Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers
Is it even worth it to engage with these people?
They're immune to facts and they will not change their minds no matter what happens, which is interesting psychologically. But should we engage for the sake of others who are rational yet "on the fence"?
I struggle with this.
[Edit: I added flat earthers to the original list.]
They're immune to facts and they will not change their minds no matter what happens, which is interesting psychologically. But should we engage for the sake of others who are rational yet "on the fence"?
I struggle with this.
[Edit: I added flat earthers to the original list.]
Comments (1445)
I've engaged with all these types of people. I've always tried to do it with respect for their intelligence and motivations and to treat them civilly. I think many of them are pushed into more extreme claims by the fact that there seems to be no room for moderate positions in the current political season. It's not often I convince anyone, but sometimes I feel like the discussion has opened us both up to compromise. I have even found myself convinced, or at least had my opposition softened, by other people's arguments.
Then you're a more mature man than I am. I struggle with it because of the stakes. Climate change and COVID are good examples. This level of ignorance is dangerous. In the past, I have been much more reasonable and civil -- even online, when it comes to issues of abortion, war, taxes, elections, etc. But we're in a new phase of ignorance, one that effects all of us and the future of the planet. So compassion fatigue sits in.
Since there's no point in pretending to have a rational discussion with irrational ignorance, I imagine the reason for doing so is for those who are watching and listening.
It depends what you want in life, I guess, but for me, yes. Sometimes people who you think are nuts turn out to be right. It's healthy and productive to see people as individuals, all with different unique constellations of views, some rational, others not. It can get a bit us-and-them if we group populations according to their views and dismiss individuals within that group because of their group membership.
Also, the things mentioned are all different. You don't have to pick a team here and accept them all or reject them all. I, for example, have not come across anything to suppose that the virus is anything other than what it appears to be, and that vaccines are probably broadly safe, at least safer than the disease, and we should probably all get vaccinated for the good of everyone. Regarding the ninth of November, on the other hand, I think the physical evidence for controlled demolition is completely overwhelming. To even begin to change my mind on that I'd need to see a plausible explanation for the collapse of building 8 minus 1 - office conflagration isn't plausible. This isn't even a conspiracy theory. It's a physical theory based on observations; I have absolutely no idea who, how or why someone would do that. And the kind of creationism that is based on taking creation myths and stories literally seems completely baseless and contradicted by evidence.
So while the populations that hold these views might overlap considerably, they are different views, and can, and I suggest should, be approached separately. However when I am tired and frustrated, I do fall into lazily grouping people together, and I do hate these groups when my head is fuzzy and they all look the same from a distance. If I had to pick a team, I'd pick yours, but I'd self-destruct it as soon as we won the game.
It's somewhat like morbid curiosity: we are drawn to it, even though we probably shouldn't be. Where you see a wreck on the side of the road and you slow down to see the ruined lives, you can also slow down on the interwebs to see the ruined mind. You can even engage it, like staring at a dead body, try some CPR but ultimately knowing it's dead and you end up wondering where the soul or the self or the brain went. But in the end, it's best to try to overcome your baser instincts and move on. There will be others, behind you, doing the same. Few, if any, will say "Gee, I wish that was me! I like that way that looks and the way everyone stares at him/her. I want that!"
The problem aren't those other people and whatever stances they hold or the things they do. The problem is that you take for granted that you're entitled to live in a safe world that is obligated to accomodate you.
The problem is those other people and the stances they hold and the things they do that take for granted that they are entitled to live in a safe world that is obligated to accommodate them.
They are inconsiderate, disrespectful and selfish. It's all about them. They are afraid of a shot. They think they should be able to run around like nothing is wrong as they spread their filthy disease.
What qualifies you to judge in this matter? Are you a structural engineer? If the evidence were so overwhelming it would be obvious to all structural engineers, and the cat would be out of the bag.
It is, and it is. But that's not the primary focus of the thread.
Off topic, but please educate this neophyte: Why speak obliquely instead of using the date and building number conventionally used? Am I out of the loop on something?
Oh, I don't know. I got the impression that discussing this openly on the forum is not welcome, not totally sure why. If some nutcase was doing a search for discussions to troll, maybe they would miss this thread. Just thought I'd disguise it a bit. I'm probably being silly.
:up:
Yes, that’s a very significant problem actually. Not just for me, but the future of the planet.
Quoting baker
I take neither for granted.
You know what it's like to be personally invested in an issue. How open are you to looking at evidence that you're wrong? Having discussed things with you in the past, I'd say not very. So is it a waste if time to engage you?
Sometimes it's worth it to ask yourself what your motivation really is.
Throughout history, men of great acumen and power have devised final solutions to such problems ...
Yes.
Depends on what that means, of course. I accept it as a fact, and willing to fight against those who wish to destroy the world, even if it’s through their dangerous ignorance.
Goshdarn, righteous indignation is the best feeling there is!!!
You seem to be taking this personally. That’s a dead giveaway.
Not worth it, for they are stuck in their notions from thoughts that so often fired together that they became very strongly wired together. It shows a fixed will to the nth degree as well as an inhibited learning disability that prevents a new and wider range of will to form beyond the stuck notion.
What we get out of it is the knowing of this trait being able to be so in human nature.
In the case of not wearing masks and not getting vaccinated, it's even the simplest of science that can't be understood, so no wonder that great stuckness is prevalent in many less simple areas, too.
So, they will die, but at least evolution has this new opening to rid us of stupid people.
Quoting baker
Well, sounds like you enjoy righteous indignation at least. It's an acquired taste; you have to bracket off the great annoyance caused by what you are indignant about or else it's more aggravating than enjoyable I'd say..
For me, I engage them only in the company of a third party or audience, not to persuade them but to expose the falsity of such claims before witnesses and hopefully to provoke others to question prevalent, uninformed gossip, conventional wisdom and stupifying conspiracies. Like a good gadly, I try to plant seeds of doubt in as many heads as the occasion allows. 'Shaming stupidity' (or rodeo-clownin' the bulls***) is how I roll online as well as off. :smirk:
[quote=Gilles Deleuze][i]Philosophy does not serve the State or the Church, who have other concerns. It serves no established power. The use of philosophy is to sadden. A philosophy that saddens no one, that annoys no one, is not a philosophy. It is useful for harming stupidity, for turning stupidity into something shameful.[/quote]
I think I like that. I'm not so sure, but since it made me think, there must be something to it. I mean, "clownin' the bulls***"? That's some gold right there. And without a barrel! That's old school. :strong:
That means that conversations with those with whom you have disagreements become more important. That it becomes more important that you find a way to find common purpose with them. The great majority of people in the US share a core set of values. Mainstream, moderate, more or less pragmatic, sometimes idealistic.
Saying you're not mature enough to work with that is a pretty poor excuse given your apparent sense of impending doom.
Well, I never took you for an optimist. This reads like early Woody Allen.
And yet despite everything you say there I have known many people who are happy and found happiness readily achievable. And they weren't rich or powerful. They just went about their business taking an interest in some matters and not others, working, raising a family, gardening, reading and finding humor in many things. And sure, it's hard to do this is a warzone or when sick, but frankly it isn't impossible.
The universe was created. Who says this didn't happen 6000 years ago? If they think this is what happened... Why shouldn't I engage with them? Of course I won't argue about the creation how they view it. But I know a lot of other means to engage with creationists. Especially when they are female (though I don't think they will like me being married, nor do I think will my wife approve...).
Yes, well said.
Quoting bert1
I have no idea what you're referring to by the 9th of November, but fair enough.
Quoting bert1
Yes -- I don't mean to imply they're the same, really. These are vastly different topics.
But there are obvious similarities, in that all are minority views that go against the overwhelming expert consensus -- whether it be that we evolved, or that vaccines are safe and effective, or that climate change is real, etc. Not all minority or dissenting views should be dismissed, but these certainly can. They've been debunked over and over again by experts in each respective field, yet they live on -- like zombies.
So the question stands: is it worth bothering with irrational people? Personally, I wouldn't care to -- just as I don't care about those who believe in aliens or Big Foot or a flat Earth or astrology. Let people be happy with that.
When it starts to effect society, the education of future generations, and the future of the planet, then I don't take this position anymore. I think it should be called out -- but whether one should bother spending time running through claim after debunked claim, that's a different question entirely. Is it worth it for others who can still be persuaded? I think maybe it can be justified on those grounds.
:up:
Quoting frank
For you, yes it is. Feel free not to.
Quoting tim wood
If one imagines them as young children, then that helps a little. We wouldn't treat children this way because of their silly beliefs or irrationality. We'd probably have more patience and empathy.
But that is wearing thin, because we're running out of time, and everyone is effected. We're all effected by the effects of climate change, for example. We're all effected by the pandemic.
Don't get me wrong -- I don't place the majority of the blame on misinformed or ignorant people. One shouldn't blame the students, only the teachers.
I place the blame on those with power who deliberately dupe them, through their influence on the government, through their owning the media, through advertising, and through appealing to their prejudices. Pundits, false prophets, bad teachers, religious leaders, corrupt "scientists," con man of every stripe, corporate propaganda campaigns, etc. This is the real source. People don't conjure most of this bullshit up on their own.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Quoting PoeticUniverse
That's pretty harsh, but you may be right. If so, it's really quite sad.
Quoting baker
I agree. This has very little to do with my own personal happiness, or looking for it outside myself. I'm not looking for a perfect world, and I'm not looking to kill people off who don't agree with me and, as I said above, don't even hold them completely responsible.
Nevertheless, I do see their beliefs as leading to very dangerous actions, as we're seeing in this pandemic and as we see with climate change. That effects everyone, and will cause untold suffering. Obviously I don't think this is their intention -- I don't think people who are anti-vaxxers are psychopaths, for example. Yet they are still causing harm, unwittingly.
My question is whether we should engage with them -- assuming I'm correct about their irrationality.
Quoting 180 Proof
That's interesting. I think that's generally my motivation as well. But not always -- in fact sometimes I feel it's better without an audience, because there's less chance of embarrassment on their end and so less saving face and digging in. Whether any of it is worthwhile, I'm still on the fence about. If we assume the audience is persuadable, I think the argument is a fair one.
Quoting T Clark
That's fair.
Here's part of the problem, for me: is time better spent organizing/mobilizing those who agree, or perhaps with those who are "on the fence"/ those who are more persuadable, who really just want to understand the issue and weight the evidence?
I wouldn't call it "impending doom," but I do take climate change very seriously, yes. Nuclear weapons as well, of course. But the same applies to the pandemic -- it's only a matter of time before we're hit with one that's both highly transmissible and highly fatal. Then the stakes are even higher.
Not the best of interviews, but there are some cogent points here.
I find this to be a bizarre response, but in a good way.
Quoting jgill
There's a good argument for that -- at least for schools and workplaces. I think vaccine verification in other public places -- bars, restaurants, sporting events, etc., should also be a requirement. It's time to stop coddling people who are putting others at risk and prolonging this pandemic -- despite them not intending to, and despite their best intentions and sincere beliefs.
Quoting jgill
More or less agree -- as long as mitigation of climate change isn't the sole focus. Priority, yes -- given that we've done next to nothing for 40 years and the effects are now locked in. But at the same time, and equally important, is to immediately transition from fossil fuels.
Quoting Banno
Thanks for that.
Depends on the person, no?
I mean, some people really are too far gone to reach common ground. But many are not. If one takes a path of sympathy to these views (maybe empathy would be too hard to reach), then there are ways to tone down the craziness.
Best is to talk to those people who are on the fence on many issues than those already set in stone in terms of belief.
In my experience anyway.
:up:
Do you spend your time organizing others?
Quoting Xtrix
Yes. Hyperbole on my part.
Done. No joy.
Sometimes words might not make much difference.
At large, people just aren't (full-time or perhaps even half-time) rational, or at least evidently can't be expected to be.
Maybe some sort of more direct (or ongoing) participation (or similar exposure) would be more beneficial, who knows.
"You can make a difference by helping elderlies to and from the vaccine clinic"
"Please help us operate and document vaccine administration at the hospital"
"This week you have the opportunity of winning $2000 by getting the vaccine"
During the pandemic, there's a heightened chance of pathogen-encounters. ?
I suppose you're entitled to choose infection for yourself (however weird that'd be, and not what others would want for you I'm sure), but you're not free to further increase chances of spread or putting others in danger thus.
Most/all are rather encouraged or obligated to decrease all that, and we have reasonable ways of going about it.
Doesn't have much to do with fear or panic or evil tyrant authoritarian government or conformism for conformism's sake or whatever bullshit; has to do with common sense, doing the right thing, being socially responsible, not being a loose cannon, and history is a fine teacher.
Presumably, you're not going to sue SARS-CoV-2? What about taking part in stomping the pandemic down?
There was a woman on the BBC’s Big Questions program a while ago talking about the effects of lockdowns, in particular the student suicides that have occurred. There have also been reports of these restrictions contributing to the deaths of babies and young children. I assume you advocate for these policies, so arguably you share some of the blame for these deaths.
Stop thinking of yourself as a good person. You’re not. Hardly anyone is. My own arrogance doesn’t even extend to that assumption about myself.
You speak as if irrationality is a trait of a minority of people. I've encountered very few people who I was convinced were truly open to being proven wrong on any subject. Virtually everyone is immune to facts/reason on many or most topics.
Most people are open to being proven wrong only on minor issues, but not issues that are fundamental to a world view.
This is simple psychology. To have ones fundamental view shifted is to lose ones bearing.
Those policies are largely the result of the refusal of disrespectful, inconsiderate and selfish people to distance, mask, wash and vax. Had they played ball from day one, the policies would be gone months ago and we'd be back to where we were. Oh, and don't place the burden of proof on me. It's not mine. So no, we don't share any of the blame. It's your fault.
Yes, but not while on here of course.
Anti-vaxxer. So here's a good example of a dead end. Don’t bother, Joe.
Consider it: you’re not a good person.
I will take your input under advisement and render an august decision at my earlies convenience. Or not. :razz:
...tf? :brow:
So there are some people here and there that could a bit of extra help, psychological in this case apparently. Numbers/reports/contexts?
You skipped ...
Consider it: you’re an imbecile.
LBC radio got a caller once who had voted for the UK to leave the EU. He cried down the phone (“What have I done to my country?”) because he felt so strongly that he’d made a mistake.
How far from such feelings are advocates for these restrictions and mandates? Do they dare consider what they’ve done? It doesn’t seem so to me.
I don't know but the news is full of folks with Covid crying that they wished they'd vaxed. Some die. So there's that.
On your question, we'll have to wait a spell, I reckon. After all, we've mostly been asking politely and the harshness has yet to really kick in. Keep up your whining and they will kick in. Then we wait and find out if I and my ilk have any regrets. Then you can tell us "I told you so!" in your righteous indignation.
177 million Americans fully vaccinated.
Vaccines shown to be safe and effective.
School and workplace vaccinations have been around for decades.
We wiped out polio, once upon a time, with a vaccine.
FDA approved.
World’s leading medical experts say the same thing: get vaccinated.
Just some facts worth remembering. Anti-vaxxer bullshit should simply be ignored, at this point. If they want to refuse, fine— but they won’t be allowed in most public places or businesses. As it should be. Their dangerous ignorance and stupidity will simply prolong the pandemic, and patience is indeed wearing thin.
Quoting AJJ
From the Christian POV, what with original sin and all, NO ONE is free of sin--all capable of rot. Is this the POV to which you are hewing? I don't like the doctrine of original sin (it was cooked up to solve unnecessary theological problems). There is a common view that most people are, generally and basically good, unless and until they engage actively in bad systems--like fascism or capitalism.
Quoting Yohan
This is an accurate statement: Shifting one's fundamental views can be very difficult when it is performed under one's own volition. When prosecuted by missionaries of various types, fundamental ideas are, for all practical purposes, damned near immovable.
Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers, Covid-19 deniers, et al have the specifics of their quirky views tied to deeper fundamentals. Those who found a home for all their various resentments in the person of Donald Trump can't change their views about vaccinations for the virus. Election fraud and disease hoax are welded together. Getting vaccinated is tantamount to accepting that there was no fraud in the 2020 election.
Polio is very close to being eradicated world wide.
You can consider it rhetorical, but equally I just don’t accept that a person can be good without being able to think. And judging by the way most people argue almost no one can really think.
Quoting Bitter Crank
:100:
MAGA-hats are so far up their own sagging fat asses that those who believe TR45H won the last election will vote for him in 2024 even though he can't be elected for, what follows from their delusion, what would be a "third term" according to the Twenty-second Amendment to the US Constitution. Stupid shits! – either TR45H won in 2020 and therefore can't be elected in 2024 or he can be elected in 2024 because he did not win re-election in 2020. Unvaccinated trumptard mouth-breathers are simply immune to both logic and evidence. :shade:
update:
I've lost any shred of empathy for all those assholes who lack enough empathy to not endanger their own families, neighbors & communities. Affix a Darwin Award on their fuckin' headstones and obituaries.
Quoting RogueAI
:rofl: Sillier sounds of woo have never been grunted.
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting James Riley
Lockdown is a complicated issue. On balance, I expect you're right that the duration of the lockdowns was at least partially due to how we half-assed all the other measures, and to the degree that some people, some elected people that come to mind, were responsible for that half-assery, then those people are responsible for the duration of the lockdowns. And to the degree that the truly tragic effects of the lockdowns are a function of their duration, then those people are responsible for that too.
But I think people on the "right side" of pandemic polemics have too often minimized the negative effects of the lockdowns, and we shouldn't do that. Lives were lost and businesses shuttered forever not because of the pandemic itself, but because of bungled attempts to deal with it.
Still, it is deeply annoying that the supposedly pro-business political party in the United States was so consistently anti-lockdown when the overwhelming consensus of economists was to shut down almost everything and get it over with, instead of dragging it out until as many small businesses as possible had failed. The GOP prioritized "muh liberty" over the real (that is, more than a couple news cycles out) economic interests of their constituents. Hell, the government has been paying farmers not to produce (in targeted ways) for generations. Just do a whole lot more of that. Just for a few months. Shut down and start cutting checks. The surest way to drive barber shops and hair salons out of business was to hold up covid relief and then insist, in front of every camera you could find, that the dumbasses who voted for you have a constitutional right to get a haircut. ("Dumbasses" because either they believed you when you claimed to be pro-business -- you're not, you just want to fight the culture war -- or they knew you just wanted to fight the culture war and thought that qualifies you for public office.)
So, on the one hand, lockdowns lasted longer than they had to, not because libs get off on taking away people's freedom but because we half-assed it. Businesses failed because of the lockdowns and people under long lockdowns suffered. (One restaurant owner in my town, who I believe struggled with depression, committed suicide when she saw her life's work slipping away.) On the other hand, a lot of us were never under lockdown at all. I worked right through the pandemic, even though the store I work at was closed to the public for a couple months. But I had the luxury of pretty safe working conditions. Ask America's essential workers what they thought about the lockdowns and they'll say, "What lockdown?"
(I just hope I never again have to listen to upper-middle-class media professionals whining, a little bittersweetly perhaps, about how much it sucked spending so much time with their children.)
The fact is that we do manage to think reasonably well most of the time. I do not like the kind of thinking that a lot of people do, but that doesn't take away from the fact of their thinking.
I’m reasonably sure. I like arguing and I want to do it well. I’ve changed my mind about large issues before and I listen in particular to people who argue intelligently. The philosopher Graham Oppy has interesting things to say about the nature of arguments and his lead is one I follow in my approach to them.
But as I’ve recently posted elsewhere, in my experience almost everyone does this:
1. They say things
2. They become upset when asked to defend what they say
3. They beg the question
4. And ultimately pretend that no argument against their position has been made
If or when I do those things I’d actually like to hear it, because I don’t want to be that way. On my terms if you routinely argue in that way and can’t change that then you can’t think.
The acknowledgment of their harms is appreciated. However, I do find the view that they were entirely unnecessary compelling. The initial scare was a product of Neil Ferguson/Imperial College’s prediction that there would be half a million deaths in the UK and millions in the US if we did nothing. Neil Ferguson has a history of grossly inaccurate predictions. Lockdown began in the UK on the 23rd of March but deaths began decreasing very soon afterwards, suggesting that the important changes had come before the lockdown had actually begun, i.e. people were taking care around the vulnerable, hand washing etc.
I haven’t kept up to date with things, but the last time I was there hadn’t been any cogent demonstrations of the effectiveness of lockdowns.
Well it's not like you can do controlled trials; we'll only ever have so-called "natural experiments". I don't know what the overall evidence is either, though I recall the general opinion that the absolute lockdown that was possible in Wuhan (because totalitarianism) was widely considered effective.
On the other hand, I think epidemiologists warned from the beginning, as they did with border closings, that lockdowns are inherently leaky. They just buy you time, time that we in the US famously squandered.
It's no answer to a pandemic. It has to be part of a larger strategy and it has to be well executed and over quickly because it is not something the modern world is designed for. Where I work, we ended up laying off good people, some of whom had been with us for more than a decade. That was not a good outcome, and not what anyone -- management consultants aside -- wanted.
You can look also at the way the virus behaved in different contexts. The Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta said some time ago that despite differing degrees of lockdown between countries the virus came and went in the same fashion, indicating natural immunity was the governing force in this and not the varying lockdowns. Can it even be shown that they bought us anything at all that a request that people take care wouldn’t have? And I’d say it’s better not to trust or emulate what comes out of a regime like China’s.
I think Neil Ferguson managed to scare the world into reacting insensibly, and what we’ve seen since is justification by doubling down on the initial mistake. Fairly normal human behaviour on a tragic scale.
You just have to find a way to say that without sounding like this:
You can argue that lockdowns were a mistake because they don't work. But I wouldn't try arguing that we didn't need to do lockdowns because far fewer people have died than in some of the early speculative projections. That "smaller" number [s]was[/s] is still horrifying.
Oh, and that number was with various countermeasures taken.
So we’re seeing numbers 2 and 3 from you now, from my post about poor argument. You’re beginning to get upset (accusing me of being cavalier about millions of deaths) and question begging (it hasn’t been demonstrated that lockdowns caused fewer deaths, I’ve shared a couple of things that suggest they don’t, and pointed out that the early estimates were by someone with a history of making grossly inaccurate predications).
Not at all. I was not accusing you of being cavalier, but suggesting that you could be taken that way if you weren't pretty careful about how you compared death tolls, and how you relied on different death tolls in arguing. (I didn't say you were Buck Turgidson, just that you don't want to sound like him.)
I was also not question-begging: by "countermeasures" I meant not only lockdowns, but masking, social distancing, plexi sneezeguards everywhere overnight, all that. I've read arguments that there was never much point to constantly sanitizing everything that could be sanitized, but that was done, here and there anyway, and maybe those arguments are wrong and even that helped. I don't know.
I don't know how much a contribution lockdown made, but I've dealt directly with a lot of people who refused to wear a face mask and I've seen a lot of people be pretty cavalier (here I am saying it) about social distancing. Having most places be less crowded is a pretty good fallback if you acknowledge that some people won't take the other precautions.
Again, that's very broad strokes. I don't know what the real evidence about lockdowns is, in part because some of the most infamous super-spreader events involve people following none of the standard public health recommendations. Is it possible that, with social distancing and masking, you could have a huge wedding and be fine? I honestly don't know. Early on we thought it was spread through droplets only, not aerosols, but that was probably wrong. So just being with a lot of people at once starts to look pretty sketchy unless you have really kick-ass ventilation. Limits on the number of people in one place at a time are, in effect, partial lockdowns.
Anyway, I'm absolutely open to your argument and I think we all want to be because this is not the last time. It will happen again and next time we need to know what worked this time and what, conceivably, did more harm than good.
If you weren’t taking what I said that way then don’t say anything. If someone else does they can tell me, and I’ll tell them they’re arguing poorly.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
This is the question begging bit. There’s little cause to think the lockdowns had anything to do with the smaller death toll compared to the predictions if you’re not assuming it.
I expect we’ll keep doing the same things regardless, or including further restrictions. To lessen the response would be to admit the others were overdone and governments can’t do that without holding themselves accountable for the destruction caused by the measures.
:100:
I misunderstood what you said (the “question begging bit”). I didn’t argue that though.
Oh, I see. I thought it was the other thing. But, no, I was not trying to suggest that lockdowns were the reason the eventual death toll was lower. You seem certain that they weren't; I suspect they helped. It should be an empirical question, but it's a very difficult one, for me anyway.
Quoting AJJ
We're all good, I think. The only reason I made the point about how your point "might sound" -- and you're right, it's kinda none of my business -- is that I wanted to see questions about lockdowns discussed seriously, and that means keeping people who raise the issue from being dismissed as loonies.
Not certain, no. But from what I’ve seen, from an empirical perspective the argument against lockdowns is very strong: known to be incredibly destructive with little to show they work.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Fair enough. But then those who are inclined to dismiss their opposition as “loonies” like to do so regardless.
Always consider the possibility that if you are unable to be convinced by rational arguments that you might not be as rational and objective as you think you are.
So you have encountered "virtually everyone" have you?
So, you have experienced "almost everyone"?
Expressions like “virtually everyone” and “almost everyone” are rhetorical, not technical.
So, you are presenting rhetoric not reasoned argument?
Share some links if you have any handy.
Since we’re not writing for academic journals I consider it fine to use rhetoric in argument.
Ok.
Here’s the interview with Sunetra Gupta I referred to: https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubles-down-sunetra-gupta-interview/
Here’s an article referring among other things to the UK death rate falling too soon for lockdown to be the cause: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/no-the-nhs-was-not-overrun-by-covid-during-lockdow
Here’s the initial Imperial College/Neil Ferguson report (I think the final paragraph is worth drawing your attention to): https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
And here’s an article listing Neil Ferguson’s past predictions: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/six-questions-that-neil-ferguson-should-be-asked
To be honest, I don’t even know that rhetoric isn’t used in academic writing. The rhetorical expression “almost everyone” means “of those who I have encountered, directly or indirectly, many/most/the vast majority are/do/are like this...”
I don’t find it too egregious. I’ve encountered lots of people, some of whom have the same opinion as me and they too have encountered lots of people. I see no reason why a sample this large couldn’t be fairly representative of people in at least the Western world.
At an earlier stage of the pandemic (before vaccines were ready) the primary purpose of lockdowns (at least as I understood them) was to reduce the number of cases, some of which would be severe enough to require hospitalization. This was critical because the capacity of hospital ICUs is always very limited--both in terms of staffing and facilities. Of necessity its a low volume specialty.
Lockdown = slowdown. The fewer people mixing, the fewer new cases. The fewer new cases, the fewer severe cases. With luck, fewer severe cases means everyone who needs ICU will get it. Lockdowns and mask-wearing when public contact couldn't be avoided, distancing, and hand-washing all helped.
True enough, no one knew what to expect. If one compares C-19 to the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic, clearly 1918-19 was worse--at least 675,000 dead out of a population of 105 million. We now have about the same number of US C-19 deaths, but the population is 3 times as large --330 million. While there have been around 4 1/2 million C-19 deaths in the world, in 1918-19 there were between 25 and 50 million deaths from influenza out of a population of less than 2 billion.
There were difficulties coping with influenza a century ago. People were not always cooperative; hospital over-flow wards were swamped, never mind the hospitals proper. Far fewer effective medications for anything were available--not even sulfa drugs. Public health services were anemic or missing in action in some states.
I'm just old enough to remember polio. I had influenza in 1969 and I was very sick. There was also a 1976 outbreak of hepatitis B (which made me intensely sick), and then AIDS came along. Older gay men have certainly not forgotten how bad AIDS was -- hundreds of cases in a very small community in the Midwest, thousands of cases in larger communities on the Coasts. Years of severe sickness and then death. Now, of course, AIDS is treatable (not curable).
So, it seems like Covid 19 hasn't been the worst thing that has come along, though plenty bad enough for those who had serious to severe cases.
It is a gross generalization without any cogent basis, since neither you nor the combination of you and those you have spoken to about this could have any hope of having encountered more than a tiny percentage of those people who are interested in thinking about things critically.
It is a gross generalization and a facile attempt to bolster your own baseless position regarding those subjects you have no expertise in. Even if it were true that most people do the things you say and you are simply just doing what most others do, that in no way excuses it.
“Social media and news reports are full of stories about Covid deniers dying in hospitals. Many of those stories seem to be in good faith. It is as if they are trying to force us to marshal empathy for people who were led astray by nefarious disinformation campaigns to their own peril. The stories have all the makings of an emotional “feel good” cinematic morality play. The dying are humanized through their social roles — a dad, a mom, a veteran — all wishing in their final hours that they had done something differently.
Like many people, I am finding it hard to muster the empathy these stories try to elicit because other images are so fresh in my mind. The maskless rallies, the red-faced anti-maskers screaming at grocery store workers, the protesters hurling invectives at the schoolteachers who are begging for masks so that schoolchildren can return to school — those images fill me and crowd out my empathy.“
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/opinion/covid-empathy-grief.html
Good to know I’m not alone in my empathy fatigue.
Hospital overflow fears were driven by the unreliable death estimates made by Imperial College, whose model - according to Johan Giesecke (one of Sweden’s prior state epidemiologists) - did not take into account that hospital capacity could be increased, which happened in the UK.
This event is far more comparable to the 1968 flu pandemic, for which no measures of this sort were implemented. Going by newspaper headlines health/hospital crises happen quite regularly. This one, though troubling, appears to have been overblown to the extent that the world is now in far worse shape that it perhaps would have been if we’d done nothing at all.
I just think Trump voters and Republicans. And I remember them, after Trump won, saying "Fuck your feelings" to the left, and their coffee cups with "Liberal Tears" written on them.
Karma, bitches.
The greatest thing about Twitter (and other online media) is that it can show you how dreadful an “expert” can be at thinking. Once you truly witness this you’re free—you don’t have to listen to selected authorities, you can find others and listen to them instead. Sometimes you can even think or experience your own way around the junk these selected authorities are perfectly capable of coming out with. You learn that you don’t need a heap of credentials to be *smart*. It’s actually quite beautiful.
Yes indeed -- thank you for that.
Since he has demonstrated, over and over, that he doesn't have a clue what "begging the question" even means, there's no sense in wasting time. In my view.
:up:
:100:
There's a very real correlation, yes. The group that denies the vaccines in the highest percentage is white, male, Republican. Not a surprise.
https://www.wpr.org/gop-men-are-most-likely-say-theyll-refuse-covid-19-vaccine
Flat-Earthers, Holocaust deniers, climate change deniers, and all the rest also say this -- and often.
Credentials have nothing to do with being smart. True. But there is such a thing as expertise. Credentials are one indicator of this expertise, along with experience, research, published material, knowledge of a subject, etc., which are the more important factors.
You have none of the above. What you do is beg the question, repeatedly. Then try to hide it by accusing others of it -- using the term in a way that betrays how little you understand it.
If it comes down to the overwhelming scientific and medical consensus, or you, I choose the former. You go with "my own thoughts on this matter" -- fine, go be happy with that. But much like flat earthers and others mentioned in the thread's title, you're just wrong.
Some groups of people devalue themselves. That can aid in finding their market value.
So, my perspective is the US, not the UK. Though I have heard plenty about the UK's situation on the BBC and from the Guardian.
I'm not so sure that hospital capacity can be increased ON SHORT NOTICE, in the UK, Sweden, or anywhere else. Yes, true enough, overflow wards can be, and were, opened across the US--especially for non-ICU patients. But space is only one part of the deal. Hospitals also have to be able to expand the number of staff able to provide ICU care, which involved procedures, practices, and knowledge that an orthopedic or OB-GYN nurse would not have. Further, the ratio of patients to staff in ICU is often 1:1. Scores of skilled ICU staff happen not to be waiting in cold storage, just needing to be warmed up and put on a shift.
Some local hospitals took over closed or under-utilized care facilities and turned them into full-time ICU buildings, in order to separate infectious patients from the main hospital population. However, they could do this ONLY if they had the staff resources necessary.
What Covid-19 revealed in the US, is that the health care industry is not all that resilient. It also revealed serious deficiencies in many state-level public health departments and public health infrastructure.
Indeed, it is. Placing blame where it belongs. If they devalue themselves, that's on them. Think ISIS, if that helps.
Quoting Cheshire
It has also preceded election losses, progress and change. But what might be an atrocity for them is a net win for humanity.
Quoting Cheshire
True, if you want a market price for individuals. But if you want a market price for groups, use the groups. Think Liz Cheney and Donald Trump, as individuals, and the Republican party as a group. The first represents classic principles of the group to which she belongs. The second does not. Yet the group chose to throw her under the bus and run with the latter. By doing so, the group has devalued itself. So, the first set her market value and we can consider that, but her remaining with the group affects that individual value. But the group value (or lack there of) is a separate matter based upon their treatment of the individual.
And so I’m not going to deny that we were always going to experience hospital crises. But in the UK we now have another one in the form of massive waiting lists caused by lockdowns (that have never even been shown to be effective compared simply to asking people to take care). It seems to me the same people responsible for a deficient healthcare system implemented and advocated for a foolish policy to “protect” it when it experienced trouble.
Some are, but are they all like that?
And what issues do you put into this category "not worth to engage"?
How about those who say that the Lab-leak hypothesis of the Corona-pandemic should be investigated? Or those who claim Pakistan to be the culprit of terrorism? Or what about the attack on USS Liberty in 1967?
Remember that this is also the way to control the public discussion. In it's obvious case. Sometime the "village nut" is the only one that is talking sanity. I've experienced in my own country during the Cold War when the existence of the Soviet Union was totally given. Anybody who would have anticipated that the Soviet Union would collapse would have been marked as a lunatic. You don't engage with lunatics.
That said, unfortunately you are also correct. Most of them do already think that everybody else that "those who have seen the light" are against them. Other people are "the Sheeple", who don't use at all their own brains but slavishly repeat what is given to them. This attitude makes them already confrontational and not open for discussion. And if they get banned from sites, the feeling just intensifies.
It's a rare person who realizes this, though.
No it isn’t.
There’s a golden mean here. We don’t want to be close minded, and we don’t want to be so open minded that we fall for any charlatan out there.
Dissent — in law, in politics, in science — is very important. Minority opinion is important. Challenging prevailing dogma and consensus is important. No doubt. We all agree.
Since charlatans and ignoramuses readily use this to justify their stances, and since real dissent often looks ridiculous to establishment dogma, how do we distinguish between “real dissent” and the “dissent” of climate deniers, creationists, astrologers, and the others?
That’s the real question, and I don’t think there are any recipes or litmus tests to decipher. It’s not even a matter of evidence, since anyone can easily claim the evidence is on their side — for example, that the fossil record is evidence for the Biblical flood. Entire books have been written about that (“The Genesis Flood”).
Yet there is such a thing as correct and incorrect, true and false. So where are we left?
Personally, I like it when predictions are made— like in the QAnon conspiracy theory — because when they fail to come true (as they always do), the failure is palpable. But most nonsense doesn’t make predictions, and in fact can’t be falsified in any way.
I think all that’s left is to understand how and why people come to these immovable positions in the first place. Like with the study of cults, it usually involves social pressure and desire for inclusion, appeals to values and existing beliefs, gives a neat explanation of things, and allows members to maintain a sense of specialness.
Whether or not we can use this understanding to change minds, I don’t know. I tend to doubt it.
Quoting Xtrix
It's the basis for tribalism. The foundation of fascism. It reduces the human condition to some narrow division of ideals and places us further from a constructive process. In this particular case it makes broad equivocations; combining those propagating a pandemic with several thousand that are simply bad at physical science. It assumes the worst and distributes it.
I think I understand this argument. It acknowledges that the individual and the group ought be assessed in different ways; at least acknowledging that people are a little more complicated than this or that ascription. It leaves room for hope.
No it isn’t.
Compelling contrarianism.
While that may be true, it is also the basis for the forces required to defeat those ills. A destructive process.
It's a tool that can be used for ill or for good. Removing the tool from the work bench doesn't make all work the better.
They can be, but when they throw their lot in with X, they have branded themselves with a group and with no aid from me.
Devaluing the Nazis is a bad thing, according to new agey, pseudo-Buddhistic bullshit.
Dehumanizing is arguably bad; devaluing groups is perfectly normal, and often just.
I still argue that it is better isolate the ideas from the people. I don't think we lose anything from failing to make additional assumptions of worth. But, maybe I'm still idealistic in my non-judgement of people; based on my desire not to be judged by those who don't know me. Or a victim of the egos desire to increase its own value based on breaking down others. The narcissistic trap so many would be intellectuals fall into to.
:100: Individuals often use dehumanization to harden their hearts and make killing easier. A seasoned soldier, on the other hand, doesn't need to dehumanize to kill. The killing is a business based upon devaluation. Killing Nazis was business and business was good.
Devaluing groups in the context of war is a good strategy for war. Do we want to create a society that operates on the rules of war?
I agree, but when the people throw their lot in with, and identify with an idea, I see no problem in holding them to it, especially if doing so will free up resources for others who could avail themselves of a good. For instance, if a guy won't take the vax because it is not FDA approved, then he should not take other non-FDA approved drugs to save him from being killed by that which the vax would have save him from. If he thinks Covid is BS, he should not take up the limited resources and time of individuals who could tend to others who need those resources or time. In a tip o' the hat to humanity, we can allow him to beg on bended knee, confessing the error of his ways, and swearing off the idea he had once thrown his lot in with; and then we re-value him, treat him, save him, and send him forth as a soldier to convert his former comrades.
Quoting H. L. Mencken
Quoting Theodore Woodward
Quoting William Of Ockham
Time to drop the bombs,
Quoting Tertullian
Quoting Tertullian
See the tool example. Everything doesn't have to be either/or. There are gradients in life. But the left, in general does not stand up on their hind legs when doing so might keep us all from war. They let the right push them around and use those methods until war becomes necessary. Then they get their asses up off the couch, kick some ass, and go back to their lives. Maybe if they stood up a little sooner, engaged in a little push-back, speak a little of the right's language, then we would not end up in a war. So yeah, fuck Trump and his acolytes. I hope the DOJ burns them down.
So were the Allies allied against the Nazis.
How is *not* devaluing Nazis going to prevent one from becoming a Nazi?
I share the sentiment with regard to the struggle in today's landscape. Taking the 'high road' in the moment looks like weakness, but we forget it's a choice. It is often frustrating to play by the rules while the opponent would cheat at every turn.
Quoting James Riley
Considering things in the context of active military engagement presupposes quite a bit. I'm not sure it's suited for broad application; unless normalizing the state of war is desirable.
I'm not asking about me. I'm asking about the prospective Nazi.
Quoting Cheshire
That just makes my point about gradients and tools. Devaluation may underlie bad (which you focus on) but it also underlies good (which I focus on). You might say that if it somehow went away, then we would be all kumbha ya. Great: start with the Nazis and get back to me. You can not devalue them and then say to the prospective Nazi "Hey, see, I didn't devalue Nazis. You should thus avoid them."
To paraphrase one wag: "When Michelle Obama says 'When they go low, we go high' I'm thinking 'How about middle?'"
Quoting James Riley
A person unwilling to devalue the worst amongst us in principle, will never devalue the innocent in practice. In practice is where it matters and in principle we create the boundaries that prevent falling into the same patterns with different names.
If your going to be ruthless, then why be slightly ruthless?
Lazy.
The fact you don't say or suggest something proves a point better than argument? Hmmm. I'll have to take that one under advisement.
Quoting Cheshire
That is so fundamentally untrue as to be crazy. In fact, shit rolls down hill. Think master, house slave, field slave.
Quoting Cheshire
I've got not truck with that. I just apply it differently.
It's like getting the sleeping giant up off the couch. It's hard to be ruthless. Until it's not.
See nobody thinks "oh I know it's wrong to hate all asian americans, but I'm doing it anyway!"
No, everyone who does this sort of thing believes it's ok to dehumanize part of the human population.
You're one of those.
Sorry, frank, but you need to brush up on your analytic reading skills. We have expressly distinguished between dehumanization and devaluation. I'll wait while you catch up.
When some one arguing the counter position demonstrates the issue in a way that supports your argument; it is more compelling, than your argument.
Quoting James Riley Fair enough.
Was it the "kumbha ya" that you took issue with, or the idea that a tool taken off the bench would make the work better? If the former, then no, you did not use those words. But if the latter, maybe I missed your point. You don't like devaluation of groups. I say it is merely a tool that can be used for bad (Nazis) or good (allies) and you seem to be arguing that if no one ever devalued groups then things would be better. I used "kumbha ya" to summarize. If that is not what you are saying, then please enlighten me.
I sat with it. I went back up and re-read what I said (summarizing my understanding of what you said), and then re-read your taking issue with that, followed by my explanation. You did not use the words "kumbha ya" but your argument seems to be that things would be better if we did not devalue groups. By better, I mean all hunky dory, kumbha ya, etc. Prospective Nazis would not become Nazis if we would only refrain from devaluing Nazis. Devaluing groups is bad, like the Nazis did. It is not good, like the Allies did. What am I missing?
It worked wonders for Chamberlain. :roll:
Oh thanks. What's the mark of distinction?
Dehumanization is what it says it is: De-humanizing. Personally, I hate the term, because is implies that that which is not human is somehow less, or that humans are somehow entitled to a consideration not applicable to others. I have the same problem with the term "humane." Seems like BS to me, since I've never met an animal that was as inhumane as most folks I know. Nevertheless, I digress.
