> ETA: ... treat you like a punching bag?

This is definitely something I picked up on and did apologize in one case where I realized there was a clear disconnect. I find that this is extremely common on the internet and it often just pushes me to stop talking (but some days I'm pulled back into the old addiction).

I'll also say that this comment has made me gain a lot of respect to you. And I must also apologize to you for being antagonistic and escalating it. You're not alone in that struggle. I do think it has become the norm of internet discussions and that at times we need to take a step back and "reset". I really do appreciate that you have taken the initiative to do so.

Maybe I can suggest a strategy I try (but clearly am not consistent in implementing). If I'm adding something to someone's comment (additional information instead of rebutting) I try to make the first line of the comment indicate this or have a positive response like "Good point! In addition..." Sometimes I find agreeing comments turn to fights. Easier to see as a third party. I also try to internalize that the way language works is: there's what one intends to say (what's in their head), what is said (how that thought is lossy encoded into speech), and what is heard (what is lossy decoded into listener's head). We all need to try to do a better job at trying to hear what the other person is trying to say, rather than what is said. But emotions get the best of us and our lazy/lossy decoders fill in a lot of info that may not be intended.

The best strategy I found is to just log off. But considering your comment, I'm going to respond and I'll do so in detail. And if you got other strategies I'm also open. It is a learning process

--

> Bad faith

I think this has to do with our decoders. It also seems that we have different definitions for bad faith. Snarky would be included in mine as the setting is about discussion accurate information rather than the joking that may happen when sitting around with friends having beers or whatever. Additionally, self-deception is included in my definition, and one does not need to intentionally misrepresent an argument or do an active form of deception. An example of this is actually all too common on the internet (and especially around discussions of nuclear technologies) is to argue strongly about an area one has little to no domain expertise in. This is common on the internet as many do watch educational videos that give a high level overview of a subject (often with bad information) and the viewer convinces themselves (self-deception) that they are qualified to expertly educate others on this subject matter (fwiw, I should mention that I have a degree in physics and have directly worked on nuclear shielding technologies and have extensive experience with radiation simulating, Both physical and computational). Another common one is the "just asking questions" version, which is just sealioning. It is hard to tell if this is used intentionally to cause disruption/confusion (e.g. Koch brothers on Global Warming) or innocent. Regardless, it does have the same result. I want to point this out because considering our above dash discussion, we should recognize that a lot of internet speech looks like we've just normalized behavior out of the CIA's disruption manual [0,1]. I do think a lot of bad faith conversations have been normalized and we do it unintentionally (myself included).

> ... closing the book ... didn't personally feel moved by the evidence

It is not that, it is that bio-accumulation was already considered. The boar are accumulating Cesium-137, typically through the ingestion of mushrooms, which grab it from the soil. Biological half-life (how long for half to be expelled from the body) is 70 days[2]. The reason this was not directly discussed is that there was already a large margin of safety in place and that this does not disrupt the thesis of my argument: You have to eat so much red meat that you'd be at a high risk of adverse health effects (heart attack, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer) before you reach a level where you should be concerned with the effects of radiation. The radiation target used was the EU guidelines for yearly protracted dosages (20mSv/yr) which already has a built in margin of safety as we typically don't see measurable increases of lifetime cancer risk until at least double that (and a low risk at that level). The frustration with many of those that responded to me is that one side of this argument was clearly ignored: the meat consumption. We are talking about health risks after all. If I said that the drinking water is poisonous, but did not note that you had to consume 100 liters in a single sitting, you would have every right to call me out and mock me as water toxicity kicks in at 6 liters. You would die from the water consumption long before you'd die of the poison. Your PI should clown on you if you did this. This is what I am doing with the boar narrative, it is the same scenario. You'll notice that every story that reports these boars state that they are over the legal limit and not a safe limit. The legal limit varies drastically by region. The EU has 600Bq/kg, Japan with 1kBq/kg, and Australia with 100Bq/kg. All three of these regions have radioactive boar btw. A 200Bq/kg boar in Australia is not more dangerous than a 200Bq/kg boar in Germany.

Similarly, bio-accumulation can happen with that poisonous water but we need to consider that the water is both difficult to obtain (it would be difficult to have an exclusive diet of wild board; radioactive or not) and that your body rids itself of poison (meaning that differential matters). I purposefully placed exceptionally large safety margins on the calculation (normal for radiation safety btw) as a means to simplify the argument (like you said, not everything has to be rigorous science) and even account for a wide variety of factors that would happen in real life (such as variance between boar, intravariance between cuts, and even factors like differing background radiation. The eater might be a Concord pilot). I would not expect someone with expertise in radiation safety (which there are plenty of HN users that are) to take issue with my claim.

I'm not sure what science you do, what is it? I'm assuming it doesn't have to do with particle physics?

[0] https://www.authenticcomms.co.uk/blog/the-1944-cia-guide-to-...

[1] https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=750070

[2] https://dec.alaska.gov/eh/radiation/half-lives-explained/