doubled down on their bullshit, the government wouldn't be needlessly dragged into this to regulate coffee temperature.
    - The lady didn't try drinking it. She put it between her legs to hold while she took the rest of her order or something.
    - Then it spilled on her soft parts, causing third degree burns and she needed skin grafts.
    - She only wanted medical expenses covered, as she otherwise admitted to being at fault.
    - They refused the 20k or so bill. So they had to pay that and a huge fine. Over a million dollars if I recall correctly. Mostly as punishment for being unreasonable, not for some dangerous practice of serving near-boiling coffee...
    - HOWEVER, this ignores what was written in the emails of the upper echelons at McDonalds. So perhaps there were multiple reasons for why they made the coffee so hot.
  - Don't buy their coffee then, go to another store. Thanks to capitalism you have that option.

** Ad Hominem Fallacies
How does whatever economic policy the Nazis used have any bad connotations just because they committed mass genocide? This is a Guilt by Association Fallacy.
    If someone uses something like this as an argument against an economic system, it can essentially be summed up as: "Nazis used this economic policy, therefore it's bad".
    There is no relevance between the economic system that a country uses, and whether or not it commits a genocide.
    Whatever economic policy the Nazis used is irrelevant to determining the best economic policy.
    And hypothetically speaking, there is no reason why a country cannot simultaneously have a robust economic policy AND commit mass genocide.
    If a country commits genocide, there are implications available to imply that their economic policy was bad. And if you disagree with me on that, then show me the evidence to prove the following implication that:  If a country commits genocide, then its economic system (Socialism, Capitalism, etc.) was bad.
The next two following claims are both invalid because they are both making the genetic fallacy. As it turns out, both of the two main parties / political ideologies in the modern-day United States are both incorrect regardless of what they have done in the past.
    The Republicans are the better party because they were the party that abolished slavery, that granted women the right to vote, and campaigned for equal rights.
    The Democrats are the better party because they are liberals and the people that abolished slavery, granted women the right to vote, and campaigned for equal rights were also liberals.
Ayn Rand's ideas are worthless because she spent her final days living off government welfare -Tu Quoque Ad Hominem Fallacy. This does not refute her ideas. And since she was undoubtably a tax victim at least a little (like everyone else), then it wasn't contradictory because then she would have been living off money that she would have had if it wasn't stolen from her in the first place.
Pornography is a bad thing because the chemicals released in the brain when someone watches porn are the same chemicals released in the brain when someone takes highly addictive illegal drugs, and every single time someone wants to reach the same high (euphoric feeling of pleasure), they have to watch even more extreme porn, just as a drug user has to take higher and higher doses to feel the same high -This argument is the Guilt by Association Fallacy. By the same reasoning, they would also have to conclude that falling in love is a bad thing since romantically falling in love someone also releases the same chemicals in the brain associated with highly addictive illegal drugs, which is exactly why it is so hard for some people to get over breakups, deceased loved ones, and why some people even love their former partners until the day that they die. The people making this argument would probably insist that love is a good thing (since Fight The Drug is funded by the Church of Latter Day Saints), so their argument contains a contradiction.
Girls' Clothing in School Is More Regulated Than Guns -This is a Red Herring Fallacy. Girls' Clothing in School has absolutely nothing to do with guns, nor does this pathetic claim state any good reasons to regulate guns more.
People that carry guns around are paranoid idiots -This is both a Red Herring Fallacy and an Abusive Ad Hominem Fallacy. The reasoning behind why someone would carry a gun with them out in public is the same as why someone would wear their seatbelt when they are on a plane or on the road. They probably won't need it, and hopefully they won't need it, but for that tiny possibility when they will need it, it could save their life. By the same logic, they would have to consider people that wear their seatbelts unnecessarily paranoid.
Eugenics is not a good idea -The main reason why most people believe this is due to the historical existence of the Nazis. It is very concerning about the current dysgenic consequences where some men have children, leave the mother, and go on to have even more children. It is also concerning that government welfare subsidizes this practice. The people born from a eugenics movement could potentially have the same benefits towards humanity as the Jews did despite being such a small minority.
   NOTE: I wrote this statement around 2019. It's a good example of how I was more perceptive than other Libertarians and other moral dogmatists since I could see that eugenics matters, I just didn't have the philosophical/biological/evolutionary understanding and reasoning to understand why we need it to prevent civilization from collapsing. I also had moral hangups that were instilled in me before I realized that morality is completely subjective.

* Worst Religions Ranked
- Islam - Most sects advocate for killing non-believers, apostates, homosexuals, and others. Islam also has a reputation of being extremely sexist and is known for excessively harsh punishments.
- Hinduism - Hinduism supports a caste system, which is incompatible with equal opportunity, equal rights, and the freedom of the individual. Hinduism also has a distinction of being more a culture than it is a religion.
- Jehovah's Witnesses - Jehovah's Witnesses forbids blood transfusions (which has and will inevitably kill people), the celebration of birthdays and holidays, and political thought. The religion also discourages higher education, especially among women, so it's patriarchal. Another abusive practice is its excommunication and disfellowship of apostates, which tears families and social bonds apart. JW also prescribes that non-JWs cannot be true friends and that worldly people are at best colleagues, so conversation and socialization is discouraged from outsiders. Lastly, it encourages annoying door-to-door preaching.
- Buddhism - Conversion to Buddhism and intolerance of religious minorities in Burma like Christians and Rohingya Muslims had lead to violence, genocide, rape, and refugee migrations out of Burma. And in 1990, Bhutan forced all of its Hindu citizens out of the country to preserve its Buddhist traditions. Even Buddhism isn't vulnerable to religious discrimination.
- Christianity - Although not a problem today, Christian wars and religious persecution against others was very prominent during Europe's Middle Ages.
- Scientology - Scientology is a scam designed to make money at the expense of tainting the minds of those who actually believe the unbelievable made-up crap that it prescribes.