Devaluing is a different animal (pun intended) all together. Devaluation recognizes the "humanity" of the person or group that is devalued. It just notes that they are worthy of less consideration in the making of plans. An example: When Lt. Aldo Raine carves a swastika into the forehead of a Nazi POS, he is just devaluing the individual for having aligned himself with a group that is an enemy. He has usually inquired as to what the Nazi intends to do after the war, or if released. The Nazi usually says what he hopes will buy his pardon; like doffing the uniform of the group and slipping back into the status of grey man, having learned his lesson and wanting peace. That, however, is not reliable. Thus, he is branded with his own brand so others will forever know he was a Nazi. He can go back to the plow and peace, but he will have to warn others of what he is and was. He's still human. But he has not been dehumanized. Indeed, he has been accorded all that humanity would call for. In this case, that would be devaluation.
(I could go on about uniforms and ranks and groups and the reasons therefor, but it's a long history.)
So, the unprofessional, emotional, childish person would need to dehumanize the opposition in order to impose upon them that which most humans deem as applicable to animals (after all, we treat animals like shit). Whereas the professional fully recognizes the humanity of the opposition and simply devalues him in accord with his perceived worth; a worth that he himself has accorded himself by his actions and affiliations. He may be highly valued among his own, but not so much among those he dehumanized.
Hope that helps.
The dynamic Xtrix created that influenced your interpretation of my position. When he devalued the group of people that might caution against thinking like a nazi; suddenly the thoughts of the person that holds a cautionary principle is worthy only of dismissal or easily attributed absurdist views.
I'm not even saying you are wrong, only that your beliefs about my position were unduly influenced in a way that doesn't serve the truth of things. It does serve a willingness to set ourselves above others. Which is what the Nazis did. I wouldn't have selected that group as an example of who we ought give consideration toward; but if I can present a reasonable argument against the worst example, then maybe my thoughts have objective merit. I always expect and receive fair treatment in our discussions. I have no complaints.
I swear it's like arguing with the evil version of myself. Maybe, I agree with you and hold you to a higher standard because of it. But, I doubt it.
Oh. I have no idea what that means and the Nazi story didn't help explain it.
Sounds pretty benign, though.
That's okay. It's there if you want it. Or not.
Quoting frank
It is. Much more benign than dehumanization.
Oh good. Nothing to see here. Move on.
I don't think what Xtric said influenced my interpretation of your position. I was pretty much dealing with your statements alone. If anything, there is the opposites of "no devaluation vs devaluation" which I was trying to thread between: i.e. Devaluation is just a tool and not good or bad in itself. Rather, the extremes of those who wield it, or refuse to wield it, can generate an outcome that can be good or bad.
In fact, I was not saying you are wrong, only that your beliefs about my position were unduly influenced by your assumption that devaluation is inherently bad or only used for bad (and should thus be avoided). I was not saying it was bad or good; only that it is not inherently bad. Just because Nazis did it does not mean that is the only use of the tool. Nazis used guns, too. They used language, food, all kinds of things. So did we.
Your initial statement on the matter was interpreted by me as "devaluation leads to bad things." That may be true, on occasion, but that is not always true. It can lead to good things. The uniform lets us know who to shoot at and who not to shoot at. When a soldier dons his enemy's uniform, he becomes a spy. They get a whole different devaluation treatment.
Devaluation does indeed serve a willingness to set ourselves above others. That can be a good thing. Nazis, not so much. Allies, yes. I'll not cede the field to them in their use of the tool.
My devaluation did not start with Nazis but they do serve a useful foil. Most everyone is familiar with them and their use of devaluation. My devaluation started with Trumpsters/Republicans, but not everyone on this board is from the U.S. or is familiar with their level of devaluation and dehumanization of the left, so yeah, Nazis work.
Replying not to just this point, but in general to your quest:
Quoting Xtrix
The issue aren't the specific claims (whether the topic is slavery, climate change, or the pandemic, or whatever), but the basic mode of interaction.
On your part, and on the part of so many who are enthusiastic about vaccination, this basic mode of interaction is combative, it's contempt. What is more, this hasn't come into being in this pandemic, it's been there for centuries. It's become normalized.
And what many people are actually replying to, is precisely this combativeness, this contempt. That's why arguments about what ostensibly seems to be the topic are irrelevant. You have not demonstrated goodwill toward them, and that's why they don't listen to you.
Since a combative culture is already in place, one that has been combative for so long (remember, you had a civil war and multiple civil unrests), it will be very difficult to change things at this point.
President Biden will likely succeed with forcing people to get vaccinated, but this will likely only further cement the combative culture. Forcing people to get vaccinated may help to weather the covid pandemic, but it's questionable whether such force will help in the future crises that are sure to come.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Xtrix
Do you really think that farting a few quips of contempt in the general direction of those you don't like is going to make them change their minds and become more to your liking, err, "finally see the truth"?
You want the world to be the way you want it to be -- but what are you willing to invest?
What are you willing to do to change the world?
Some people who want to change the world amass wealth, armies, they seamslessly inflitrate themselves into people's lives, they take decisive action, they make an effort. But what are you doing? You just expect others to be other than they are, as if they owed you that. What if someone treated you that way? Would you change? If someone considered you a child, irrational, you'd tell them to fuck off, wouldn't you?
Should other people work hard to earn your empathy?
This is true, but in the American culture war, if that's part of the topic here, it goes both ways. We're practically famous for deep currents of anti-intellectualism, occasionally politicized, religious suspicion of education, rural suspicion of cities, and so on. Broad strokes, I know, but hard to miss.
It's not just that.
Given the combative culture that has been present in so many societies for quite some time, and which capitalism thrives on, to do what another person tells you to do amounts to admitting defeat, it amounts to submitting oneself to another person, to enslave oneself to them.
And this is what some people are fighting against, not the vaccination.
What is sometimes happening now is that if a person who previously wasn't particularly enthusiastic about vaccination gets vaccinated, the pro-vaccers interpret their decision as "Finally, you have accepted the truth" or "Finally, you have decided to listen to science" and such. And this is what is so offensive: not being allowed to own one's intentions for one's actions. You bet people are going to fight against that.
The chance for a constructive approach to the covid pandemic was wasted long ago, somewhere around the time when capitalism was enshrined as the only good and just world order. We're now reaping the fruits of having normalized capitalism.
Indeed. In fact, like a little child, I feel like saying "But they started it!" LOL!
On the other hand, it is funny to watch the right start playing the victim card when the left starts giving them a taste of their own fucking medicine. Once they get their teeth kicked in with some push-back truth, they, with the tails between their legs, come back in trying their hand at "reason" and "calm" and "gravitas". So, our aggression and devaluation has served it's purpose: It's shown these bullies what it's like to be on the short end of the stick. Now they get a little more polite, they learn some manners, and don't venture out from under the fridge unless they are prepared to act like adults. They are still wrong, but at least they aren't throwing their weight around like they have been. Good stuff.
It's not about "taking the high road" -- and it's telling that people conceive of it this way.
It's about employing a strategy that may have a better chance of success, with less collateral damage.
Contempt breeds contempt. If you attack people, they will fight back, what else? That's not a way to change them, or at least not for long.
People get persuaded by goodwill, not by arguments, nor by force.
Sure. But the pro-vaccers are trying to present their contempt as justified, and as if people who are not enthusiastic about vaccination (and they are a very versatile group) are somehow obligated to accept this contempt.
This is simply megalomania on the part of the pro-vaccers. If they really are trying to make a difference, one would expect that they would go about it more constructively, instead of using medieval methods of coercion.
I do know of an example and I lead with it: Trumpettes/Republicans.
However, you have entirely missed my distinction between devaluation and dehumanization when you say "so I don't mind killing them." That is the dehumanization used by many a human to make themselves feel better about killing, enslaving, etc.. That is a totally different than devaluation which is nothing more than an assessment of relative worth, of a person, a group, a position, etc.
If you want a non-military example of the benefit of devaluing a group of people, see every party in every election.
I don't have a solution for the "tolerating intolerance" conundrum, but I'm confident everyone being intolerant about everything isn't it.
Quoting baker
I agree at least that contempt is not helpful.
I was reminded, entering this little subtopic, of an interview I heard once with John Gottman, the University of Washington marriage expert: his number one sign that a relationship is going to fail is not arguing, but contempt.
In this context, I find that thought a bit chilling.
Intuitively, dehumanization seems like the extreme result of devaluation. I'm sure you have a reasonable threshold, but I don't see them as different types of activities.
Quoting James Riley I disagree with them, but I don't see a need to devalue them. I need people that disagree with me in order to improve my ideas. A world where everyone agrees would eliminate this activity.
Quoting James Riley Every human organization, endeavor, or product will be subject to human error. If I devalue everyone subject to error, then I devalue myself.
Notice how, in this very thread, the defeated are trying to now take the high road? Conveniently forgetting how they call vaxers "sheep" and tools of big pharma, and whatnot? Treating us like shit?
Then, once the left stands up on it's hind legs and starts bringing them some of their own shit, they all of a sudden starting crying foul. Fuck them. And the gurney they are rolled in on.
They can dish it out but they can't take it. This kind of attitude, of mine, expressed here aggressively, is then used by them as they cry to mommy, the reasonable mediator (you?) about how bad people like me are. Don't fall for it. They'll be right back to slinging shit and being bully's once they get their way.
Nah, I don't judge you either.
Of course. In cultures where contempt has been normalized, vaccination tends to go slowly, despite there being enough of the vaccine. And things are going from bad to worse.
Instead, look at a country like Denmark: they have officially ended the pandemic, all restrictions have been cancelled. Marvelous things can happen when people don't insist on contempt.
If you try to engage someone whom you believe to be irrational, then you are the one who is irrational, and at fault.
Unless you're a high politician or otherwise influential, this question is beside the point, you're just spinning your wheels, wasting time that would better be spent otherwise.
Anything can be taken to an extreme. That doesn't make it undesirable.
Quoting Cheshire
You like a hard stone upon which to whet your edge. That's a good thing. But if that stone is banging against your edge, it has lost it's value.
Quoting Cheshire
Notice your use of the word "every", "everyone". Take it down a notch. That is extreme. If you see the world in such extremes, it is no wonder you can't appreciate the nuance of relative value.
You might be right. All I know is, some times it is good to not tolerate something.
Quite the opposite. I have— they haven’t.
Which is exactly what the question pertains to. If anyone wants to enter a discussion in good faith and a spirit if goodwill, I’m all for it. But not only do they not do so, their views (through their actions or non-actions) harm everyone.
Quoting baker
I’m not interested in your continual projections and diagnoses.
They don’t “owe” me anything.
It's a rare deliberate use of a universal. All human knowledge is subject to unknown errors. It's assumed to be undeniable as the basis of critical rationalism; until critical rationalism is shown to be an error.
Go ahead and judge. It's human. Value, it's human.
It's more mundane than that. Imagine if you were to boycott the products and services provided by anyone who isn't particularly enthusiastic about vaccination. You'd be hungry, cold, homeless, and naked.
The people who aren't particularly enthusiastic about vaccination are still people who are making the economy possible. So to dismiss them just like that (either as subhuman, or as irrational or childish) is to dismiss the work they otherwise get done, and from which you benefit.
Suppose hypothetically I place a low value on a human and then fail to realize when they produce a good idea. It's only to my detriment.
I don't even know what that meant in the context of our discussion.
And blaming them is helping you how exactly?
Suppose you don't place a low value on a human and then end up a prospect? That could be to your detriment.
The position I'm putting forward is the attitude of critical rationalism. To see every person as a source of knowledge for the sake of working closer to the truth. Devaluing people is counter this particular philosophy.
There is your extreme again, assuming devaluation is the assessment of no value. Just because I think your widget isn't worth what you are asking for it, doesn't mean I think it's worthless.
So you’re indirectly answering my question: it’s not worth engaging with people who are actively harming others, the planet, etc.
Why? Because having “goodwill” towards those who are actively harming you is not only next to impossible, but undesirable.
If they’re not persuaded by reason, then force is all that remains. Hence the vaccine mandates.
Working, raising a family, gardening, reading and finding humor in many things needn't necessarily be done in an effort of looking for happiness outside.
My reference was to the Buddhist concept of looking for happiness inside. This means that one's happiness doesn't depend on how the world is, or how one manages to make it. Looking for happiness inside doesn't mean that one stops engaging with the world, on the contrary, one still engages with it, it's just that one doesn't believe that working, raising a family, gardening, reading and finding humor in many things is what is going to make one happy.
Basically, yes.
Suddenly it’s all about empathy, contempt, and how generally mean we are.
Patience and empathy have their limits. If you don’t listen to reason, evidence, and argument — you leave little recourse.
The thing is that you see yourself as the arbiter of rationality.
If you don't see the problem with that ...
Helping with what? They are to blame, bringing everyone down with them, and patience is rightfully wearing thin.
Goodwill doesn’t last forever.
You treat people like they are your underlings. And you think they should just accept that, submit to you?
Changing them.
Again, there's that authoritarianism.
What on earth makes you think that?
Nah. Righteous indignation rocks! People are addicted to it, it's orgasmic, and then some.
There was backlash before as well. So what does it matter.
Quoting baker
:yawn: More diagnoses.
I’m not doing that.
Quoting baker
I do not.
Quoting baker
Nothing to do with authoritarianism.
For me it's about more than that. I will confess to being a child in this regard. I remember all too well listening to all their shit when they were in the cat bird seat. They had their chance to reason, evidence and argument. Too late. Maybe next time. You notice how Nancy Reagan supported baby stem cells once Ronny got oldtimers? Or Jim Brady got gun control once shot in the head? And Jim Baker got all inconvenient big gubmn't regulation once he lost his kin? Or Newt and Dick are soft on lesbians when it's their sister or daughter? The list can go on about how these people only get empathy when the shit comes home. Until then, everybody is on their own and fuck them. Well, guess what . . .
And now they threaten backlash when that is what they are currently getting. The problem for them is, they always lose the backlash game. Two steps forward, one step back, the long and gentle arc of history, justice, etc. And it only progresses when the left has finally had enough.
Then it wasn't goodwill in the first place. It was pity.
Do you want to be effective or not?
It was goodwill.
Quoting baker
Effective at changing minds? Surely.
If I have to engage in endless debate while the planet burns around me, in the name of goodwill, then no— I don’t want to be effective in that way.
Blaming people, limiting your goodwill, showing contempt, considering them infantile, irrational, and so on is _not_ effective in changing people's mind.
Don't worry, cancel culture, consequences, ostracization, passports, mandates, sickness and death will be effective. They'll cry like little puppies about big bad authoritarian gubmn't treading on them, but they had their chance to debate politely on the merits of the science and consider what the experts had to say about what the experts had to say about what the experts had to say. Their bed may be uncomfortable, but they made it.
https://www.facebook.com/TheIronSnowflake/photos/a.156018051569910/1229385930899778/?__cft__[0]=AZX0qYdsLHlTE7oY1jfkxEDWY8jQLTn8tm_95uBh36D1SEPkjDrYDrtRA5ysN7IaBaXqqBSPRmUEKcejrIUc5xOVq2bWb15JXSKYf2WeJCmN8fI-QvMaT7scLQ_5wnS-gQweFE8gDRDuYBpqtlzH8qTA&__tn__=EH-R
And this:
https://www.facebook.com/TheIronSnowflake/photos/a.156018051569910/1229410574230647/?__cft__[0]=AZXdy3HRlRMz9FkddNOHk64AxCDtgYC6FLKXB-u5svbxo7kIjsbXerQ0jFV8C0jNb73SCCk32xTGgIG77KVdPOpCNBJftcrNcbSQc7ZbzgUdiuk0LSz3d8dOpdfFGI0sSl6QxZcKNNo-AGOc1rJlLo5W&__tn__=EH-R
I don't know if it's forbidden to post links like that, but if so, I'll stop. It seems kind of weak, like I'm not thinking on my own two feet, but some folks just say it better.
https://www.facebook.com/TheIronSnowflake/photos/a.156018051569910/1229235150914856/?__cft__[0]=AZUnIRGF0EOAdqgrtaPQvTmSKgbkRPq9bqfXpP2QPfiP-8_HUtHwazBVE4IbWj-DB0cQ0f4F2Pj4Nhfg6rZylsZcjn8gu3P1xPPVj2HMK-zs5pyOfQ__-ORUAgK4F-kSaI32HtzfoI7tNLaQWPj78pHL&__tn__=EH-R
It doesn't have much of a practical effect to devalue people, does it?
It's mostly like venting behind someone's back, right?
How about taking your own advice and actually get to know a person?
Actually, it does. Every time people get up before the podium and devalue the position of the opposition, people take that under advisement for the voting booth. Same with editorials. Don't even get me started on war.
It's not all venting behind people's back, either. For instance, you are here endeavoring to devalue my position on devaluing. Granted, you are not doing it to my face, but you aren't exactly doing it behind my back either. And rest assured, you could do it to my face with impunity. Sticks, stones, all that.
P.S. If you would like to distinguish between the position and the person, just remember what I've already said on that point: Ownership of the party (platform/position) reflects on the person. Not because I want it to, but because they want it to.
So we aren't devaluing people, but rather attitudes, beliefs, and so on. Works for me.
Devaluing here just means we're calling out someone's bullshit. I think it's important to realize that the deplorables we're thinking of here are doing the same thing, many of them, anyway. They truly believe it's foolish to trust the government or science or what have you. If they spend time in an echo chamber, it becomes normalized. I know people who are like this and they think I'm as deluded as I think they are.
It's become an accepted narrative in some leftist circles that the attitudes of these people are a direct result of the neoliberal policies that have prevailed since the 1980s. So far from being lice on the skull of an otherwise healthy society, they're a predictable side effect of a social disease.
I may have edited on my P.S. subsequent to your response. In any event, I do devalue people who own ideas that I likewise devalue. I believe in personal responsibility. Academic philosophy might allow a divorce, but in the real world, not so much. Parties, people, ideas (groups, platforms, members) can marry each other and, like felony murder, the driver who did not pull the trigger was still on board for the killing.
I agree that both sides do it. I know for a fact that I and my opinions are both devalued, all the time. While I am not a member of any group, per se, and while I believe "liberal" is not a person but a position, I can understand why I am deemed to be married and I accept that view unless and until I disown my spouse.
In the end, though, valuation is a consideration when deciding how much we want to spend; how valuable an idea, a group or an individual is. You, as a health care provider, may not want to distinguish between someone who honors, respects and looks up to your efforts, and another who thinks you are part of a conspiracy, full of shit and not worth listening to. That's fine. I only devalue you and your position to the extent you believe all ideas, groups and individuals are equal on your gurney. I disagree. That doesn't mean I think your value is zero. Far from it.
What a curious reaction. And here I am thinking this is a site dedicated to making comments on comments.
So little Johnny thought 5+5=11. You're going to devalue him because he was mistaken? How does that make sense?
Relative to little Sally who nailed it, yes.
Quoting frank
It makes sense because I'm not going to hold little Johnny to the same standard of value as I would for an adult anti-vaxxer who should know better. I accord little Johnny a much higher value. Nevertheless, not as high as little Sally.
Of course, there would be other factors at play. Did little Johnny assume five adult males + five adult females, one of each which procreated and had one child for a total of 11 people? Hmmm. Did he ask "5 what + 5 what? And what do you mean by +? And what do you mean by = ?" Then I would value little Johnny more. But if he was fucking off in class and not paying attention and actually thought 5 apples + 5 apples made for 11 apples, then not so much.
You've got quite the cosmic scale working there. Interesting.
The me in me says we all do it, whether we admit it or know it or not. But then, that's me. Perhaps there are some real Boy Scouts out there, some real Mother Teresa's that don't value people. For them, even Hitlers, are invaluable.
Quoting baker
I can only speak for myself. Feeling indignant is far more annoying than it is orgasmic; in fact it is not orgasmic at all. If I ever get to the point where I think righteous indignation is better than sex then I'll know I'm no longer enjoying life very much.
:up: :strong:
I really don't know what you're talking about. It just doesn't mean anything to me to value people one way or the other. I guess it's working for you, though.
As a clarification I'm stating the valuation of the widget and the person selling it should be separate matters. So, just because my widget is worth less than I'm asking; it doesn't me I am worth less because of it.
Do you find all people invaluable?
There's no way to put a value on a life.
While they may be separate matters, they can inform each other. Someone who is selling meth does indeed have a different valuation than the meth itself. I never said they tracked equally.
Okey Dokey. I guess Hitler and Mother Terresa are of equal value. One thing is for sure, you need to keep your day job and not try for the life insurance industry, or Worker's Compensation, or . . . etc.
What's your evaluation of your own life?
Quoting James Riley
wut
I've never thought about it and I wouldn't hazard a guess. You are free to do so, though, if you wish. But I'm sure you would find me invaluable. LOL!
Quoting frank
Well, since you think there is no way to put a value on a life, you should probably steer clear of industries that do it all the time, as a matter of course. Eyes, fingers, arms, toes, lives, etc. You also should not be placed in a position where, say, OBL and some SEAL are having a disagreement. Or a Nuremburg Judge and a Nazi. Or a single poor girl with a rapist uncle's baby in her belly or . . . etc. I mean, it's already a shame that you'd place me on equal footing with an anti-vaxer when we both need a vent. But you be you.
Why are you exempt from the valuation process? I mean you've got a value set for Sally and she doesn't even exist. You do.
Quoting James Riley
It's ashame that you think non-medical criteria should bear on the question. I think we've covered this ground sufficiently.
Quoting Xtrix
If most of those attributes are true, then there's no point in doing so in the first place.
I don't assume every anti-vaxxer is irrational, however. Most are; some are reachable. The question is whether it's worthwhile making the attempt, or if time is better spent on other things. I think the latter is the case, at this point.
I'm not exempt. I told you that you are free to value me. As is anyone else. I'm not selling anything to me.
Quoting frank
It's a shame that you consider failure to take the medical advice and the vax as non-medical criteria. We did cover that.
Were you selling something to Sally? Or was she selling something to you? I'm so confused. And tired. Talk at cha later.
Yeah -- at what point do we say "enough is enough, this case is settled"? When the vaccines were first rolled out, I was one of the first ones in line -- and many friends, family, and co-workers were hesitant. I totally understood their hesitancy. While I didn't accept them myself, I could see why they would have fears -- about how quickly it was created, about FDA approval, about side-effects, and generally about it's safety.
8 months, 5.4 billion shots later, FDA approval, and rigorous safety monitoring -- almost all of them have come around and gotten the vaccine. The ones who refuse even now are doing so because it's been politicized. The demographics bear this out -- Republicans being far less likely to get the vaccine.
So we're talking about all this as if this weren't the case. But it's very clear. The question is what to do about it. How many times can experts explain things, field question after question, concern after concern? It's like playing whack-a-mole.
It reminds me of the Creationists: "Where's the missing link between x fossil and z fossil?" A missing link, y, is provided. Then: "Where's the missing link between x and y, y and z?"
Time is of the essence, both with this and with climate change. Lives are on the line. Denial and immovable ignorance cannot be tolerated forever -- even if one is the Dalai Lama. The world is burning, people are dying, while we're "debating" this issue over and over again.
Sorry, but eventually we have to move on and take action. Sometimes there's simply no amount of goodwill, reasoned argument, evidence, or logic that will sway people who don't want to know or understand. Yes, they will complain, mock, sue, kick and scream -- in other words, they'll try their best to keep this pandemic going, accelerate climate change, etc. But given that their choices effects everyone else, and their choices are dangerous, I don't see any alternative beside them isolating themselves.
I wasn't selling anything to Salle. Sally was trying to sell me on the idea that 5 + 5 + 10.
:100: :up: I got it April 1st but I had waited until those more vulnerable and the health care workers had had a fair shot. I didn't want to take up a shot from those who need it more. I self isolate real well and masks don't bother me. But once it was clear they had plenty, I got it. Wife and kid too.
Worth mentioning you are starting to sound like a prophet preaching to people who would not listen. That being said, we're all going to die eventually, some sooner than others. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. There are a lot if sheep in the world to different ideas and ideologies. It's why the Taliban exists, Isis exists, political parties exist, religious groups that fight each other exist. Part of the great American experiment was to see if we could all co-exist without killing each other. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how stupid someone else's idea is, at least they're free to it and we don't have to fight each other--at least until the modernist prophets come declaring we need war to cleanse our planet...
I would have done the same, but my clients are mostly high risk, and so they were encouraging all staff as well.
Quoting Derrick Huestis
It does matter when it effects other people. These ideas do effect the other people. So no, you're not "free to it" at that point. I can't act in a way that harms others, regardless of my beliefs.
[quote=NY Times] As Americans contemplate the prospect of a second winter trapped in the grip of Covid-19, remember that it didn’t need to be this way. Vaccines were developed in record time, and have proved to be both incredibly safe and stunningly effective. Nearly two-thirds of eligible Americans have accepted these facts and done their part by getting fully vaccinated.
Yet tens of millions more have not, allowing the more contagious Delta variant to sweep across the country, where it is now killing more than 1,500 people in the United States daily. Right now, the list of the very sick and the dead is made up almost entirely of the unvaccinated. But as long as the virus continues to spread widely, it can and will evolve in ways that put everyone at risk.
Faced with this avoidable catastrophe, President Biden is right to order tighter vaccine rules, which he did for roughly two-thirds of the nation’s work force on Thursday. “We’ve been patient,” Mr. Biden told vaccine holdouts. “But our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.”
The president moved to require all executive branch employees, federal contractors and millions of health care workers to be vaccinated. Workers at private businesses with 100 or more employees will have to either get vaccinated or take a weekly Covid test. Any business covered by the order must offer its employees paid time off to get their shots or recover from any side effects.
[...]
Yet vaccine resisters carry on about violations of their freedom, ignoring the fact that they don’t live in a bubble, and that their decision to stay unvaccinated infringes on everyone else’s freedom — the freedom to move around the country, the freedom to visit safely with friends and family, the freedom to stay alive.
The Supreme Court made this point more than a century ago, when it upheld a fine against a Massachusetts man who refused to get the smallpox vaccine. In a majority opinion that echoes powerfully today, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote, “Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.”
Refusers’ hollow appeals to “freedom” are especially hard to take considering that Americans already accept countless restrictions in the name of safety: We are required to wear seatbelts, for example, and to get vaccinations to attend public school.
Speaking of school vaccination requirements, they’ve proven wildly effective. Thanks to vaccines, measles and the mumps were essentially eradicated in children, at least until vaccine opponents opened the door for them to return.
A small number of people have a legitimate reason to decline the vaccine — say, those with an allergy. Others, particularly racial minorities, are mistrustful because of their personal experiences with the health care system, or because the vaccines are relatively new. Still others have struggled to get time off work or have worried (mistakenly) about the cost.
Beyond these, it’s hard to understand any arguments against getting the shot. The vaccine made by Pfizer is now fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and the one by Moderna is expected to be shortly. [/quote]
It goes on, and worth a read. Says it all quite nicely, I think.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/opinion/biden-covid-vaccine.html
You can justify anything on that basis. Our country permits a lot, and sometimes it bothers me also. But the things that bother me would probably piss you off if I tried controlling it. We just find the middle ground and move on, it isn't worth pissing people off for. Personally, I think this is one of the best reasons for state autonomy, people have the ability to move states, but when you push things on people from the national level, boy do they get mad fast.
For what it's worth, not that you will change your opinion, drunk driving kills many people, but banning alcohol didn't work so well.
No, you can't.
Quoting Derrick Huestis
It is. I don't care who it pisses off. Smoking laws piss people off -- doesn't give them a right to make everyone take in secondhand smoke.
Quoting Derrick Huestis
Drunk driving is illegal.
If we could put a prohibition on the coronavirus, I'd be for that.
Alright fine. You're already on the side of saving the planet from climate change or it hurts people, so from now on in order to not hurt people with CO2 gas you can't travel anywhere in powered transportation except work and the grocery store. You can't visit your parents or friends or go on vacation unless you can walk or bicycle there. Since water usage has an effect on the environment, in both treatment and sourcing, and uses energy to heat when you shower, the government should now impose limits on your shower, you can only use a few gallons to wash yourself. And heating/cooling houses uses a lot of energy, and the wood to build them cuts down trees, so that all hurts the environment which hurts people so 1 person is only allowed to have a 400sqft home, and each additional person in your family allows for 200sqft, all to save energy, and the government will handle moving you if your family size changes. So a family of 4 gets 1000sqft, plenty, no more retired individuals living comfortably in a 2000sqft home they've been paying 30 years for, that hurts people!
Or we could just reduce our population down to carrying capacity. But yeah, government action is better than expecting environmentalists to reduce consumption, thus increasing supply, thus lowering price, thus stimulating demand, thus bearing all the burden while Rush Limbaugh and company roll coal and party down. It's kind of like responding when .gov asks nicely to distance, mask and vax: we don't do it and the hammer comes down. Only with climate, Mother Nature holds the hammer.
It's always the foot-dragging assholes that cause the hammer.
Tired denialist thinking.
Common.
Boring.
She is the best teacher, let her do her thing. I'm all about government stoping the waist of the wealthy, one flight in a private jet consumes more fuel then I'll burn in a year. But no, they have to bug the little guy because the people with the private jets pay for the political campaign. Get rid of first-class in the airlines while they're at it. That would make the airlines so much more efficient to carry more people and potentially require fewer planes. But once again, that affects the wealthy who pay the politicians, so go after the little guy...
Quoting Xtrix
Argue with emotion because logic is hard.
Common.
Boring.
One simply has to have general knowledge and insight to the issue. What matters even more is to understand the political biases that people have. Usually these are given far too much importance, but the easy simple way is to watch or read the different coverage of an issue. This is very useful as you can easily understand what are the facts and what part is story told in the certain way. Once you understand the bias what Fox News, RT Today, MSNBC, CNN has, it's easy to spot an agenda. The conspiracist will not do this: he or she will cling on to one true narrative and not even look at what other (false) narratives there are of the issue. Because the other is "the evil propaganda" of the "evil actors".
Quoting Xtrix
Well, let's just remember that even in this site you start to argue about mathematics something that is clearly wrong, I think those who do reply to you will have "immovable positions". The basic thing again comes down to the level of general knowledge the person has.
Without basic school level knowledge of things people will be the most insane things.
So in a triage situation you would let a charity worker die if she was in worse condition than a rapist and you were only able to give medical aid to one of them?
Irrational over-trust vs irrational under-trust.
Both sides can be immune to facts and a waste of time.
[quote=Ken Ammi]The second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he is the good guy.[/quote]
It appears that those who deny mainstream views/official explanations are of the same breed as people who have the so-called God Gene put forth by Dean Hamer - it predisposes people to (always) consider the possibility of a hidden, third-party, force/agent in all human affairs. This concealed-from-view force/agent/actor used to go by the name god, now it's the government, big businesses, and so on. The God Gene must have something to latch onto it seems. I'm probably talking about conspiracy theories more than anything else but the OP seems broad enough to accommodate my point.
If we disagree and you are wrong –> demonstrably wrong –> demonstrably dangerously wrong, then is it "fascist" to defend myself, with violence if needs be, against being subjected to the imminent danger/s which you (e.g. anti-vaxxers) advocate or present?
I'm liking this manifesto.
“Logic.” :rofl:
“Against climate change? Then don’t drive a car or heat your house!”
How original! Because we haven’t heard this denialist bullshit (sorry, I mean “logic”) a million times before. You seem satisfied with it, so I’ll let you be.
(y) ("No", I mean :smile:)
London transport staff warned of anti-mask posters with razor blades (Sep 9, 2021) :o
People going to such lengths over masking up have more than just lost perspective (if they ever had any). Sure, they'd have to be way out extremists. I'd be somewhat reluctant to feed their fanaticism.
against demonstrably (dangerously) wrong ? fascism
https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/241993676_1229838880854483_7035579705140754664_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=2EKPt-ha7_UAX8ZfbqG&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-1.xx&oh=900995b7c8f46c55369e470a920ca1ef&oe=61438079
This is misleading. Try arguing both-sides to the flat earth “debate.” It simply looks ridiculous there.
Yes, as laymen we should question those in authority.
But most of the time, our real choice lies in who we deem trustworthy— because we can’t be questioning everything at all times, and we can’t do “deep dives” into every medical, mechanical, scientific, or physical issue that we face— we rely on those with the requisite experience, knowledge, expertise to guide us as we get on with our lives.
We do this all the time. When we go to the doctor, when we go to the auto mechanic, to the bank, and even when we go over bridges. There’s a level of common-sensical trust and reliance on others’ goodness and expertise that’s taken for granted in everyday life.
This issue about vaccines is no different, as vaccines have been around for a long time, mandates have been around a long time, etc. What’s changed is the anti-vax movement and politicization of every issue. Because of this, laypeople who would otherwise get the shot and get on with their lives now feel the need to have an “opinion” about it and choose a “side.”
Many — enough to prevent vaccination targets from being met — are going with Alex Jones, “plandemic” and other such nonsense, some more sophisticated and nuanced than others. But all as wrong and misguided as flat earthers and, unfortunately, much more dangerous.
To argue that both sides are equally irrational is irrational.
:100:
"Both sides" is the media's veiled "whataboutism." They don't do it when the should (Iraq) and do it when they shouldn't (Trump).
I never really did the mask thing, used it a few times in Walmart and some other places but it quickly became unnecessarily to wear it. I think they give some people anxiety, so it isn't that they are extremists, it's more of a psychology issue. Personally, I find masks depressing, I'm glad I haven't hardly needed to use them.
Quoting jorndoe
You've obviously never met people who live in the country, there's a lot out there to kill someone, but doesn't stop them one bit. I've met a guy who as a teenager tried helping save a calf in the winter, got a bacterial infection from the calf in his brain, nearly died and lives the rest of his life thinking/moving very slow because of the brain damage, that one was preventable, but nobody changes course they keep doing their thing.
Sometimes, I think people trade physical well-being for psychological well being. People in the country might be considered stupid for their stance, but at least they are far happier than those in the city with so many rules and mandates.
For me, I chose what works for me. I took the vaccine and use the mask when obligated, which isn't often. Works for me, I've never gotten covid, and if I did and died oh well, at least I died a free man.
No, self defense has a legal definition. I'm not sure how I made this list or if it's composed of dangerous anti-vaxxers. The OP list 3 or 4 different ideas and suggest those that hold them are lesser people. I was stressing a cautionary principle against putting people in groups and devaluing them collectively. It was acknowledged, but not really embraced. Simply, don't become the monster you seek to defeat.
Better yet, don't create the monster that you don't want to fight.
I'm not just talking about covid and vax. I'm talking about the way the right treats the left when the right is in charge. What goes around, comes around. Try a little compassion, empathy, consideration, respect. Otherwise you end up creating people like me: not really the touchy-feely lib.
I actually agree more than my position in this thread would suggest. It's painful to watch the left gain power and fracture or pander to the center. I would be all up for using an any means necessary under the law approach to politically crush a lot of what the right seeks to do. In reference to anti-civil liberties and voter repression. I just won't hate them while I do it.
I agree. Hate is the difference between dehumanization and devaluation. The professional has a hard time looking objectively at the job that needs to be done when he's got his hate all spun up. But the job that needs to be done can be misinterpreted as hate, especially by those who are uncomfortable with crushing a lot of what the other side seeks to do, not to mention how the other side perceives it when their pet privileges is getting crushed. Notice how they then pivot from tough-guy-asshole to "reasonable, moderate, let's-all be calm and logical as we approach this." Some even take up the banner of peace and forgiveness. Fine. But your shit still needs to be crushed.
It's the one I often get from you.
So why don't you sue them?
Prove that what they are doing is reckless endangerment or even deliberate endangerment, and sue them, like every decent American would do.
Oh, and "to affect" and "to effect" are two different verbs.
Given that people typically identify themselves with their beliefs, their attitudes, etc., to question those beliefs is to hurt those people.
- - -
Quoting Derrick Huestis
I think people often do that. Even as a rule.
What on earth are you talking about??!!
Quoting baker
Quoting baker
Quoting baker
It's on you to spell out what exactly it is that you want, and then act in ways that will lead to your goal.
There are no leftists in mainstream American politics. There are just different varieties of right-wing authoritarianism. It's what makes American Republicans, Democrats, and Liberals so similar.
Well, look at so many people in these discussions: they brim with righteous indignation, they seek it.
Andrew Yang?
I stated a truism. I'm not misleading
Quoting Xtrix
It's good to keep a level of skepticism for all people at all times.. Because basically nobody is totally rational or virtuous.
Quoting Xtrix
I meant to say that both sides, those who are married to mainstream narratives, and those married to counter-mainstream narratives can both be immune to facts. Being married to a narrative is irrational in itself. Why marry any narrative?
Not sure what's going on here. I'm actually in favor of vaccine mandates.
I'd be really curious to know why you think I'm an anti-vaxxer -- if you do, the grammar here's a little unclear to me.
Same here.
I gather that because I didn't exibit an enthusiastic belief in vaccination, that automatically made me an anti-vaxxer in their eyes. And from then on, they see fit to hurl all kinds of insults and accusations at me, and they ignore everything I say that doesn't fit their hasty image of me.
He only counts as "left wing" if that means "not a Republican".
Sanders supporters were convinced Yang was a libertarian trojan horse. Nobody on the left, or that thinks of themselves as on the left, ever had time for him. He likes capitalism.
So, hey, @180 Proof, wtf?
It's kinda like the "black face of white supremacy" thing, the words don't mean what the words mean. It's just a tricky deceitful way to discredit people to push a political agenda.
Though not free of the virus (which took your freedom).
Born and raised. And I know us rural folk are the first to run to Uncle Sugar's tit, and we rely on anti-biotics like crazy (for us, not just livestock). As to happiness, I've found it's relative presence rather evenly spread around the world. You are correct, though: I wouldn't trade the sticks for city living. Freedom ain't worth shit if you don't have a place to be free in. Some folks just like the company of other people. I want to keep them there, and not out here. One way to do that, is to help them weather this shit storm.
Nobody is free from death, but we can be triumphant in it. Socrates, Jesus, early Christian martyrs (the famous first Stephen)--their names and stories have remained with us for thousands of years, immortalized, because they didn't fear death. You're free to be a coward, but I've said elsewhere, although I don't have a death wish and will do basic things to protect myself, I will not let fear control my life. Death is not my enemy, living a worthless life, holed up in a room afraid of the dangerous world outside is worth than death, so death by some virus is more than welcome to come for me if this is the alternative.
That's their problem, not mine.
I personally like these kinds of storms, probably because I view them as revealing the crap we had buried. We'll probably come out of this crappy storm better off, just got to weather it...
I hope so. I've seen some social media memes that I thought were good in that regard. There are some folks out there looking at making a good thing out of this. As one elder said, it could be a hole to fall into, or a door to walk through. It's up to us. I just don't want to see a mass exodus from the city out to the empty quarter. My nearest neighbor is 2.5 klicks away and I like it.
Sure, when you have the luxury which is often up to monster. Some dangers are zerosum, bordering on lose-lose (pyrrhic), where it takes a monster to defeat a monster. Last resort, yeah; but not unthinkable.
You think it's a truism, but it isn't. It treats everything as if there are "two sides," and there aren't. Are there really "two sides" to whether the earth is flat? No. Also, even in less extreme examples, like with climate change, where one person is in concurrence with the overwhelming scientific consensus and the other isn't, it's completely misleading to suggest they're equally irrational.
Quoting Yohan
Both are non-experts who choose who they trust. If one trusts the overwhelming scientific or medical consensus, that's simply a better choice than the other non-expert who chooses to trust Internet conspiracy theories.
:rofl:
How utterly pathetic that this is the hill one chooses to die on -- vaccines, during a pandemic. In their minds, this is akin to Socrates and Jesus. Imagine that.
No one cares if you die or not. Feel free. The issue is other people. Again: you want to smoke -- fine. You want to smoke around me? You will not.
It becomes your problem if you set out to change their minds.
You can read what people are saying; I don't know what gives you so much confidence that you know what they're feeling.
Sue who?
Quoting baker
Affect and effect are overlapping. I decided a while ago not to bother with "affect."
How pathetic that you resort to this, by the way. Can't say I'm totally surprised.
Quoting baker
I'm not interested.
Wonderful.
Dude, look at what he said in the sentence right before the one you quoted:
Quoting Derrick Huestis
The demon that started this thread titled it with exactly 5 different groups of people. That is a fact.
I am referencing a principle on how one might approach any given group. I don't know which of the five you see as a killer counterexample to the principle. I imagine I would agree. If I begin discussing tactile approaches on a specific group, then I'll make sure to note(write down) it in the preceding title; top section of the document.
Having said that anti-vaccination sentiment does seem to come down to distrust and fear of authority. And I can understand that; I also entertain a certain distrust of government and corporations; it's just that it doesn't extend to the kind of wild speculations to be found in conspiracy theories.
I guess you couldn't read between the lines, so I'll spell it out: what was said still applies, whether vaccinated or not. HIs entire comment was based on a straw man anyway.
The "them", the "those people". Those in the title of your thread.
*sigh*
You know, it would help your case to spell properly. Mixing up verbs like you do makes you look irrational and emotional. And incompetent.
So you have a goal (to change other people's minds), but you're not interested in getting to that goal.
How ironic that you spell _that_ out.
I do admire your confidence, though.
That's too simplistic. I find that I distrust people in positions of power who pretend to be friendly toward me, but who also have at their disposal lethal force and a track record of using it.
If they're going to be the authority, they should stop fooling around, stop mincing words, and act as actual authorities, instead of pretending to be paper tigers, when it's clear they're not paper tigers.
So sue Creationists and flat-earthers, etc?
I won't bother following this line of thought. But thanks for the tip.
Quoting baker
No, it doesn't. You say this because you yourself are emotional. Affect and effect are often used interchangeably. There's a subtle difference, but both convey the same basic information to English speakers.
It does make you rather pathetic to bring this discussion into spelling, however. Revealing -- so thank you for that. Now I know not to waste too much time on you in the future.
