Does trying to live healthy make sense considering an imminent bird flu outbreak?

[Spongebob]

@FlatAssembler What you seem to be missing is that you've made several very specific claims that are not supported by consensus science. Claims like a vegan or veggie diet boosts the immune system, and that in turn will prevent COVID-19. Neither of those claims are supported by science. Now I'm positive that you can produce some "study" that says otherwise. We now live in a world rife with "alternative" facts. But there is real science and there is pseudo-science. The latter tries to look and sound like the former, but it relies on short cut methods, grand assumptions and lies. The list of these is gigantic. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference because pseudo-scientists have gotten very savvy, but there are some specific signs that raise a red flag. If you truly want to become better educated, you need to learn to tell the difference. You claim to be educated in logic, well here is a great opportunity for you to learn and improve your reasoning.

You also made the statement that things that are difficult to imagine are less likely to be true (or something to that effect). That is simply not true and I listed a number of examples of concepts that are not intuitive but have been objectively demonstrated to be true. The ability of anyone, yourself in particular, to be able to imagine (I think you actually mean understand) a concept has literally nothing to do with its basis in fact. What you are missing is that complex or extremely difficult concepts require equally complex and compelling evidence to justify accepting them as fact whereas simpler concepts require simpler evidence.

These are just some of the reasons that I concluded that your grasp on reason is tenuous at best.

[The Architect Of Fate]

You just keep hitting the rake

[Spongebob]

It's literally been pointed out over and over

No, it has not been. Where did I commit the "Personal Incredulity" fallacy? And why is it a fallacy given that it seems to be one of the basic principles of the scientific method, namely, preference for hypotheses with mechanistic evidence behind them?

You stated yourself that something difficult to understand was less likely to be true, did you not?

[Spongebob]

Where exactly do you think that I used argument from incredulity? And why exactly is it fallacious? I mean, if something is difficult to imagine, it is certainly less likely to be true, even though it can be true. Saying "I cannot imagine how F could be true, therefore F must be false." is arguably fallacious, but saying it is unlikely to be true is not fallacious.

I don't know what the original argument was, but this is where you are falling short.  You seem to understand that making this statement (bold) is definitively is false, but then you waffle and say that it is "unlikely" to be true.  That is equally false.  Your ability to understand a concept or the overall complexity of a concept has zero impact on the truth of that concept.  It only informs the degree of evidence necessary to support said concept.

Let's consider something that is not complex at all, yet clearly difficult to accept as fact.  Consider a stone statue that reportedly bleeds from the eyes whenever Christians come to it in prayer over some misfortune.  This concept isn't difficult to understand at all, but it is certainly difficult to accept as factual because everyone knows stone does not bleed (not actual blood anyway).  This defies what we know to be a simple fact of nature; stone does not bleed.  And in this case it is likely to be false because it goes against a simple and commonly accepted fact of nature.  So in order to accept this as factual, we need considerable evidence.  I don't know, maybe you are conflating these two approaches to logic.

[FlatAssembler]

Claims like a vegan or veggie diet boosts the immune system, and that in turn will prevent COVID-19.

Well, I have heard some scientists claiming that, and I haven't heard any claiming otherwise. Therefore, I conclude that is the scientific consensus.

The ability of anyone, yourself in particular, to be able to imagine (I think you actually mean understand) a concept has literally nothing to do with its basis in fact.

No, I did not mean understand, I meant imagine. A rock bleeding is hard to imagine, because it obviously goes against what we ordinarily experience.

[Spongebob]

Well, I have heard some scientists claiming that, and I haven't heard any claiming otherwise. Therefore, I conclude that is the scientific consensus.

