No, actually I have said I was wrong several times. And I actually had that ‘weenie’ mea culpa in my post buffer ready to send when the thread was closed.
I feel no obligation to apologize here in the pit, after that thread was closed for the number of personal insults against me. At this point, you’ve forfeited that for being fucking assholes who should be ashamed of yourselves.
I largely agree with Sam’s general critique of the Dope. It’s just too bad that he used this thread (which relied on Trump telling the truth) to voice it. Plenty of Dopers have said things equally as stupid but given the political layout of members they usually get by unscathed.
Nearly every time–if not every time–you’ve said you were wrong, you’ve qualified that by saying, “LOOK AT ALL THESE OTHER PEOPLE WHO WERE WRONG!”
Cool cool cool; your lack of integrity is on display for all to see. To suggest that WE should be ashamed of ourselves for correctly calling out your foolishness, and that this is justification for your refusal to give an unqualified mea culpa (not an apology, an unqualified admission that you were wrong), tells us a lot about you, if we didn’t already know it.
What Left_Hand_of_Dorkness said.
And read it again, I said you were mistaken not that you lied. And very quickly it was already known that Trump did not tell the truth. No ifs about it.
So there’s enough room in the ‘aquarium’ for Sam and Octopus? Good to know, good to know.
Not really, even Irish_Girl spanked me years ago for believing the most stupid thing, that Guinness beer was British. 
As I said elsewhere, there’s an obvious reason for it:
It’s probably also relevant that this is how many conservatives operate - the new partisan narratives get parroted on relevant right-wing media and social media sites, and suddenly they’re all repeating the same lines virtually verbatim. Left-wingers don’t really operate like this (for better or worse); the “herding cats” analogy tends to apply (as well as the “circular firing squad” one).
The difference is that mainstream media outlets, for better or worse, are obligated to take Trump and the things he says seriously. To do otherwise would be held up as evidence of bias.
You and I are under no such obligation.
One more thing, -actually several, but this example will do- one of the biggest and most serious calumnies was believed and pressed by Sam Stone on several occasions and AFAIK he never admitted how wrong he was after me and others pointed at the evidence.
There was never an acknowledgement from Sam of how wrong that was, and never a hint about what was his source then. And about ten years after that, I pointed at his error again when he posted that in a more recent and different thread, to no avail.
So what have you learned? That Trump’s tweets are rarely true? For somebody who allegedly doesn’t support Trump, you sure are giving him one yuge benefit of a doubt.
The SDMB: Being killed by liberal bias since 2001
As for Lobohan’s comment: True* - except the point I was making was that declaring the Left to be free of anti-science nonsense was not a tenable position. Beyond GMOs, we could also cite the example of vaccination - where mindless opposition is distributed fairly equally among “progressives” and conservatives.**
Waving one’s arms and saying (to quote Judy Tenuta) “It could happen!” is not exactly a devastating rejoinder to evidence of genetically-modified crops non-harm to the environment. One could also point out that transfer of genetic material between related species has occurred naturally many times (i.e. between plants) without harm, and that objections raised vs. GMO crops concerning the environment apply equally or more so to non-GMO crops.
*however, organized opposition to genetic modification technology is typically a feature of left-leaning groups. It’s not the Federalist Society that’s been helping hold up the approval of golden rice (to prevent malnutrition, blindness and death), but instead organizations like Greenpeace.
**although catering to or embracing antivax ideology is far more common among right-wing politicians than among those on the Left.
This should have tipped you off. The rest of your message contained nonsense that directly contradicted reality.
This could be a great example of a reductio ad absurdum…
If Trump’s Tweet is true then x, y, and z. Since x, y, and z are clearly and obviously at odds with reality, we know Trump’s Tweet is false. Quod erat demonstrandum.
The problem here is not that you believed Trump’s Tweet, it’s your failure to recognize that x, y, and z are absurd.
I thought it was a great example of a minimal effort at JAQing off.
That would be a dumb thing to point out, though, because that interspecies transfer of genes happens slowly enough that ecosystems adjust to each one as they happen; and also, “harm” isn’t really a valid concept in nature, where shit gets disturbed like crazy every now and then, and if something upends everything, that’s nature for ya.
When we’re introducing a new industrial chemical, there are regulations that govern its introduction and use. When we introduce a new pharmaceutical, there are similar regulations. It may (may!) make sense to have similar regulations around the introduction of certain sorts of GMOs. As long as we lack a scientific consensus about the long-term environmental changes caused by GMOs, I’d be in favor of such regulations around, say, a GMO that causes plants to manufacture insecticides not previously manufactured by plants; and I wouldn’t be in favor of such regulations around, say, a GMO that causes tomatoes to contain heightened levels of vitamin C.
Two additions:
Some nits there, although I do agree that a few from the left are dunderheads on that.
In a previous discussion I found that an influential anti GMO group proudly mentioned in their website that many conservatives supported their positions. This is because like with the nuclear issue, super-majorities come out in polls also being against GMO or supporters of labeling. Again, that points to a big mess of Republicans that also follow NIMBY about GMOs.
As for the antivaxxers, I have to report that the weaponization of anti-science (accelerated by Trump) leads to anti-science conspiracy conservatives to not just eat one conspiracy, the anti-science machinery in place has turned the tobacco and cancer connection, evolution, climate change and other subjects into conspiracies with no value for them. Vaccination is being put into that machine as we speak, and you are correct about anti vaxxers being more common now among right wing politicians. That is one of the first steps on turning what it was a reprehensible minority bipartisan issue into a litmus test for being a Republican.
I’m unaware that uncontrolled natural transfer of genetic material between species or genera is a “slow” process or for that matter that it’s intrinsically safer than “artificial” insertion of a single gene. Cites would be nice.
Sounds like a pretty valid example of harm. If “nature” decides to kill off plants or animal/human populations with a new pathogen, that arguably threatens more worrisome environmental devastation than inserting a resistance gene through GM technology. But great minds may differ on that. 
Sensible regulation is preferable to opposition based on the naturalistic fallacy. Unfortunately, GMO opponents who say they’re not anti-GMO, just against inadequate regulation of GMOs are akin to people saying “I’m not antivaccine, just pro-safe vaccine”, and it turns out no vaccine has ever existed that meets their “safe” standard.
This is not to say that LHOD’s views on GMOs are unreasonable; however far too many on the left (and the right) are dogmatic opponents of GMOs. It’s not that crucial a deal when it comes to introducing
a disease resistant coffee variety*, but could be critical when approving a Covid-19 vaccine or an effective cancer drug.
*On the other hand, I want my coffee.
Sorry–“rare” would be a better word. Changes to multiple species in an ecosystem through this means is slow, because it’s so rare, but of course each occurrence happens at evolutionary light-speed.
When you introduce human concerns into the equation, sure, “harm” exists. But was the cataclysm that ended the rule of dinosaurs and allowed the proliferation of mammals “harmful”? If an interspecies genetic transfer causes a huge change to the ecosystem, and humans aren’t involved, from whose perspective do you evaluate harm?
But Sam, you are unbalanced. What you perceive as a board becoming a mononoculture is you slipping further and further away from a healthy culture into teh crazy.