Quoting baker
That's not my goal and wasn't the question of this thread. If I could snap my fingers and change people's minds, fine -- but in the real world, I know very well it often can't be done and is, essentially, a waste of time. Much like this discussion with you.
Quoting baker
Good luck with your spelling bee.
I am speaking of motives or attitudes. Not views.
Also, there is nothing inherently irrational with being in concurrence with the overwhelming scientific consensus. Group think can infect any institution.
Quoting Xtrix
Some experts are counter-mainstream narrative.
Quoting Xtrix
If a minority expert offers more compelling arguments for their views than the "overwhelming scientific or medical consensus" than it is rational believe them.
Using the word 'simply' is a red flag for me, btw. Often it means someone is trying to make a nuanced case appear simpler than it is.
I agree.
Quoting Yohan
You're in no position to judge if it's more or less compelling. Which is why plenty of people get sucked into Alex Jones. He's very compelling, too.
Batrachomyomachia!
There is also nothing inherently irrational with not being in concurrence with the overwhelming scientific consensus.
Quoting Xtrix
I talk about minority experts and bring up as an example, Alex Jones?
Put your money where your mouth is.
Am I in a position to determine who I can and cannot trust?
If two experts are not in agreement, is it always safer to bet on the expert who has more experts agreeing with them?
There is. If we know nothing about a subject, and care about truth, accuracy, well-being, etc., then the rational choice is the consensus view. If we actually want to do a long-term, deep study on the issue, or have some expertise ourselves, then there's nothing irrational about holding dissenting views. For the laymen, however, there is.
Easy example: climate denial. If we care about the planet, as laypeople, then we should trust the overwhelming consensus. It is irrational to do the opposite -- because that's going against our goal. The correct choice is to go with not what feels good, or makes us feel special, or aligns with our religious or political affiliation -- but with what's true. If we can't decide for ourselves if something is true or not -- and we usually can't -- then our only choice is to trust others. If we decide to trust Alex Jones over the CDC, that's irrational. If we choose to trust Sean Hannity over the IPCC, that's irrational.
Quoting Yohan
He claims to be an expert. So does Donald Trump. But fine -- take dissenting expert views. We're in no position to judge that either.
99 doctors tell you you need surgery on your heart or else you'll probably die, and 1 says you shouldn't -- knowing nothing else, what do you do? (Assuming you want to continue living.)
Seems like an extreme example -- but that's exactly the level we're at with, again, climate change. (Actually it's said to be around 97%, but other studies have it higher, and I suspect it is.)
I'll give away the answer: you go with the 99% of doctors. It's as simple as gambling: do we put all our money on an event that wins 99% of the time, or not? Of course we go with the greater chances of success -- again, assuming we wish to win money and not lose money.
How do we know that going with the majority of experts is more likely to be true, or more likely to give us the results we want? What about in harder cases where there's less agreement? Can we really put a number on it the way we can with the roll of a die? All those questions are important, too.
Quoting Yohan
The choice about who to trust is up to each one of us regarding things we don't understand.
Yes, affect and effect are different. One is a verb, one is a noun. I choose not to care about it, since the meaning conveyed is the same, and its so trivial as to be embarrassing to go on about. But you two have fun with it. Small victories, I guess.
"If when you are out of Breath, one of the Company should seize the Opportunity of saying something; watch his Words, and, if possible, find somewhat either in his Sentiment or Expression, immediately to contradict and raise a Dispute upon. Rather than fail, criticise even his Grammar." - Franklin
:kiss:
Are you saying I shouldn't take horse deewormer and shit my pants in the grocery store? Or end up shitting all over the ER?
Depends on your goals...
So you confess this discussion was worthless from the beginning, then proceed to blame the worthlessness of it on someone else? Maybe you could at least add a paragraph break between these contradictory statements. If we're going to devolve this discussion into a series of pointless insults, we might as well to a good job of it...
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Xtrix
A wonderful example of a reluctant evolution in understanding.
Boy would I love to be able to trace Covid by a preponderance of the evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt. But that's the thing about viruses: some filthy POS can spread it all over hell and gone and not be caught. That's why suing is fundamentally stupid, like those who would propose it under current scopes and standards of review and burdens of proof. That's why government comes in and forces the filthy POS to isolate, mask or vax. Government IS the solution in this case.
No.
"But should we engage for the sake of others who are rational but "on the fence"?"
That was the question.
The discussion with Baker wasn't a complete waste, I suppose. Now I know something about engaging with him in the future.
Don't forget what you discussed with me on my discussion, x=x and ~x, so therefore the government is the solution and the problem, we should promote it and get it out of the way. That is, unless you suddenly changed your mind about all that...
I didn't change my mind. I just distinguish between the metaphysical and the political. You know, I don't conflate two different discussions. But yeah, if you want to, I'll not only say government is the solution, but it's the problem, and there is no government, no individual, and yet there is. And there is no problem, and you and I aren't even having this converstation.
So there's that.
But it's not what they say.
You might be right. I tend to agree with your diagnosis. I tend to think you and I are on the side of reason and democracy and all that's good. I tend to think some of the loudest voices on the other side are just plain lying when they say they're standing up for what we are actually standing up for.
But I don't believe that the entire audience for those folks knows they're lying. I think a lot of them believe it. There's some bad faith there, no doubt; some of that audience eagerly laps up the rationalizations offered for their prejudices. It's a fact. But it's not all of them.
And it's not what any of them say. Both sides in our culture war claim to be the good guys. I think when it comes to the exemplars on this forum, both sides actually believe it. Both sides think the other side is the enemy of everything good in the world. (Okay, obviously there we have to make an exception for evangelicals because they wouldn't piss on the world if it was on fire. And it is.)
Do we just try to bully them into a Are we are the baddies? epiphany?
The next president is probably going to be a Trump clone, so all the flat earthers will be in charge again. Should you consider expatriation so as to find valuable community members?
Experience is the mother of wisdom, don't you find? It doesn't matter much what I say.
No, I have friends in low places.
Power is usually frugal, starting nice and working up. When it fails to persuade with reason, power just bullies; but not into an epiphany. These people will never agree they are wrong. But the subjective understanding of the oppressed is irrelevant. Gubmn't asked nicely; no joy. Next step, passports, mandates, etc. The oppressed will have a choice: Come around, suffer the consequences of not coming around, or revolution. These people will come around. But why try to convince them? That horse done left the barn. They've killed untold numbers of people already. Time to turn up the temp and listen to them wail about fascism. Talk to the hand, bitches.
That is unless the Supreme Court rules that power overstepped it's bounds, but we aren't there yet.
Right. This is happening, one way or another. It's completely legitimate. Refusal to understand or "agree with" the law isn't an excuse when you're pulled over for drunk driving. Nor is it an excuse when asked to leave a restaurant for smoking inside.
They're killing people and prolonging this pandemic with their ignorance and stupidity. The ones who are really to blame are the people they trust: talk radio conservatives, Fox News pundits, social media stars, misinformation super spreaders, and politicians along for the ride.
When Trump gets booed for saying "Take the vaccine, it's good" -- you know the monster is unleashed and there's no going back. Still, it was Trump who helped create the monster.
Is it someone who is opposed to vaccinations?
Or is it someone who does not want to get a vaccine themselves, but is fine with others getting one?
Or is it someone who is fine with getting one themselves, and fine with others getting one, but doesn't believe others should be 'made' to get one?
I mean, I am an anti-vaxxer in the third sense (although I'd say 'anti-vaxxer' would be a misleading term to refer to me by, as I am not opposed to vaccinations and am very much in favour of me getting one).
I don't think there's any reasonable, ethical basis for forcing people to get vaccinated. You have the right to refuse medical treatment. And in this case, refusing to be vaccinated means one exposes oneself and others who have made the same free decision as oneself to greater risks, not innocent others. Unless, that is, the vaccine is not very effective - but then it'd still be unjust to force others to take it, for if it is unjust to force people to take an effective vaccine, then a fortiori it is unjust to force people to take an ineffective one.
Just came across this. Seems about right.
Quoting Bartricks
There's plenty of literature on this. It has been a movement for a while, in fact. Generally it's exactly what the label says: being anti-vaccines. Won't get their kids vaccinated, believe vaccines cause autism (yes, that's still out there), etc.
I remember hearing years ago about how the flu vaccines have mercury in them, how they "give you" the flu, etc. So the seeds have been there for a long time.
Quoting Bartricks
So far no one is being forced to get one by law. That's not what's being proposed. Mandates, so far, are about workplaces and schools mostly. Many have the option to either get vaccinated or get tested more frequently. Everyone has the "option" to resign (or not go to school) if they don't like either. It's odd that mostly conservatives are screaming about this, yet are the first to say "You're free to leave your job and work somewhere else" when poor working conditions are brought up. But when a legitimate reason is given, suddenly they all become Eugene Debbs.
Quoting Bartricks
If by "forcing" you mean what I described above, there is most definitely an ethical reason for doing so: the lives of those OTHER PEOPLE who share a space with said refusers.
It's baffling this is hard to understand, considering we've had school (and work) vaccination requirements for DECADES -- for reasons very easy to understand.
Quoting Bartricks
No. This is a mistake. Listen to what the overwhelming medical consensus say about this -- it's not hard to do. Takes a few minutes, and is well advised.
This is not simply an individual choice. If it were, there would be no push for it.
That's still ambiguous between being opposed to anyone taking them, and simply being opposed to taking them oneself.
For instance, I think crystals are a waste of time. But I am not opposed to people decking themselves out in them if they really want.
So, I am opposed - very opposed - to anyone being made to get a vaccine. I think it is wise to get one. I think it is irrational not to, given that any risks that attend the vaccine are likely to be even greater from the virus itself. But I am opposed to anyone being made to get one. And I am very much opposed to the state using the powers at its disposal effectively to force people to get one.
I am not in the US, but as I understand it, that's exactly what's happening. And it is disingenuous in the extreme to suggest that merely forcing companies with over 100 employees weekly to test all of those who haven't got one doesn't amount to such an act of forcing.
I am opposed - very opposed - to the government (any government) doing anything other than recommending getting one. Which is all I would do - I recommend people get one if they can. But it would be quite wrong for me forcibly to inject someone or to do things that amount to something similar, such as issuing threats to you until or unless you get one or mounting a campaign of harassment against you if you don't have one.
Now, given what I have just said, do I qualify as an anti-vaxxer? I am not opposed to the existence of vaccines, nor do I disbelieve in their effectiveness, nor do I think that it to mess with a divine plan to try and come up with them; nor am I opposed to others getting them; and I intend to get one myself. But given what I have just said - given my opposition to any government (or indeed, anyone) forcing or menacing anyone into getting one - am I an anti-vaxxer?
Quoting Xtrix
I think a handful of people have actually addressed the question.
The conclusion I’ve reached is that it is indeed worth it, provided there’s a neutral, persuadable, or otherwise reachable audience to witness the exchange — and that keeping ones temper, sticking to logic, facts and evidence, and maintaining a respectful tone is the best approach.
I’m reminded of the well-known destruction of William F. Buckley by Noam Chomsky on "Firing Line" in 1969, discussing the war in Vietnam. What could be more persuasive to those “on the fence” about the issue then witnessing something like this?
https://youtu.be/9DvmLMUfGss
The difference is that Buckley is not in the same league as those mentioned in the thread’s title, in my view.
I’m opposed to people being made to stop smoking, though I think it’s wise to stop. But this isn’t the question. Why? Because (1) we’re not talking about making this a law and (2) this is not simply an individual choice.
It’s (2) that continually gets ignored, and why patience is wearing thin. It’s ignored because science and medical expertise is ignored. It’s misunderstanding what’s being aimed for and misunderstanding what vaccines do, and also failing to take into consideration the factor of mutation. It’s not simply “well what do vaccinated people care? They’re protected!”
If people choose to smoke in public places, I’m no longer opposed to them being stopped. I think you understand why. The exact same thing applies to vaccines. But again, no one is proposing a law. So I would think you have a much stronger resistance to smoking laws?
Quoting Bartricks
Who cares?
My personal view: no, I wouldn’t categorize you this way. You don’t sound anti-vaxx, you’re just anti-mandate for in my view misguided reasons.
So, if the vaccine is effective - and I am going to assume that it is, and believe that it is - then those who freely decide not to take it are exposing themselves and others who have made the same choice to a risk.
What's wrong with that? Whose rights are they violating? It's imprudent - but lots of things are imprudent. Punching yourself in the face is imprudent. Not taking enough exercise is imprudent. My friend Sarah's dating decisions are imprudent. But in none of these cases are anyone's rights being violated. Am I entitled to stop Sarah dating Steve because Steve's a bloody gold-digging pillock and will take her for every penny she's got? No. At most I can advise against it, but not actively intervene.
Likewise, deciding not to get the vaccine is stupid, but people are entitled to do stupid things so long as doing them doesn't violate anyone else's rights. Right?
Incidentally, the relevant experts in this scenario are not the scientists, but ethicists. For this is a normative issue, not a scientific one. The science can and should inform the ethical judgement, but it can't be a substitute for it, for scientific claims are simply not normative claims.
So, the experts we should be listening to here are professional ethicists, yes? Guess who's one of those?
Not true. Innocent people have died because they could not get a bed. (By bed, I mean all the staff and kit that goes with it). These people didn't have covid. They had accidents or other illnesses that hospitals usually have room for.
Quoting Bartricks
I'd give an option: Stay away from the public and stay out of public spaces. Problem solved.
Quoting Bartricks
See above. And, if you do get sick, don't go taking up a bed. Stay at home and ride it out. Die? Tough shit.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes. Or they can stay at home, away from the public and out of public spaces.
Is there any case where you would change your position?
For instance, I read some time ago that Covid is, quite literally, nothing compared to what could happen with other unrelated viruses should they: 1. make the leap from the animal to man; 2. be airborne; and 3. be easily transmissible. The worst case scenario being a pandemic that wipes out 70 or 80% of the world's human population in a matter of months.
If there was a biological agent, free and easily injectable into the human body that would stop this in it's tracks if everyone took it, thus preventing variants and pass-throughs, and if the physical down-sides were no worse than the Covid vaccine, would you stick to your guns?
(If I recall correctly, the hypothetical is actually probable if human population continues to increase and if there were no countervailing medical rescues. Apparently it happens in nature all the time when a species gets beyond carrying capacity.)
If you would stick to your guns, fine. But if not, can you articulate where and when the line should be drawn? Or are you just saying "This isn't it. We aren't there yet"?
They did not violate those people's rights. You're blaming the wrong people. It was those who determined who does or does not get a bed, if anyone, who violated those people's rights (not that anyone has a 'right' to a hospital bed).
Yes, that is what everyone can freely decide to do. So, those who - despite being vaccinated themselves - are paranoid about getting seriously ill from those who haven't been vaccinated (a concern that is silly if, that is, the vaccine is effective) - can stay at home if they so wish. Similarly, if they do not want to go to work anymore out of an irrational fear of those who have not taken the vaccine, then they can, once more, stay at home. They'll be sacked, of course. But that's their choice to make.
Quoting James Riley
Not sure what you mean. But I'll say yes, as I am extremely reason-responsive. Give me a good argument and I'll change my position on anything - literally anything. I'll respond to the rest shorlty
If there is a right to health care (some think there is), then they forfeited their right and by doing so and then taking up a bed, they violated the rights of the innocent. They took their filthy disease to the hospital. They should have stayed at home. They had a chance to vax, did not, and went to the hospital. Should they have been turned away? Yes. But they should not have gone in the first place. They should not have put the Hippocratic Oath types in that position.
You're confusing different issues. What I am talking about is making people take a vaccine.
So, there's a vaccine freely available. Those who want it can take it. And they will now be protected from the virus - or at least, from getting seriously ill from it.
And there are those who - for whatever reason - do not wish to undergo this medical procedure. That's their right. I personally think it is unwise. We - most of us - have instrumental reason to take the vaccine, for whatever risks it may carry are less than the risks posed by the virus it protects against. And so given that it seems inevitable that we'll all be exposed to the virus at some point, it is wise to get the vaccine. But that's a prudential obligation, not a moral one.
Those who decide not to take the vaccine are not violating the rights of others. Far from it - it is those who want to make them take it for their own good who are violating their rights. It is a constant danger - the danger of imposing your own conception of the good life on other people.
So that's this issue: this issue is about whether you can make adult free agents do things for their own good, or whether you have to let them decide for themselves.
Wrong. The burden is upon those who don't vax to not have covid or stay home. Those who vax can go back to the public. It's not a matter of paranoia. It's a proven fact. Have you counted the dead? The burden has shifted to those who don't vax to stay away from the public and out of public spaces. I sincerely hope the government uses all that power you are afraid of to make it so.
Quoting Bartricks
I just did. And not a Chicken Little hypothetical, but a scenario that the Obama Administration started to spin up some plans for before Trump trashed them.
I don’t see how you could read my response and not see exactly where I object.
Nevertheless, you ask why. Why do you agree with government “flexing its muscle” about smoking in restaurants? Because we agree with what science and medicine has discovered about second hand smoke — since this has effects on others, it’s a legitimate use of power.
Likewise, if we accept the science about vaccines, and listen to the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus, we would quickly conclude that this “mandate” is legitimate as well—just as it is in schools and many workplaces over the last several decades.
Quoting Bartricks
I addressed this:
Quoting Xtrix
You’re just misunderstanding what experts are telling us and what the goals are.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes. My smoking example is a good one.
What happens when someone smokes in a restaurant, however? Why is that against the law? Why do restaurants have bans on them? Are they unjust?
You have a right not to take a vaccine. But you do not have a right to come to the workplace, the school, the concert, the sporting event, or the airplane and infect others — whether others are vaccinated or not.
You’re also contributing to allowing the spread, which encourages variants — variations which may become more deadly and perhaps resistant to vaccines altogether.
Quoting Bartricks
The scientific and medical experts are what’s relevant here. If we understand how vaccines work, about viruses, about pandemics, etc., then we can decide what to do — in this case it’s a trivial and obvious decision. Just as it is if we understand the science of secondhand smoke— and just as it is in school vaccinations for the last half century.
Quoting Bartricks
The experts we should be listening to are doctors.
No, I am not. I'm giving you a scenario that is identical to the current situation, only with a worse bug.
Quoting Bartricks
So 70 to 80% dead because they chose to exercise their right. Got it.
Quoting Bartricks
No, that is not the issue. No one (except the Hippocratic types) cares about their own good. They can die as far anyone is concerned. It is the rest of civilization, including those who can't vax or who are immunocompromised that matter. Remember, you have three to four months and no variants or pass throughs allowed or everyone is dead.
Well I don't think there is a right to health care.
If I go to a bookstore and buy the last copy of a book you want such that you can't now buy it, I have not violated your rights. Your issue is with the bookstore owner, not me.
If I get sick and go into a hospital and am given a bed such that you now can't get one, I have not violated your rights. Your issue is with the hospital's practices, not me.
Now, you have asked if I will ever change my position - I assume you have asked that becasue you now think I'm a dogmatist. Why do you think taht given that I am arguing every step of the way? That's the mark of a non-dogmatist.
Locke argued - and I think he's broadly correct (it is a bloody good guiding principle anyway) - that the state is not entitled to do to us what we would not be entitled to do to each other in the state's absence. That, like I say, seems broadly correct, and seems correct for good reason: we do not get our rights from the state, rather the state's justification rests on its ability to protect our rights. And thus the rights the state is justified in protecting are not ones that it - the state - creates, but ones we had anyway. And thus, the state is not entitled to do to us what we would not be entitled to do to each other in its absence.
That's not a dogmatic view, but a highly rational one. And there will be grey areas - grey areas precisely becuase it is sometimes not clear what we would be entitled to do to each other in the state's absence.
But if you want to take risks with your life - if you want to engage in dangerous sports and so on - then that's not something I'm entitled to stop you doing. Not until or unless it violates my rights.
And if someone sets up a hospital and undertakes to treat you if you injure yourself, that too is something they're entitled to do. I mean, that's nice and doesn't violate your rights.
But that person - the person who sets up the hospital - is not then entitled to stop you engaging in dangerous sports because they don't want to treat you, or want to free up bed space to treat others. Yes?
So the state is not allowed to do those things either.
Where's your argument? You're just stating things.
The unvaccinated are not posing a risk to anyone other than the unvaccinated. So, if vaccines are freely available, then they are not violating anyone's rights and there's no justification for restricting their movement. That's as stupid as insisting that skateboarders at a skateboarding park are violating 'my' rights because they might injure each other. It's just silly. They're posing a risk to each other. Which they're entitled to do.
This is simply incorrect. You’re not listening to what doctors are saying. They’re not encouraging everyone get vaccinated simply because they’re nice.
No, Riled-up, it is 'ethicists' we should be listening to. Ethicists are experts on what it is right or wrong to do. Doctors are not. And this is an ethical issue, not a medical issue. It 'concerns' a medical issue, but what we're talking about are the rights and wrongs of it......which is not a medical issue, but a normative issue.
So, once more, the experts here are the ethicists. Where do you get your car fixed? The dentist?
Explain. Is the vaccine effective? If it is, then they're not posing a risk to the vaccinated. If it is not effective, then yes - I agree, they're posing a risk to everyone. But then there's no point in forcing people to take an ineffective vaccine.
I have, incidentally, been listening to the doctors, and they're not pressed on this. And they're not ethicists, so perhaps they don't understand the ethical significance of this issue. Or perhaps they rely on the fact that most people don't know which are the relevant experts to be listening to and consulting. He/she's a doctor......so their judgement about what I ought to do must be correct! It's an expert judgement. Only it isn't.
Medical doctors aren't experts in ethics.
Do you agree, in principle, that if your choices are posing no risk to anyone save yourself and others who have made the same choice, then no rights are violated and no-one has the right to stop you doing what you're doing?
Then you shouldn't have a problem with the perps staying home, whether they want to or not. Good.
How about if my vaxxed wife needs a bed and a vent some reason; can I go in and clear a bed from some POS anti-vaxxer who's sick with Covid? He's got no right to be there, right? Can I compel the Dr. to treat her? Health care is not a right, so I suppose I could pay to have the POS tossed?
Here's the deal: You and I disagree. I already owned up to NOS that I am his (and your) worst nightmare when it comes to the state wielding it's power like a fucking sledge hammer on this issue. I'd support the state if it branded a forehead with a "T", put an antivaxxer on a train, take them to a camp where work will set them free. And you know why? It has nothing to do with covid or a fear of covid. Rather, it has to do with my subjective perception of the type of people who would jeopardize the health of others for no other reason than to be an obstinate, petulant, disrespectful, inconsiderate, selfish, rights-wielding child who just thinks he's a rebel defending some righteous cause of Locke or whoever.
If there is a good anti-vaxxer out there, I'm sorry, but they are forever branded by Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and their type. How does it go: Guilt by association? Yeah, that's it. GO GOVERNMENT!
Time for bed. Discuss among yourselves.
No, it’s doctors we should be listening to. Mostly virologists, epidemiologists, infectious disease experts, etc.
What’s “riled-up” mean here?
Quoting Bartricks
Doctors don’t consult “ethicists” in the ER. Medical ethicists — like Art Kaplan — are useful for tricky issues, but it’s usually very clear what is to be done. If someone is rushed in and needs surgery to live, you give them surgery. You don’t consult an ethicist about whether it’s right or wrong.
Incidentally, medical ethicists I’ve read are in agreement about vaccinations.
This is really your reasoning?
Did you say you were an “ethicist”?
Quoting Bartricks
Or perhaps you don’t understand medicine or virology— which is in fact the case, given what you’ve said so far.
There’s a reason doctors get more respect and prestige than philosophers. I sense you’re a little perturbed but this.
Oh, okay then. Good point. On an ethical issue - so an issue to do with what it is right or wrong to do - we should not listen to ethicists, but those with no expertise in ethics. Good one. Good point. You're on fire. (Incidentally, if you're on fire, the best person to call would be a plasterer).
Quoting Xtrix
I was responding to Riley and had decided to call him 'Riled-up' as that's the effect my arguments seemed to be having on him.
Quoting Xtrix
So? Maybe they should. Also, there are medical ethics committees and those have ethicists on them. But anyway, what's your point? That what actually happens, just by dint of it happening, is right? That's not something a professional ethicist would think.
Quoting Xtrix
Really. Who? I suspect that the only ethicist you've read on this is me. Willing to stand corrected, of course. But they'll have arguments for their view.....which is something you don't seem to have provided me with.
Quoting Xtrix
We should — provided they understand the medical facts. Medical ethicists usually do. You — whatever you are — clearly do not. So your advice about what to do is, thus, misguided — as I’ve stated before.
Should we ban smoking on airplanes and restaurants? If we think smoking is harmless for everyone besides the smoker, the ethicist will say “No, we shouldn’t ban smoking.”
That ethicist would be wrong. Why? Because second hand smoke is indeed harmful to others.
Quoting Bartricks
Sure. I have nothing against ethicists.
Quoting Bartricks
I mentioned one already, who I’m sure you’re familiar with: Art Caplan. A medical ethicist. He’s strongly in favor of mandates. But that’s because he understands vaccines and the goals of vaccinations.
Quoting Bartricks
I have, but you seem to be ignoring a great deal if them.
Your statements about how people taking the vaccine shouldn’t be effected by what unvaccinated people do leads me to believe you really haven’t researched this deeply enough. I think reading Caplan is as good a place as any to start.
Vaccine Mandates Aren’t Enough. Make Unvaccinated People Pay if They Harm Others.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/coronavirus-vaccine-mask-mandate-unvaccinated-51627939803
“Choices have consequences. Personal responsibility matters. Want to reject expert opinion and the established facts about Covid and put yourself and others at risk? Then you should pay, if your choice harms others.”
If you’re interested.
You can't refute me by simply expressing surprise at what I am saying.
Quoting Xtrix
They're just glorified plumbers. I think you'll find Socrates, Plato and Aristotle enjoy a little bit more respect and prestige than your average medical doctor. But whatever; the important point is that my dad is bigger than your dad.
So, do you respect the views of ethicists or not? Or is it only when they say something you already agree with that you respect them? I am unclear what your position is.
And what argument do you have? This is a philosophy forum - I've argued, you haven't. What's your argument?
I respect them if they deserve it, for example by demonstrating a basic understanding of medicine and vaccines.
Now, as for that article you linked to: did you read it yourself? (I have just had the displeasure of reading it - and it is poor, though allowance has to be made for the fact it is a popular piece). Given its contents, I am not convinced you have.
I’ve argued as well. Claiming I haven’t doesn’t change it. The responses are there, on record.
I argue in favor of mandates. I argue why I’m in favor of mandates.
I use the example of smoking, and asked several questions related to this example, which you’ve repeatedly ignored— I assume now on purpose. But it’s a relevant one, as are the facts of the case at hand.
Lastly, and also ignored: we have had school and workplace vaccines requirements for DECADES. What do you make on those? Ethical— not ethical?
Whatever that may be, I’m in favor of it.
I’m not in favor of demonstrably wrong suggestions based on misunderstanding science.
Quoting Bartricks
I have— several times. I can’t help it if you can’t see that. I’ll gladly repeat myself if you’d like.
Quoting Bartricks
I have. I also quoted from it a little.
So you picked up that he wasn't arguing for making people vaccinate. He was arguing that people should pay the costs of their choices. That's different. I agree with that. Wholeheartedly.
Do you? I mean, I assume you do. And so I assume you agree that those who wish to be vaccinated should pay for the vaccine - and pay the proper cost, not the cost as subsidized by those who do not wish to be vaccinated. Or is it only some who should pay the costs of their choices?
THe sick should pay the costs of treating their sickness, yes? If you get sick through no fault of mine, then you should pay. Not me. Not anyone else (not involuntarily, anyway). You.
Different if it's my fault. But if it is not, do you agree that you should pay?
Do you agree with that? I do. It seems he does too. Do you? I just want to explore the logic of Dr Caplan - for it seems to me to bear closer resemblance to mine that it does to yours.
No one is arguing for that, as I said at the beginning. These mandates are not legal. You still have a choice— even if you view it as unfair, it’s still a choice. Besides, we have school mandates already.
It’s unjust to force people not to smoke — or even not to do drugs, in my view. It’s just to prevent them from smoking in restaurants.
I won’t let you dodge this: Do you agree with school vaccine mandates or not? Smoking bans?
“In this situation, those who do not vaccinate are not just risking their health, but putting others at risk of a disease that can harm and kill them. The unvaccinated include children who cannot be vaccinated, those who have access barriers, and vaccine refusers. Further, in those with immune disorders—or people with, for example, cancer—vaccine effectiveness is lower. The intentionally unvaccinated are also delaying the point at which we can resume prepandemic life, by prolonging the pandemic and creating a real risk of more variants emerging, including variants for which current vaccines would perhaps be less effective.
One solution that some cities and states are seizing upon are mandates that limit the ability of those who choose not to vaccinate to risk others, by requiring vaccines as a condition for certain jobs or to attend university. We have no great choice here: limit liberty, or lose lives and lose liberty in the long-term, as the disease rages.
But there are other policy options to consider in addition to mandates…“
This really doesn’t sound like you at all. It sounds like me. Seems you don’t even agree with the first paragraph and have been continually arguing against that.
Isn't smoking a doing something? We are asking people to refrain from unvaccinating? At some point the push forward just creates more push back. Vaccination seems to fall along some political lines. The virus spreads really fast now with the delta variant. Technically, there's two ways to increase the percent population of the vaccinated.
He's in favor of mandates. What he’s proposing in this article is something IN ADDITION to mandates.
You’re not a careful reader.
But anyway, when it comes to the young matters are different, for they do not yet fully qualify as agents and thus doing what's in their best interests typically takes precedence over respecting their autonomy. Parents should pay the costs, of course - the costs of their education (to which it is justified to subject them) and vaccinating them. The full costs. As Caplan would - or should - agree. Do you?
As for smoking bans - well, no, I am opposed to those. Just don't go to restaurants that allow smoking.
Yes, he does. Hence the “in addition…” He’s building off of the necessity of mandates— it’s right in the title, in fact.
But apparently you’re not familiar with Caplan at all. Because it’s obvious from his past comments where he stands on mandates. Since you seem to be struggling with this, I’ll quote directly:
“How ought we solve this problem? One approach is to get tough on the unvaccinated. Examples include: vaccine passports (i.e., authentication for entry to private establishments); banning unvaccinated students from attending colleges and universities; vaccine mandates for private- and public-sector employees; and perhaps even a federal mandate for vaccination.
These tactics are necessary for protecting our communities and restoring our ways of life. This plague has gone on for more than 18 months and will continue without these steps.”
So, you’re simply wrong.
He even goes on to discuss the opposition—of which you’d be included. Another interesting read for you. Odd that I have to point you to relevant literature, given your claims to be an ethics expert. But I digress.
Good luck finding one.
No he isn't. And if you've ever written an article for a popular venue, you'd know that they typically come up with the title (and that it's often misleading).
And no, I am not familiar with Caplan's work. But in that quote you just gave, he also does not explicitly defend mandates. He asks, "how ought we to solve it?" and then simply describes something, which is not the same as defending it.
But note: I am what he is. I don't care what he thinks, I care only what can be supported by rational argument. And paying the costs of your choices is something that can be supported by rational argument. And that's what he was arguing in that otherwise poorly argued popular piece taht you linked to.
So the plot thickens. As I suspected, this is really just libertarian “principles” once again coming to absurd conclusions.
JS Mill was a fine thinker. He’d also be in favor of these mandates, because he wasn’t an idiot.
I don't think he would be in favour of them. Indeed, I think it is fairly obvious he'd agree with me. He thought that neither the state nor any individual is justified in interfering in the liberty of another save to prevent others from coming to harm. So he was absolutely opposed to interfering with people's freedom of choice 'for their own good'. Which is what this is all about.
If the vaccine works, then the unvaccinated pose no threat to the vaccinated. So Mill would have agreed with me. Have you read him? He didn't have any medical training....
So we can add 'labelling' to the list of ways you think you can refute an argument. There's 'contradicting its conclusion' (presumably that one only applies if the person doing the contradicting is Xtrix); there's expressing surprise and bewilderment (same again); and now there's labelling.
You may like pigeonholing people, but I simply follow reason.
Yes, this is exactly what he’s doing. “In addition to mandates” makes that clear, along with prior things he’s written. You’ve simply misread it because you don’t want it to be the case, unfortunately.
Quoting Bartricks
No, you’re wrong:
“These tactics are necessary for protecting our communities and restoring our ways of life.”
If this isn’t defending these policies, including mandates, I don’t know what is. He goes on even more explicitly, which I can quote as well.
Description. Saying that X is necessary for Y is not the same as saying "we ought to do X".
No, I just know how to write and read carefully (not that I always do so, of course). At no point - no point in the article you linked to - does he defend mandates. I probably should have been a lawyer. He invites you to think he's in favour of them. But he doesn't explicitly defend them. He defends paying the true cost of your choices. And I agree - we should.
This isn’t what it’s about. You continually get this exactly wrong.
I’ll repeat it a thousand times: it’s not only a matter of “vaccines work, so why should we care what unvaccinated people do?” That’s just a mistake, and a common one. Considering you’ve tried setting yourself up as some kind of expert, this is striking. Why?
Because breakthrough cases happen, as we’ve know all along, because those out there who aren’t eligible or can’t get vaccinated for other reasons are also vulnerable, because it’s impossible to get to herd immunity if 40% of the population refuses, because this allows the virus to mutate into more deadly variants, and because hospitalizations are overwhelming hospitals, leaving staff having to make extremely hard decisions.
Anyone who feels entitled to give lectures on “ethics” has the minimal responsibility to take these factors into account. Apparently you haven’t, and instead settled upon a simplistic version of things one might easily hear from the likes of your average rural Trump enthusiast.
He’s in favor of vaccine mandates. Sorry you refuse to see this. He even gives you what you want: the “ought”.
More:
“Rather than restricting liberty, these strategies are necessary to achieving it. COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandates are past due. They are not too coercive. They will produce quick results and save lives. Ethics falls on the side of creating liberty through freedom from plague. Dawdling around using failed strategies just means more misery and less freedom.”
Sounds like you? Don’t think so.
Quoting Bartricks
Given your level of reading comprehension, your made the right move.
He does, both here and in other things he’s written. Again, I’m sorry this runs counter to what you want to believe. I can’t help that.
He says it’s what we ought to do, he calls it necessary, proper, necessary for achieving freedom, that they are not coercive, etc.
Yet he’s not in favor of them or defending them?
You’re just reducing yourself to a clown figure at this point.
You've just lumped a whole load of different issues in together. Why would you not get herd immunity if 40% do not vaccinate? Do you think the unvaccinated will not get the virus? I mean, they will! There will be immunity in that herd in no time!
But it's beside the point: this is about what's right. And what's right isn't always about achieving the best outcome, not unless consequentialism about ethics is correct (and it isn't). This is where you seem to have a difficulty. Non-ethicists are typically only concerned with consequences (for that is what their expertise gives them insight into). That's where non-ethicist experts are expert : they can tell us about the likely consequence of this or that (economists in terms of the economy; psychologists in terms of our psychology; medical experts in terms of medical outcomes and so on). But what's right is not solely determined by such considerations, as any ethicist worth their salt knows. You really need to listen to the right experts!
Let's say we could eradicate covid by torturing a child. Would it be right to torture that child? No, obviously not. Torturing the child would save millions of lives. But it'd be wrong to do it, yes?
Now don't go all "how is that the same!! Call yourself an expert!" on me - just acknowledge the point: that doing what's right is not all about securing the best outcome. You have to respect people's rights along the way. And what I want to know from you is whose rights those who freely decide not to take up a freely available vaccine are violating.
He may elsewhere, but he doesn't in that article or in the other quote you gave. He's just invited you to think he defends them - and maybe he does - but he hasn't explicitly defended mandates in that article.
For instance, "flat earth", was clearly started (or then fueled on the net when it became known about) as a joke, clearly engineers and physicists making up alternative explanations if the world is flat. Of course, any idea that "gets out there" some people are actually going to believe, but the quantity of such people is minuscule. The only reason the media took interest in this topic is to associate flat earth with other groups they don't like.
If we compare the amount of evidence the world is flat, to the amount of evidence confirming the US government, or elements thereof, enabled or even planned 9/11, or then the amount of evidence provided by that government of who's really to blame, it's simply comparable. Believe what you want to believe, but there are no simple backyard experiments and pretty direct logical consequence of many known facts, that Bin Laden did 9/11. There's no epistemic equivalence, not even remotely close between the "earth is spherical" and "Bin Laden orchestrated 9/11". It's certainly physically possible some project, by nature clandestine, was "really" orchestrated by some even more clandestine and shadowy group. Likewise, "vaccines do more harm then good" is far easier to support than "the world is flat".
So, there is simply no equivalence in terms of weight of evidence for the various claims listed.
However, there is also important differences in motivation. We know powerful oil interests funded climate denialism in bad faith, and, even it many then "really believe it", many are willful participants in the bold face lies know they are simply lying to favour different values (such their individual short term economic interest) than engaging in honest political belief. "9/11 Truthers" and "anti-vaxxers" and "creationists" (although certainly many bad faith actors profit off these) are not beliefs that were essentially astroturffed into existence, but are fueled by legitimate belief systems and concerns.
I myself am a "creationist", just not that the earth is 6000 years old, but created sometime at or before the Big Bang and in a way that makes logical sense (physical laws, evolution etc.). Whether athesist, agnositic or theist, I think we'd mostly agree on this forum these are legitimate belief systems that can be defended, and can all be made compatible with basic science.
But again, the perpetuation of this belief I would say is mostly bad faith actors in the US, to create a a schism between science and easily manipulated Christians. And again, the idea the earth is 6000 years old, and not billions of years old, is vast difference with the belief elements of the US intelligence service did 9/11 or vaccines do more harm than good.
Not that I am trying to resolve any of these issues (both what is "actually true" and the "true reasons" it is true), but I think it isn't intellectually honest to posit as equivalent beliefs with vastly different plausibility (believing there was some even more nefarious and clandestine scheme behind 9/11 does not require disbelieving / rewriting nearly the entirety of contemporary science as does believing the earth is flat or 6000 years old or evolution doesn't happen).
Likewise, the sociological drivers motivating and sustaining these beliefs and whether proponents are good faith or bad are also very different, and this is not a "belief group" characteristic but can only be evaluated on an individual / institutional basis. Bad faith actors can also be motivated for a variety of reasons -- from political or financial power, social validation in their "in group", or to just trolling on the internet for self-amusement.
For instance, someone who is bad faith, is always a mistake to engage with assuming they are good faith (it's simply a false assumption that can bring no good); engagement with someone who is bad faith is a political act (would be, for instance, for the purposes of exposing that party as a liar and discredit them, or otherwise frustrate their efforts, waste their time, or other tactical and strategic advantage extraneous to the intellectual debate), not a "truth seeking" act between, fundamentally, two good faith people trying to find and agree on the truth.
No one’s. Same with the solitary drinker or drug user or smoker.
But, once again, this isn’t close to the issue because no one, least of all me, have said this. So it’s a strawman or irrelevant.
Quoting Bartricks
:lol:
Quoting Xtrix
Whatever you say bud.
No need to cry over it. Quoting Xtrix
Correct. Thus there is no case for intervention. Thus, those who do not wish to take a vaccine should not be made to do so - and that extends to the state using its powers to bully them into doing so or threatening their employers with bankruptcy.
If a private company wants to fire everyone who doesn't have a vaccine, that's their business. They should be allowed to do that if they so wish.
The point is that the state should not use its powers to 'make' companies do that (or, what amounts to the same thing, artificially arrange things so that they'll go bankrupt unless they do).
If you're not violating someone else's rights, then even if what you're doing is stupid - and not getting a vaccine is stupid - then no one is entitled to stop you doing what you're doing. Indeed, you need to butt out and let people live the lives they want to lead. Let them, to use Mill's term, engage in their own 'experiment in living'.
And as Mill pointed out, the human tendency to want to meddle and impose one's own conception of the good life on others (and then to congratulate oneself on helping others) is so deeply engrained that we need an absolutist ban on those in power doing so.
Hence the liberty principle.
“Liberty Inducers Are Effective and Ethical
So, the political opponents are making a philosophical mistake about the kind of liberty at stake here. What about the pragmatic opponents who are concerned that more stringent tactics won't work?
To them we say that liberty inducers 1) will work quickly enough, 2) will work broadly enough, and 3) will be ethically justified despite their having some negative consequences.
First, liberty inducers will work quickly enough. There is a solid evidence base supporting mandates, passports, and the like. That support is found in data about laws and policies related to seat belts, smoking, and school-mandated childhood vaccinations, all of which achieved significant public health outcomes. These data cannot be dismissed by noting that the efforts took years while COVID-19 vaccine uptake is much more urgently needed. These past successes reveal that we have already laid the groundwork to support passports and mandates.
Second, liberty inducers will work broadly enough. Polling shows that about 14% of Americans say they will "definitely not" get the vaccine and 3% will get it "only if required." These poll findings are misleading. The numbers would shift with different incentives and disincentives attached to vaccination status. Those stubbornly opposed to vaccination are viewing possibilities in the world as it is now. Liberty inducers alter that world. Intentions change with possibilities.
Finally, liberty inducers are ethically justified. True, they will have some negative effects. They won't move everyone, and for those unmoved there will be consequences. But the unmoved will move on, and their private, temporary setbacks are justified by our liberation from COVID-19.“
Yeah— he’s not “defending” anything. Nothing to see here.
Imagine proudly describing yourself as an “ethicist,” inflating your importance and relevance while demoting doctors, and yet coming out against vaccine mandates because “if you’re vaccinated, what do you care?”