Maybe you aren't aware of this, but where you get your information matters...a lot.  Like most people, you probably get your information from mass market news agencies, who may report real science, but they often do a terrible job.  They misrepresent stories, blow it out of proportion, and sometimes report new findings from disreputable people.  That's how Andrew Wakefield's antivax agenda became so well known.  New agencies rarely do the hard work of evaluating their sources when it comes to science.  And there are just as many pseudo science papers out there as real science.  You have to read multiple sources and you have to learn how to spot the pseudo from the science.  Also, the fact that you said you haven't read any scientific reports that a vegan diet does not improve the immune system tells me you haven't read much about it at all, which means you probably just read an article or two on the Internet.  I happen to know for a fact that this is a much studied subject and the results are inconclusive at best. I suspect you are easily convinced and this can be dangerous.  You have to get better at that if you don't want to be gullible.

There's a lot of misconception about how our immune systems work and it's largely because of the pseudo scientific claims about certain fruits or vegetables that will "supercharge" the immune system.  Those claims are all false.  A healthy immune system needs no boosting whatsoever and an unhealthy one can't be fixed by eating kale.  So, again, I suggest you do some reading on the subject.  Get a good book produced by a reputable medical person, not some kook.

No, I did not mean understand, I meant imagine. A rock bleeding is hard to imagine, because it obviously goes against what we ordinarily experience.

Is there a language barrier here?  How is it difficult to imagine a rock bleeding?  Just imagine a rock.  Now imagine blood flowing from it.  Done.  No, you are meaning you find it difficult to either understand or believe some concept.  But in either case, what you said is still wrong because whether you believe something or not still has nothing to do with reality.

[The Grand Nudger]

You knew you were going to die before you worried about the plague. If you thought that living healthy was worth it before, it's not clear what would or even could change from then to now.

[Deesse23]

Claims like a vegan or veggie diet boosts the immune system, and that in turn will prevent COVID-19.

Well, I have heard some scientists claiming that, and I haven't heard any claiming otherwise. Therefore, I conclude that is the scientific consensus.

How hard have you looked for those claiming otherwise? Confirmation bias is a bitch. But frankly, i didn't expect anything different from someone who also things that something is "more unlikely" because he suffers from a lack of imagination.

Took me ca. 1min with Google Scholar to find a paper that concludes that "A long-term vegetarian diet, however, seemed to be associated with a lower diversity of T-cell repertoire "

[Spongebob]

Food gurus have been with us for a long time. Back in the 80's they seemed to be tapping into some kind of secret knowledge. Then there were more of them and more still. At some point it became pretty obvious that these people were creating magic foods as a marketing scam and real scientists couldn't begin to keep up with all of their claims because it takes time to do real science. To create a superfood all you have to do is find an obscure vegetable, cultivate it and market it as magic. People are so gullible they will pay anything for it.

Back in the late 90's I had a co-worker who was sold on some kind of mineral oil that was extracted in the south Pacific. All the islanders there supposedly ate a teaspoon of this stuff every day and lived to be 120. I think a years supply of this stuff was like $1000. Years later I read an expose about this same product. Turns out it was coconut oil.

[Abaddon_ire]

Food gurus have been with us for a long time.  Back in the 80's they seemed to be tapping into some kind of secret knowledge.  Then there were more of them and more still.  At some point it became pretty obvious that these people were creating magic foods as a marketing scam and real scientists couldn't begin to keep up with all of their claims because it takes time to do real science.  To create a superfood all you have to do is find an obscure vegetable, cultivate it and market it as magic.  People are so gullible they will pay anything for it.

Back in the late 90's I had a co-worker who was sold on some kind of mineral oil that was extracted in the south Pacific.  All the islanders there supposedly ate a teaspoon of this stuff every day and lived to be 120.  I think a years supply of this stuff was like $1000.  Years later I read an expose about this same product.  Turns out it was coconut oil.

Sure. Have you seen the nonsense that "The Food Babe" shovels out. She is supposed to be a food guru yet couldn't find her butt with both hands. Or how about Adams, the health ranger. Follow all his nutty advice and you will come down with an advanced case of dead.