The site fairly well warns you that they’re a biased source and unlikely to present things in the full context, so it certainly is evidentiary of living a poor information diet on Sam’s part. But, that all being true, it is a video clip of someone saying something and it’s better to simply look at the thing, find the context, and demonstrate the issues with it, rather than dismissing it without consideration. That just feeds the other person’s sense that you are the one locking yourself into an information bubble and not them. There’s no rule that you can’t both be guilty of the same crime.
So, @Sam_Stone , let’s properly check your video.
First, let’s note that even the context free clip that you posted doesn’t say anything near to what you described.
If we continue on to look up the actual, full, unedited and meaningful context of the video then we have to contend with problems like these:
- The video is from 2018. There was no pandemic and he was answering a question from the the audience about how new technologies might impact medical regimen compliance numbers. Ergo, he’s giving a hardcore compliance answer because he was asked about technological approaches to compliance.
- He answers by bringing up someone else’s pill that actually exists, is already on the market, and has been approved by the FDA in America - a country with tighter restrictions on forcible medication by the authorities than pretty much any other one. Ergo, lots of chronic homeless people and teens with guns, shooting up schools.
- He does not mention “the authorities”. He says that the pill sends a signal so that the doctor knows you’ve taken your medicine and then - presumably, through the doctor - your insurance agency will know that you’re being compliant with what they’re paying for (and, we can infer, they then know that you’re not going to relapse and that they don’t need to bump up your premium).
- He doesn’t really advocate for this sort of technology. His presentation is simply that it’s a novel thing of interest that the inquirer might be curious to know about, given they question. There’s no particular reason to think that he’s in favor of it, that he considers it the undeniable future, nor that he wouldn’t be opposed to concepts of that sort, given good reason to think it was bad for society.
- We can almost certainly assume that people who are taking medicines of this sort have given documented, legal consent to be tracked in such a way.
Now, to be sure, having a technology that allows your insurance company to track you is questionable. Once there are technologies for this, the companies have a pretty strong incentive to tell you that you either need to accept tracking or to pay for your procedure on your own.
But, personally, I don’t see any issue with bringing that topic up in response to a question that’s directly about that. And, likewise, I might be specifically inclined to mention the insurance angle - if I was being asked - because I think that it’s an important point for people to start thinking about, seriously. The are pros and there are cons. If you just let those pills slip out into the world without much discussion then you’re creating a situation where, suddenly, several years later you’ve got a bunch of nutters finding out about it and going crazy that shadowy groups are making people swallow microchips.
Talking about a thing is not an endorsement of that thing.
I do, personally, endorse finding neutral, unbiased sources and dumping any that offer things out of context, make factual assertions that are false (e.g. that there’s discussion of “the authorities”), and/or which explicit try to be biased and skewed. The last in particular is real dumb. It’s like someone telling you that they’re an alcoholic and then you put them in charge of running your nightclub.
This shit ain’t hard sometimes. If they’ve made it real easy for you to know, and you proceed anyways, then that’s pretty demeaning of yourself.