Then deny that a much more respected (medical) ethicist isn’t really saying what he’s clearly saying because it undermines your uninformed, simplistic position.
This, again, is why philosophy gets a terrible, terrible reputation and why science and medicine are far more respected. Philosophy students just spend way too much time in academic problems, not the real world.
I don’t care what you label yourself, the answers here are clear (provided we know a little about vaccines). To get them exactly backwards isn’t surprising, actually.
Wrong. The vaccine mandates are both ethical and effective — according to real medical ethicists.
If people don’t want to vaccines, fine— then isolate yourself. You have no right to spread the virus to others — to the vaccinated or the unvaccinated.
Bottom line.
This seems an incredibly naive belief, and it is not a consensus in the medical ethics community. Many countries have not implemented any sort of vaccine passport, precisely because it is in stark contradiction with forced medical procedures, of which it is a foundation of modern medical ethics not to do, so much so that it is put into laws that are very difficult to change, essentially constitutional (and many medical ethecists say shouldn't be changed).
And domestic vaccine passports are not the same thing as needing a vaccine to travel to a different country (where you are a guest and are not "forced" to go to) nor for participation in a relatively minor set of professions (you are not "forced" to have that profession).
Forcing everyone to undergo a medical procedure by making life practically impossible without it, is obviously a controversial thing in medical ethics. Nazi's thought they were "improving society" too; and, that institutions can go disastrously wrong (if not today, then maybe tomorrow) is the foundation of the moratorium on forced medical procedures in favour of "informed-consent" based medicine.
There's a drug that radically reduces your chance of catching hiv from someone infected with it. It's called prep. Should we make everyone take it?
Yeah, how? I don't think you gave a reason in what preceded this question. 99 doctors to 1 doesn't translate to 99% odds, not if all we know is that they are doctors. If the 99 doctors, when I ask them how they know heart surgery is the best bet, respond with something like "That's just how its done. I am following what I was taught in medical school". Then I will doubt their wisdom. If the 1 doctor who recommends an alternative to heart surgery, and gives explanations that make sense to me and examples of former satisfied clients, I may trust him over the 99 doctors. Not necessarily, but there is a chance. I have personal experience of family who have not listened to medical experts and came out well of it. On the other hand, this same family member later in life agreed to preventative heart surgery. In other words, he had no issue, but his doctor recommended it as a precautionary measure because of his age. He took the surgery and it severely compromised the quality of his life as a result.
I suppose in the doctor's opinion, the risk of side effects from the surgery were less than the risks of having future heart issues... but its hard to believe the doctor was right about which decision is more rational when the results didn't turn out in this family member's favor.
I agree to this, this is barely a kind of "ethical" question. I think the good people not ready to get a vaccine should avoid getting infected for own egoistical reasons. Getting that germ is no walk in the park. That should be reason enough not to go hugging galore.
Fascinating back and forth.
I have a quick question (apologies for the poor articulation): Assuming the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine(s) is beyond doubt - you seem to believe this - do I have a right to spread potentially lethal misinformation? I doubt any who choose to not take the vaccine look at it as if they're making a stupid, reckless decision - they of course see things quite differently.
Anyhow, I find much of what you've written congenial, but it does seem to presuppose important conditions that are rarely met, e.g., reliable sources, indisputable facts, expert consensus, etc. Does the state have a role to play in securing these conditions of rational and ethical decision making? in stopping the spreader of disinformation (again, only applicable to cases where the issue is beyond doubt) from peddling harmful, even lethal ideas?
I think I know what your answer will be (it's up to the individual to uncover the truth without state intervention) though I'm curious to see the reasoning behind it.
Well, it wasn't just the Nazi's that carried out forced medical procedures for the "good" of society. Everyone was doing it -- it's completely compatible with the Hippocratic oath if it is "good" for the patient -- it's just the Nazi's took it next level. And we still do it today to the mentally ill all the time, just with large efforts to avoid doing so, danger to others and "themselves", only option etc.
We could also imagine a scenario that is so severe, forced medical procedures seems reasonable even to me.
So, I wouldn't say it's barely even a question, and, I think it's also clear some medical ethicists, medical professionals and politicians (people who are supposed to have an ethical expertise and opinion on this) argue it is ethical to have vaccine internal passports.
Certainly there is an argument to be had ... which is argument currently happening.
But, to tie into my first comment on the thread, the fact there's clearly a legitimate debate (clearly well motivated to be concerned about giving governments the power to inject what they decide is necessary into everyone, and everyone needing their "papers" to prove it; and I know plenty of doctors who are against it, which isn't unusual where I live because it's the government's policy as well not to force/coerce vaccinations) on this issue, underlines the point the epistimic comparison to flat earth theory (which no one here is arguing about) is pretty substantial.
It's the same thing though, isn't it? Except you don't have to adapt to Canada or Mexico. You can stay home and be governed by those who, by your account, shouldn't be in decision making positions.
Sorry, frank. I don't even remember what we were talking about. But the reference to Canada and Mexico reminded me once again of war. See below:
It is my understanding we are in a pandemic. A pandemic has been likened to a war; a war on an invisible enemy. The enemy is not conveniently overseas somewhere. He is here, among us. Around the world. Those who champion the right of individuals to not do what the military tells them to do in a combat zone are not merely civilians, non-combatants, or collateral damage; they are, instead, providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
If you want to get off the battlefield, do it, or you might get shot. Ultimately, in this case, you might literally get held down and given a shot: a vaccine shot. If you don’t want the shot, stay off the battlefield, go home, and pray the rest of us win the war quickly so we don’t have to kick in your door, hold you down and give you the shot. It is not the soldier's job to stay home and hide from the war. We are out here doing our part.
You can philosophize about being against the war, or being against the way the war is being conducted. But you are either with us or you are with the virus. You can sit around the bistro, drinking whatever, pinky extended, waxing on about Locke or whoever, but you could be doing that in Dresden, or Hiroshima and guess what? You will be history.
I can go on with the analogy, the players in this case and the players in WWII, etc. But suffice it to say, everyone has been trying extremely hard to play to your needs, your wants, and your desires; the government has been trying hard to maintain the peace and avoid the extremes of war. But you are and have been providing aid and comfort to a virus. Don’t be surprised when your rights go on hold. There are people on the front line and you are spitting on them as they work. That shit won’t last.
Or it will last, and you and your virus will win. You will surrender your fellow human beings and make peace with a virus. You and your virus will win. Then those who survive the virus can sit around and mourn the collateral damage and all those who died resisting the virus or who could not resist it. But most likely you will not mourn. I'm not seeing you mourn. It just doesn't fit.
Nope.
If it's a war, we lost already. All the variants will be endemic in the US.
Like I said:
"Or it will last, and you and your virus will win. You will surrender your fellow human beings and make peace with a virus. You and your virus will win. Then those who survive the virus can sit around and mourn the collateral damage and all those who died resisting the virus or who could not resist it. But most likely you will not mourn. I'm not seeing you mourn. It just doesn't fit."
And there you were, championing the treatment of the enemy instead of soldiers and innocent civilians. You know, first come, first serve.
Now there could be an insurgency. And pay back at the polls. I guess we'll see.
No, it isn’t. You have no right to harm others.
Quoting boethius
Not forced any more than school and work vaccinations have been forced, for decades in fact.
Quoting Bartricks
Because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Read more Caplan and learn something — that’s my advice.
Quoting Bartricks
Imagine this is the level of thinking among “ethicists.” How sad.
Protected sex should be encouraged, and has been for years.
Quoting Yohan
:roll:
Yes, but that’s not the question.
It's part of us now. You may as well accept it.
Quoting James Riley
Unvaccinated people aren't my enemies. They're fellow citizens. If you don't like that, I think there's an isolated spot near the Arctic waiting for your tiny house where you can survive on moose meat.
Quoting James Riley
I doubt it.
Well, that's the issue isn't it.
A medical procedure is by definition harmful; so, what's your right to force / coerce people to have it?
Furthermore, limiting the power of the state (which I in no way share the extremism of libertarians about ... and, would also say their idea of immutable rigid market "principles" are extreme state power that they are in denial about), is for the purposes of limiting the harm the state can do.
Limiting state power has obvious costs. In exchange for not giving the state power that could easily be abused (people needing "papers" to participate in normal society), there are costs to that.
Quoting Xtrix
Not where I live: due to it being a forced medical procedure. Which you may disagree with, but the fact entire countries do actually implement a moratorium on forced / coerced medical procedures should be enough to support my claim there's legitimate debate on this issue ... whereas no country implements a "flat earth" based geologic and space institution.
There are countries that didn't even have a legally enforceable mask mandate, only a recommendation, because enforcing that by law would be unconstitutional. It's not even a medical procedure, so if that was their position on masks obviously forced / coerced vaccination is essentially no-doubt unconstitutional.
But, even so, in places where it is as you say, the alternative "home schooling" is not at the same level as carrying papers to simply exist in society.
Internal vaccine "passports" is clearly a step much further than has existed before. In pre-pandemic times, if this issue was brought up, it was entirely accepted that the consequence of not having forced / coerced medical procedures is that the government can't do that even when it would be a good social outcome in that case. Otherwise, the moratorium on forced medical procedures and "informed consent" based medicine is ... only until we don't want to, then we'll force you for sure.
I'm afraid you may be right. Too bad. I can't imagine all the grief that could have been avoided.
Quoting frank
They aid and abet a virus. The company you keep . . .
Quoting frank
You could be right. We could get Trump, or a new Trump and live in a colder, harder world. One that I doubt a guy like you would like. On the other hand, business will be good for you. Though I suppose it always is.
All the best, man. :mask:
It's complicated.
There is, as I understand it, very strong evidence that the vaccinated are less likely to become infected on exposure, to develop Covid, but it's certainly not 100%. We do not have a vaccine that literally immunizes you against SARS-CoV-2. If we did have an immunizing vaccine, your argument would be strengthened.
Of course, just being unvaccinated is not threatening, in itself, to anyone. What we're interested in is whether someone who is infected can infect someone else. There is also evidence, though it is not as strong, that being vaccinated reduces the likelihood you will transmit it to others. Reduces, but not all the way to zero. Since there is also strong evidence that being vaccinated when you get infected reduces the severity and duration of the ensuing illness, we could conclude that the vaccinated potentially present a greater risk to the unvaccinated than the unvaccinated do to the vaccinated. (The transmission reduction effect is smaller and perhaps less well-supported -- I'm still not clear on this -- than either of the other effects, the reduction of the chance of being infected, and the reduction of the severity of the illness if infected.)
If you are not vaccinated, you are more at risk of getting sick when exposed to the virus, and the illness you develop is likely to be more severe and last longer, no matter whether you caught the virus from someone who was vaccinated or someone who wasn't. Since there are people who cannot get vaccinated, people with certain allergies and medical conditions, the very young, and for now teenagers (though that may be changing), everyone is a potential threat to them, and it seems the unvaccinated are probably a somewhat bigger potential threat. (Again, "potential" because not unless you're infected.)
In the broadest strokes, you are right, that the unvaccinated take the biggest risks with their own health and the health of those who are also not vaccinated, but not everyone who is unvaccinated is unvaccinated by choice. There is at least some reason to think they also present a risk to the vaccinated as well -- smaller, though, because being vaccinated reduces both the chances of getting sick and the severity of the illness when you do, but of course those are only likelihoods. It is even possible for a vaccinated (but carrying or even infected) person to infect a vaccinated person and for the latter to become severely ill, but that is less likely than an unvaccinated (but carrying or infected) person infecting a vaccinated person who becomes very ill.
Since none of the effects are 100%, I feel I should add that the mandate case would be strengthened if vaccines actually blocked transmission. They do not.
The lack of gun control always keeps us hopping.
Plus nobody in this thread addressed the huge amounts of pesticides humans drop everywhere. You guys are useless.
This is a completely ill informed position.
There was a chance to avoid the pandemic, via containment (which I advocated strongly for at the start of the pandemic on this very forum), which successfully contained SARS 1 the first time (difference; SARS came out of a poor place no one hesitated restricting flights / quarantining everyone); but that would have been bad for airplane stocks (as people, especially politicians, do hesitate to restrict flights from China).
Vaccines would never have avoided "all the grief"; even the above containment would have been a lot of grief for people who get it anyway and are in quarantine as well as hundreds of millions of people who would have had travel plans disrupted.
Of course, failing containment, vaccines can help, but it's a complete exaggeration to put all the blame on anti-vaxxers.
Notice how, since this blame game could start, talk of holding people accountable for not containing the pandemic (following far clearer science and "expert" opinion; this exact problem, and what to do about it, has been studied and modeled for decades) has all but disappeared. Funny how governments aren't carrying out any introspection as to why they were "anti-science" at the start of the pandemic when they feared a stock dip in a few sectors more than millions of people dying.
Likewise, experts also pointed out at the start of vaccine development that there's a large portion of the public that won't take them, so depending entirely on vaccines is a policy made to fail (and also leaves the developing world hanging), compared to policies (preparing for another wave, increasing global health capacity, nutrition, etc. that would benefit everyone and also mitigate both vaccine reliance failing, and even if vaccines succeed, mitigate the fact it's totally certain a percentage of people people wont' take them).
Governments went with the only policy that hands over billions to corporations ... and put essentially zero investment into basic health measures and increasing health capacity. For instance, a small percentage of what's been spent on the pandemic could have solved world hunger, which requires no waiting for any "science development" and would have mitigated the effects of the pandemic in the third world as well as being morally justifiable anyways.
Deal with the criminals. DOH!
Quoting frank
Did they kill 600,000 + in a year and a half? I'm all for regulating them in any event. But they weren't brought up because this thread isn't about pesticides. DOH!
You can just stop there.
Did I confuse questions?
Oh I see, you just pick and choose your villains. Typical.
Again, totally delusional.
World succeeded in containing SARS 1; now, even if that was impossible in this case; which who knows, if sane policies weren't implemented to find out: it was still the only chance to actually avoid "all the grief". Vaccines only became available after many people already died, so, how would vaccines avoid that grief?
Avoiding "all" or even close to all, would have only been possible with containment: maybe fast and competent response in China (which did suppress the virus when they did implement containment ... after infecting the rest of the world) was obviously the best chance.
I remember a time on this very forum when we were concerned about the fact China obviously censored their scientists trying to warn the rest of the world ... and also may have killed the one's that got the word out; which, is obviously far inferior to China getting the word out themselves and acting on an obvious health emergency proactively.
I remember a time when some participants still with us argued what happened in China wouldn't happen in the West for [insert delusions] and not any "science" that could be recognized.
After that, could essentially shutting down world plane travel have succeeded in containing the virus? Maybe not, but it would have bought plenty of time to optimize policy response strategies and mitigate plenty of grief even if containment did ultimately fail. Rather, we supercharged the spread of the pandemic around the world; no one who studied this question would tell you that was a good idea. And, world plane travel got shut down anyways, so it there was only anti-science delusion behind trying to delay that comeuppance.
Enough said.
P.S. Sorry I used the word "all". I was just thinking of the kids of a guy I know who's sig line was the John Wayne quote: "Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid." He didn't vax and died. I'm sure someone missed their trip to Italy. Oh, the grief!
You beg the question that the majority of scientists are more likely to be right. If we don't know anything else except the amount of doctors that advocate for surgery vs the amount that don't , that doesn't tell us who is more likely to be right.
No, the thread picked the villains. DOH!
The world is full of villains and I've fought quite a few of them. Covid is just the latest and the subject of the thread. Certainly you could have taken a page from Isaac and chosen fat-people comorbidity, instead of pesticides. :roll:
This is a philosophy forum, maybe reformulate your statement the first time. Obviously "all" is a big difference with "some".
But my main issue is the scapegoating anti-vaxxers. Lot's of policy failures throughout this pandemic worth discussing, but society has been given a cathartic "other" to blame and to hate.
Where I have issue is the total hypocrisy. Western governments are not "pro-science" or they'd do something about climate change. They are pro-science when it benefits the largest corporations that care about the issue and pro-something-else or like you know we can't actually like you know "do anything" when the science doesn't benefit the largest corporations that care about the issue.
The current wave in the US was completely predictable, with or without vaccines, and there are other policies that could have been implemented since 2020 that would be a good idea anyways, regardless of how well the vaccines work, how many people take them, or what percentage of the population is needed for "heard immunity" if the vaccines would even accomplish that, which they don't (or even if they worked at all, which wasn't a given when vaccine development started; so, was an insane risk-management decision to not competently prepare for more waves ... actually learn something from the first wave).
But again, my basic point is that this issue is obviously not on the same level as "the earth is flat" or "the universe is 6000 years old" which no one here is debating.
It isn’t correct to lump teenagers and the very young in with people with medical conditions when you say this.
This is from the JCVI’s recent judgment on the universal vaccination of 12-15 year olds:
It seems there’s a lot of fear within this debate, on both sides, that gets masqueraded as reason.
I agree, very strongly. But there is a clear problem. What if they consider me their enemy? (For "they", feel free to substitute climate-change deniers, flat-earthers, Nazis, racists, theocrats.)
In this case, it's very direct: if I were in a position to use state power to forcibly vaccinate someone against their will, I might regret resorting to force and even apologize for doing so, but protest that what I'm doing is for their own good, and for the good of others. They won't agree. What do we do?
Anti vaxxers just don't wanna vax. Let them.
9/11 conspiracionists just think these 4 planes were remote-controlled by government officials to start a new war, make money from it, patriot acting to consolidate their power, while infusing society with fear (safe-boxes to be sold in which you can drink your red Lambrusco wine while outside you box hell is breaking loose).
Creationists are right. Only, it didn't happen 6000 years ago.
Flat-Earthers are locally right.
Thanks for being helpful.
Quoting boethius
Enough said.
Quoting boethius
Climate change gets the same treatment as Covid. We can't interfere with Cletus's God-given right to roll coal! Freedom! Murica!
Quoting boethius
Yeah, I think Obama was working on a plan that Trump trashed.
Quoting boethius
Yep. But freedom.
Hell, social distancing and masking could have done tons, but it's too much to ask. Don't expect any help on climate change.
I'm sorry, I don't understand your point. Here in the US we're not vaccinating children under 12. Vaccinating those between 12 and 18 is I guess becoming pretty common, but certainly wasn't earlier in the year.
Young children, and teenagers, may indeed be at lower risk of becoming infected, and at lower risk of becoming seriously ill, but they're certainly not immune. I have a friend who teaches in a public high school that, within the first month of the new school year, had three children sick enough to be hospitalized and many more sick enough to miss school.
Quoting AJJ
Is this obiter dicta, or was there something in my post that struck you as fear masquerading as reason?
He's actually right about that. I've got a good video to help you get up to speed on "food-gate" if you're interested.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm not sure what you're asking. Wouldn't that issue be settled by the Supreme Court?
Sorry. What concerns me is navigating the differing perspectives of our fellow citizens. It's all very well to choose not to consider those who differ with us enemies, but in some cases they will consider us enemies. I worry about that.
I've been writing about this topic, on this forum, since March 2020.
The moment to put in place policies that would have had a dramatically different outcome was then. The countries that contained competently ... managed to contain the pandemic.
March 2020:
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
All predictions that came true, from one random poster on the internet, over a year and a half ago.
The people most responsible are the governments that had "the science" telling them contain early, contain hard (especially early days, how "bad" the virus even was represented large error bars; could have been a lot worse than it is even now, which is bad). This was all known and uncontroversial science of literally decades of study and modelling of pandemics, how to identify them, and what to do.
Definitely total incompetence of the Trump administration I would say most contributed to "all the grief", doesn't make them less responsible just because they were totally incompetent. But, he's voted out, why didn't the next administration immediately start fixing those obvious policy failures of not preparing for more waves.
If people are suffering now from governments not preparing health systems to deal with another wave, that's really avoidable grief. Governments and twitter warriors blaming individuals for failed government policy is simply pathetic standard of intellectual honesty.
What did experts say back then about a vaccine? Well, would be nice if we could develop one, and would be nice if it works really well, and would be nice if both logistically and everyone being willing resulted in super high numbers to achieve some level of heard immunity. But, hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
It brings to mind the soldier blaming the hippie for causing the loss in Vietnam. The analogy can be spun out in a different direction, though. This war is at home. Government policy early on may have been fucked, but the protestor didn't help. Indeed, evil gubmn't was just getting oxygen from them.
I saw Fast Food Nation. Does that count? My point is, your pesticide argument is fallacious.
Quoting frank
I think it was. Like a hundred years ago.
"Medical procedure"? That's deliberately beefing up what amounts to a tiny prick of the arm. But so be it.
I don't have a right to force people into doing the smart, relatively painless, socially responsible thing. I don't want the police going into people's homes and injecting them with a vaccine. I haven't seen anyone argue this. I've seen a lot of deliberate conflating, however.
We do also have the right to life, health, and safety. This is where individual freedoms can be restricted, as the courts have ruled, if it has effects on other individuals. This is why we have smoking bans and hand washing laws. This is also why, more pertinent to this discussion, we have school and work mandates for vaccines, and have for years. We don't want smallpox and polio around -- we don't want COVID around.
Plenty of schools and businesses have already mandated vaccines, before Biden's announcement the other day. Perfectly sensible. Is this "coercion"? Yes, but no different than "coercing" people into wearing clothes when they go into public places -- and, importantly, it has not been made "illegal" to refuse vaccines. Exceptions are always permissible, as well.
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/when-are-vaccine-mandates-appropriate/2020-01
The entire question here, and has been from the beginning, is whether this (vaccine mandates) state / corporate power is legitimate or illegitimate, just or unjust. In this case, I think it's very clear that this is a legitimate use of power, and that those who disagree with this are simply overlooking what medical experts (and medical ethicists) have been saying, and misunderstand both basic functions of vaccines and the goals of herd immunity.
Quoting boethius
Schools don't require vaccinations where you live? That's odd.
But again, this isn't being "forced" in the sense you're meaning. You cannot be physically made to get the vaccine against your will. Likewise, you're not physically forced to wear clothes when going to school -- but you'll be asked to leave if you don't. That's a kind of "coercing" people to wear clothes, but it's not technically forcing anyone (flawed example, because we have laws on the books against public nudity).
Quoting boethius
The Supreme Court disagrees. I can't speak for other countries. Regarding mask mandates: most countries do, in fact, require masks -- unlike the US. They're even tougher than we have been.
https://masks4all.co/what-countries-require-masks-in-public/
There have been vaccine mandates for various professions and schools in the UK, Canada, Australia, Greece, France, etc.
I'm not sure if you're agreeing with my basic point on the issue (and I haven't developed it much, since my main point is that obviously this issue is totally different than the earth being flat).
However, where I live there has never been a legally enforced mask mandate, not even talk of "internal vaccine passports" in any serious way (as totally unconstitutional), never a "hard lock down" (but some months non-essential shops were closed), benefit of seeing how vaccines play out in other countries and then using those statistics to optimize choice of vaccines per group, timing of shots, easier to convince people too when other countries have done the hard part of experimenting on their citizens, pretty much only a handful of covid deaths throughout the pandemic and nothing close to triage has happened (though there are lot's of knock-on effects; mainly people cancelling their own appointments for fear of going to the hospital, creating a health backlog, but obviously not has bad as an actual lack of resources).
Why?
Because the government actually implemented "the science" that said pretty amazingly clearly that the longer the delay, the harder the measures later, the higher the burden on the health care system (that has less time to prepare), the more disruption to society, the more deaths for a whole bunch of reasons.
No real "first wave" to speak of.
Plenty of governments "listened to the science" and reaped the benefits.
Governments that didn't, blood of the first wave and every subsequent wave are on the hands of the politicians that didn't follow the obvious science, but followed the stock market (obviously Trump the champion here; literally phoning ariplane CEO's to ask their opinion; we don't have the transcripts but I can guarantee each one said "well, I'm not a medical expert, but I can say that stopping air travel will affect the industry", as, obviously it would, and, I'm sure they simply didn't know what else to say).
This is more of what I’m referring to as fear masquerading as reason. Here’s John Ioannidis, a highly respected researcher in epidemiology, saying that according to his research (in places such as Germany) the absolute risk of an under-65 dying from Covid-19 is about the same as driving your car to work: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T-saAuXaPok (at about 1:20)
To speak of young children being hospitalised with Covid-19 has the the same fearful effect as speaking of all the anecdotal reports of horrific vaccine injuries. Do you dismiss the latter as being unverified and unrepresentative? If so it seems worth considering that you may be employing the same trick.
It does. That's not what "begging the question" means. I wonder if you and AJJ are the same person.
Anyway, I'm giving you an option. What would you do? You want to avoid that question out of fear it makes your position look ridiculous. But that's not the case. It's a straightforward example. The answer is clear: we'd listen to the 99 doctors. More experts working on the same issue and coming to the same conclusion to this degree is rare, but it happens. Which is why the consensus on climate change is over 97%. Knowing nothing else, you can argue that "doesn't tell us who is more likely to be right," but at that point you're off in space.
Could they all be wrong and the 1 doctor right? Sure. That's possible. Maybe flat earthers have it right, who knows? There's a chance, I guess. How big a chance, would you say? 1%? .001%?
But knowing nothing else, any sane person would go with the 99. Why? Because the overwhelming consensus on an issue among experts tells you something about the issue.
Yes, I do assume overwhelming consensus has a greater likelihood of being true than not. That has nothing to do with "question begging". I was seeing if you came to the same conclusion. Apparently you don't. So be it.
Quoting boethius
No one said they were the "same."
It's not beefing up anything. Saying masks are a "medical procedure" I would agree is exaggeration, even if, technically it is.
Injecting a therapy into someone that is going to change their immune system is clearly far from "wearing a mask".
It's clearly a significant medical procedure, and there are obvious risks, and obvious risks of giving the government control of what they can decide to inject into you.
For instance, just a couple years ago a large part of the US population was convinced a fascist takeover was, if not imminent, certainly "on the table".
Maybe it was close or maybe Trump and co. were so amazingly incompetent they couldn't even coup if they had the means to do so.
It is worth considering, however, if a "bad government" does get into power, how much power they get to start with.
What I am arguing here, however, is simply that these questions have far more room for legitimate debate than "the earth is flat" or "the earth is 6000 years old".
Which is the only thing being grossly conflated in this thread.
Quoting Xtrix
That's why I say, look around, maybe get out more.
It's not deliberately conflating ... if there are governments that exist which are have zero coercive measures, and their politicians even say they couldn't legally do so without changing laws, maybe that makes the point it's obviously not basically unanimous medical ethical position to mandate / coerce / force vaccination; which was your original point.
There's even a government, Norway, that has a law that would allow the government to mandate (with threat of fines / prison), but has not implemented that law. Presumably, there's some medical ethical reasons not to do so (no consider Covid "bad enough" to warrant that).
Of course, Norway also followed the obvious pandemic science (actual scientific consensus) and has few deaths and social disruptions due to the pandemic, so, "mandating" seems alarmism and government overreach in a context of a government putting in place competent policy from the beginning.
In places where governments weren't competent ... maybe those governments aren't competent generally speaking and we can maybe see why people have low trust in their government.
If it had a doctor explaining how the sugar industry manipulated government recommendations resulting in an increase in the incidence of diabetes and obesity in the US, then yes.
Did this in turn lead to America's disproportional mortality rate from COVID-19? That would require more research.
Early on, it seemed to me that most of those hardest hit were black and Latino. Now I'm finally seeing one fat, diabetic unvaccinated white person after another dying.
And this is my answer to the OP. I doubt you have the flexibility to listen to what I'm trying to tell you here. But I put it out there anyway, and I'm only surprised if you take a second to look at things differently.
That's a political and legal issue. The WHO has been pretty clear on their recommendations. No one is saying we want to physically force people into vaccinations -- that's a false characterization and a red herring.
Also, I'm talking about the United States. I can't speak for other countries, even though many have issued mandates -- including France, which I believe was one of the earliest.
Quoting boethius
Yes, but the Trump administration, which completely botched this entire thing by ignoring it and claiming it will "go away by Easter" (April of 2020), is no longer in charge of government.
Biden's mandates should have happened months ago. They're legitimate, legal, and follow the advice of the medical community.
The title of the OP obviously makes all these issues "the same" with respect to the question of "worth engaging with". That's the question.
Again, if whole countries don't have mandated vaccines, it's no where close to "settled science" and "settled ethics" like the earth is round like a ball.
Norway is particularly interesting (because, it's not "unconstitutional", but they haven't don it, because competence generally means they don't really need to consider it):
Quoting Article explaining Norwegian vaccine position
Turns out reasonable government people trust more:
Quoting Same article explaining Norwegian vaccine position
Also interesting, the "technically they can law" isn't so easy to implement:
Quoting Same article explaining Norwegian vaccine position
No, they haven't been -- by anyone except you. Totally different topics, as was made clear a while back.
There's sensible debate to be had about the legitimacy of state power, and whether vaccine mandates are an example of such. I get the concern. I'm not equating this with anti-vaxxers, and especially not flat Earthers. But I do think the case is clear cut and that people are arguing for the sake of argument -- typical in philosophy forums, I suppose.
I so far haven't heard one good argument against the legitimacy of vaccine mandates for schools and in business, especially given they've been around for decades. Why the sudden outrage? We know why: because it's a current hot topic and has become politicized. So everyone comes out of the woodwork with an "opinion."
Remember that Hamilton and Jefferson hated each other to point that there was violence in the air. That's normal when there is no dictator to suppress conflict.
The American system can handle that kind of conflict up to a point. The Civil War shows how the whole thing can break down. If things head in that direction, history shows that compromise only makes things worse.
I think of mass events like that as storms. No one rain drop can do anything but be slung around like a character in War and Peace. No point in worrying about it before hand.
As I mentioned before, only in the sense of irrationality -- immunity to facts, being non-persuadable, etc. Otherwise they're very disparate topics indeed -- and there are plenty of others.
Quoting boethius
No one has once equated the two. You're welcome to quote me, but you won't find it.
What countries are you referring to? And the science is indeed settled, however governments wish to carry on about it. The advice from ethicists vary, depending on the country and its unique set of issues. I've restricted my criticism mostly to the US. Not every country has an abundance of vaccines, which also changes the dynamic.
The world is a complex place.
Quoting boethius
Fine -- good for them. The US wouldn't have needed to mandate vaccines if much of the population weren't being completely irresponsible. Now they've been pushed into doing so -- despite an abundance of vaccines, free vaccinations, convenient sites, etc.
Do I wish our population were more like Norways? Yes, I do.
I've made it clear I am talking about needing papers to participate in normal society, which I would define as "force". The force is the fines or prison (and prison if you don't pay the fines); clearly using force.
However, I'm fine with the word coerce or just internal vaccines passports.
Quoting boethius
Quoting Xtrix
This is all I'm trying to say here.
I'm not saying the issue is clear cut; I even stated a scenario could be so extreme that I would support forced medical intervention. Maybe aliens (from the movie aliens) come to earth; what do we do then?
However, what seems pretty clear to me in the pandemic is that competent governments that really do "follow the science" didn't need vaccine mandates or hard lock-downs (those "restrictions" for the sake of public safety), with disastrous health consequences anyways (both on lot's of people who got covid as well as the trauma to health professionals trying to deal with the situation) ... because they took science and public safety seriously to begin with.
And, because they took science and public safety seriously to begin with, people have high confidence in such a government and vaccine uptake is not only high it's done before there's any significant wave (reaping the full benefits the vaccines can offer to society, assuming they work as advertised).
Of course, I think each issue is worthy of discussion, and feel free to start a thread on anything that don't already have a thread about.
Even the "flat earth" issue is worth while to go over why we are as certain the world is a ball as we can be about essentially anything; though, more interesting to me is the what's pretty clear to me the media making "a thing" about flat earthers to make the intellectual equivalence with dissent of essentially any kind. Why wasn't "flat earth" an issue of any relevance before? Because it's not an issue of any relevance now; and I'm pretty sure 99% of "true believers" only found out about it because the media turned it into some sort of relevant public debate (which it's not), I'm nearly 100% confident the entire flat earth content was started as a joke (extremely typical engineery / physicicsy joke material).
That's not on the table in the US. No one will be sent to prison. You get vaccinated or you don't come to work/school -- simple. That's coercion? Fine -- then it's excited for decades. Have you been against this for decades -- the measles and smallpox vaccines, for example? Tuberculosis shots for healthcare jobs? Etc?
Quoting boethius
I think similar things are happening here with the covid vaccines. But not only that -- when anything big happens, people feel the need to settle on an "opinion" and some memorized lines to say to friends and family.
As far as flat earth -- I think a lot of it was a "joke" tweet by the basketball player Kyrie Irving.
People (especially in the US) need to work to survive; obviously it's coercion if "enough" jobs require vaccine that you cannot practically find work at a "normal level" (making you a second class citizen); likewise, suddenly changing the policy for professions that previously had no such requirement is coercive to people who depend on that profession and did not provide "informed consent" when they started in that career.
If such mandates are for a limited set of professions, then easy to argue you can do something else, so depends on how many such work places we're talking about.
School has other issues (parents rights vs. state rights; children can't "consent") etc. lot's to debate about.
However, what's clearly coercive is needing "papers" to simply exist in any sort of normal way in society, which is pretty much the explicit goal of the pro-vaccine-passports partisans on the internet.
Now, UK government I believe just backed down from the internal vaccine passport policy.
And, if few governments, including the US, have even implemented any such policy, seems just to support my view it's not obviously ethical, settled medical ethics question, which was the statement of yours I was responding to.
Ah. Well it was not intended as a trick, but only to demonstrate that children are not immune. The only reason to demonstrate that children are not immune is because exactly that claim had some traction earlier in the year in some media circles, and maybe still does though I doubt it.
Quoting AJJ
Ioannidis is a pretty smart guy, and I would trust his statistics. But that video is from over a year ago, and we should have a better idea by now what the actual mortality rate is, and how it compares to, say, seasonal flu. Here's something from Johns Hopkins. I didn't realize the rates were so variable, which I suppose is down to quality of care. Seasonal flu is usually around 0.2% or 0.3% right? So a lot of countries are less than one order of magnitude bigger than that, and a lot of countries are much higher (but may also have much higher rates of death from seasonal flu). Higher than he thought a year ago, but within an order of magnitude, so not bad at all for an estimate. (Is there an easy-to-find breakdown of case-fatality rates broken down by vaccination status? That would be worth seeing.)
What I don't understand is what use you're making of case-fatality rate. Are you telling parents they shouldn't care if their kids get sick because they're less than ten times as likely to die from covid than they are from the flu? I mean, yeah, it's not Ebola, but you and your family ought to get vaccinated. Right? It's a risk that can be dramatically reduced.
And I've made the straw/camel back argument but don't expect you to get it. Or the variant issue and how, as you say, we lost the war. Whatever, let's blame fat people. For now.
Civil war feels decidedly less hypothetical than it did when I was a kid. We're basically living through a cold civil war right now (with occasional open fighting, January 6 did actually happen).
What straw/camel back argument?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
There are pretty deep divisions now, yes.
Never mind. I sometimes forget that not everyone reads the whole thread(s) on a subject. I tire and don't want to repeat myself.
:up:
I think about waking-up-from-a-coma-on-January-6 scenarios. Fifty years ago, pre-Watergate, the scene itself might not be surprising -- students had been occupying university administration buildings and stuff like that -- but this was a large and violent group of people who believed the election had been stolen. (Not protesting but attacking, and not a policy, but questioning the legitimacy of the government.) Nixon won the election he was so worried about in a landslide.
Post-Watergate, the idea that some group might conspire to rig a national election is more plausible, but still fringy. Today, there have been all sorts of polls showing a majority of Republicans think the election was stolen. What was the last day, between Watergate and January 6, that you could have gone into a coma and then wake up to find what was happening surprising? Twenty years earlier? Ten? Five? One? How did we even get from A to B?
Maybe it wasn’t intended that way but it is tendentious, just as speaking solely of the vaccine’s potential harms is, and so suggests your view is not balanced (not assuming that mine conversely is).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Presumably the JCVI had information of that sort and concluded the risk to the very young was marginal enough to warrant a precautionary approach to vaccinating them all.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No. Questions such as this are a slippery way of defaming someone.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What is the risk of a young, healthy person dying from Covid-19? According to research such as Ioannidis’s, tiny. What is the risk of a person being injured by one of the vaccines? We don’t really know, but it exists. So where does this dramatic reduction in risk you claim actually come from?
"begging the question occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it."
Why is it more likely the majority is right? Because the majority is greater in number, there is a higher probability they are right.
Is that not the gist of your argument? If you would rather call that circular reasoning, I'm ok with that.
The important point is that you haven't offered an argument that doesn't assume your conclusion is right.
We don't have both sides on this forum, as far as I know. I haven't seen any vocal anti-vaccers here.
From what I have seen, there are only the vocal pro-vaccers and the moderate pro-vaccers here. The vocal pro-vaccers automatically class the moderate pro-vaccers as the enemy.
Further, the moderate pro-vaccers don't see the vocal pro-vaccers nor the vocal anti-vaccers as the enemy, much less as "the enemy of everything good in the world".
That coercion is legitimate, considering the stakes. This is a public health issue. Likewise, school and work vaccines that have existed for decades are also legitimate.
Quoting boethius
The vaccine passport idea is perfectly ethical in situations I’ve heard so far: travel, concerts, etc. how else will we know if those are vaccinated or not?
If people were smart and decent, these measures wouldn’t have to be taken. So these proposals are necessary because all other rational pleas have failed.
What’s the alternative? Let things go on like this? Check out what’s happening in Idaho— with hospitals so overflowing they’re moving them to neighboring Washington state, with much higher vaccination rates.
Right now, those who are unvaccinated are dying at a much higher rate, and taking up hospital beds.
What about coworkers who don’t want to have a higher likelihood of getting infected do? Quit their jobs? Isn’t that also coercive?
So you wouldn’t go with the 99 doctors. Got it.
I think that’s demonstrably stupid. Same as going with Alex Jones over the IPCC. You can apply the rationale you’re employing to this as well.
As laymen, it’s prudent to listen to the consensus of experts. This is so commonsensical it’s essentially a truism. If you want to have an abstract, academic conversation about it, I’m not interested.
Good question.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Wendy Brown describes a left leaning narrative:
"Taking even themselves by surprise, hard-right forces have surged to power in liberal democracies across the globe.1 Every election brings a new shock: neo-Nazis in the German parliament, neofascists in the Italian one, Brexit ushered in by tabloid-fueled xenophobia, the rise of white nationalism in Scandinavia, authoritarian regimes taking shape in Turkey and Eastern Europe, and of course, Trumpism. Racist, anti-Islamic, and anti-Semitic hatefulness and bellicosity grow in the streets and across the internet, and newly coalesced far-right groups have burst boldly into the public light after years of lurking mostly in the shadows. Politicians and political victories embolden far-right movements, which in turn acquire sophistication as political handlers and social media experts craft the message. As recruits continue to grow, centrists, mainstream neoliberals, liberals, and leftists are reeling. Outrage, moralizing, satire, and vain hopes that internal factions or scandals on the right will yield self-destruction are far more prevalent than serious strategies for challenging these forces with compelling alternatives.
"We even have trouble with the naming—is this authoritarianism, fascism, populism, illiberal democracy, undemocratic liberalism, right-wing plutocracy? Or something else? Failure to predict, understand, or effectively contest these developments is due partly to blinding assumptions about perduring Western values and institutions, especially progress and Enlightenment and liberal democracy, and partly to the unfamiliar agglomeration of elements in the rising Right—its curious combination of libertarianism, moralism, authoritarianism, nationalism, hatred of the state, Christian conservatism, and racism. These new forces conjoin familiar elements of neoliberalism (licensing capital, leashing labor, demonizing the social state and the political, attacking equality, promulgating freedom) with their seeming opposites (nationalism, enforcement of traditional morality, populist antielitism, and demands for state solutions to economic and social problems). They conjoin moral righteousness with nearly celebratory amoral and uncivil conduct. They endorse authority while featuring unprecedented public social disinhibition and aggression. They rage against relativism, but also against science and reason, and spurn evidence-based claims, rational argumentation, credibility, and accountability. They disdain politicians and politics while evincing a ferocious will to power and political ambition.
"Where are we? There has been no shortage of efforts by pundits and scholars alike to answer this question. A composite Left account, whose limits will soon become clear, goes roughly like this: in the Global North, neoliberal economic policy devastated rural and suburban regions, emptying them of decent jobs, pensions, schools, services, and infrastructure as social spending dried up and capital chased the cheap labor and tax havens of the Global South. Meanwhile, an unprecedented cultural and religious divide was opening. Hip, educated, slender, secular, multicultural, globetrotting urbanites were building a different moral and cultural universe from the midlanders, whose economic woes were salted with steadily growing estrangement from the mores of those who ignored, ridiculed, or disdained them. More than hard up and frustrated, the Christian white rural and suburban dwellers were alienated and humiliated, left out, and left behind. Then there was enduring racism, rising as new immigrants transformed suburban neighborhoods and as policies of “equity and inclusion” appeared to the uneducated white male to favor everyone over him. Thus, liberal political agendas, neoliberal economic agendas, and cosmopolitan cultural agendas generated a growing experience of abandonment, betrayal, and ultimately rage on the part of the new dispossessed, the white working-class and middle-class populations of the First and Second Worlds. If their dark-skinned counterparts were hurt as much or more by neoliberal decimations of union-protected jobs and public goods, by declining opportunities and educational access and quality, what blacks and Latinos did not suffer was lost pride of place in America or the West.
"As this phenomenon first took shape, the story goes, conservative plutocrats manipulated it brilliantly: the dispossessed were thrown under the economic bus at every turn while being played a political symphony of Christian family values along with paeans to whiteness and to their young sacrificed in senseless and endless wars. That is “what’s the matter with Kansas.”2 Combining patriotism as militarism, Christianity, family, racist dog whistles, and unbridled capitalism was the successful recipe of conservative neoliberals until the 2008 finance capital crisis devastated incomes, retirements, and home ownership for its working-class and middle-class white base.3 With even the economists muttering that they had been wrong about unchecked deregulation, debt financing, and globalization, serious displacement was now required. This meant screaming about ISIS, undocumented immigrants, affirmative action myths, and above all, demonizing government and the social state for the economic catastrophe—slyly shifting the blame from Wall Street to Washington because the latter mopped up the mess by rescuing the banks while hanging little people out to dry. Thus was a second wave of reaction to neoliberalism born, this one more unruly, populist, and ugly. Already galled by an elegant black family in the White House, disgruntled whites were also fed a steady diet of right-wing commentary by Fox News, talk radio, and social media, inflected from the fringes as a potpourri of previously isolated movements—white nationalist, libertarian, antigovernment, and fascist—connected with each other via the internet.4 Especially given widespread disillusionment with the interminable Middle East wars, militaristic patriotism and family values were no longer enough. Rather, the new hard-right populism was bled directly from the wound of dethroned privilege that whiteness, Christianity, and maleness granted to those who were otherwise nothing and no one.
"The dethronement was easy enough to blame on job-stealing immigrants and minorities, along with other imagined undeserving beneficiaries of liberal inclusion (most outrageously, those of putatively terrorist religions and races) courted by elites and globalists. Thus were the causalities of neoliberal economic policies mobilized by the figure of their own losses, mirrored in a nation lost. This figure drew on a mythical past when families were happy, whole, and heterosexual, when women and racial minorities knew their place, when neighborhoods were orderly, secure, and homogenous, when heroin was a black problem and terrorism was not inside the homeland, and when a hegemonic Christianity and whiteness constituted the manifest identity, power, and pride of the nation and the West.5 Against invasions by other peoples, ideas, laws, cultures, and religions, this was the fairy-tale world right-wing populist leaders promised to protect and restore. The campaign slogans tell it all: “Make America Great Again” (Trump), “France for the French” (Le Pen and the National Front), “Take Back Control” (Brexit), “Our Culture, Our Home, Our Germany” (Alternative for Germany), “Pure Poland, White Poland” (Poland’s Law and Justice Party), “Keep Sweden Swedish” (Sweden Democrats). These slogans and the aggrieved spirit they express connected heretofore disparate racist fringe groups, right-wing Catholics and Christian evangelicals and merely frustrated white suburbanites falling out of the middle and working classes. Growing siloization of media consumption, from cable TV to Facebook, strengthened these connections and widened the chasm between the midlanders and the educated, urban and urbane, mixed race, feminist, queer affirmative, and godless. At the same time, neoliberalism’s relentless diminution of nonmonetized existence, such as being knowledgeable and thoughtful about the world, converged with the privatization choking off access to higher education for the many.
"A generation turned away from liberal arts education was also turned against it. The accent marks in this story vary. Sometimes they are on neoliberal policy, sometimes on putative Left-liberal absorption with multiculturalism and identity politics, sometimes on the increased political importance and power of evangelicals and Christian nationalists, sometimes on the growing vulnerability of an uneducated population to lies and conspiracies, sometimes on the existential need for horizons and inherent unattractiveness of a globalist worldview for all but elites, and sometimes on the enduring racism of an old white working class or the new racism cleaved to by younger uneducated whites. Some stress the role of powerful right-wing think tanks and political money. Others stress new/old “tribalisms” emerging from the breakdowns of nation-states or previously more (racially or religiously) homogenous regions. However, almost all agree that neoliberal intensification of inequality within the Global North was a tinderbox and that mass migration from South to North was a match to the fire. With its various inflections, this has become the Left’s common sense since the political earthquake of November 2016. The narrative is not wrong, but, I will argue, incomplete. It does not register the forces overdetermining the radically antidemocratic form of the rebellion and thus tends to align it with fascisms of old. It does not consider the demonized status of the social and the political in neoliberal governmentality nor the valorization of traditional morality and markets in their place. It does not recognize the disintegration of society and the discrediting of the public good by neoliberal reason as tilling the ground for the so-called “tribalisms” emerging as identities and political forces in recent years. It does not explain how the attack on equality, combined with mobilization of traditional values, could turn up the heat on and legitimate long-simmering racisms from colonial and slave legacies (what Nikhil Singh calls our “inner and outer wars”) or the never-go-softly-into-the-night character of male superordination.6 It does not register the intensifying nihilism that challenges truth and transforms traditional morality into weapons of political battle."
-- Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism
Thanks for only sharing this now. Could have saved mine and others time, I imagine.
Obviously it's not legitimate for a lot of people considering many government have made no coercive measures. Again, clearly not on the same level as flat earth and 6000 year old earth, which this thread is supposed to be equally about according to your own OP.
You've also answered your own question, on at least this vaccination point, by engaging with me.
Quoting Xtrix
The issue of the vaccine passport is "how much". But again, zero vaccine passports and no serious talk of making any where I live.
Quoting Xtrix
What about the "rational plea" to governments to contain the virus when it first broke out?
Or the rational plea to prepare enough resources for the next waves ... or even the first wave with just keeping existing legally obliged stocks of emergency supplies up to date and so on.
If governments (so incompetent as to let the crisis get out of hand where other governments "following the science" haven't) aren't held accountable for existing policy failures, why should people trust the next policy? All I hear is "yeah, yeah, yeah, government fucks you and lies to you all the time, will ruin your health and planet in a heart beat if corporations can gain anything from it, but! but! this particular issue is different".
Trust needs to be earned. Governments that have not earned any trust shouldn't be surprised when they start to lose the basic trust needed to govern in the first place.
Reasonable, whether imposing/"discriminatory" or not. (y)
Another dilemma related to anti-vaxxers is parents choosing for their children. I guess a common example is Jehovah's Witnesses denying blood transfusions. The situation has also been treated by various fictional accounts, e.g. a Babylon 5 episode called Believers (science fiction can sometimes defuse taboos). We have real life examples of criminal negligence where peers imposed whatever their religious faiths were on others, disregarding medicine, kind of bordering on murder in a way.
Irrational/ignorant, and a bit creepy. (n)
Medicine/science informs, ethics/morals decides, policies/politics implements. Presently, getting vaccinated comes out on top. While partaking in society do we not also have at least some social obligations? Seems responsible to take part in stomping the pandemic down.
Then we don't use that word there same way. I wasn't trying to make a broader point with the thing about kids, just the exact point I made, as I've explained. I may be arguing incompetently, but I'm doing so in good faith. I assume you are too.
Quoting AJJ
And I wasn't trying to defame you; I was asking why you brought up case-fatality rates. How should people use those statistics to inform the choices they must make? (Is that less offensive?)
Quoting AJJ
I'm not advocating vaccination for children. If people who know more than I do have made the trade-off, I trust that decision.
Given that, I take your point about not lumping in unvaccinated children with adults who cannot get vaccinated. If the risk for children is already extremely low, we should talk about them separately. You are right.
Making life essentially impossible without an internal vaccine passport, is a use force. What happens if you don't have your papers? Fine or prison. What if you don't pay the fine? Prison. What if you don't voluntarily go to prison? Force.
If something is needed for survival, you are de facto forced to do it. That there is a nominal difference with holding you down and injecting you is not so relevant ethically. If you withheld food from a prisoner unless they danced like a chicken, most people would not quibble that that's not "physically holding them and making them dance like a chicken".
Now, if it's perfectly easy to continue to live a normal life without the vaccine, then I'd agree it's not a use of force or "coercion" for those that prefer that softer lexical version of the same moral thing.
And, as noted, many countries do not have anything close to a "vaccine mandate" or "vaccine internal passport", but common pro-vaccine-mandate sentiments on the internet are: denying care to the vaccinated and making life impossible without your "papers". UK recently reneging on their vaccine passport plan.
Obviously, is up for fairly legitimate debated Which again, my basic point in this threat is that vaccine issues are no where close to the shape or age of the earth (in the sense of 000 or roughly 4 billion) issues.
Part of a narrative to delegitimize any dissent from government policy while serving as a scapegoat for obviously failed government policy.
I don’t know how they *should* use them. I’m arguing that they *can* be used to inform a decision to decline the vaccine. I keep bringing up young children and the JCVI judgement because it provides a helpful extreme—it shows there are cases where the trade-off *might* make it not worth getting vaccinated or where the decision is negligible, at least from a personal perspective. Are such cases found in the somewhat older population? I don’t see why not. If this is right then vaccine mandates lose this justification.
Honestly a good read, thanks for posting.
Would you agree with part below?
And of what follows:
Of course, the more radical left has not at all been surprised. We usually call it "late stage capitalism".
Here's some sample content:
We can always abstract things into irrelevance, cutting some corners/particulars here and there. We still have to deal with the current outbreak.
By the way, ad verecundiam/populum isn't quite applicable here. The world (nature, evidence) is the authority here anyway, that's what subject matter experts point at.
, how many (real life) examples do we have? With no workarounds?
There is the problem of when attending school is mandatory and (some) vaccines are mandatory for attending school. (And, for that matter, I guess school can be where ignorance is dispelled in the first place.) What now?
Agreed.
I do wonder how the trade-off is made though, as children in school together represent an excellent way for diseases to spread from household to household, even colds, flu, and the like.
For adults, as @Isaac has argued at length, the baseline risk for a healthy middle-aged person might be low enough that the vaccine offers little additional protection, some but not much. (Though possibly still a good decision given the extremely low cost to an individual.)
That still leaves questions about whether the vaccine helps reduce transmission.
I'll repeat yet again: I'm talking about the United States. Whatever country you're referring to -- as most have mask and vaccine requirements -- I'm not sure, but it's irrelevant. Why? Because different situations call for different solutions. If every citizen vaccinated voluntarily (or 80-90% do) then no mandates are really necessary to begin with. In countries without an abundance of vaccines, a vaccine mandate makes almost no sense.
In the United States, this is clearly legitimate use of power. I wish it didn't have to come to this -- but I wish we didn't have to go so far as to create laws for other issues as well, like drunk driving. Responding with "some countries don't have drunk driving laws" is equally irrelevant.
Quoting boethius
I'll repeat, yet again: No one, including me, is equating a discussion on vaccine mandates and state power to Creationism. If you want to keep repeating falsehoods even after being corrected, you'll be ignored.
Quoting boethius
Maybe it's impossible for you to understand that different countries are in different situations.
This is exactly what I mean by a waste of time.
Quoting boethius
What about them? I was on here arguing in favor of much stronger measures. Take it up with the Trump administration.
To point out another obvious fact: The Trump administration is not the same as the Biden administration.
Quoting boethius
Yes, which is why the question is a simple one: given the state exerts power all the time, in manifold ways, is this particular act of power legitimate or illegitimate. You're arguing for the latter, and you're wrong. You're wrong for myriad reasons.
These mandates are not only just, but overdue -- given the situation in the United States (which is not Nigeria, or Australia, or Bhutan). The medical community (and medical ethicists) have fielded many questions about all of this, which are all over the internet and media if one deigns to read and listen, and they have been ignored -- by you, and by everyone else fighting against mandates. So now you have become what you're criticizing the Trump administration of doing.
It doesn't make you an anti-vaxxer, but it certainly gives cover to them and legitimizes their position, during a time when we need everyone on deck for the common good.
Quoting jorndoe
Quoting jorndoe
Well said. Now comes the sophistry, the linguistic and logical gymnastics, the red herrings and whack-a-hole style argumentation -- one question answered (and ignored), another pops up (which has also been answered, and which is now re-stated). All in the (otherwise reasonable) name of freedom, autonomy, questioning of authority, liberty, suspicion of the state, and other important values -- all leveraged so that one can feel good about denying taking a damn vaccine.
And they wonder why "patience is wearing thin."
Indeed. Apparently, the solution is in lowering one's expectations about mankind, and renounce one's humanist sensitivities.
Then why don't you do something in that direction?
See, this is why we can't have nice things.
And a legitimate one. But it by no means makes life "essentially impossible." Plenty of people have already quit their jobs because they're refusing to take a vaccine. Fine -- their choice.
If something makes life virtually unlivable, then it must be pretty serious -- like other laws. Driving laws make driving without a license, or drunk driving, "essentially impossible" to do these days. But they're legitimate laws notwithstanding the few who "don't agree/refuse" to abide by them. They're free to disagree -- but pay the consequences for it. We're in a pandemic, and this is a public health issue -- everyone is on the line here, not just you.
Quoting boethius
Trying to equate vaccine passports to Nazi Germany, as you've continually tried to do, gives away the silliness of your position. As does using "medical procedure" instead of "getting the vaccine," etc. All fairly revealing.
For the record, no one is proposing fines or prison -- or "papers." You're deliberately misleading people, during a pandemic, by characterizing things this way.
Quoting boethius
I guess this is all that's left: straw men.
What a sad hill to die on.
Quoting boethius
And repeated long-refuted claims.
You're quickly becoming a joke.
Regarding transmission, I think people can take care of themselves. It’s always been so that the number of cases hasn’t reflected the amount of illness because they’ve included of all of the very mild and asymptomatic cases. The transmission of more severe cases is troubling, but how many people are inclined to go clubbing when they have, say, the flu? How likely is it that a mild case will transmit and become a severe case in a vaccinated person? How much risk should we be eliminating from our society? Driving a car is somewhat risky, we could ban them and eliminate that risk; for various reasons we don’t do this. Is even the elimination of the risk Covid-19 poses worth mandated medical treatments? Perhaps one day a medical treatment will be mandated that you wish to refuse—on that day would you regret that its precedent had been made?
I don't think I want to continue to line of thought any more.
I'm interested in questioning if the experts are worthy of trust.
Until I see that someone is actually open to questioning their chosen experts, why waste time if I'm gonna be replied to with platitudes, comparison to flat earthers and climate change deniars etc
And some growing/flourishing things?
I'm a little confused. My understanding is that you transmit the virus. Severe illness might mean you're shedding more virus, more likely to infect others, but also likely to stay home, not infecting anyone; but the asymptomatic can also transmit the virus. You don't transmit your illness and how sick you are has nothing to do with how sick someone you infect gets. Is that your understanding as well?
Quoting AJJ
Sure, it's always a question of costs and benefits. Cars are a lot safer than they were fifty years ago, or even twenty, and we still drive.
I'm not on board with any delusional plan to eliminate risk from life.
Quoting AJJ
I'm not quite sure what you mean here.
The matter is primarily psychological and ideological.
This whole covid crisis has long since stopped being about the virus or health, but about people seeking ways to feel good and to feel safe. The emphasis being on _feeling_ good, _feeling_ safe, as opposed to actually _being_ such. The former is much easier to accomplish than the latter.
Quoting baker
We have to risk our health, or even actively sacrifice it on one thing or another: Whether it's polluted air, polluted food, work related injuries and diseases, socially praised poisons like alcohol, coffee, and nicotine, hormonal contraceptives, and the occasional experimental vaccine.
It would be unrealistic to think that living in the modern world could come without costs, risks, and sacrifices.
Cars may be safer, and the traffic infrastructure as well, but people are worse drivers.
No, my understanding is this (https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-few-vaccines-prevent-infection-heres-why-thats-not-a-problem-152204):
I haven’t seen any reason why this doesn’t also apply to unvaccinated people with mild or asymptomatic cases.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think the above understanding, plus staying home when very ill, plus people managing their own exposure to the risk would be a better approach than mandating vaccinations.
I agree with this.
I guess some are more so, some less so, to varying degrees, ... Either way, it's worthwhile differentiating them, what they say, what they point at, the usual.
, I was just pinching your apparently universal statement.
Quoting baker
Beg to differ. Not everyone sticks their head in the sand. (Assuming I didn't misread your comment, which is entirely possible.)
That's interesting. It wasn't obvious to me that the Nature paper they cite says what they say it does, but I can't read the whole thing right now. And I'm not an epidemiologist.
I really wouldn't have expected that how much virus you're exposed to has some effect on how sick you get, but I suppose it makes sense, if your immune system has some time to respond without being overwhelmed. Again, not an epidemiologist.
That might change my thinking a bit. It's still a good reason to get vaccinated, but where I live has about half the vaccination rate of Sweden and people still refusing to wear masks...
Blaming the symptom, not the source of the disease, yes. Doing that fills a psychological need. In fact in general neoliberalism works with human nature as it finds it instead of trying to force something new.
As hospitals are overrun in Idaho and Texas and ~3000 die every two days. Keep minimizing it -- you're doing great work.
You were never serious about questioning the experts, nor are you an expert yourself. Any sophomoric question you have are out there for experts to answer, and they have -- and it's all over the internet. newspapers, the internet, and at your doctor's office.
The final summary at the end of the Discussion section seems plain enough; but there’s always the problem of being unable to evaluate these studies without the know-how. Still, the explanation intuitively makes sense and there must be some mechanism behind the reduced transmission.
Where are you getting those figures from? The Worldometers website has 3 day averages of around 400 and 40 daily Covid deaths for Texas and Idaho respectively.
Perhaps 400 Covid deaths per day still seems like a lot, but Texas has a population of 29 million. England has a population of 56 million and around 1,600 people die per day of all causes. Given that most people who die from/with Covid are at the ends of their lives anyway you can expect natural deaths and Covid deaths to significantly overlap.
Oh, and you thought “to beg the question” in this context meant to *raise* a question, didn’t you?
I was never serious about questioning which experts?
Of course I'm not an expert. Are you?
Quoting Xtrix
Including answers to ethical questions on vaccine mandates? Which medical ethicists should I trust, because I am pretty sure its not 99% who think vaccines should be mandated? But anyway, I thought I'm not qualified to judge if their answers are compelling or not because I'm a layman?
This is what is happening in some EU countries: A fully vaccinated teacher infects a class of children and coworkers. All must go to quarantene. Now what?
And, of course, in some jurisdictions, for a death to be ruled a covid death, no covid test and no autopsy are required, just the assessment of a doctor.
So who knows how accurate the covid death numbers are.
Yeah, it’s a mess.
You are.
Quoting tim wood
Explain.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/14/us/covid-hospital-icu-south.html
“One in four hospitals now reports more than 95 percent of I.C.U. beds occupied — up from one in five last month. Experts say it can become difficult to maintain standards of care for the sickest patients in hospitals where all or nearly all I.C.U. beds are occupied.“
But who cares? Better than getting a MEDICAL PROCEDURE.
I agree, except for the part about being stupid fools. They’re well-meaning people, mostly, who’ve been mislead. This is at education is important, and why regulating social media is important. No standards whatsoever, and an algorithm essentially designed to promote falsehoods— because they get more clicks.
They can’t see that the very fact that they’re “questioning” things so rigorously here and not elsewhere is the real issue. It’s not only because it’s a “big deal” that effects us all — that’s true too. It’s because of politicization.
I asked where you’re getting these figures from. They aren’t found on the Worldometers website. You posted an article about ICU beds that does not contain those figures.
Funny you have you ask me, as if this data wasn’t readily available. Here’s one example (the depths of obscurity, I know):
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
I sympathize. But if you instead imagine them as, say, high school students or, better, college students from Liberty University— would you feel the same? I wouldn’t.
I agree they’re doing untold harm, and that their actions are stupid. Their beliefs are also stupid— but who is planting them there?
I blame social media and the likes of Rupert Murdoch much more than any Joe Sixpack.
So like a sneak you’ve written this is a way that suggests those deaths are occurring in Texas and Idaho, when it’s really across all of the US.
Around 8,000 people die per day in the US of all causes. I’ve already said why this consideration is meaningful.
People who argue well don’t just say things and oblige their opponents to support both cases.
I decided to respond. Xtrix can ignore this post if he is not interested in my abstract academic philosophizing.
Experts don't always agree, and when they don't, the amount of experts on either side of a position does not tell us who is more likely to be right, because when both sides are experts, the expert status ceases to hold weight when compared to the opposition of an equal expert.
Just as the shared opinion of 99 laymen are not more likely to be right than the opinion of 1 laymen, so the shared opinion of 99 experts is not more likely to be right than 1 expert.
I think that is straight-forward, but I'll go into more detail in an attempt to cement it:
If the expertise level of each laymen is only at a roughly 1-10 percent level, then no matter how many laymen agree something is true, it will not be based on a greater percent level of expertise than 10 max.
It's possible that of the 99 laymen, none in the group exceeds a level of expertise higher than 9, as 9 may be unusually high for a laymen. And it's possible that the one laymen who came to a different conclusion than them, reached a different conclusion because he did significantly extra research to bring his expertise level to 10...and that 1% increase in knowledge made him come to a more informed conclusion. Just 1 percent more knowledge could give a vital piece of knowledge that changes one's conclusion.
So the same sort of thing can be at play with the 99 experts vs the 1 expert. We don't know why that 1 expert reached a different conclusion. It could be that the 1 expert is stupider, has a hidden agenda, or a lower level expertise, or it could be that he is smarter, more sincere, or a higher level expert. Until we know, I don't know what a justification could be for betting on the the majority of experts.
So you misread what I wrote and I’m a “sneak” because you haven’t followed the death cases which are posted almost everywhere one gets news. Interestingly. Pathetic is a better word.
Quoting AJJ
Yes, like I said: keep minimizing. You’re doing great work contributing to new deaths.
Quoting Yohan
It does exactly that.
Or we can go with your way of thinking, in which case Creation Science is equally as plausible as Evolution Science, as creationists like to say. 97% consensus in climate change? They’re all just as likely to be wrong or right— no way to tell, since they’re all experts.
If you’re convinced by this kind of thing, you’re welcome.
I’m not American, I don’t read that news.
And to be fair, given the whole “affect” and “effect” thing and not understanding what “begging the question” means while insisting others had it wrong, you might just be an egg.
:rofl:
Quoting tim wood
Yes. It’s still up to us to question and to research, if we’re really interested. But there is usually a reason for doing so and not simply trusting the experts. Mostly this reason is religious (not accepting evolution because it conflicts with beliefs), but also political (climate change). That’s the interesting part: to ask yourself “Why this issue, exactly?”
Quoting tim wood
I’m 39. Wouldn’t say I’m a spring chicken, but I take your point.
Then explain how. I gave a detailed explanation. Show where I made an error, if you want. I am always open to being proven wrong. I hope I do get proven wrong because then it will mean I have learned something.
I didn't say we have no way of telling what is true if there are experts on both sides of a position. I said if there are more experts on one side, and less but still some on the other side, that that isn't enough information to reach a conclusion about which is more likely to be right.
Probability is more nuanced than that.
Here is quick test for you. If 2 experts believe Y is true, and 1 expert believes Y is false, is it TWICE as likely that the 2 experts are right and the 1 expert is wrong? Please be honest here.
Quoting tim wood
I was saying that in a tongue and cheek way. I don't think I am being especially abstract. I don't know what case you are referring to. Xtrix when called out on circular reasoning called what he claimed "essentially a truism."
Anyway, what experts are you referring to? If you are claiming I am not an expert on experts, you are right. Are you? What I do know, is that often experts come to different conclusions, and therefor I cannot always trust someone to give me the right conclusion just on the knowledge that they are experts alone. Thanks.
I’ll give a simple example — very simple, and admittedly limited, so let this be the obligatory qualification:
Scenario 1: We have a complex math equation to solve for. Many people have made minor errors in prior classes, the teacher mentioned. You think you have the problem solved. You hand in your work.
Scenario 2: Same situation, with one difference: you have 3 of your friends check your work for errors. You hand in the work.
Scenario 3: Same as scenario 1, only before handing in your work you find out that 3 of your math friends, working independently, have gotten the same result.
Should we be equally confident in all three scenarios?
Quoting Yohan
It is. If that’s all the information I have, as you say, then going with the greater number of experts is the correct move.
Take the climate change example. Knowing nothing except that 97% of climate scientists agree— is it a better bet to go with them over the 3%? Yes, it is.
There are ways to test this too.
In science, when numerous fields and numerous experts, from around the world, come to the same conclusions and results after weighing evidence and doing experiments independently, the level of certainty is increased.
There are always exceptions we can point to— but science is the best we have. Maybe a psychic or astrologer is right once in a while— does that prove anything?
Quoting Yohan
It’s more likely that the two experts are right. I don’t know about twice as likely — probably not, but compared to what?
Two people are proofreading your paper instead of one. Are two people more likely to find errors? Yeah, of course. In general that’s true. Two people mining for gold are more likely to find something than one person. 100 people mining, even more likely. Etc.
Remember, we’re assuming a level of expertise as well. If two people proofreading your paper are average Joes, and one is an experienced editor, that situation is different.
Webster:
Expert 1. One with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject
I find the word representing interesting here. I'm not sure what it means here.
Anyway, I've read about the process of Mastery. From what I understand Mastery is never fully achieved. It is something one passionately dedicated to a topic, field, discipline, sport, whatever constantly strives for, and in the process achieves a comparatively high level of greatness at/in that field. But what I read may be wrong. Perhaps Mastery is possible. But I do suspect it may be somewhat uncommon(which may be the point), and I think everyone has room for improvement, even the experts.
I don't know how good at something one has to be to be justifiably labelled an expert. I tend to think of it, as with many words, in degrees. From 0-100% skill/knowledge. But its not so easy to determine at what percentage of skill you are at, at least in some fields, and again, what percentage of skill is enough to be labelled an Expert/Master. is 80% enough or should it be in the 90% or higher?
Quoting tim wood
1. Sorry if I'm being overly picky, but what exactly do you mean by 'presumed'? And is the presumption a necessary part of the definition, or a necessary aspect to determine an expert?
2. How do we determine what the limit is of what can be known and understood?
3. How do we test if someone has arrived at this limit or near this limit?
Quoting tim wood
I don't understand. The experts should agree on what can be known and understood? Until I understand, this, I don't understand how further down you reached the conclusion that a majority of expert agreement is itself compelling. If what I said is what you meant, then I don't see why experts should necessarily agree on what can be known or understood.
My left arm feels a bit numb, and I get hot flashes, and some palpitations.
As of tomorrow, Slovenia will have some of the most restrictive measures in the world: the only places one can go without a valid covid passport are basic grocery stores and pharmacies, provided they are not in a shopping mall, but directly accessable from the street. Masks, social distancing, disinfection as usual.
The government is announcing even more restrictions, although I'm not sure what more they can do.
You should probably go to the hospital
That's where they have the cardiac catheterization labs though.
Besides, one cannot just go to the hospital here, unless it's an urgent matter. First, you need to go to your GP, who then perhaps refers you further. It all makes for a lot of waiting in situations that aren't particularly epidemioloigcally safe.
Just for your knowledge, what he's describing are the symptoms of a heart attack. If you get those, go to the emergency dept. of your local hospital.
Palpitations along with left arm numbness could be runs of ventricular tachycardia, a sign that the heart muscle is lacking oxygen.
Women tend to have odd symptoms.
My point to you was that since you didn't realize she was describing heart attack symptoms, you might want to read up on it. In America, you can easily avoid death or permanent heart damage by getting to a cardiac cath lab in a timely manner.
Do try and show your reasoning. The vaccine protects against the virus. So, the unvaccinated are exposing only themselves and others who have made the same choice to a risk.
Now, do what others do and desperately scrabble around trying to find some hugely remote risk and decide that it is on that basis that you think it is ok to violate people's rights. Then realize that this would justify quarantining people for the common cold; then realize this would mean forcing everyone to take Prep so that we don't catch HIV from one another. And so on. Realize, in other words, that you have a childishly ignorant view, wholly unnuanced and uninformed by any understanding of rights and how they work.
Ethics: it's what I am an expert in and you're not. Now, experts in subjects other than ethics will typically only be able to tell you about the consequences of things. So that's all they do. The economic consequences; the medical consequences; the psychological consequences and so forth. That's what their expertise gives them authority to pronounce on. And that's fine - but it isn't ethics and when they make a normative judgement - a judgement about what we ought to do - they're stepping outside their area of expertise.
If you knew anything at all about ethics, you'd know that ethics is not all about securing optimal consequences (even after one has figured out what those may be). It is about respecting people's rights in the process. That's why if the only way to stop covid was to torture a child, it'd be wrong to do that. It's why it is wrong to shove a fat person off a bridge onto some tracks below in order to stop a runaway train trolley from running over five innocents further down the line. People have rights and those rights put restrictions on what you can do to other people to further your own - and their - ends.
Now, those who take the vaccine are free to do so. Nobody is arguing that people should be prevented from taking the vaccine. But people should also be free not to take the vaccine if they do not wish to. Yes, it's dumb. But people are free to be dumb (see, I'm on your side - you just don't realize it). They're not exposing others to a risk apart from those who have themselves made the same choice.
And if you don't want to work with unvaccinated people for whatever irrational reason, that's your right - stay home. Resign. Lose your job. Up to you.
And if you run a business and don't want unvaccinated people working for you, sack them. That's your right too - it's your business, not theirs and they're not entitled to their job.
But what you're not entitled to do is say to another business owner "sack your unvaccinated employees".
Stay in your lane. Other people matter and other people have their own lives to lead. Let them lead them in the way they see fit. They way 'they' see fit - not you. You're not them. It's a very simple idea - an idea J.S.Mill (someone you think was a great intellectual, despite obviously never having read him) championed. Read J.S.Mill's On Liberty. And stay out of other people's lives until or unless the way they're living them threatens your rights.
No— this seems right, but is completely wrong. Which you would know if you deigned to read what doctors and the CDC say about this. Completely open to everyone to learn— simple google search would do.
You’re not only risking your own life. The protection rate for vaccines is 90+ %, which is very good, but still people can get it. That’s one fact.
More importantly, there are other people who are unvaccinated (like children, and those who can’t get vaccinated for reasons beyond refusal) who will be impacted.
There is also the fact of overwhelming hospital ICUs, which is happening in Idaho and across the south— which has wide ranging effects on heath care personnel as well as people with other health concerns.
Less people get vaccinated, less chance of reaching herd immunity.
Lastly, there’s the greater possibility of mutation as the virus continues to spread— mutations which will effect everyone, as the delta variant is — only with the possibility of being vaccine resistant.
There are thousands of deaths every week. This effects everyone. We have a vaccine which can stop it, as every major medical organization has stated and is why they are pushing for people to receive them.
There’s simply no excuse anymore, and no time to keep debating with people who don’t want to change their minds anyway. Hence the mandates, which are not only legitimate but overdue.
It’s hard to believe you can call yourself an “expert” in anything, with such embarrassing questions like this.
Safe sex has been encouraged for decades. Besides instances of rape, sex is a choice undertaken by individuals— with known risks of AIDS, STDs, and pregnancy.
COVID can be caught through the air, so the more appropriate analogy is to smoking. If COVID could be caught through sexual contact, the story would be different. That’s not the reality. COVID effects the entire community.
Quoting Bartricks
This is laughable. In my experience, anyone who has to go on about what experts they are, or their credentials, rather than letting their arguments speak for themselves, are usually just betraying their insecurities. In your case it’s so transparent its cringe-inducing. I’m glad this is the internet, for your sake.
Quoting Bartricks
You have a shallow understanding of ethics. Why? Because ethics is a branch of philosophy, and of which there are many perspectives. To simply declare that the field of ethics isn’t “all about” consequences is saying almost nothing whatever. Neither I, nor anyone else so far, has stated that we’re concerned only with consequences.
Secondly, the tired example of sacrificing a child for the sake of saving many other lives— which is something out of any undergraduate philosophy course — is irrelevant here. Why? Because we’re talking about the real world. You want to ignore the real world so you can go on about thought experiments, but that’s simply a deflection.
The reason medical authorities, medical ethicists, and most of the country agree with mandates is because they understand something that you, with your self-proclaimed “expertise,” can’t seem to — which is why you come to ridiculous conclusions: vaccines are safe, they’re effective, they help stop the spread, and they will get us out of this pandemic. With those facts as a basis, the rest becomes fairly easy to determine.
I’ve quoted an actual medical ethicist on this topic. I can quote others. I take them seriously— in contrast, I think you’re a joke. You’d do well to listen to them.
Quoting Bartricks
Brilliant insight.
Quoting Bartricks
They are free to be dumb to themselves. Smokers are dumb. When you smoke next to me, it’s not longer about you being dumb to your own body, but mine as well. You simply refuse to understand this, despite it being raised over and over again…for example:
Quoting Bartricks
This is completely wrong, as my other response shows, and also fails to consider other effects of these choices.
If people want to refuse the vaccine and isolate themselves from others— I have no issue with that. If people want to smoke in their homes, or never wash their hands when they make a meal (at home), that’s their choice. But we live in a society — these choices effect others, whether you refuse to see this or not.
Kind of odd you don’t, for someone who pretends to care about “ethics.”
JS Mill's harm and offense principle might help here. In favor of @Xtrix due to the nature of harm being considered in this thread.
The unarmed has a higher chance of becoming a virus replication/propagation/mutation factory affecting others. ?
And higher risk of getting sick (up to and including death). :death:
Anyway, it seems there are some emerging efforts to find vaccine exemptions, whatever may come of that.
The Harm Principle -- others can restrict your rights to certain things or activities if those things and activities can physically harm them. Second-hand smoking inside a room with other people, for example, is one of those offenses. It's called negative rights -- one's freedom can be ethically restricted to prevent harm to others. For example covid infection.
Imagine Tim wants to hit Jones in the face, and Jones wants Tim to hit him in the face. Would Mill think we could intervene?
Once more: what risk are the unvaccinated posing to the vaccinated?
I am now vaccinated (today, in fact!). Why should I give a damn whether you are?
I did not actually cite that particular issue here -- the unvaccinated. After all, using the HP means employing it on a case by case basis. Slowly now -- it means, if it's about smoking, smoking is an activity that harms, then we go on and explain what the harm is, citing scientific studies. etc. Now when it comes to covid, I meant people who are careless, not wearing masks, or not washing hands, those sort of eeek things.
If Tim wants to thump Jones and Jones wants Tim to thump him, what business is it of yours? Whose rights are they violating? Yours?
Now, baby steps......if two people want to remain unvaccinated then they....are....posing.....a.....risk....to.....each....other. Of their own free will. So butt out and let them pose that risk to each other if that's what they want to do! It's nothing to do with you. Lead your life how you want - let them lead theirs how they want. Sheesh. You busy-bodies really annoy me. Covid has put so much wind in your bossy sails hasn't it?
Imagine being such an imbecile that you keep repeating this nonsense. :lol:
No ethical sense, either.
Apparently been beaten out by years of scholarly study.
Remember Xtrix, I'm in favour of allowing dumb people to live the dumb lives they want to live. I'm on your side, Xtrix.
See above. Has been explained several times now.
My advice to others here: it’s about time to ignore this imbecile.
I have. So have many others here. I won’t be doing it again. You can re-read. That’s all you deserve, and it’s generous at that.
Better advice: learn something about ethics. Perhaps start by reading those who know what they’re talking about (i.e., can understand basic medical facts).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/594855
Maybe we should stop butterflies flapping their wings - they cause tornadoes, you know! Experts tell us.
The self-proclaimed ethics expert, folks.
:lol:
Reading comprehension isn’t a requirement for ethics curricula anymore, I guess.
And how many of those die from the virus, Xtrix? Virtually none. You'd have to lock us down for regular flue, Xtrix! I hope you don't drive. There's a vanishing small possibility that you'll run someone over at some point. So keep it in the garage!!!
And then there's sick little tiny Tim ....but what about the children!!
If you promise to read every damn response I've thrown at ya so far.
Quoting Bartricks
Thousands dead every week, hospital ICUs pushed to capacity, during a worldwide pandemic, and this is what gets said.
Just another anti-vaxxer disguising himself. I’m glad to have helped to reveal it, at least.
Don’t bother. This imbecile is another example of a lost cause— he has no interest in learning anything, and apparently doesn’t allow himself to even hear anything (“you said some stuff”). That’s impressive!
Oh well.
“But I’m an ethics expert and you aren’t!”
:lol:
Don't say that. He might have a learning disability. :fear:
Fair point.
Worth repeating for those genuinely curious — and interested in the facts (upon which we base our ethical decisions).
All these factors have to be considered together, not isolated and minimized.
Apparently one simply has to NOT be an “ethical expert” to see these simple facts.
You don't seem to understand what a big factor unknown variables play in probability theory.
Are two writers working together on a book more likely to write a best seller than 1 writer working alone?
I imagine you do, which means you are assuming a bunch of variables without warrant.
Some writers, scientists, etc, work better alone. Joint efforts can work better in some cases, especially when the answer is predetermined and proof readers are just checking for commonly known mistakes. I don't deny that more is more when more is more, but its not always. Some times more is not more, and sometimes less is more. The answer before enough variables are known is: It depends.
Here is another example.
Two martial arts experts vs 1 martial arts expert.
Which side is more likely to win, if that is all we know?
Answer: It depends. Are they at an equal level of expertise? Are they all in their prime?
Two fifty year old small built martial artists may be no match for one 25 year old huge built martial artist. We don't just get to assume an equal playing field because all of them have the same title of Martial Arts Expert
There is this myth that the world of Science doesn't work like other fields. That in science everything is clear cut and absolute and simple. I am challenging that myth.
I think this is a valid point, so far as it goes. The vaccine does not immunize you against infection, just reduces your chances substantially, but the evidence is also strong that it reduces the severity and duration of the illness.
But since uptake of the vaccine has been relatively slow in the United States, there is still a large portion of the population the virus can spread through essentially unchecked. There may have been a window, earlier on, for getting enough of the population vaccinated quickly that the virus would have much less opportunity for reproduction -- herd immunity -- but that window seems to have closed. Since the virus still has a steady supply of new hosts to spread to, it is continuing to mutate, and that's trouble. I believe several prominent virologists and epidemiologists (maybe Andrew Pollard?) have expressed a concern that the virus may yet throw up a variant that it is even more effective at infecting the vaccinated. And I see no reason to assume that we won't end up fighting a variant that causes more severe illness among the vaccinated -- though that's admittedly speculation on my part, and I don't want to lean too heavily on dangers we might face. On top of all that, it is known that resistance to coronaviruses fades over time. It's still there, but the immune response seems to be somewhat less robust many many months after exposure or vaccination.
All of which is to say it is more than paternalistic concern for the well-being of the unvaccinated that leads genuine experts to want as many people as possible to get vaccinated. The longer the enemy is in the field, changing as it reproduces, the harder the enemy is to fight. A lot of this is about timing.
Quoting Yohan
I anticipated you would get fixated on the example, but not the principle. So be it.
Quoting Yohan
I’m not talking about “joint efforts.”
Quoting Xtrix
Yes, but calculating the exact odds aren’t the issue. Why? Because with incomplete information— in this case limited to 2 against 1 — we have a choice: do we bet on the 1 or on the 2?
The question isn’t “what’s the EXACT probability”? The two could be 5th degree black belts, the one could be Jet Li — that changes things. But we don’t know any of that. We also aren’t expert enough to say which material arts style pairs well against another, even if we knew the styles. And on and on. There are many variables. That’s not the question.
The question, to take the obvious case, is: do we, as laymen, knowing nothing else (a crucial point which you continually want to divert from), go with the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, or do we go with the minority view? The 97% or the 3%?
To shift to your example: there’s 97 martial artists against 3. Knowing nothing else, what is your choice for who wins?
If you really can’t bring yourself to admit you’d go with the 97, then you’re simply arguing for other reasons — which I can guess about, but which are completely irrational. The answer is obvious, and has been my only point all along. If you don’t want to concede that, that’s your issue. But as I said before, it’s essentially a truism.
Quoting Yohan
No, what you’re doing is creating a straw man. You can have fun destroying it if you like— so you can feel like you’re accomplishing something— but it makes no difference, because I’ve never remotely argued that everything in science is “clear cut and absolute and simple.” Never.
:clap:
You’re a more patient man than I.
Where was this advice two pages ago?
I haven't researched this issue, but I'd go with the 3% because its more likely the majority is influenced by group think, while the minority are better at thinking out side of the box (less biased and influenced by peer pressure)
Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist, if you will.
:lol:
So you'd also go with the 3 martial artists over the 97. In other words, you're an imbecile (apologies for the accuracy). Fair enough. Stick with it.
(Or it's "more likely" that the 3% are bought off by fossil fuel interests -- which indeed is the case. It's also "more likely" that the small group of Creationists who argue for a Biblical flood are influenced by religious beliefs. But you go with those guys.)
Does the Philosophy Forum have a Hall of Fame for the most stupid answers?
Quoting Xtrix
Yes. If someone said there is a match of 3 martial artists vs 97, and told me I could not know anything else about the match, and asked me to place a bet, I would think its likely a set up and place my bet on the 3. Probably the 3 have some unfair advantage that wasn't stated. Seems pretty obvious to me.
:rofl:
Actually had me laughing. I appreciate it.
Remind your friends never to gamble with you. Roulette: "I'll place my money on GREEN -- seems likely there's a set up going on."
:strong:
Yeah, come to think of it, that sounds more likely. I concede the point. :up:
Perhaps I didn't pick the best time to suspect Group Think. But I do hope you are honest enough to accept that it is a legitimate concern. Science is not immune to it.
Consider how many scientists were resistant to change their mind about Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
I'm not convinced the Majority is right the majority of the time. At least not on contentious or subtle issues.
Good article here which describes that sort of thing: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/pandemic-science
Never said it was.
Yeah, because we’re all convinced you two care about scientists being abused. If you are, then it’s funny you should exclude the more glaring example: the case of Dr. Fauci, who has received numerous smears and death threats for months, for doing nothing more than giving the current medical understanding, over and over again. Or the thousands of others — like the head of the CDC and its other employees.
Creationists love to paint themselves as oppressed martyrs fighting for truth as well. So do Holocaust deniers. So do flat earthers. Wait— so does every pseudo-scientist and Qanon conspiracy lunatic out there. Hmm…
Talk about scary and tragic.
So just because I didn't name names, didn't give particular examples which are countless, but was speaking in general, I'm somehow dishonest? What a silly incorrect conclusion you've come to.
No, it isn't incorrect. Given what you're said prior, this is the correct conclusion. Wormy people like you want to try to hide your very obvious prejudice, and appear as neutral/objective when confronted on it.
You've deliberately taken the side of a minority medical position, and now go on harping about how they've been mistreated for "not following the mainstream narrative."
Gaslight somewhere else.
When you stop posting nonsense on my threads and mentioning me in your comments, you got it. :ok:
Based on your childish immature unfounded unnecessary rudeness and arrogance from the very first reply on, but more because of your very poor reasoning (maybe few others spot the irony you've created here and have a good laugh as I did), rest assured I'll stay the fu*k away from your threads and comments on this forum.
Are you serious?
:lol:
Coming from you, this really means a lot. I'm devastated.
You keep up the good fight of defending quackery because it goes "against the mainstream narrative." Excellent "reasoning."
Quoting RAW
Wasn't that a Rolling Stone song?
Quoting Philofile
Yes -- and who are you? Odd that you jump in the middle of this after joining the forum 2 hours ago.
I find it interesting that AJJ, Yohan, RAW, and now Philofile are all relatively new members who have come out of the woodwork to pursue this crusade of ignorance and championing of woo-woo.
Not a coincidence. Probably banned members reconstituted. All the more reason to take with a grain of salt.
http://www.williamsonherald.com/opinion/commentary-why-should-i-care-if-others-get-vaccinated/article_96e737c2-b369-11eb-90ce-c79d7571ff9a.html
Last Scenario then I give up:
There is a fight between Person 1 and Person 2.
Person 3 is going to bet on who will be more likely to win based on randomly receiving 1 of the following pieces of information:
Person 1 has some advantage over Person 2 in some area
Or
Person 2 has some advantage over Person 1 in some area
Person 3 has told us before he is given one of the pieces of information, that he believes that, absent of all other information, if he knows one Person has any advantage at all over the other Person, it would be a safer bet to go with the Person with the known advantage. He admits he wouldn't necessarily know the exact degree of the advantage, but that he would be justified in claiming there would be some over-all total advantage.
Therefor, we know ahead of time what Person 3 will bet on if he receives either piece of information.
Because we know this, we know that the odds of him betting on either of the persons would be 50%.
Will Person 3's guess have a higher chance of being right in either case of him receiving the First or Second piece of information? There doesn't seem to be. As far as we know, whichever piece of information Person 3 receives, will have no bearing on who will be more likely to win. The, as far as know, 50% odds, would not be influenced in the slightest.
If this is wrong, then please show me how. Anyone.
I stopped reading around this point. I’m not going over it again. If you are legitimately struggling with a truism, I wish you well in working that out.
You don't really need to go this far, your first approach was fine.
Probabilities are a function of variables. The variables which make an expert more likely to be right are things like; diligence, lack of conflict of interest, peer review, a good understanding of statistics and experiment design, a secure position (like a tenure) not reliant on frequent publication, a willingness to be wrong, a wide field of funding sources, pre-print publication, a good network of peripheral experts independent employment etc.
There simply isn't a mechanism whereby the agreement of a majority of one's peers could affect the likelihood of a theory being right. Most theories which differ do so because of underdetermination of data, not because of some error, but even if it were, despite @Xtrix's bizarre notion, we don't all check each other's work.
There is, as demonstrated over and over again. This is why consensus is important and, within science, taken very seriously indeed. This is exactly why experiments are conducted in multiple settings, with multiple research teams. When results are duplicated, the likelihood of the original results being accurate are further confirmed.
When 97% of climate scientists from around the world have reached consensus, it's more likely this is true than if there were 30% agreement. If 97% experiments gave the same result, confidence is higher than if 20% of experiments gave the same result. Etc.
But the original question -- which you can't seem to understand -- was about what laymen should do when no other information is available: go with the overwhelming scientific and medical consensus, or go with the minority view? The answer to that, I believe, is simple and straightforward. Sorry that you struggle with it.
Not a mechanism, no, not in the sense that what someone else thinks has a causal bearing on whether what you think is true. (There's actually stuff about that -- can't quite place it.)
But from a simplistic population point of view, why not? Why can't we be happy to tell the story of science this way: 99 guys believed in phlogiston and 1 didn't; smart money was that he was wrong, but it turns out he was right. Probability isn't destiny. The unlikely-to-be-right, unlike the impossible-to-be-right, can, and now and then should, turn out to be right.
I think what you're saying is that there is a better way to assess those likelihoods than just counting heads, and that's fine. Better than fine. But the important thing is that your likelihood function be properly calibrated, right? There are probabilities between 0 and 1, and if you think your model shouldn't leave room for the unlikely to turn out to be right, you're doing it wrong. The question is whether the unlikely turns out to be right as often as you predicted it would, neither more nor less.
Or how about when gay people were called mentally ill and tried to be medically cured?
Phlogiston anyone?!
How much medical science has been shown to be absolute dogshit.
So this bullshit about people who don't trust the medical system being labelled derogatorially just shows the ignorance of these science/pharma industry/witch doctor bootlickers for what they are. Ignorant wimps.
Man up,and trust your immune system and personal intelligence.
See this for example.
It is definately a reason to mistrust big pharma and mainstream medicine.
No I don't see doctors or take their antibiotics.
When I'm sick,which is very rare,or have a sports injury I heal myself with nutrition,exercise and will power.
If need be I use some over the counter or underground medicine. Only sources I trust.
But bottom line,its my choice.
That's unwise.
What do you look for in a source for it to earn your trust?
Well I'm very healthy.
Why are you so concerned about my health but not freedom?
You're free to drink bleach, but I'd strongly recommend against it.
There is no risk.
I only take medicine when I'm sick,and even then only if I feel the need.
My lifestyle and fitness regime is better than 99% of the folks yapping about health.
Really,you think everyone should vax because you THINK it's safer for you that way.
Sorry,I don't live life in fear like a pussy.
I would rather you concern about freedom than my health.
Nor am I swayed in the slightest by your appeal to "rational decision". I'm a better rational judge of my health than you,wouldn't you say,Big brother?
And your comment about bleach is irrational and stupid.
Then why do you oppose the vaccine? I assume it's because you believe one of these:
1. The vaccine offers no additional protection and so is unnecessary
2. The vaccine is dangerous
3. The additional protection from the vaccine is marginal and so not worth my time getting
Which is it? Or is there another reason I'm not seeing?
I see no danger from colds.
Vaccines are unnecessary against potential colds.
They do not work.
A cold is not dangerous unless you are already very ill.
Colds are natural.
I don't wear a cast before I hurt my leg,just in case!
I don't believe in germ theory. That's nonsense from monsieur pasteur.
Plus,your not the judge of my health.
You wanna take vaccines,go ahead your free. I believe they are useless. And yes,you can get adverse reactions in some cases.
I'm not getting in the way of your choice. You can do the same to me.
Yes, because colds aren't very dangerous. I don't know if anyone has ever died of a common cold. Lots of people have died from measles and COVID, though. Are you saying that there is no danger from measles and COVID?
Not against colds as far as I'm aware, but they work against measles and COVID.
Why not?
But presumably you would wear a helmet when riding a motorbike, or when working on a construction site?
You see I have explained clearly my reasons and you still want to badger. Face to face I would tell you go fuck off and get out of my business.
Corona is the name for the common cold look it up.
Because pasteurs theory doesn't make sense in the real world. Nor is it proven by kochs postulates.
If I feel a risk I would wear a seat belt or such like. But that's my choice.
You claimed that you don't take vaccines because the common cold isn't dangerous and vaccines against them don't work, but there are diseases that are dangerous and with vaccines that do work (measles, COVID). I want to know why you don't get vaccinated against them.
The common cold is a disease caused by many different viruses, including many different coronaviruses. These viruses can cause more than just the common cold, though. They can cause SARS, MERS, and COVID which are a lot more dangerous than the common cold.
Koch's postulates have been supplanted by things like the Bradford Hill criteria and Falkow's criteria.
Yes, it's your choice. And I'm asking you why you make the choice you do. It isn't very smart to choose to not wear a seatbelt and it isn't very smart to choose to not be vaccinated. Wearing a seatbelt and getting vaccinated are the rational choices to make.
Sorry,I don't follow your scientific religion salvation route.
I never died of measles or colds or anything else!
Yet wasn't I exposed to them during my life?
Yes,whenever a paradigm doesn't benefit big pharma it is changed to a more lucrative one.
Just think,we would have been having this same conversation years ago about "curing" gay people.
And you would have been dead wrong then,just like you are now,despite your dialectic mumbo jumbo.
False equivalence! Nice sleight of hand!
Bottoming line,its choice,mine not yours mister tinpot.
Like a cold is the same as driving in a car!
Plenty of other people have. I've already linked to this.
The fact that people have died from measles is proof that measles is dangerous and the fact that an increase in vaccinations has reduced the number of deaths is proof that the vaccine works. It's rational to be vaccinated against measles. Arguing that you don't need to be vaccinated against measles because you have never died of measles is an irrational argument.
Why is it a false equivalence? Seatbelts are a preventive measure against trauma in the case of a car crash and vaccines are a preventative measure against infection in the case of contact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
You thinking some Tinpot paranoic calling me irrational means anything to me!!!
The fact people have died in boxing means I shouldn't box,or that I should be scared or take a vaccine beforehand???
Get out of here with your Wimpish rationality.
Well, it does quite literally 100% of the time, that's just the nature of scientific progress (by which I mean the mechanism, not each and every unlikely idea, of course). Every single thing we now consider to be 'right' started out as the maverick theory of some lone scientist. The question is not whether it happens but how far along the curve are we, how far have we progressed in any question away from lone mavericks and toward everyone thinking the same 'truth' (the truth which 20 years ago was abject nonsense).
The key thing for the probabilities argument is that the numbers are still exhaustive. If there are 20 scientists in the world, then every single one will take some position on every issue. So for newly emerging theories (say, germ theory at the late 19th century) we'd expect 19 to think it nonsense and 1 to think it right. By the early 20th century we'd expect 19 to think it right and 1 to think it nonsense. Whether the majority are actually right is entirely a function (here) of where one is in the progress of a theory*
*All of this assumes other factors are equal.
With our current issue (a novel vaccine, using newish technology to fight a never-before-seen virus on an unprecedented scale), it's very hard to believe we're so far along the curve that what the majority believe has any bearing at all on the matter. Without the data on how far along the normal maverick->commonplace curve we are we've absolutely no way of judging the relationship between majority belief and 'rightness'.
All of this is, of course, common knowledge. Which is why, prior to this social-media-induced mess, it was perfectly normal to accept a person's position as being reasonable on the grounds of it having...well, reasons... good grounds... justification... adequate support... the rather old fashioned Mertonian principle we used to believe in. This notion that one must hold to whatever the consensus currently think is entirely modern, and quite repugnant.
I'd certainly advise against it.
No, because vaccines don't protect you from head trauma. A head- and mouth- guard would be more appropriate. Vaccines protect against viruses, e.g. measles. I'd recommend getting them during a pandemic, or when visiting certain foreign countries.
Because car crashes are a potential occurrence,though very rate.
Dying from a cold is zero,unless your already very ill.
Your big pharma govt propoganda mean zero.
I notice your avoiding the gay cure example I gave,very disingenuous.
Fact is you
believe in vaccines a priori from appeal to authority and fear.
But dying from measles and COVID isn't zero.
I didn't ignore it. The first thing I said to you is "medical science being wrong in the past isn't reason to dismiss medical science today."
Yes, I do. It's a pragmatic approach to life. I'm told that it's dangerous to drink bleach so I don't drink bleach. A doctor tells me that my breathing difficulty and coughing is due to a chest infection and so I take the prescribed antibiotics.
Using "personal intelligence" (which you referred to here) involves understanding when it's appropriate to trust the word of experts. I have neither the time nor the resources nor the knowledge to conduct my own research into everything.
I boxed without a headguard.
And I will Continue to live exactly as I see fit.
All these precautions and intrusions are based on fear and deliberate lies.
Zero sleep lost from these lies.
I suppose your celibate,vegan and never pick your nose in public?
Well you trust your "experts" just like Christians trust their priests.
I will trust my intelligence thanks.
No, they're not. A great deal of them are based on facts and common sense risk aversion.
Whoever told you that vaccines don't work or that germ theory is false is the one peddling in lies (whether deliberate or from ignorance).
Intelligence isn't enough to know the facts about microbes and the immune system. That requires study and experimentation. Are you a trained pathologist?
Well my common sense differs greatly from yours.
Medicine has a proven track record of lying.
It also has a proven track record of telling the truth. Modern medicine works. Vaccinations have reduced the number of people dying from measles and COVID and lessened the severity of the symptoms.
I remember the days when Christians would castigate people,don't you believe in the eucharist and demons on a pin!!!??? Same tired old appeal to authority.
Are you a trained priest!!! Or a bootlicker of priests!
Totally circular reasoning.
Marijuana lowers symptoms.
Big Pharma is not the only game in town monsieur.
Two heads are better than one.
That's a truism. When in doubt, get a second opinion. Yep, could be helpful.
Does it mean a group of people is more likely to be right than one single individual? No, that is not a truism, that is bias. Most people are Christian, so what? Most people used to believe in flat earth (I assume including most geologists).
If you can't grasp the different between conventional wisdom, and conventional bias, that is your thing to deal with. I'll leave you alone. Take care.
Imagine there's a bridge across a river with a single fatal flaw. The flaw is so hard to spot that there's only a 1% chance of an expert spotting it. We ask 100 engineering experts to check the bridge. What would be the expected proportion of safe to unsafe assessments? 99:1. We just specified that the problem is so hard to spot that there's only a 1% chance it will be spotted so we'd expect only 1 in every 100 engineers to spot it - 99% of experts would be wrong.
Now imagine the flaw is so easy to spot that only 1 in every 100 engineers would miss it. Now we'd expect a 1:99 ratio of safe to unsafe assessments - 99% of experts would be right.
So the variable that matters is how hard the flaw is to spot, not how many experts spot it.
Since that's an unknown variable, there's a 50% chance we're in the first scenario, and a 50% chance we're in the second. So the ratio of experts judging safe:unsafe is irrelevant, it just cancels out.
Thanks Isaac. That makes sense.
One way I've thought of it is, out of all professionals, the majority will be most likely be of fairly average general competence when compared to all other professionals in that field, while there would be at least two groups of small minorities, the far below average and the far above average professionals. So that when there is any professional who comes to a different conclusion than the majority, there is roughly a 50% chance that the person will be in the far below or far above average group.
The common assumption we see a lot when people interpret professional opinion statistics, is that its more likely that the very small disagreeing minority is of the below or far below average competence group, or just made uncommon mistakes as nobody is perfect, or has succumbed to some agenda. It is assumed that those at the minority far above average group would be in agreement with the average majority, that its not likely that the vast majority would make a mistake.
This may be because the majority of people who interpret professional opinion statistics are themselves in the majority average layperson opinion group (or have been influenced by them due to Group Think)
That is my incomplete theory
Except maybe add the word professional..."1% change of a professional spotting it". In theory, a professional should have a higher chance of spotting a flaw than a laymen, such that a laymen would have even less than a 1% chance of spotting the flaw.
Thanks, that's indeed what I meant, and a very necessary bit of clarity. I've edited accordingly.
I never once said a group of people is more likely to be right than one single individual. But you know that already, and are just arguing for some other reason -- my guess is because I'm not a nice person. That's usually the case. But regardless, you're embarrassing yourself.
Quoting Yohan
No, there were no geologists in any sense we mean today. The flat earth example is often misunderstood by those who have no history of science. In fact the circumference of the globe was calculated with remarkable accuracy in the 3rd century BC by Eratosthenes, an early "natural philosopher."
What "most people" believed is questionable. They believed all kinds of things. Probably many believed the earth was flat, yes. Folk science isn't science.
Quoting Ambrosia
:rofl:
Quite a display of intelligence so far.
:lol: :lol:
:up:
Surely you don't know unless you try?
It's obvious, isn't it?
I'm not so sure. If you send bleach to tribe in the middle of the jungle, it isn't clear to me that they wouldn't drink it to see what it is.
As for engaging my brain. Well, I'd have to take it out of my skull, which would perhaps cause some problems so far as living is concerned. I'd prefer not to.
I never said that. Anybody could've be born to a tribe. Drinking stuff coming from bottles is not irrational behavior actually. Or it doesn't seem so to me.
I'm just saying that you might what to reconsider what you take something obvious to be.
I frequently do engage with my mind. I come here for further engagement...
No. That's a 1% chance of it being spotted by an individual. If you want to formulate it to fit what you're trying to say, you'd say the following: 1 out of a 100 people will solve this problem.
In that case, you get your answer in one step. In reality, the overwhelming scientific consensus, as in climate science, has a much greater chance of being true. The consensus on atomic theory, likewise. Electromagnetism, likewise. Quantum mechanics, etc.
As a layman, knowing nothing else but the information "97% of scientists agree/have come to the same conclusion/have gotten the same results", the correct move is to go with the consensus. It's that simple.
You don't want to see this -- probably because you want to justify some "minority view" you hold, like any anti-vaxxer, climate denier, creationist, or holocaust denier will do ("there's a consensus among historians, but that means nothing!). This is unfortunately why so many lay people can get sucked into pseudoscience and quackery. Con men will always take the position of heroic skeptic questioning establishment dogma. Very self-serving.
Quoting Isaac
Imagine working this hard to defend a stupid choice. To the point where you have to convince yourself that it's just a coin flip between climate scientists and climate deniers, evolutionary biology and Creationism, Dr. Fauci and Tucker Carlson.
Reminds me of the old roulette joke: "I figure I have only two possibilities: I win or I lose -- 50/50"
Quoting Yohan
:rofl:
Its obvious. Nobody just drinks a random bottle. Especially with a pungent smell.
You haven't thought this through at all have you?
Am I the only one following this? Is anyone else reading it?
lol
I believe neither.
Both are science fiction.
Can the moderators please remove this person's posts from my thread? He's contributing nothing and he's basically spamming. Thank you. @Banno@Hanover
This argument seems like it makes sense, but how exactly is "how hard the flaw is to spot" defined? As I understand it, you want this to be the independent variable; it is not defined as the percentage of experts within a population that miss it. But that's pretty weird because, on the one hand, "spotting" is a concept that implies the gaze of an expert, and, on the other hand, the percentage of the expert population that misses it tracks exactly how hard it is to spot. They're equivalent, aren't they?
Now, I'm the first to admit that my stats fu is weak, but I think the argument you'd rather be making is that we don't know enough about the problem to know what sample size we need to be confident in our conclusion. Maybe only one in x engineers will spot the mistake, and so far you've asked 5. Is 5 enough? Dunno. Maybe x is 2, maybe x is 20.
It's an interesting analogy, but I'm having trouble thinking of any conceivable use for it. If we actually did stuff this way (instead of what experts actually do, learn from each other's mistakes) then we would collect data that would help us estimate x. We would not leave ourselves in the position of having absolutely no idea what its value might be.
Whiskey isn't pungent? Tangerines aren't pungent? Tea leaves?
We must smell things quite differently.
You said bleach,now you changing the issue?
Disingenuous.
Bleach smells a lot different than whisky,tangerines and tea leaves.
You in the habit of drinking from strange bottles with a very unappetising smell?
Yes. Those are illness not viruses.
I think @Xtrix is right about you.
Anyway, it was fun.
And you, if you keep it up, will likely (and rightly) be banned from this site. It's almost a certainty you're a returning member, so I'd say "banned again."
This level of fear is unusual.
:yawn:
There is such a thing as ignorance gone dangerous and incorrigibility makes it worse. (n)
You just don't do me any favors ya' hear.
Remember when certain countries had doctors sterilising people in the name of eugenics,and curing gay people with medical "cures"?
Well you had scientific and public support for those as well. And folks of similiar mindset
to you and xtrix and others would have defended these in the name of medical science whilst trying to marginalise opposition and dissenting voices.
You feel good about being on the wrong side of history?
@Xtrix
One can be measured by the other as a proxy, but a flaw's difficulty to spot exists independently of the existence of experts spotting it, so it's still an independent variable.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Exactly. Consider it a proof of principle if you like. The question is the positive predictive power of the variable {degree of agreement in a cohort}. I've engineered an example where the PPP is actually 0, just to show how it's done, but in reality we do know some things about a question's orthodoxy, so the PPP of the variable might well be above zero. The point is it's just never that good because of the uncertainty about how many experts we'd expect to miss the flaw.
There are simply way better variables available, in terms of this PPP. The factors I listed in my first post in this, for example. To borrow a term from Taleb, one of the strongest variables in terms of PPP is the degree of 'skin in the game'. The engineer who gets sacked if the bridge fails will spot a flaw 99 of his less involved colleagues will miss. If someone is risking ridicule and ostracisation supporting a theory, they're far more likely to have checked it thoroughly than a hundred comfortable peers publishing what they already know will be well accepted and applauded.
This is why I find this modern trend toward tribalism so repugnant. It exaggerates the degree to which publishing in line with current thinking is in one's best interests which makes it less likely that such papers are going to be thoroughly checked (there's no real 'skin in the game') and so 'current thinking' can drift unchecked. But that's another issue...
The point here is simply that degree of agreement in a cohort is simply a low value variable when it comes to likelihood of being right compared to other more powerful ones like skin in the game. It gets more powerful the greater the heritage of the theory (which is why it intuitively feels right - and why xtrix can so easily play on these intuitions by using silly examples like flat earth and vaccination in general). They're well established theories so the PPP of agreement in a cohort is quite high, though still not great. But with newer theories, the PPP of agreement within a cohort is terrible, worse still when the public debate is so toxic.
Excellent reasoning tim! Take a bow!
That might explain it.
Not aware of the conflict inflation fallacy I see — here, here.
[sub](maybe not faulty generalization, prejudice, poisoning the well, invincible ignorance (and incorrigibility), "I'm entitled to my opinion", either)[/sub]
And here we are, communicating almost instantaneously worldwide over the Internet using complex electronic devices, where diabetes is no longer a slow death sentence, navigating using the Global Positioning System, having all-but eradicated cholera, enjoying electricity and clean water in the house, reasonably working treatments of schizophrenia thus far, ... (y)
Quoting jorndoe
Science is descriptive/propositional, morals are proscriptive/performative. Conflating them all is just bad discourse.
@Srap Tasmaner
I'll keep repeating it for others' sake, since this guy is mentally blocked from hearing it:
The question is about laypeople. Given no other information but consensus within a field, what is the better bet. Is it better to go with the overwhelming scientific and medical consensus, or not? That's the only question raised here, all these desperate contortions and embarrassing digressions aside (the reason for which is to convince oneself that one is correct after being shown one's decision is remarkably silly).
The example was raised in this thread in response to the fact that none of us are experts in the fields mentioned in the title -- climatology, medicine, virology, etc.
If one really believes the chances of 99 doctors being right versus 1 is 50/50, then one has failed in mathematics -- in probability, in statistics -- and in logic.
The correct answer, and obvious to any thinking being, is to go with the 99 doctors. This is not difficult.
If 99% of experiments show the same result, we have far more confidence than it were less.
Going with the international scientific consensus on climate change is the right move for a layperson. Going with the medical consensus in the 70s and 80s regarding smoking and cancer, rather than tobacco-sponsored "dissenting views," was the correct answer. And so forth.
Yep. Most boxers would blast your ivory tower world.
Yes. Just ignore the history of medicine, its monoplisation of drugs,its ruthless pursuit of money,influence and lies.
Gay cures and Eugenics were done by doctors and informed by medicine.
You cannot seperate medicine from ethics.
I've worked with schizophrenics and seen the medical maltreatment and recourse to the chemical cosh and electroshock therapy. Remember lobotomy? Thalidomide.
You are aware of the official work of medical doctors in government torture and the manufacture and sale of nasty weapons by engineers and scientists? Are scientists absolved of moral responsibility for those as well?
That's pretty much what I haven't been doing.
But, seeing you're impervious to facts and oblivious of faults, what does it matter?
[sub]• Tuberculosis therapy: past, present and future (Jan 25, 2002)
• Typhoid Mary: Villain or Victim? (Oct 16, 2013)
• Treatment of Tuberculosis. A Historical Perspective (Oct 14, 2015)
• History of Vaccines - Government Regulation (Jan 17, 2018)
• History of 1918 Flu Pandemic (Mar 21, 2018)
• Cases of measles and deaths per 100000, per year, in the United States over the 20th century (Jul 26, 2019)
• Measles (Dec 5, 2019)
• The 1918 Spanish flu killed 8,000 people in Colorado, but Gunnison only had 2 cases. Here’s why (Mar 4, 2020)
• How Typhoid Mary left a trail of scandal and death (Apr 20, 2020)
• Pandemics Throughout History (Jan 15, 2021)
• Spanish flu: the virus that changed the world (Mar 2, 2021)
• How the COVID-19 vaccines were created so quickly - Kaitlyn Sadtler and Elizabeth Wayne (5m:7s) (Aug 17, 2021)
• Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services: In 1954, polio was a terrifying reality (Sep 14, 2021)
• Measles - Timeline (Sep 15, 2021)
• International Organizations, Vaccine Manufacturers Agree to Intensify Cooperation to Deliver COVID-19 Vaccines (Sep 16, 2021)
(not that it matters, my tracker has 228 entries as of typing)[/sub]
Yes,you just ignore the substantive points and examples I gave and resort to tired government historical propoganda articles.
As though articles are proof.
Hell there are articles that talk about cold fusion and quantum time travel!
Look at the "scientific" "predictions" from the past. Said the oil would run out way before now.
You been hoodwinked fella.
They would not be able to find it or enter it, let alone "blast it". But by all means go back to boxing without a headguard and give your brain the only workout it seems likely to get.
Pedant.
Try some sports,good for your mind,might improve your lame attempts at humour.
My attempts at humour might be lame, but yours haven't even learned to crawl.
I know enough to know your weak.
As are your clichéd retorts.
I glean plenty from your posts.
Well documented!!!
Many boxers are fine in retirement.
And with Intelligence,heart and physical skills one is safe in boxing.
You are a prude.
The behavior of the useful fools of history, who are completely possessed by a narrative which tells them what they want to hear and feeds their feelings of moral superiority.
I used to wonder how people could stand idly by while the Nazis rose to power in Germany, but I've come to realize that people did not stand idly by, but happily participated. The narrative provided them with the approval of their own conscience and as history has taught us, the sky (or should I say, the deepest, darkest pit) is the limit with such people.
The "intellectual" parts of society are not as immune as they think. In fact, their arrogance may make them more susceptible to being told what they want to hear.
Some of them are moderators...
You need to read more carefully. Did I say that all boxers, or even most, end up with brain damage? What I suggested was that it is a risk that comes with receiving repeated blows to the head; a risk that would be somewhat mitigated by wearing a head guard.
Can you cite some texts or studies that support that conclusion?
If you knew about boxing,sometimes headguards make it harder to move your head out of the way.
Armchair quarterback.
And you are backtracking on your original implication,which is disingenuous.
A brave person's "risk" is different to a weak person.
Who are you to tell me what's risky?
Have a look at the 1932 election results.
What was my original implication, according to you?
You know full well what it was. Read your own post.
Well documented that you are backtracking.
I don't agree with every part of your post,but a lot of it is spot on.
Amazing how so called philosophers are so partisan and dogmatic.
Indeed. The key variable being how IBM-like any theory is. IBM were the 'right' choice from the first moment they produced their first reliable, capable machine. But they weren't the most popular choice (even among experts) at that moment. Expert opinion took a while to catch up with the way reality actually was. At first, most experts would eschew the newcomer in favour of the tried and tested old-timer (probably triplicate accounting pads in this case). They'd have been wrong.
New theories take time to become established, so in the meantime proportion of expert opinion will be a poor predictor of a theory's success. All (sufficiently detailed) theories about how to handle COVID are new theories, they have to be since the detailed circumstances are unprecedented. So proportion of expert opinion is a poor predictor of any theory's success.
Also, I didn't spot this last time, but worth commenting on...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think this is a common misconception which is causing a lot of issues confusing long-standing expert opinion with expert opinion on contemporary issues. We don't learn from each other's mistakes. Or at least if we do it takes ages. It's simply not a significant factor in any contemporary issue. The data is too thin on the ground and underdetermines the theories by even more than usual. The overwhelming majority of theories are perfectly well supported by the data. No one's necessarily made a mistake and no one's necessarily missed anything. It's simply that the data set is too small or low quality to determine between competing theories. So experts fall down on which theories they prefer, find more intuitively compelling, find less risky to throw their weight behind... etc.
In some countries, a high-risk population that is reluctant to get vaccinated are young medical nurses, for fear that they will become infertile.
Now, at first glance, and esp. when seen from a male perspective, this seems an unwarranted fear.
But if I were in their shoes, my line of reasoning and concerns would be such: Taking hormonal contraceptives increases the risk of something going wrong when taking the vaccine. So in order to reduce those risks, stop taking hormonal contraceptives. But then it is almost certain that an unwanted pregnancy will occur (since men cannot be relied upon to use condoms or to wait), and this will need to be solved with an abortion. An abortion increases the risk of infertility. If a woman isn't able to have children this can result in the man abandoning her or otherwise reduce his affections for her.
So what are those young women supposed to do?
Statistically, it's probably safer to take their chances with covid than with a man.
You dismiss the history of medicine,human nature,politics and eugenics et Al.
Pot,kettle black.
But Americans don't want to be a herd, do they?
A part -- perhaps a major part -- of the problem with low vaccination rates is that the US has a private health care system. People are taught, from early on, that each person's health is their own problem, their own responsibility. This is further strenghtened by the American belief in personal freedom and in refusing to live in a "nanny state". It's un-American to think "we're all in this together". (American nationalism seems to come down to "We, the Americans, are better than other people".)
This mentality cannot be overcome with education or with telling people the facts about covid (or climate change, etc.). This is a much more fundamental problem.
Vaccination is not only about one's own body, as has been repeated multiple times. Similar arguments about "freedom" were you used about smoking laws, which were equally absurd, unless of course one rejects the medical facts (in that case, about the link to cancer and effects of second-hand smoke).
If people don't want to be vaccinated, that is indeed their right. If people want to smoke, that is indeed their right. But have the decency to stay away from public places.
I sympathize with anyone who has concerns. It turns out this is completely untrue. When shown that this is untrue, the result shouldn't be to dig in further, but to get vaccinated. When this doesn't happen, despite overwhelming evidence, then it becomes clear that the conclusion to not take a vaccine was foregone and that the evidence never mattered.
Quoting baker
Quoting baker
There's no reason to think it can't. This "mentality" didn't come out of nowhere. It's the result of a change in thinking spurred on by the educational and information systems, by elite colleges and universities and by corporate media. It took a while to settle in, but it can be reversed -- and in fact is being reversed.
Did you read the rest of what I said?
I haven't seen any evidence of this.
If it's true, then women who are taking hormonal contraceptives have to weigh what those chances are. The hospitals mandating vaccines should make a similar assessment in deciding whether to allow exceptions.
It's part of how Astrazeneca got a bad reputation. I've heard it on the national news, and I'm sure they can fact-check better than I can.
Quoting Xtrix
Aww. And completely excuse the men. Because, hey, boys will be boys, right.
I think that had to do with blood clots, and was shown to be mistaken.
Quoting baker
Excuse the men for what?
It's hard to disagree with a statement that ends with "etc." and I won't try. But I do disagree with the suggestion, which you constantly walk right up to, that there's nothing more to find but personal preferences for personal reasons, that not only is it all stories, it's all *just* stories.
I remember an argument I got into with a guy on Fangraphs (a sabermetrics site): guy had a model that predicted the strikeout rate of pitchers and was highlighting pitchers he believed had been lucky so far that season (and were thus overvalued by fantasy players). I suggested that another explanation might be something that was not in his model and that was hard to measure, like sequencing or deception. His response floored me: it couldn't be that because if there were such an effect it would show up in the data. That's the wrong answer. Something is in the data; the question is whether it's stochastic and how we could know. (Hence the obsession on Fangraphs with sample size.)
I'm getting to the point. There are statistical methods you know better than I that can give you an idea how much of the variation in opinion can be explained by your social roles and stories model. I assume that value is something less than 1. My question is, how do you know that what's left definitely isn't reasoning?
Quoting baker
Quoting Xtrix
There are a few serious side effects, most notoriously the blood clots that in "Some cases were life-threatening or had a fatal outcome", according to the UK Government.
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca/information-for-uk-recipients-on-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca
You're right -- my last statement wasn't clear, but I was referring more to the issue of birth control and blood clots which was raised by Baker.
I haven't seen anything about contraceptives increasing the risk of vaccines. Maybe @baker can give us a link or two.
Have you seen our chief medical officer responding to Nicki Minaj's impotence claims? It's a must watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkc6pHWHTn0
I was surprised by the ratio of thumbs down, and amount of anti-vax comments left on the video though.
If it was a trending item, there seems to be a coordinated effort to "dislike" almost anything from mainstream news that trends. You see it in every news video that pops up on YouTube. It's almost always right-wing, as far as I can see. If it's Trump speaking or something they consider positive, the ratios change. I'm not sure if bots are being employed, but I imagine they are.
I noticed this a while ago. It's pathetic.
Anyway -- funny video, and he's exactly right.
No, they aren't new. And they're not theories.
I'd say the electors could have had no idea what was coming at that time.
Let me start by just clearing up that reasoning (by which I mean a set of thinking methods that are well-known to preserve or approach more true conclusions) is not redundant as an explanation of the differences between various people's conclusions. It's a necessary but not sufficient factor in the explanation. The problem is that reasoning is either not that hard (PhD level experts should all be perfectly capable of it), or it becomes something clandestine and ephemeral - some property we can't quite explicate - which means we can't then demonstrate where is has, and has not, been used.
Consider the problem the other way around. Let's assume, as our default, that all decisions are arrived at by reason alone. We then want to explain the problem of disagreement among epistemic peers.
A couple of possibilities we'd want to reject off the bat, as they undermine the whole project, are;
a) that one peer simply 'gets it' where another doesn't - if we start explaining reasoning in terms of some occult property of some brains then we lose any warrant to claim the process gets us any closer to the truth. We need to be consciously aware of the process, so we can show where it has and has not been used.
b) that one peer is more intelligent than another (ie they're not quite peers) - accepting this leads to either the notion, again, that there's some property our measurements (PhD qualifications and the like) don't capture, so we don't want to go there. Alternatively, as @Yohan pointed out earlier, this undermines the idea of majority consensus. If it's just linearly related to intellect then the majority are almost certainly wrong, as they don't represent the cohort with most intelligence. The group that are right will will one of the minorities but we won't be able to judge which (are they the most intelligent, or the most stupid?) because we won't understand the arguments.
In order for it the play the part you want, we need the rational method of thinking (reasoning) to be a series of explicable steps working by agreed rules of inference which any suitably qualified person can 'get'.
So what's left for reasoning?
Perhaps one peer made a mistake, missed a step, or some evidence, simply by oversight. But this is either a) easily rectified by simply pointing it out (yet this has already happened in cases of disagreement among epistemic peers); or b) not so easily pointed out, a step the 'right' peer didn't even realise they'd made or that the 'wrong' peer just doesn't 'get' - in which case we're back to reasoning being some orphic process that is partly subconscious and so can't be demonstrated to have been used.
Perhaps one peer has been mistakenly allowed into the set of suitably qualified persons and so doesn't understand the reasoning give - but that means our methods of selecting the qualified set are flawed and we need to trust that method in order to render the judgements there more likely to be right.
So we don't seem to be able to explain the problem of persistent disagreement among epistemic peers by differences in reasoning without defining 'reasoning' in such a way as it loses the very properties that make it such an attractive explanation in the first place.
And I think we'd all agree with that under the heading of "human frailty".
I haven't read Noise yet. Have you looked at it? It seems like the natural approach to me. As I indicated in the last post, I used to spend a lot of time analyzing baseball, and there's an example from baseball that's a perfect fit here, the calls of balls and strikes by home-plate umpires. For years now, we've had data on where each pitch actually went, so you can analyze the performance of individual umpires, and of umpires as a group. You find a lot of noise and a lot of bias. (A machine would be more accurate and consistent, and there's been talk for a long time of switching to an "assisted" system somewhat like what's used in tennis.)
Here's one example I recall: umpires are, as a group, somewhat reluctant to make game-deciding strike calls. That is, when a called strike would decide the outcome of the game, then and there, umpires are slightly more likely to call a ball a pitch they would usually call a strike.
Suppose you want to explain why there is so much variation in a field that is supposed to have little variation, because it is supposed to be rule-governed; you would look for factors that would interfere with the consistent application of the rules. I could see many of the things you are wont to talk about slotting in there. It's not so far from the way Wittgenstein and Sellars talk about images and myths that philosophers rely upon without recognizing it.
But, perhaps unfairly, perhaps defensively, I always get the impression that you think there is no such process being interfered with, that all there is is my myth versus your image, that you can only reduce the influence of one myth by replacing it with another, that it's all noise and bias all the time and nothing else. Say it ain't so, Joe.
Briefly, I was given a copy so it's on my reading shelf. As I said before I don't entirely see eye to eye with Kahneman, but I've always liked his style. Oddly, where I've disagreed with him has been on almost exactly the point we are now discussing - the extent to which awareness of these biases is part of a real solution, or just another post hoc justificatory tool. Anyway...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Nice example.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It's an assumption about the audience, that's all. Once one has reached a reasonable level of academic skill, say PhD (or the equivalent, for those who've not had the opportunities, or took an alternative route), the variance in the application of reason is very small (there's a limited number of sanctioned 'moves' and all PhD level theorists will know all of them very well). The issue of analysing flaws in reasoning simply drops down the list in most cases.
It's a bit like analysing the moves of a chess grandmaster... if they make a suboptimal move, the first theory as to why might be that it's part of some new strategy, the second maybe tiredness or distraction, the third forgetfulness...maybe they want to lose...maybe it's game fixing...The very last possibility anyone considers is that they just didn't know about the en passant rule.
Likewise with experts in a field. If there's persistent disagreement (lasting beyond peer review error correction, or updated data), we'd be silly to jump to a failure to properly apply one of the basic rules of inference. It's far and away more likely to be one of the other factors, just like with the chess grandmaster, so that's where the interesting analysis lies.
Proper reasoning is just the qualifying round, not the playoff. Sure, we can still disqualify contenders at the first round, but almost every serious contender has cleared that stage with ease. The role in a social narrative is the playing field on which the finals take place.
Quoting Isaac
This argument makes some sense, and maybe is relevant to the covid debate, though I'm thinking of the more general case.
But it seems to entirely miss the distinction between capability and performance. I used to be a tournament chess player. It is a fact that grandmasters make blunders. As you say, when a move looks wrong, maybe it's not the first explanation we reach for. (A trap? A speculative sacrifice?) But it's absolutely still on the table. Performance is inherently unpredictable, even before you consider outside factors. (I used to tell my gymnast daughters that training is about moving the range of probable performance, raising the floor and the ceiling, but that you still can't know what will happen at a meet.)
I can't find the reference but there's a great example of a grandmaster game where, through an apparently innocent transposition, white was actually hanging the exchange on move 3! But neither noticed -- they carried on with the usual shadow boxing GMs engage in for the first half dozen moves. Note that this also speaks to my point that no computer would have missed the blunder; ideology about the opening was interfering with actual analysis of the position on the board -- the narrative about what exactly they were doing. Neither player even got to the point of dismissing the possibility of blunder on reputation grounds (and there are stories of that); they just didn't see the position for what it was. Looking over the shoulders of amateurs, they would have though. (Skin in the game is a sound idea, despite Taleb's endorsement, but so is Robert Burns on lice.)
I thought I recalled something along those lines...the analogy was tailored.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
True, but that's just my failure to produce a suitable analogy. In chess one doesn't have the benefit of peer review, or even a chat with a couple of colleagues over the canteen table at which one's embarrassingly amateur oversight can be pointed out before it progresses beyond the university walls (speaking from experience!) So whilst I agree with you about the process, I still think it's true to say that expert opinion in the public domain is largely (if not wholly) past the stage of blunders in basic reasoning.
The notion of a majority of experts being a safer bet (if what we're after is the truth), relies on the variance in opinion being caused by factors related to proximity to truth (soundness of reasoning, exhaustiveness of evidence...), and on those factors being randomly distributed, such that a distribution mean will approach it*. I'm not arguing that those factors aren't crucially important in approaching truth - they are - I'm arguing that they're not a significant cause of the variance in expert opinion and so we can't use the mean of the sample of opinions as a proxy for truth. If the variance of the sample is unrelated to it, then the mean has no more predictive power for it than the upper quartile, or the second standard deviation.
*the alternative is that it's not randomly distributed, but then there's no reason to think the mean approaches it and not, say, the upper or lower quartile (except we'd never know which).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
This is a really interesting example. Here the social narrative (grandmasters playing tournament chess) ruled out a storyline which might have worked better. I'm going to risk your polite wrath by suggesting that the 'fact of the matter' (whether the wrong move was a 'blunder') is itself a socially constructed post hoc story. We don't have real-time access to the actual mental activity which precipitated the decision to make the bad move, we tell ourselves a story about it after the fact. Maybe it was originally part of a genius master plan which was forgotten moments after the move was made and so never followed up on...
...but I do see what you mean.
Do notice the violent theme of the parties campaigning:
Naughty.
Quoting Isaac
And all that's basically wrong, but I don't know that it matters.
Quoting Isaac
Probably?! But the blunder idea is not the main point anyway.
Quoting Isaac
No, no, that's not it at all. For grandmasters (and some lesser players) the first handful of moves aren't normal moves on the board at all; it's a cryptic negotiation, like bidding in bridge, about what opening they're going to play and thus what kind of position. So they screw around a lot with the textbook move order that kids learn. I'm saying they were so caught up in this negotiation and deciding what sort of game each felt like playing under the circumstances that they essentially forgot these are also actual moves on the board.
The funny thing is that the Soviet-era term for this kind of mistake is "playing the programmed move", that is, following a script when you shouldn't have. (Funny because we program machines better than we do ourselves.)
Quoting Isaac
GMs, some of them anyway, can be surprisingly forthcoming about their mistakes. There's not much point in trying to dissemble, since the facts are plain for everyone to see.
As another data point, David Bronstein argued for faster time controls (less time per move), decades before quick chess became common and respected, precisely on the grounds that it was a myth that slower games produced better quality chess. He would point to all the blunders in top-tier chess played at slow time controls as proof. (Mainly he wanted people to think of chess as a creative endeavor, rather than something that might conceivably be done perfectly.)
But, again, blunder is only part of the story. Narratives can help -- actually unclear, but I'm willing to let them in as "imaginative", "changing the narrative", that sort of thing -- or they can get in the way of analysis, is the rest. More or less.
((The part in the middle of your post I don't have anything to say about yet.))
Intriguing. I meant really that when one makes a move in chess one cannot check with colleagues that it makes sense first, as one can do with an expert opinion. Is that wrong? Or am I missing the point?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I see it as being quite essential to the idea that following the majority is a safer bet. If the variance is not caused by blunders (because we're past that) then how is cohort agreement predicting truth (fewest blunders was the original mechanism proposed)?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Ah, I see. Cool insight. Still a storyline though. 'Negotiations' vs 'rule-based game'. Two roles to play in two different storylines, am I playing the master negotiator, or the dispassionate calculator of moves...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't see any evidence of analysis existing outside of a narrative, nor can I see any cognitive mechanism whereby it could be done. All conscious activity is always interpreted within a model of it's role in the wider context, it's quite fundamental to how hierarchical neural networks work. I don't think the issue is narratives getting in the way, the issue is poor choice of narrative getting in the way.
It's a simple point really: a chess player is a cumulative person. When you play an opening, your moves have been vetted by generations before you -- and sometimes they turn out to be wrong. Top players preparing for big matches have a team that helps them come up with new ideas in the opening. Computers have changed a lot of this. (There were still adjournments when I was a young player; you and a buddy would analyze the position and then at the appointed hour, you'd play relying on that analysis. Chess has a lot of non-obvious communal elements.)
Quoting Isaac
And the second isn't really optional, not even for Tal.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
I lean that way too, but I sometimes wish I didn't. Still I think there are clear reasons to consider some narratives as unwanted intruders. Which of these two candidates is the better engineer? Your personal race narrative can help you make a better racist decision, but not a better engineering decision.
If we're forced to say stuff is purpose-relative, that'll work, but it feels lame to say that all the time, hand-wavy pragmatism.
First of all, by what metric are you judging "intelligence" by? The IQ distribution? In which case, this is not the general population but a group of people who are experts in their field. To argue there's a similar distribution within this subgroup in terms of general intelligence or expertise is bizarre and unfounded.
Second, think for a second about the logical consequences of this reasoning. It would mean that the majorities are almost always wrong, since they constitute the mediocre middle 80%. The super smart top 10% will usually have it right, since they're the top 10% -- but it's just a matter of figuring out if they're actually the super smart ones or the stupid ones, the bottom 10%.
By this reasoning, we'd certainly want to bet on flat earth theorists and Creation scientists, who themselves argue along similar lines and, according to you, are correct to do so.
This is a ridiculous argument. Why you go on like this, simply to justify your own decision to bet on a minority view (in this case, I assume, issues around COVID), is beyond me. But it's truly embarrassing to read, in my view. You've now had to regress to empty verbiage and abstractions, as is the typical tactic of those who no longer have any real argument. This was one of Trump's tactics, for example, when confronted with realities.
A distribution of individual umpires. First, this group will perform better than others, as experts. So betting on them as a group instead of non-experts is the question -- and I'd argue you must go with the umpires, mistakes aside.
Second, and most importantly, think about if, instead of one umpire making a call, it were a hundred -- and 97 percent of them agreed that it was a strike and not a ball. How confident should we be that they got it right? Say we let the computer analyze it -- would the computer call it a ball or a strike?
I'd say the computer would confirm the majority opinion, more so with higher consensus.
Thus, as a non-umpire (and non-expert, or layperson), the smart bet would be on the expert consensus, not the dissent. Seems almost like a joke that this even has to be justified, but here we are.
Science and experts make mistakes, sometimes they get things wrong, sometimes the prevailing ideology changes, new theories emerge with new evidence, and on and on we go. That's a truism. The question is: what do we, as people who cannot be experts in everything, do when we want to learn something about the world? When we have to base our decision and actions on other people, who do we trust? Who do we "bet on"? That's the question.
The answer, in my view, unless there's good reason to believe otherwise (and there almost never is), one goes with the experts, and the expert consensus within the field of science or medicine.
If this rule of thumb were followed by most people today, the pandemic would be lower than the levels they were at in June (at least in the US), we wouldn't have such "division" about climate science and could actually pass some legislation to do something about it, etc. Instead, we have people listening to anti-vaxxer enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists, industry propaganda, climate deniers, astrologers, psychics, 9/11 truthers, media pundits, etc. A lot of this stems from not only ignorance (as most people are ignorant of all kinds of things), but bad instinct. The ones who have the instinct to make the correct choice don't deserve much praise, but they deserve some.
Then you'd be wrong. I haven't looked at Fangraphs in a while, but the "average called strike zone" tends to move around from year to year. Either umpires are trying to keep the game balanced (probably unconsciously) by adapting to trends in pitching and hitting, or they are causing those trends. I mean, obviously it's going to be both because there's feedback here. Plus the matchup (handedness of the pitcher and of the batter) makes a difference, but shouldn't.
No, because a study has never been done about this.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm talking about one instance being analyzed by 100 umpires. If 97 say it's a strike, I'd go with that. It would be extremely rare that they'd all be incorrect. That level of consensus is unusual in sports, I'd imagine. This is also why they do instant replay reviews and have conferences to discuss calls in various sports. Why? Because more people looking, and more data analyzed, the higher the confidence.
If it really turned out that umpires are usually wrong, then they're hardly experts in the first place. But if we consider them experts, then more eyes looking -- and a higher consensus among these eyes, leads to increased confidence.
There was a goal once scored here in a soccer game. Protest. The ball alledly went outside the field in the attack. Replay. Unclear. What to do? It took long. Was the ball completely outside the line? Nobody could see. The camera hadn't the right angle. Maybe if there was enough time this could be calculated. What to do? Goal assigned to homeplaying party.
Yeah it has. I mentioned it. It's why we're talking about this.
There's a fair amount of noise in any umpire's calls, and in umpires taken as a group. A pitch over the outside corner might get called correctly half the time. Almost anything on a count of 3-0 gets called a strike no matter where it ends up. Plus, as I said, the zone moves around, mainly at the top and bottom. Many people believe that sinker ball pitchers began to dominate a few years ago because umpires started calling a lower strike zone. To fight back, a lot of hitters switched to an uppercut swing, and then we start getting more home runs. So far as we know, it has never been the case that the average called zone matches the rulebook zone.
It's a long way from knowing there is Antisemitism afoot to knowing that 6,000,000 Jews will be tortured and executed.
No, it hasn't.
What you mentioned is not what I was talking about. What I was talking about involved a hypothetical consensus of experts (in this case, umpires) on a particular call. Which is only to demonstrate the point I was making much earlier in this thread, and which led to the baseball example.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
They're accurate about 94% of the time, or that's the average anyway. That's not bad. I wonder how that compares to laypeople, which is the relevant point here. Would we presume they're better or worse? Would we imagine two or more umpires analyzing a particular pitch, if more agreed with each other than not, were more likely to be right -- or not? I think the answer is fairly straightforward and commonsensical. But evidently I'm wrong about that, as many seem to be struggling with it.
https://www.dailynews.com/2021/06/23/hoornstra-baseballs-best-and-worst-umpires-by-the-numbers/
Should laypeople go with the 97% consensus on climate change? Why or why not?
In my view, the answer is obvious -- not because it happens to be supported by the overwhelming evidence, but because it's the correct move when there is not more information.
They can either attack the 97% statistic, or go with the 3% :cool:
I think I understand what's happened here.
I did not bring up baseball umpires to make the point you appear to think I was making. I was not attacking the status of expert opinion within yet another field of human endeavor.
But baseball is a goldmine of data and I happened to recall an example that is very similar, I believe, to the sorts of examples discussing by Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein in Noise. That point is that humans are capable of consistent rule-based decision-making but sometimes external factors interfere and sometimes we even know a little about those factors, and that's interesting. (The classic example is judges handing down harsher sentences before lunch and lighter after.)
You seem to have read that as an attack on expertise. It was not. It was an argument for the claim that there is a rule-based process to interfere with in the first place. Same with chess: I was not arguing that grandmasters aren't actually trustworthy experts or something.
If the average is now up to 94% accuracy, swell, that's better than it used to be, and we probably have PITCHf/x to thank for that. It's fine with me if you want to add MLB umpires to your arsenal of trustworthy experts; that's an argument you're having with someone else, not me.
:up:
Mostly it’s the former, because they too know very well that going against the overwhelming international consensus looks bad.
They'll never run out of gullible people...
Who could've thought violent rhetoric would lead to actual violence?
You're both just trying to excuse naivety with deadly consequences at this point.
Of course. How naive of me to have the impression Kasparov just rocks up to the tournament, takes a seat and then thinks "now, what's all this about?". I get the comparison now. But the 'blunders' to which you refer, are these moves which this team of prior analysts have come up with? Are you suggesting that the grandmaster comes up with a patently wrong move, discusses it with his colleagues, his analyst team, computer software, etc. all of which say it's a good move, when in fact it's a bad one (and clearly so)? That's the equivalent we're talking about here. Before an expert voices an opinion there's a small army of people they can run it past to check for obvious errors - the actual opinion they're about to voice. In chess, people might well have potential moves vetted beforehand, but the actual move they're about to make is a choice at the time made without consultation and so the chance of error is increased. That's really all I meant - the fact that grandmasters make blunders is a feature of the independent decision-making in real time, this is not s feature experts have to contend with when voicing opinions.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It is as a role. The archetype doesn't have to be achievable, that's why heroes are all greater than it's ever possible to be. It's a direction, not a destination.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, indeed, it's the reason we have stories (by which I mean actual storybook stories).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
OK, so what's the alternative? Given our group of experts, the variance among whom we know is caused by a wide variety of factors, reasoning error being very low on that list (if present at all). How do we then talk about that variance in a non-lame way? Should we pretend that reasoning errors are mostly to blame and discuss the differences ad infinitum in the full knowledge that we'll never resolve them because they're not reasoning-based differences in the first place? That seems like a pointless bit of self-flagellation.
Quoting Isaac
If all you're going to do is skim through my posts for your little triggers then don't bother replying.
If you have a substantive counter-argument beyond simply re-asserting what you believe to be the case in opposition to any understanding of statistics of or the way expert discourse works, then I'll be glad to consider it.
No. Just to show how non-functioning the democracy of the Weimar Republic was then and how many campaigns were about smashing the rulers or the other parties. The Brownshirts weren't the only street gang around then.
Actually one only has to read "Mein Kampf" and then come to the conclusion that this person will truly go through with what he has written about the Jews and about Germany getting Lebensraum from the East. That is a far more precise warning than a election poster. Yet do notice that "Mein Kampf" wasn't a hit beforeHitler came to power. I'm not so sure how many had read it then.
And there you find the real problem: because, just as now, a lot of politicians say one thing and do another. Many aren't ideologues. They will use some rhetoric only to get into power, while not going through with their most bizarre objectives. Many people will think that there's the "campaign rhetoric" and the the "actual political decisions made" and that these can be quite different. Historical hindsight gives us the certitude of what some politician or political movement could and would do. It's a different thing when the issue hasn't happened.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think the salient point is that when it comes to dealing with a pandemic, this is a complex problem, and that priorities pertaining to solving complex problems are not universal nor can they be scientifically established. Instead, those priorities need to be decided upon, and action taken from that point on. At the same time, any course of action we take will further shape the factors of the complex problem.
We all agree (except, perhaps, pharmaceutical companies) that we want the pandemic to be over.
But we disagree on how to go about it and at what cost.
It is not possible to scientifically decide what an allowable cost is. So it's up to the individual stakeholders to decide this.
The matter is further complicated by the fact that we're dealing with a contagious disease that has a high transmission rate and a relatively low death rate, and whose symptoms vary from nothing to death and everything inbetween. If covid would be more like smallpox or polio, it would be easier to handle. But as it is, there are more issues to decide about. Again, _decide_ being the salient point.
You mention the strikeout rate of pitchers -- ie. sports statistics. This is a very good example of what we're talking about: conceiving of performing a particular action in sport as a hard task or complex problem.
Meaning that if a baseball player properly hits 30% of the balls properly aimed at him, he is deemed to have an excellent result. In other words, properly hitting the ball in baseball is a hard task, a difficult task. So hard that even good hitters don't properly hit around 70% of the balls.
In the abstract, 30% compared to 100% seems dismal. But excellency is measured on the relative difficulty of the task. The more difficult the task, the lower the percentage of effectiveness that can be counted as good.
In the case of covid, this line of reasoning means that we might need to shift our view and instead of expecting vaccines to be upwards of 80% safe and effective, satisfy ourselves with a much lower percentage. Or that even a 10% death rate is still a relatively low death rate. Or that a certain economic decline is inevitable.
By pointing out that the problem at hand is a complex problem and that solving it requires decisions that are based on priorities (which cannot be established scientifically).
(Clearly, this is not a popular view to take.)
Some believe that it is better to sacrifice some of the economy in order to preserve lives.
Some others believe that it is better to sacrifice some lives in order to preserve the economy.
Some believe that it is better to sacrifice some civil liberties in order to preserve lives and the economy.
And so on. What these preferences have in common is that it is generally considered repugnant to voice them publicly. But if they aren't voiced, we don't understand how come experts disagree on how to solve a complex problem.
Generally, people prefer simple solutions. They also generally prefer to think that there are ideal solutions to problems, with very little or even no costs and sacrifices. And that even after crisis events, it is possible to "go back to normal".
Experts, who have a deeper insight into the complexity of the problem are less likely to think this way.
By creating said truth.
This doesn't always work -- it doesn't work with things such as tables, chairs, the universe.
But it does work, to a lesser or greater extent in socio-psychological matters or where volitional effort is needed to make something happen. "Believe it, and your belief will make it real", they say. It doesn't always happen, but it's a factor.
At the risk of flogging the dead horse of statistical misunderstanding, I'll try another explanation. Remove climate change and replace it with issue X. On issue X the facts are such that two possible theories can be both held without being falsified by them (you're familiar with underdetermination of theories?). Theory X1 is favoured by experts with green eyes, theory X2 is favoured by experts with blue eyes. 97% of experts have green eyes. Now does it benefit the layman in any way to go with the 97%?
Of course it doesn't. Because the variance in the variable {numbers of experts supporting} for each theory is caused by the distribution of the variable {eye colour} whereas the variable the layman is interested in is {rightness/accuracy/utility}, the correlation of which to the variable {numbers of experts supporting} is unknown.
To show that the layman (assuming he's interested in being right) is better off pinning their flag to theory X1, you'd have to show that the variance in support for each theory is caused by (or at least correlated with) the variable {rightness/accuracy/utility}, otherwise the fact that theory X1 has a high score in the variable {numbers of experts supporting} has no bearing at all on the variable of interest.
I've provided a long list of variables other than 'rightness' which correlate better with the degree of support a theory gets, and I've given a detailed account of why 'rightness' does not even have a very strong variance once the opinions we're discussing are honed down to those of experts (mainly underdetermination and the availability of informal peer review at early stages).
If you want to further this discussion you'd have to dispute my list of variables which correlate with degree of support more strongly than 'rightness' and you'd have to provide an argument which undermines the underdetermination described by Duhem and Quine. Without either you've provided no argument to link 'rightness' with 'degree of support' among a range of expert opinion.
You could, of course, make an entirely academic argument that if we know of no other variables, then a possible weak link between 'degree of support' and 'rightness' might be all we have to go on, but that assumes we've no priors at all which outweigh such a weak correlation, and of course we do have such priors.
True, but this is another level of analysis from the one @Srap Tasmaner and I were talking about. It's something I mentioned way back though, that much of the 'expert opinion' we're referring to in this situation is actually the 'opinion of experts' - a different beast entirely. I'm an expert in psychology, and I'm asked for my 'expert opinion' as part of my job, but if I provide an opinion about investment in mental health services, or sentencing guidelines for criminals with mitigating psychological circumstances, I'm providing the 'opinion of an expert' which (unlike my expert opinion) will include a whole set of assumptions about values which are totally outside my area of expertise (like economics or jurisprudence).
One of the problems with the analysis in this thread is that even where it might apply to 'expert opinion' (say in very well established principles like those of physics or chemistry), it does not apply to the 'opinion of experts', which is what we're dealing with when it comes to "you should take the vaccine".
Which leads to the bizarre situation: We must get vaccinated, but it doesn't matter how effective the vaccine is -- whether it's 80%, 60%, or 10% effective. They're all approved by EMA and the state and we get a covid passport all the same.
How on earth is one supposed to take this seriously?!
I've just started reading Plato again -- been a very long time -- and it's practically the founding claim of philosophy: we don't care what the majority thinks.
Except it isn't, because that's only half the point. Not everyone in town is a horse-breeder; if you want to know about horses, ask the expert. Not everyone in town is a physician; if you want to know about health, ask the expert. The situation with wisdom is apparently no different:
Except it is, because Socrates has never found anyone who is genuinely wise, only people who claim to be, or who are acclaimed by others to be.
There is variation in the natural world; some cats are better hunters than others, I suppose, or some crows better at crow-things. Ants famously have some division of labor going on, and we're more like that. In spades. By the time of Socrates, there is already long since too much going on for everyone's opinion about everything to be equally valuable.
Is Socrates enthusiastic about the new order of expertise? Maybe he is but not everyone is, and that's why he makes these comments so frequently. Maybe he isn't but most are, and he is only strategically relying on their views. Either way, he does believe he has found a limit to expertise, having found no one who is an expert in wisdom.
What he never seems to consider is the simple rejection of expertise, "My ignorance is as good as your knowledge." (Is that Asimov?) It's precisely his knowledge that he is ignorant that he "celebrates" in drawing a limit to expertise.
So here we are, all these years later, or the blink of an eye later, as you like, and still trying to figure out what to do about expertise.
Here's my question: is expertise the same issue for us that it was for Athens? Or has something changed?
Still, 10% doesn't sound right.
This from someone who rejects the idea that overwhelming scientific and medical consensus is the correct choice for a layperson. You have no idea what you're talking about.
No. That's not the question. Issue "X" is an abstraction; what I'm asking about is a specific real-world example. You can't answer that simple question, and so have to fall back on empty verbiage.
Regardless, I'll go over this again with you.
Quoting Isaac
This is what I mean by employing ridiculous contortions when all else fails. But to answer your question: if it could be determined, somehow, that experts with green eyes causes them all to choose the same theory, then this is extra information that is relevant, and one should take that into account when deciding who to listen to. But that, as I've now stated for the umpteenth time, is not the question, because it's been stated from the beginning that there is no other information that the layman has beyond the majority.
If you add to the climate change example this important piece of information: "The 97% who agree are all graduates of Liberty University," that is important indeed. Likewise, if it turns out that most of the 3% of dissenters have ties to the fossil fuel industry, that's also relevant. But that's not the question.
Quoting Isaac
And it does correlate. How do we know? For the same reasons that greater experimental confirmation increases likelihood of accuracy. Not only is there historical data, but we know from predictive accuracy as well.
It helps to think about the consequences of what you're arguing. If it leads to absurd conclusions, which it does, then you know you're on the wrong track.
This still doesn't address the original question.
Scientific consensus on any particular issue usually pertains to theories -- whether quantum theory, the theory of evolution, atomic theory, the big band theory, or anthropogenic climate change. When there is overwhelming evidence that supports a theory, the experts (as experts) will be familiar with this, the consensus will change and often reflect the level of confidence in a theory. This can change/adapt over time with the emergence of new theories and new evidence.
The same is true in other cases, like vaccinations. Experts run experiments, check data, gather evidence, conduct studies, etc. -- all around the world. Experts do not come to consensus because they've got green eyes or want to jump on the bandwagon, and certainly not at higher levels of consensus. It can, of course, turn out that they're wrong or everyone has missed something -- that's happened. But that's very rare in well supported theories. People like to point to Newtonian mechanics and Einstein, but Einstein didn't falsify Newton's theories.
So back to the question: Is the layman better off choosing the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change (evolution, quantum mechanics, etc) or not, knowing nothing else?
If you aren't able to answer in the affirmative, then you're simply wrong, because that's the correct answer. In the same way it would be the right answer to bet on something with a 60% chance of winning and not a 40% chance of winning -- knowing nothing else and not getting better betting odds. It's really that simple.
If you're arguing it isn't correct, then you're essentially saying that a laymen ISN'T better off going with the overwhelming consensus, and in fact cannot know either way -- perhaps it's 50/50, etc. Which is an absurdity, as demonstrated by the facts.
Quite an assumption to be made.
I would think the layman would simply choose the option that fits the closest to his or her Worldview in general. There being two or more opposing views means that the issue isn't a simple tautology and for the layman to hear about opposing views means that either the issue isn't settled or there is a sustained campaign to fight the so-called scientific truth for some reason.
But the aptness of that analogy is exactly what @Isaac is disputing, isn't it?
Sadly, it appears so. Which basically means there's no reason to go with the overwhelming scientific consensus over anything else -- because, who knows? Theory of evolution or creation science -- all experts, so who should we non-experts believe? No way to tell. Take the vaccine, which is the overwhelming medical consensus, or go with Alex Jones? No way to know.
If this is where we've arrived, then we should realize something has gone drastically wrong.
We don't end up there immediately though. You can deny that a simple headcount of experts is dispositive, without concluding that's there's nothing else, and without dismissing the work of experts entirely.
There really seem to be problems here. The usual bayesian story is that you have your prior and update based on new evidence. But what if you can't personally evaluate that evidence (maybe you don't have the training or maybe it's just impractical). Then you need someone else to evaluate the evidence. Then you also need somehow to factor in your confidence that they have properly evaluated the evidence for you. Maybe you know them, know their qualifications and their integrity. But what if you don't? What if someone else chooses for you who will evaluate evidence on your behalf? Then what? You have to keep discounting.
One obvious way to tie-off this daisy chain is trust. At some point, early or late, you trust someone or some institution. Done. But don't we have to talk about how you make such a trust decision? Maybe not. Maybe people just choose, but you're not going to like everyone's choices of whom too trust. Yuck.
Taking the beliefs of another person or of a group of people as itself evidence just doesn't play nice with certain (vaguely empiricist) views of knowledge acquisition. But it is absolutely unavoidable, so maybe those models are junk.
It is a matter of trust, yes. A large part of the country -- 30 or 40% maybe -- go with the 3% who dissent on climate change (actually less than that, perhaps 1% or so). That's a huge mistake. If we struggle to say this, then we’re deluding ourselves. We should rather start with this simple truth and work outward to understand why it’s true— not deny it’s truth altogether, as if consensus means nothing and science means nothing.
The rest of the country, who are equally ignorant of climate science, throw their support behind the 97% consensus. They are making the correct move, even if by accident. I argue that it isn't completely an accident, and that there is something intuitive or instinctive about their decision -- just as winning poker players can make theoretically correct moves without knowing anything about game theory -- that deserves at least some credit, though minimal.
That's what started this odd discussion. What's followed is typical of those who try to use the little they've learned in philosophy in order to justify their awful reasoning: when in doubt, bullshit your way through rather than admit it. Throw in abstractions, empty verbiage, multisyllabic words, ludicrous hypotheticals, etc. Go so far as to even question the very nature of truth.
You see this in much discourse these days. When a QAnon supporter is confronted with facts and evidence, they're forced to undermine it all (“no one trusts those data or those polls”). When confronted with the idea that there is no evidence supporting their claims, I heard this nugget once remarked: "Well, there hasn't been any non-evidence yet."
This is what’s happening here. Maybe others will be bewildered by it; I will not. There’s a simple matter at stake, and no amount of bullshit will divert from the question.
Absolutely. There's a very strong distinction between the cause of variance within the whole population and the cause of variance within a particular class of a stratified population. The cause of variance in support for a theory among the entire population will probably correlate quite well with education level (the cleverer believing the most plausible theories - in general), but if we stratify the wider population by that very variable (education level), we almost know for a fact that the variance within that strata will be less well correlated with that variable, because it's the variable we used to carry out the stratification, it's relative effect will just inevitably be smaller.
In other words, yes we should trust experts, and the more expert the better, but within experts of the same education level (ie we limit education level as a variable by stratifying our sample over it) other variables are going to be much more significant - simply because we've eliminated the most significant one by stratification. We haven't made education no longer the most significant factor in likelihood of being right, we've just manipulated our sample to limit its effect.
I think one of the things that's getting mixed up here is the difference between the question "should we trust experts opinion?" (the answer is yes) and "should we trust the majority of experts over the minority of experts of the same education level?" the answer is no - by specifying that they're of the same education level we've removed (or severely limited) the one variable which had a link to 'rightness' (education level) so the remaining variables responsible for the within class variance may or may not be linked to 'rightness'.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Interesting question. Yes, I think something has changed. Taking my model above what matters most when deciding between experts are these other variables (as we've removed the most important variable - degree of expertise in the field - by specifying that we're only consulting experts). That most important variable was no different in Athens as it is today, one studies, and uses rules of inference to draw conclusions, others check you've applied the rules correctly. Over time mistakes are minimised evidence is multiplied and good theories develop (note the plural - I'm not dismissing underdetermination).
But those within class variables have all changed - independence, financial incentive, political affiliation (maybe not so much), publication metrics, tenure, social media outrage, lucrative consultancy gigs, access to data, open pre-print servers, corporate lobbying, increasing specialisation (particularly in statistics)... I don't think the people of Athens had to contend with any (or many) of these when choosing between their experts. Just as I'm sure you find in baseball, the more variables in play the less clear the cause of any trend.
Difficult question. I've debated 9/11 truthers and climate deniers for months online and got nothing to show for it. Zilch. Nada.
My sister-in-law believes that AIDS is a hoax, that aliens from other planets live among us, and that COVID is some sort of world-wide conspiracy. I love her, she's a good person and a great artist, but she's lost connection with rationality.
There's nothing you can do on a case by case basis. Crazy is crazy. These people are "lost for science", gone.
But maybe we could do something at societal level, because it does not seem normal to me that so many folks would chose to go irrational. We're doing something wrong.
I can, it's just not relevant. I'd go with the 97%. Largely for the reasons you later give
Quoting Xtrix
If it turned out that 97% had ties to the fossil fuel industry would it still make sense to go with the majority? No. Because the variable 'degree of conflict of interest' is more significant than the variable 'degree of support within an expert cohort'.
Quoting Xtrix
Then you too are engaging in "ridiculous contortions" We have access to tons of information other than degree of support. In fact I'd say we have access to other variables to a greater extent. Do you really claim to have the data on how many epidemiologists/virologists support mass vaccination vs those that don't? Of course you don't, you have access to the general impression of that number from the media, but not the actual number. We do, on the other hand, have access to data such as political affiliation, source of funding, lobbying power, social media trends, employment security, consultancy offers, openness of data, willingness to pre-print... we know all of these variables quite accurately, so it's just nonsense to invoke this hypothetical where the only information we have access to is degree of support, it's one of the variable we have least access to.
Quoting Xtrix
Struggling to even work out what this could mean. What do we "know from predictive accuracy", and "historical data"? That the most well supported theories turned out to be the ones that were true? You can see, surely, that this is obviously wrong? All theories that we currently consider to be true started out as theories which were only supported by a minority. The predictive power of majority support depends entirely on where a theory is in it's arc of acceptance. Notwithstanding that, you've not provided any counter-argument to Duhem-Quine, so at best this principle would yield a set of theories (plural), that are more likely to be true, not just a single theory. It is a statistical impossibility for a majority to support more than one theory, so by definition, one of the perfectly accepted-as-true theories must be nonetheless supported only by a minority.
Quoting Xtrix
Why only the consensus? Why do the minority not also change their confidence in a theory in the face of this overwhelming evidence? Maybe they're corrupted by bias? So it's possible for an expert to modulate their confidence in a theory because of bias. So why only the minority?
Quoting Xtrix
Classic.
Quoting Xtrix
What facts?
Yes. We haven't even gotten to that question yet. I'm just correcting @Xtrix's first error mistaking variance in a population with variance in a stratified cohort. Once that's fixed (which seemed like a simple explanation of the way stratification affects the variable the stratification is over - but apparently not), the more interesting discussion is over who chooses which option and why.
One of the things that has changed is we don't force our experts to drink hemlock once we find them wrong.
Yes, we should start with the conclusion we like and then keep changing our reasoning until we justify it regardless of any mathematics, evidence, or line of reasoning to the contrary - what a brilliant way to go about thinking over a topic. I couldn't have written a better explanation of exactly the process I was describing in theory selection.
Quoting Xtrix
Yes, of course. Happens all the time. QAnon are constantly trying to support their views by explaining the effect of stratification over a variable on the predictive power of that variable within the stratified class, they never shut up about it.
I think Trump/QAnon is becoming the new Godwin's law
That's one way to justify your position. I'd say "Stop the steal" is here an even better example where the Republican politicians and lawyers that supported Trump hopelessly tried to bring some credibility to a crazy man's narcissistic impulses and his bizarre claims that the election was stolen. Anything goes that will make it at the present. With wild accusations you can seize the moment in the media, but it won't stand in court, literally in this case. Yes, obviously it's not science, but politics, but unfortunately even scientific discourse can be hijacked in this way.
Btw, making outrageous claims that won't hold up with longer scrutiny might be even the strategy when the audience doesn't remember or isn't interested to genuinely inform itself on the events, but just responses to the present day "outrage issue". Conspiracy theorists behave like this: when the outrageous isn't true and shown not to be true, you have already moved to the next outrageous claim.
That about the tactics. Yet in truth a large part of these issues where science "gets attacked" are basically political issues. Or simply put it: when our policies are justified by scientific observations, then, unfortunately, science gets dragged into politics. The obvious way to be against the implemented policy is to be against the scientific observations.
Science of course tries to be objective and the normative part (how things should be) isn't anymore so much about science but policy. And perhaps with the exception of creationism, which actually does inherently go against modern day science, usually all political sides do accept science. That is when science isn't made part of the so-called "Cultural War". And unfortunately again, it is. And that is very sad.
I get that. It's an interesting point, a reasonable point, but what kind of point is it?
This is what I was trying to get at by asking whether we're even dealing with the same issue Plato does in the dialogues. What you're talking about is whether there is a statistical correlation between a person being a member of some group and their opinions on a particular subject being 'right'; that's an empirical question, approachable using the tools of modern science, which is the most obvious "something that's changed" between us and Plato.
When Plato says
is he making an empirical observation about the population of Athens and its horse breeders? That being a horse breeder is highly correlated with improving horses?
I don't think so, and that he's not is one way of defining what's changed. You might see, in the practices of the horse breeder, something like nascent science: careful observation, predictions that are tested, some experimentation in training and treatment of ills. But is there, for the rest of Athens, something like a science of being a citizen? A science that would tell you, among other things, to trust the opinions of horse breeders when it comes to horses?
That's a whole thing, but first of all it's a no, because even if there were such a science, telling you who to trust is not something science does. That's advice. Science at most would tell you there is, or isn't, a correlation. Can we make science do that? Could we set the terms to be correlated, or not, as "is a horse breeder" and "raises the sort of horses we like"?
It looks to me like that's what we do much of the time. Science works at what it does, so we want to use its tools for everything we possibly can. We behave as if there's a "science of being a person". --- I've mentioned that I work in a bookstore, and thinking about expertise the last couple days I have looked around the store and seen experts everywhere. The novelists are experts on stories; the cookbook authors are experts on food; the self-help authors are experts on happiness; the religious authors are experts on God; the astrologers are experts on fate. Everyone's an expert.
It's not like I don't see the appeal. If you take a largely instrumental view of intelligence, which I'm at least as tempted to do as the next guy, then you might as well be as scientific as you can. What you're headed for is just results in the form of conditionals in some special mood, imperative maybe: if you want to grow really nice tomatoes, then you should conduct as scientific a review as you can of the techniques of tomato-growers and adopt the most successful method. No one minds that there's no science in the antecedent. Publishers understand this so thoroughly that they even publish books with titles like, I shit you not, "Read this if you want to be Instagram famous". You do you; we've got the science to show you how.
I'd like to talk about more about what Plato is saying and whether we ought to care, but instead I'll close by noting yet again the cross-purposes in this damn thread: one side (mostly that's just you @Isaac) is talking about this as an empirical question, and the other side (this would be you @Xtrix) sees all Isaac's talk as a shocking failure of citizenship. (I wander between camps and get two suppers.)
Of course not.
Quoting Isaac
You yourself stated “both sides” are generally ignorant, which I agree with. This isn’t a ridiculous contortion— people simply go with one or the other “expert,” for many reasons, usually on the instinctive level, because it appeals to some other belief or value they hold.
I’d say the WHO, the CDC, the AMA, etc, represent a majority of experts. This is all most laypeople know. So is it right to trust the CDC? I think so, yes. Many don’t, and give their reasons — but they’re almost always bogus.
Laymen would do well to stop pretending to know things they don’t, and listen to what experts are telling them — especially the mainstream of experts, as reflected in the aforementioned organizations.
Quoting Isaac
Amazing. So then you concede this is indeed what you believe.
What facts? The facts of reality; the overwhelming evidence that supports one theory (which is usually why there is such a consensus) over others (e.g., evolution vs creationism).
In your view, for the layperson, a bet on evolution theory isn’t any wiser than betting on creation “theory.”
This is how you know you’re on the wrong track.
On the contrary, it is indeed an empirical question. I never said otherwise.
We can get into WHY it’s a better choice to go with the overwhelming consensus when you’re a layman, but we’re not even at that stage if we deny that this is the correct move (which it is).
No, not with a conclusion, with a truth. A truth which you seem hellbent on diverting the conversation from.
We start from facts and then we try to explain them. So in the case of consensus, we should ask: why is that so? Not “it’s 50/50, and there’s no real way to know.” There is: the theory of evolution is correct, creation science isn’t. The earth is a sphere, not flat. These are not equal theories. Because they’re not equal, they likewise have a massive imbalance of expert opinion.
Second opinions, corroboration of witnesses, replication of experiments, etc, all contribute to greater confidence. This involves agreement of more than one person. Working with thousands of other scientists around the world as part of the scientific enterprise, greater consensus means something. You seem to think it doesn’t. And you’re wrong. You won’t worm your way out of it either.
In fact that’s exactly what you’re doing, which I pointed out several posts ago.
Then you've agreed to fight it out on @Isaac's terms, but I'm not sure you have to. This is what I wanted to get at: are we compelled interpose a step where we play at doing social science every time we face a decision about how to be a good citizen, or just a good person?
I'm not saying our world isn't more complicated than ancient Athens -- in some ways it obviously is, but recall that there's also something like an official religion that adds its own complications. (What Socrates was convicted of in his time is no longer an issue in ours.) Maybe we're right to do all this analysis, but maybe we're just aping the practices of science out of habit.
I should say, I don't have a ready alternative. I have some sense of what an alternative might look like, but for now the question is enough: are we sure we're approaching such decisions the right way and for the right reasons?
Complete and utter fabrication. That’s what kind of point it is.
Should a LAYMAN trust the majority of experts over a minority? Yes, he should, if this is all the information he has (as is normally the case). The case of climate change or evolution or quantum mechanics are cases in point.
There is no “link” between “rightness” and “education level.” I never said such a thing. An expert is an expert, whether a Ph.D or Masters level. The move he’s desperately trying to make here to avoid a truism is to pretend that consensus between experts doesn’t tell us anything— and it does.
Me neither, since he doesn’t believe consensus means anything. So there’s no sense explaining, empirically, WHY this is the case.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Sorry, but I really don’t know what you’re asking here.
I’m not talking about being a good citizen or a good person really.
Yes, we’re educating people poorly. Now every joe blow out there thinks he’s doing god’s work by “thinking for himself” and “questioning authority” — which sounds good until you see where this leads.
Something has gone wrong indeed. As Aristotle would say, something is out of balance.
Most people can now justify any belief based on the nonsense espoused by some in this thread: consensus of experts mean nothing— they’re all falling for group think, all establishment hacks. We, who are outside it all, will go with the righteous dissenters, the small minority who sees the REAL truth and who “they” try to suppress.
It’s a fantastic story for every charlatan and crackpot conspiracy theorist out there. So 97% of climate scientists agree? Who cares! That means nothing— don’t you know most scientists thought the earth was flat once? Etc.
Quite sad and quite scary.
Here's the response to that from a well-read member -- don't know if he's around anymore -- in a similarly-themed thread from four years ago. (It's over there to the left in your "recommended viewing".)
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Maybe. The PoMo genie is out of the bottle though, and it will be hard to put it back in and convince folks to believe the doxa.
Quoting Xtrix
I think fear is one of the reasons why so many people lose their rationality nowadays: they are afraid of the future -- COVID, terrorism, climate change, make your pick -- and they break under the pressure of fear.
And you are right that seeing people go crazy and jettison their rationality, this adds to the fear of the rest of us.
Fair question. It comes down to this...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I could give a statistical argument about hedging against uncertainty, but the stats doesn't seem to be going down well, so maybe an appeal to the gut. Does it not strike you a seriously wrong to put a rational or ethical imperative for a population to all believe one single thing, all follow one single solution (that of the majority of experts)? Putting aside all arguments about the greater long-term pay-offs of hedged bets, just as a gut response, you don't find something icky about that?
Despite the repeated attempts to conflate minority expert opinion with dissenting opinion in general (like Alex Jones is an expert in anything!), we're not talking about a lack of constraint on solutions - they have to meet the threshold of being reasonable, well-supported, evidence-based, peer reviewed etc. But once that threshold has been met, to demand that the range of options is further narrowed down until only one 'most-supported' solution remains which everyone has a duty to believe on pain of being held immoral/irrational... Well, if it's just me who finds that quite repulsive, then maybe I should start again with the statistical arguments.
Then you agree that other factors (like conflict of interest) are more important than majority support. Now you have to show what mechanisms exist to make it impossible (or less likely) that a majority on any one question could be the result of any of these other factors, of which conflict of interest is just one.
Quoting Xtrix
Then it is a contortion to say that they have no other information. How can they use "a number of reasons" yet also have "no other information"?
Quoting Xtrix
No. Not necessarily.
1. For a start you listed three organisations there so when they disagree (as on the issue of boosters, for example), why pick the CDC?
2. None of these institutions is free from political, corporate and ideological influence, whilst that's very unlikely to lead them to say something false, it's well within reason (in fact demonstrable historically) that it leads them to choose one strategy over another even if both are equally viable.
3. All of these institutions produce strategies, they are not publications of science. Journals publish science, institutions interpret it and formulate strategies based on it. Their strategy is not science, it is not subject to peer review, it's statistical methods are not scrutinised and it is never experimentally falsified. The rational incentives to prefer science over guesswork do not apply to the strategies of these institutions, it applies to the science on which they base those strategies. that science is not all in agreement...which leads to...
4. Only one strategy can be advocated by any given institution. They have to decide, even if the science is 51/49 in favour of it. Public health policy is a very blunt instrument, it must appeal to the lowest common denominator and achieve it's goal despite a heterogeneous, often recalcitrant, often downright idiotic population. Again, public health policy is not science. Following it does not have the same logical imperative as following science would have.
Quoting Xtrix
So you're saying that when there's two competing theories, there is always overwhelming evidence in favour of one? You're essentially denying underdetermination?
So, if you deny that underdetermination is possible, then the next question, I suppose, is what do you think is happening to the minority of scientists who dissent? Take Peter Doshi, for example - he dissented from the view that the vaccine should have been given full FDA approval. He's a fully qualified professor of medicine and editor of the world's leading medical journal, so there can be no question about his status as expert. So what happened to make his view wrong (or more likely to be wrong)?
Did he make a mistake in reasoning? - No, people argued their counter case and he maintained his disagreement, so any error in reasoning would have been obvious at that point.
Did he miss some evidence? - No, likewise the counter-argument would have contained any missing evidence and he would have corrected his position accordingly. He didn't
Was he ideologically, politically or financially motivated? - Undoubtedly, yes. But how more so that those holding the majority view? All of them have political affiliations, all have employers, funders and future consultancy work to think about, and all have a belief system which might bias their interpretation of evidence.
Did he just lack intelligence or some 'spark' which the majority have? - Possibly, but again, why would the majority have this property in greater quantity than any given minority?
So. If you reject underdeterminism (which to me, and most philosophers of science, is the most obvious explanation) then what is your alternative explanation?
Yes, but you've given no evidence at all that the theories supported by the majority of scientists have a greater quantity of these properties than theories supported only by a minority.
Quoting Xtrix
Explain. In what way have I mistaken variance in a population with variance in a stratified cohort?
There are better reasons to follow public policy than to follow "science", which never tells you what to do next anyway so you couldn't follow it even if you wanted to. Public policy is (in this case at least) based on science but takes into consideration social goods as well. If you care for the people around you, you should follow public policy. It's only if you are anti-social that you shouldn't.
:up:
So it's not entirely rational to adhere to the prevailing scientific view. It's weight comes from the fact that conservative people (in the best sense of the word) want a conservative opinion. As Xtrix demonstrates, there is virtue attached to it.
This is ancient and maybe partly a matter of cultural selection?
Do you disagree with vaccination as the only workable strategy out of this situation? Do you agree that the vaccines are safe and effective? Do you agree that the more people there are vaccinated the less our hospital systems will be overwhelmed by covid patients and the less likely there will be variants? If you agree with all of these and also agree that in a community facing an emergency it is a moral imperative that everyone should play their part, just as they are expected to in a military campaign, then what reason could you have for refusing to be vaccinated?
I wrote a long rambling response about the American culture war, but I'm replacing it with this:
Yes, orthodoxy is both dangerous and repugnant. I don't cotton to it.
...is exactly the issue in question.
If you can't make a case that one should always follow public policy (which no one in their right mind would), then the fact that some advice is public policy has no bearing on whether one should follow it does it? If it's good advice, follow it; if it's bad advice, don't.
Quoting Olivier5
Only if public policy does, in fact, on this occasion, pursue social goods based on sound science.
You've provided no mechanism by which we can distinguish the occasions when public policy is based on science and pursues public goods from the occasions when it is not, rendering the advice to follow public policy completely useless.
Quoting frank
Given underdetermination it is rational both to adhere to the prevailing scientific view and to adhere to dissenting scientific views. So long as the views meet the threshold for rational views (things like evidence, lack of COI, peer review etc) then it's rational to adhere to them. It's not rational to adhere to the view of Alex Jones or Donald Trump because they're not experts, and have obvious ideological conflicts of interest. Like...
Quoting frank
Yes, so there's definitely an ideological bias in favour of theories which support the status quo, but there's also the draw of the 'maverick genius'... I'm not seeing the virtue though, you might have explain that one.
Quoting Janus
I understand the link, but I went through my reasons for not getting vaccinated quite exhaustively in the other Coronavirus threads. With only a last minute exception they received nothing but vitriol and cliché both unrelated to the actual arguments put forth (standard fare nowadays unfortunately). There's only so much of that it is worth my while enduring on any given topic. I find everyone's responses very interesting, but not such as to be worth just any price.
So here, I'm really just interested in this idea that majorities are more likely to be right (in certain cohorts).
Sorry to cut your line of questioning short. Briefly (if it helps), the answer to all your first questions is no, mainly because the questions are too broad in a complex situation to give a 'yes'.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Possibly wise, though I'm sure it would have been interesting.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That's basically what I'm saying here. There are (quite rightly) social norms which set thresholds for the sorts of beliefs it's acceptable to have and act on, beyond those, diversity should be the aim, not the enemy.
Neither did you, and yet I am quite certain that you understand the value of having a public policy and of trying to enforce it.
I am also quite certain that science never ever told anyone where to go next, reason for which it would be impossible to "follow it", as you wrongly assume, while it is at the very least possible to follow public policy. I would further argue that it is being a good citizen to follow public policy, especially when this policy aims to save lives in times of emergency. It's called being disciplined.
In my country, public policy generally pursues the public good. At least that is the general perception. It might not attain it; it might damage the public good here or there; one might disagree with how it defines the public good; and of course there are exceptions, i.e. cases where a policy is crafted to benefit or protect private interest, which is bad. There are also token policies, i.e. policies that are not really meant to be implemented, but mere gesticulation. In this case the policy is dishonest, it does not really pursue the public good; it just pretends to.
But by and large, French policies are seen as bona fide aiming to protect citizens' interest, which is a condition sine qua non for their applicability. In other words, a social contract still exists in France, but it's eroding, and IF this public trust in public policy was to disappear, then our republic herself would disappear. A republic is literally a Res Publica; it depends on public trust to exist.
I've lived and worked in places where public trust had evaporated, such as DRC. I don't want this for my country. And if I need to take a shot of a vaccine, the usefulness of which might not be totally established, in order to protect or rebuild public trust, I will personally do so.
It's not just about statistics.
Where have I assumed this?
Quoting Olivier5
...
Quoting Olivier5
Quoting Olivier5
Quoting Olivier5
... So public policy pursues the public good, except when it doesn't. Difficult to disagree with that.
Quoting Olivier5
What an odd sentiment. If people don't trust public policy to be in their interests, how does blindly following it regardless help to restore that trust? Surely if trust in public institutions has been eroded that's a problem the public institutions in question need to solve. Are you suggesting the problems in the DRC would have been solved if people would only have just unquestioningly done what Kabila told them?
Ah, so there are possibly some historical cases which you can't fully recall but which might have tended to show something about responses to pandemics?
Well, what reasonable person could maintain an alternative position under the weight of that kind of evidence? I concede.
Quoting Isaac
Science doesn't tell you what you ought to do. It just tells you what is.
Quoting Isaac
I'm just doing my bit, considering the moral duty, in a time of crisis, to support the community I live in. At the very least, I am trying not to undermine trust by my own behavior.
Quoting Isaac
No. I am suggesting that public trust is the only thing that binds us together in societies. Protecting it, when and where it exists, is important to avoid chaos, especially for one who shares this trust, which is my case, and especially in times of crisis.
If we can't rationally pick between them, something irrational has to decide. It's personal bias, isnt it?
Some political theorists believe there's a growing hatred toward educated people among those who feel disenfranchised. They'll go with dissenting voices: the crazy doctor who says we should take ivermectin.
The bias toward mainstream scientific views can be scientism, or mistaking engineering feats for proof of some scientific theory.
Quoting Isaac
That's the scientism. Science where there is no Church.
Incidentally, if you're interested, Johns Hopkins have published a few essays on the subject. The broad conclusion... compassion, investment in healthcare, education, dealing with inequality... just about everything that is being avoided in discussion here in preference for just pillorying people who don't take vaccines.
...
I see. 'Follow' doesn't only mean to take instruction from.
Quoting Olivier5
Yes. That was the bit I wanted you to explain the rationale for. How does blindly doing what they say repair the trust in those for whom it has been lost, I can't see what process you imagine taking place?
Quoting Olivier5
I agree. So again, how does blindly doing as you're told protect this trust? You already trust your government, it's other people who don't, and they have good reason to not. So how is you doing as you're told helping to restore their trust? Did the problems with the DRC reside in Kabila or the populace?
Yes, that's basically what I've been saying. We choose the theories which best fit our favoured social narrative. If we're reasonable people we'll discard anything which is overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary (even at the expense of our favoured narrative if need be). But anything supported by a genuine expert without obvious conflicts of interest automatically qualifies as not being overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary.
Quoting frank
I don't believe in such a thing. There's always a 'church'.
That's not what I am trying to do. As I explained, I am trying NOT TO UNDERMINE trust. I'm not trying to actively shore it up, but I don't want to contribute to its fall.
Holding a government to account according to high standards of transparency and freedom from corporate influence is traditionally held to be a mechanism for increasing trust, not undermining it.
You're right.
Quoting Isaac
I just meant that science doesn't really offer soapboxes to preach from. People make science into a church to back their misanthropy or what have you.
Good question. The short answer is both.
The story of how Zaïre / DRC became a failed state is best told in "Dancing in the Glory of Monsters", by Jason K. Stearns. The title is a quote from Kabila the elder, the limp guerillero himself. When he reached Kinshasa at the head of his group, freeing the nation from the grip of Mobutu, he made a speech in which he told the Congolese that they shared the guilt of the Mobutu regime, because they had done nothing to oppose it. Instead, he told them, they had been dancing in the glory of the monster.
Needless to say, Mobutu is not the only monster in this story. Hence the plural in the title.
You can do that and still take your shot.
Interesting. To what extent did a lack of trust figure in their complicity, do you think?
Quoting Olivier5
Yes, and you can do it without taking your shot too, making the taking of your shot entirely inconsequential to the project.
Trust in institutions which have lost it can only be restored by a change in the structure or behaviour of that institution. We, as citizens, if we want such trustworthiness, ought to campaign for those changes by holding those institutions to account when they fail to meet the high standards we expect of them. Whether we follow their advice or not in the meantime is immaterial.
I see, yes. Makes sense now.
If it is totally inconsequential to the problem at hand, why did you bring up "holding the government into account"?
Quoting Isaac
The fact of the mater is that trust of the average citizens in one another, in one's neighbours, is close to zero in the DRC. This sentiment may be well-founded in their case but it still creates a lot of problems.
That such a sentiment be justified in Congo doesn't make it justified where I live, where reasonable levels of trust in one's neighbours, as well as in public institutions still exist, and for good reason, and where this trust is an asset.
It’s always possible. It’s possible that Noah’s flood is responsible for all the world’s fossils too. So what?
Quoting Isaac
Number of emotional reasons, as I made clear. Knowing nothing else but betting odds, I know people who cheer for the underdogs. Why? Because they have information Vegas doesn’t? No—because they like rooting for underdogs.
Quoting Isaac
Well that answer is clearly and demonstrably wrong in this case. Likewise for other cases of “both sides.” So the question is: how many times does the consensus of experts need to be proven true before we simply (as laypeople) trust them? We can do deep dives into these issues if we want, as we can with quantum mechanics, but it’s best to just take their word for it. That’s the correct choice.
Those laypeople who go with a minority view are almost always doing so for emotional reasons, as is the case with anti-vaxxers.
Quoting Isaac
No.
Quoting Isaac
I did. The case of the theory of evolution was an example. Ask yourself why the consensus is so high. It’s because there’s overwhelming evidence to support it. Hence, very high acceptance and confirmation.
That’s not true in every case, but nearly without exception when you reach higher levels of consensus,
:100:
You said you were trying not to undermine trust in your government by taking the vaccine, I was pointing out that holding the government to account is the usual method of not undermining trust, rather than the taking of prophylactic medicines.
Quoting Olivier5
No. It being justified makes it justified where you live.
France, right?
Is the French government immune to lobbying? Has it made decisions on global warming that are truly in the best interests of the people rather than the short term interests of industry? Does it's tax policy reflect social goods or the influence of the very wealthy? Do it's arms sales favour global stability or the arms industry?
When the French government were found guilty of failing to take sufficient action on climate change earlier this year were the courts wrong?
What exactly is it about the structure, history and objectives of your government that gives you such confidence in it's magnanimity?
I've been angry with the CDC since they screwed up the testing early on at the cost of helping the US lose control of the virus. The WHO likewise reliably gave out false information early on.
I trust webMD over either of those groups.
Nothing to do with the government. It's the whole health sector we are talking about. And not during a pandemic. Sowing doubt for no good reason in situations of crisis is antisocial.
Quoting Isaac
Technically I live in Italy, but it changes nothing to my argument. The Italian health sector and government did in fact better than in France in my assessment. I trust both countries' institutions, by and large, are well-meaning, if often inefficient.
Especially now. It's a national security crisis. Whatever their turpitudes, I trust that the government, the health professionals, the economic actors, e tutti quanti do not want to die. They don't want their parents to die, nor their children. They want to get out of this crisis.
I do want this as well. My neighbours, my colleagues, my friends, my family want this as well.
Vaccination gives us a tool to work to that end. Collectively.
So we speak to one another about the pros and cons. It's not entirely entirely certain and all proven, it's a new technology after all, but it seems to reduce both incidence and gravity. But we GET it. It's a necessary leap of faith. Yes there's some social pressure to get vaccinated, as there should be. It's a mater of survival.
I’m talking about vaccine recommendations. But what false information are you referring to? “Early on,” when circumstances were changing rapidly, it’s understandable mistakes were made. No one is arguing perfection.
The question is: should the population (laypeople) trust the CDC and the WHO? Yes, they should. Should we trust scientists? Yes, we should. Neither implies we should do so because science and medicine never make mistakes. My mechanic makes mistakes — I still trust him with my car.
Hospital to replace doctors with parents who have done their research (The Science Post; Jul 23, 2021)
(I sure as heck ain't gonna' take the advice of someone over in The Shoutbox over an established international panel of subject matter experts, and call it a day.)
Fair enough. It's not that I don't trust the CDC to have good intentions. They just haven't been leaders through any of this, which is unfortunate.
:100: This is true. People who nit-pick fluctuations/change, and then use them as evidence that science or government should not be trusted, are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with how the scientific process works. They need perfection from their government (which is relying on science) to be 100% right 100% of the time. It's like some General said about terrorists: They only have to be right once; we have to be right every time. This is understandable when dealing with simple-minded anti-intellectuals whose motives are political and based on emotion and confirmation bias.
I'm reminded of the simpletons who pointed out that masks are not 100% as reason not to wear them. My response analogy was automobile emissions control technology: just because it does not capture all pollution does not mean we remove the technology from cars. Perfection is the enemy of progress.
I'm also reminded of Fauci initially saying masks were not needed, and then saying they are advisable. This was during a mask shortage for health care workers and essential workers, and shortly after the anti-social people had their run on toilet paper. On the one hand, Fauci always knew masks were helpful, but he also knew how anti-social and selfish the simpletons are. Had he lead with mask efficacy, but requested they be reserved for health care workers, he knew the selfish, inconsiderate, disrespectful people would not care. They would have taken all the masks and the doctors and nurses would have had none. So, the very people who pretend to demand openness, perfection, and truth from government and their experts are the same people who can't be trusted. It's not government that cannot be trusted; it's the stupid people.
Had Trump spun up the war-footing production from day one, this would not have been an issue.
But alas, I am near convinced that the stupid people have won and this fight is no longer worth having. Let the chips fall where they may and let Covid fix stupid. If a lot of smart people have to die along with them, I guess that is the way of the world. When the remaining smart people re-set, we'll just have to listen to the stupid people say "We told you these draconian measures were coming." :roll: It's like one wag said "Those complaining about the new mask mandates are responsible for the new mask mandates."
The WHO and the CDC have all been dealing with science, which is a learning process, and the politics of those who would hamstring them. I lay 100% of the blame on the latter. Digging at the former is a vindictive child's angle.
Sure. And one of the mistakes we made was trusting the WHO. That's just a fact.
I did my own research and read the following article on the interwebs and it disagrees with you. There are opposing opinions in the world and therefor my confirmation bias tells me that you are wrong and WHO is right. That's how science works, right?
https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/world-health-organization-and-pandemic-politics
I think that’s the underlying problem here, yes.
wut
Just saying, WHO is right and you are wrong. At least according to my research. :lol:
Ok.
Love the science post link. That’s hilarious.
Well since you guys seem so much happier arguing against the entirely fictitious position that "we shouldn't trust experts" rather than saying anything substantive about the actual position that variance in degree of support within the cohort of experts is not well correlated with a theory's predictive power, I'll leave you to it.
The Unbelievable Grimness of HermanCainAward, the Subreddit That Catalogs Anti-Vaxxer COVID Deaths
That story posted above links to other stories about people suing hospitals to force them to administer their ‘folk remedies’ to COVID patients. As if the hospitals have tons of time and lots of spare cash to swat away this pernicious abuse of the legal system.
Those people were forced to pay for other people's poor decisions their entire lives, and when they need the help you wish to deny them?
What a simple view.
Why people believe what they do is much more complicated than one might imagine. There is a whole range of things that affect our beliefs (genetics, culture, family, friends, group dynamics, politics, intelligence, etc, etc), it's not always about evidence or reasons. In fact, much of the time it's not about evidence or facts. Moreover, if we think we're immune to these kinds of psychological factors (it's just a matter of degree), then we become part of the problem. You have to keep engaging with people, generally speaking, obviously there are some people who are more difficult to talk to than others, but most people will listen.
I'm currently attending a class at a church on faith and reason, and I'm not at all religious, but I do it to keep engaged. I was straight forward about what I believe with the class, but I was respectful. I challenged their beliefs, but I take my time and allow them to approach me, and I don't try to make them feel stupid. I'll have to admit, I'm more respectful in this class than I am in this forum. Some of the people in this forum are much more respectful when engaging with people in here than I am, but for the most part, I try, but with mixed results. Anyway, this class is going well so far, and they often ask me questions about their epistemological views, and I try to answer their questions gently and with humor. This is disarming, and it allows me to get my point across without trying to tell them that they're being irrational about this or that belief. I believe they enjoy having me there, it's a chance for them to hear other points of view. Now this doesn't always happen, there are some churches that wouldn't take kindly to someone challenging them, especially in this setting (Sunday school class). Years ago I was kicked out of someone's house for my disrespect of Cornelius Van Til, so I'm very familiar with how these situations can go sideways. In this class they always ask me questions, so basically I just wait for them to ask me, and then I simply share what I believe about the topic. Last Sunday I shared why I don't believe in the resurrection, and they listened intently.
The point is that we should stay engaged where possible, don't let it become us against them. Also, you may find that some of your own beliefs aren't as reasonable as you might think.
It’s natural to feel that way, but everyone has to be treated equally, I think. I think those who refuse vaccination without good reason should forego some of the privileges that it confers, but that can’t include healthcare.
We all know that the more someone tells you to do something, the more some people resist. They want to make their own decisions and not be coerced. Therefore, the govt. shouldn't be in the business of telling people how to live their lives, but instead should simply be providing objective information for individuals to make their own decisions concerning their own bodies. Whatever happened to "My body, my choice"?
Can I have what you're smoking?
Of course, I was just venting.
That’s not the “actual position,” except in your imagination.
Degree of consensus, like degree of experimental confirmation, like the degree of corroborating evidence, etc, I would suspect is indeed correlated with reliability.
But so far as I know, this hasn’t been systematically studied. Looking at historical and current cases where consensus is high — like climate change — it’s fairly obvious there’s a correlation. Which is why laymen should trust consensus, and which was the ACTUAL position of this thread.
These free wheelers consume resources which could be put to better use.
Did you stop for a second and think: “Maybe others — many others — have asked this question?”
Apparently not. If you did, you’d find answers on an interesting bit of technology called the Internet. Odd that you would miss that.
But feel free to go on thinking that experts have missed these questions somehow, and continue to push for vaccinations anyway.
Here's a question no one has asked:
If Covid-19 naturally mutated from a non-lethal virus to a lethal virus, then what is to prevent the regular annual flu from mutating into something more dangerous? Why aren't the annual flu shots being mandated if this is the case, and we should never stop wearing masks for the fear of some virus naturally mutating into something more lethal?
If Covid-19 was manufactured in a lab, then that brings a whole host of other implications that we should consider and be fearful of. One implication is that we should be more angry at the scientists manufacturing lethal viruses and unleashing the on the world, than being angry at those that are unvaccinated, which the internet shows most blacks haven't yet been vaccinated thanks to the Left's scare tactics last year when Trump was president. So are you being racist by bashing the un-vaxxed?
So, in the Left's haste to deny that the virus was man-made, they are implying that non-lethal viruses can mutate into lethal versions naturally and that we will never stop wearing masks or mandating vaccines for viruses that have the potential to mutate.
We don't know if vaccinated people transmit at a lower rate, per the internet.
Quoting Lili Loofbourow
Quoting Lili Loofbourow
Quoting Lili Loofbourow
The incorrigibility is as striking as the cynicism, though.
Some of those folk are both entrenched and have their "warriors" (as we've observed).
Quoting Lili Loofbourow
Apparently, this is now called "vaxenfreude".
Because it’s been covered by numerous people numerous times. I’m not doing it again simply because you refuse to take 15 minutes and read.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It has. Anti-vaxxers (like you) raise these questions constantly. The very fact you think they’ve “never been raised” is laughable.
Where the variance in degree of support within the cohort of experts is not well correlated with a theory's predictive power, then the lack of variance may be well correlated with a theory's predictive power. Regardless, I just don't think you have the chops to make sense of any variance or the lack thereof; nor do you have the ability to discern whether any variance rises to the level of a distinction with a relevant difference. We leave that to the experts. You should be so humble.
Do you really read anything before responding?
I didn’t bring up whether the vaccinated can spread the virus at a lower rate or not in the post you’re responding to.
Please try reading carefully before responding with non-sequitors. You’re not the objective referee you’re pretending to be.
The capital of Massachusetts isn’t Albany, it’s Boston.
Thanks.
Not trying to be a referee.
, sure, I suppose the "personal freedom" thing can make a point of sorts. It's just that SARS-CoV-2 doesn't care about anyone's freedom. The virus replicates propagates mutates unchecked in whatever fertile grounds, leaving victims in its wake, and that's a social thing with consequences as well as personal.
Very true, it's truly pathetic. I wish our pinko, bleeding-heart society would throw all the cretins into a furnace, beginning with the fat and the ugly
Are you familiar with the notion of 'more or less' as opposed to 'all or nothing'?
There is a huge demand for the Janssen vaccine now in Slovenia, given that a covid passport is needed for pretty much everything, and the Janssen vaccine is the quickest way to get it (it's just one dose and the passport is valid immediately after vaccination).
So this vaccine is now under the spotlight.
It was the head of a major vaccination center here who said Janssen's effectiveness was so low. He said he wouldn't get vaccinated with it, but would choose one with a better effectiveness.
I don't know whom or what to believe.
Look at what the EU covid vaccination document says -- see the part in English on the left side:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/O%C4%8Dkovac%C3%AD_certifik%C3%A1t_-_vzor.jpg
"The scientific evidence on COVID-19 vaccination, testing and recovery continues to evolve, also in view of new variants of concern of the virus."
In legal terms, this is a waiver of liability, if not even more than that.
The issue is whether the limited effectiveness of the vaccines warrants the hatred and the contempt that the vocal pro-vaccers are directing at anyone who isn't all that enthusiastic about the vaccines.
Here's the thing: Why don't the vocal pro-vaccers (who claim to be taken hostage by the unvaccinated) put their money where their mouth is and limit health care (and other things) for the unvaccinated?
If the vocal pro-vaccers believe they are so right, so superior to the unvaccinated, then what on earth is stopping them from passing laws in accordance with that?
Irrelevant. What is relevant is what happens on the ground level.
Ie. in terms of medicine, what is relevant is how actual doctors and other medical personnel actually interact with actual patients. This is the level at which trust is build, or destroyed.
When people quite consistently have the experience that what those "high up" (ie. the scientists in fancy medical journal and news features) say is one thing, and what their doctor tells them is another one, this erodes trust in the entire medical system.
When people quite consistently hear on the news about great medical advances (that could potentially help wih their medical problem), but then on the ground level see that those medical technologies are not available to them or prohibitively expensive, this erodes trust in the entire medical system.
To say nothing of doctors who don't listen, who amputate the wrong leg (and aren't held accountable), clumsy nurses, waiting lines so long -- years long -- that by the time one's scheduled time for a knee surgery comes, it's too late to save the knee, and so on. One can stomach some of this, but there is a limit to it. At some point, one loses trust in the entire medical system.
Irrelevant.
I live in a region with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, and the national television gives considerable attention to this region (apparently in an effort to increase the vaccination rate).
Just the other day, the head of the local health clinics said on national television that some doctors in those health clinics advised people not to get vaccinated. (Note: We have a public health care system and all those doctors are licensed by the state to practice medicine.)
The vaccination rate for medical personnel is around 70%.
The government did not make it mandatory for medical personnel to get vaccinated (but made it mandatory for the military and the police, and some other government institutions).
Given this, what are ordinary people supposed to do?
What does it help if the national health institute says one thing, but the government does something else?
What does it help if the national health institute says one thing, but on the ground level, even medical personnel is skeptical about vaccination?
Absolutely. Righteous indignation is so addictive.
As long as the discussion is limited to philosophy forums, there should be no problem.
But look at Israel. Sky high vaccination rates achieved early on, yet the vast majority of covid patients requring hospital care are fully vaccinated. This trend is observable in other countries too: the percentage of the fully vaccinated hospitalized is growing.
Pressure? It's flat out hatred, contempt.
Quoting Olivier5
Croatia has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the EU, around 50%. There is a public debate as to why this is so and what can be done.
Some Croatian social scientists say that the reason why many people don't get vaccinated is because they don't trust the government. More importantly, that they are justified in this distrust, given that the government has a track history of letting many people down (ie. the institutions aren't doing their work, the legal system panders to the rich and powerful), and that it has been doing this for the past 30 years.
They also say that the solution isn't in trying to change people's beliefs (it's too late for this by now, and it takes too long), but that by now, only practical measures (read: coercion) can make a difference.
Given your righteous indignation, given your contempt, your hatred: only perfection justifies and warrants those.
If you want to be justified hate people for not thinking and acting the way you think they should, then you better be perfect.
Seems to me the stupid people and the virus have won. So, does winning make the stupid people smart and the smart people stupid? How does this work? Or does it even matter? I'm beginning to think I don't have a dog in this fight. Like the American vet returning from a lost cause, I know I stepped up and did my part, even if it turns out that I shouldn't have. Hey St. Peter, will that count for shit? I guess we leave the stupid people to their righteous indignation. Oh well, carry on.
Oh, but you are undermining trust: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/599142
QUESTION: Are the vocal pro-vaccers willing to sacrifice their hatred and contempt against the unvaccinated in exchange for better vaccination rates?
We weren't talking about what happens on the ground between doctors and patients, so this is irrelevant.
Quoting baker
Only for those like you who wish to change the topic.
About 96% of doctors in the US are vaccinated, with half of the rest willing to be vaccinated. And this was back in June.
There is an overwhelming consensus about vaccines among experts. If you want to talk about how this message is disseminated, or stress the importance of the ground-level relationship between doctors and patiences, fine -- but that's not what was being discussed. Try to keep up.
It's the level on which trust in the medical system is build, or destroyed.
A point you keep avoiding. You want people to trust the medical system, but you want this trust to be build on something other than the actual interaction with said system.
You know, I will repay you and your ilk for this contempt.
I don't feel any of that. Your projections are your own.
The issue which was being discussed was whether laypeople, knowing nothing else but that high consensus levels existed among experts, should go with that consensus or not.
Incidentally, there are plenty of people who would otherwise trust their doctors who are not doing so now. Why? Because this has become politicized. That is a function of belief systems and perceptions shaped largely by media (including social media), not by the messaging of doctors on the ground level.
And you're not alone in this. There are many high politicians and other influential people who have those same attitudes, and who appear to be oblivious to the effect that those attitudes have on people. That those attitudes are counterproductive to the goal of increasing people's trust in the medical system and the vaccination rates.
:broken:
I hold no contempt for you. If I did, I wouldn't bother talking to you at all. I don't think you're inferior to me -- I think you're wrong. You're confusing the two.
Quoting baker
Yes, because you're been so very kind in this discussion so far, starting the entire thing off with a condescending "irrelevant," and then accusing me of hatred and contempt. Spare me.
There's no 'problem' per se in voicing opposition to whatever policy but I believe that in times of crisis, 1) one should give some slack to political leaders, their job is hard nowadays and you and I wouldn't be able to do any better; and 2) consider the need for a little social cohesion, for a bit more attention to the public good, i.e. more civic sense and responsibility to the collective is required in times of crisis than otherwise I think.
Certainly, spreading unfounded suspicions and rumors is beyond the pale, IMO, here or anywhere.
You need to serve somebody alright. It may be the Devil or it may be the Lord. So be careful which master you serve. Beware who is spreading rumors, and why. Who's your handler?
Quoting baker
The issue is the variants, Delta mainly in Israel. This thing is mutating fast. So in terms if vaccination, it will require annual shots. Updates of the latest variants downloaded to your immune system via RNA updates. The technology allows it. And vaccination is not the only tool a nation should use. Masks should remain on the nose when in crowds or indoors, etc.
Quoting baker
So a guy spoke on TV, huh?
:100: :up:
:rofl:
"Doctor do no harm", "doctor help the sick", all that? Empathy/decency towards the ignorant/fearful/ungrateful? Ethics? I'm thinking there are a few reasons anyway.
[sup]• ‘So frustrating’: Doctors and nurses battle virus skeptics (Oct 8, 2020)
• Many COVID-19 patients insist ‘it’s not real’ until they die, nurse says (Nov 17, 2020)
• Nurses Are Dealing With Patients Who Think COVID-19’s A Hoax (Nov 25, 2020)
• 15 Infuriating Stories About Doctors Who Had To Diagnose A COVID-19 Denier With The Coronavirus (Apr 21, 2021)
• Companies mulling charging unvaccinated employees more for health coverage: report (Aug 14, 2021)
• ‘Crisis teams’ sent to hospitals in Oregon hard hit by COVID (Aug. 25, 2021)
• Largest real-world study of COVID-19 vaccine safety published (Aug 26, 2021)
• Anti-vaxxer mother and daughter die from Covid in Belfast hospital (Sep 16, 2021)
• A New Nurse Struggles to Save Patients in a New COVID Surge (Sep 16, 2021)[/sup]
Now, unlike the U.S model, which is based upon pure hysteria and permanent pharmaceutical spending, the Swedish have done quite well. The only country that has adopted a nuanced approach to health.
You want to stop Covid and most other diseases. Stop eating like pigs (obese people are 3 time more likely to have severe problems), and stop stressing out like idiots. And by all means stop popping drugs that destroy your immune system.
I had a mild case, and my long-term immune prospects are quite good. Just treated it naturally. I won't have to take "boosters" every few months with..... what kind of long term effects?
We do know.
This is one of the many claims that anti-vaxxers often use. In the "long run" we're all dead, as Keynes once said. 6 billion shots given, it's been 9 months and given a level of scrutiny unlike anything else in history -- I think it's safe to say they're safe. They're also remarkably effective.
Quoting MondoR
This is unproven. But even if true, and it was created in a lab, scientists also created nuclear energy. That doesn't mean they had in mind Hiroshimo.
Quoting MondoR
And what, pray tell, *is* a "good source" besides virologists, epidemiologists, physicians, etc?
Quoting MondoR
62% vaccinated -- better than the US. Apparently less anti-vaxxer bullshit/pushback in Sweden.
The US policy is not based on hysteria, it's based on the recommendations of medical experts -- just like in Sweden. The hysterics are coming from those, like you, who buy into the many false and misleading claims of anti-vaxxers, and anti-vaxxers themselves. The same people claiming the vaccines magnetized people, would sterilize them, had a chip implanted that could track them, etc. etc. I guess that's not "hysteria."
Quoting MondoR
Wonderful. I guess that proves it.
It'll be precisely people like you who run to the vaccines when a virus comes around that's more deadly. And it'll happen.
Sorry, your philosophy about living a healthy and vibrant life is rather sick, which is why I don't look to people like yourself for advice.
quote="Xtrix;599534"]created in a lab, scientists also created nuclear energy.[/quote]
Yep, they do like creating toxic substances, don't they?
Quoting Xtrix
Nuanced, not hysterical.
Quoting Xtrix
The same chaps who created the virus. Good luck.
So pushing for vaccines is "nuanced"? OK, so the US is nuanced as well -- just with far more pushback from hysterical anti-vaxxers. Got it.
Quoting MondoR
That's likely untrue, but the fact you believe it is telling. If you want to learn about it, see here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3
Even if it were true, it was created by a Chinese lab. I'm talking about the United States. Those aren't the "same chaps." You really don't have a clue about what you're talking about.
Like most anti-vaxxers.
Read about the Swedish story and compare the results. You are all hung up on sticking stuff into yourself and people. I don't mind you experimenting on yourself, but like some mad scientist, you have some sick desire to experiment on others, seeing as they are going to die anyway. A new justification for harming people?
Quoting Xtrix
They are. You don't have a clue. Lol
The Pied Piper of Hamlin.
:rofl:
Another anti-vaxx troll.
I think questions of liability are moot in this emergency situation; unless of course it could be proven that there had been negligence or fraud by vaccine developers during the testing stages.
Quoting baker
I don't agree with hatred and contempt being directed at people, unless they are promulgating misinformation and conspiracy theories about the vaccines; if they are merely hesitant or fearful and are amenable to reason. then education, not hatred or contempt. would be the best approach.
I don't know about that. I wonder how many spectators of this forum who don't themselves contribute there are.
Some things are known, and there are (historical) case studies.
BTW, what do you think of a science-made virus that has killed millions of people and destroyed life as we once knew it?
https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/242809899_1237101963461508_4861156168586191973_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=xbP4D1rXvToAX8XDWPy&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&oh=dbd4658619aa2c97ce5d54269e3f01a2&oe=6152913E
The auditions to The Twilight Zone (or whatever it is) are over that'a way (pointing).
This should be the case in a perfect world. But we are in a fucked up world, and, historically speaking, crisis is the most opportune time for the tyrant to make a move. I cannot hold it against anyone who harbors heavy mistrust and skepticism towards government, given the countless times it has betrayed the public.
The current debate can be reduced to fear of disease versus fear of tyranny. In the end we will find endless reasons why one should take priority over the other. My solution, however, is that we should all shed our fears, and take pleasure in getting sick, and in obeying irksome and/or unreasonable commands.
No opinion on how scientists have destroyed life on Earth as we once knew it. How about at least a bow?
Not at all. Just pointing out that the madmen who created the virus are now, in high shrill and pure hysteria, trying to force everyone to partake in their madness. Their rationale: well heck, we are all dying sooner or later.
If you were worried about that, you're about 200 years too late.
Not really worried. More bemused of how humans go around destroying themselves in the name of science.
You're wrong, then. It's not in the name of science. Science is just a tool. We lie about how it's in the name of our children and other such nonsense. It's really in the name of money.
Totally agree.
Anti-vaxxer says what?
While vaccinations are problematic, I do recognize they provide an excellent revenue stream.
What I am fervently against is having a bunch of hysterical, crazies telling me what I should stick in my body, particularly if the same crazies were involved with the development of a virus that has destroyed the lives of hundreds of millions of people. I'm rather particular about who I take advice from.
Now, tell me again why long-term effects don't matter?
Keeping people alive is also a good revenue stream.
Quoting MondoR
That sounds more like the anti-vaxxers than the vaxxers. I have yet to see Fauci, el al, act like hysterical crazies. Now, Tucker Carlson and the other conspiracy turds: there's some crazy.
Quoting MondoR
First, I don't accept that it was man made. Second, even if it was man-made, what evidence do you have that the "crazies" that developed it are the same "crazies" that are trying to get you to vax? Painting all scientists with the same brush is fundamentally stupid.
Finally, what evidence do you have the the lives of hundreds of millions of people have been destroyed? That sounds like hyperbole to me. Have you ever seen a life destroyed?
Questions that seem relevant here by now:
In the history of ? outbreaks, how %many were (ab)used for (enduring political) power grabs?
Might be easier to find some examples of some opportunistic profiteering here and there?
And downright evil examples of someone intently creating an ? outbreak to some Machiavellian (or worse) end?
What did in fact take place, what does history tell us?
Pertinently, what exactly would you expect or (realistically) want in case of an ? outbreak?
Evident/justified responses would carry far more weight than (wild or baseless) claims and conspiracy theories.
:100: Another thing to consider, the first rule of Dr. Evil is to have an antidote before releasing the poison.
Are you referring to the conspiracy to cover-up the gain of function virus research in U.S. and Wuhan labs? Oh, we are well past that conspiracy. Wasn't it Dr Faux-ci who claimed that there was no gain of function research, and zero possibility that the virus came from the Wuhan lab (love the video of the lab filled with bats)? The trail was just too long and wide to cover-up. You know, it takes a lot of chutzbah to poop on someone's doorstep and then claim a bat did it.
What's your opinion of the poop laid down by medical science? Should I trust the pooper?
If you live in a tyranny, I feel sorry for you.
Both sides are the problem. I'm not on either side. I'm just asking questions that people refuse to answer and would rather nitpick posts than address the valid questions being asked.
Asking questions means that you haven't yet taken a side because you don't have all the information to be able to make a decision - mostly because both sides keep playing politics with the idea of personal choice.
None of this addresses the issue of why someone should be vaccinated. As I pointed out, even the vaccinated can carry and spread the virus. So again, what is the point of vaccinating?
It seems to me that getting vaccinated or not has only implications to the individual deciding to get vaccinated or not. Everyone else each has this decision with the implications only involving themselves.
Taking your post at face value, I can only assume you've been living under a rock. You might try "doing your own research" and not on a philosophy forum. There are no experts here. Try the CDC web site. Or look up hospitals that are "booked" with Covid patients to the detriment of innocent-others who need those resources, for Covid and non-Covid reasons. Or there is always Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson. :roll:
Many people here think that they are experts. They imply that science is like a religion where it's conclusions are never to be questioned. As an example, the info that the CDC has put forth has changed several times throughout the pandemic. Even Fauci said that masks don't protect well. Most people are just wearing cloth coverings and wear the masks improperly anyway.
I don't know about you, but I don't trust what the government and the state-run media says. The media has become a joke. They are all political propaganda machines.
Apparently you are unfamiliar with how science works. And apparently I was a fool to take your curiosity at face value. You're just another fucking idiot. Sorry to have wasted our time. Carry on.
The flu sometimes does mutate in a more deadly strain but because the virus is endemic most people have some resistance to it, even against a new deadlier strain. So that never resulted in pressure on healthcare capacity as Covid has and does (I've not heard of triage because of the flu, except maybe the Spanish one). Since we all rather not live in continuous lock downs (I presume) to avoid total deterioration of the healthcare system, a way out is getting enough people vaccinated instead of infected.
Every policy decision was to avoid a collapse of the healthcare system, not to save every life out there, as the knock on effects of a healthcare system unavailable for any other type of care would result in even more deaths as those with other life-threatening diseases could not be helped and Covid-care wouldn't be much more than getting a bed in a tent in a parking lot of a hospital if you're lucky.
With proper detection, isolation and contact tracing, a lot of nasty bugs could be squashed before they really can do damage, as NZ did, but it requires political will which is often absent because $$$. Closing down air traffic with China is apparently problematic.
And there's definitely something to be said for including mask wearing as a general hygiene precaution in busy areas. As some cultures already do. Incorrect mask wearing notwithstanding as large scale research has confirmed.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This makes little sense to me. Whether it was manufactured or not doesn't change the healthcare problem. Being angry with those who allegedly made it, wouldn't diminish my annoyance towards those advocating bad policies or personal decisions.
I'm not aware of a causal link between "scare tactics" (which ones?) and getting a vaccination. Care to share your insights on that?
So you're saying science is like a religion and it's conclusions should never be questioned?
I do know how science works. You only arrive at the correct answer after making all possible mistakes.
How did most people develop a resistance to the annual flu - by getting it and now they have the anti-bodies? Why doesn't the same concept work for Covid?
Quoting Benkei
I don't get this part. If closing down air traffic with China is problematic, which is in essence keeping people separated to prevent the spread then keeping people 6-feet apart and limiting the number of people in a room would be problematic. China was the one that prevented any information from getting out about the virus and how it originated. And if you believe anything the Chinese govt. says then that is problematic.
Quoting Benkei
Many people are arguing that people should get the vaccine to prevent the virus from mutating and spreading, but the research shows that the virus can be spread even by those that are vaccinated. And if the virus can mutate even among the vaccinated, then why are we not making the same argument regarding the common flu?
Your thinking that that might be what I was saying reflects negatively on your cognitive abilities. I can't pretend to have the skill required to pierce the fog that must be your mind.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Google "Scientific Method." Then ask yourself if science, the CDC, Fauci, et al, should have had all the answers (to your satisfaction) on day one in November of 2019.
Also consider that Fauci, who was trying to reserve a limited mask supply for doctors and nurses, was dealing with a fundamentally stupid population that caused an unnecessary run on toilet paper. Fauci told the Harry Hindu's of the world that masks were not necessary because he knew that if he told the Harry Hindu's of the world that masks helped, then the Harry Hindu's of the world would have panicked and gone out and bought up all the N-95 and other masks, leaving the doctors and nurses with nothing. You see, Fauci is not only an expert, but he is smarter than you, and wiser than you. See how that works? But one thing he could not foresee is that Trump would not invoke the requisite war-footing to spin up masks as fast as we could have.
You are a classic example of the type of person who should not question. You should just do what you are told. I don't care if it's Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson who tells you. You aren't meant to be a thinker, to have curiosity, or to engage the world. That is not your lot in life. You need to get back in your cubicle or wherever it is you work and spin your wheels there. This part of life is over your head. This is no sleight on you. The world needs minions too.
This has been my morning finger exercise, limbering up to type more, for others who can appreciate my genius. Carry on, Harry.
The answer was in my previous post. It would eventually work for Covid but not before crippling the healthcare system for months and causing unnecessary deaths.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I already answered that too. It's about political will of whatever relevant government. I'm not even talking about the Chinese government here but our own.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The vaccination claim of manufacturers was never about reducing spread. People assumed this to be the case because this has been the effect of other vaccinations like polio or measles (but not the flu shot for instance, which is also a vaccination). Covid vaccination was and is about protecting people against hospitalisation so that the burden on the healthcare system would be acceptable. Initially it also reduced spread and with the delta variant a larger proportion of vaccinated people can pass on the virus than happened with previous variants.
To reduce spread, social distancing and mask wearing remains important for everyone, whether vaccinated or not.
Anti-vaxxer says what?
The vaccinated are far less likely to spread the virus, because they’re far less to be infected by the virus. It’s that simple.
Which you’d know if you bothered to read anything.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Or medical experts, apparently. Fine— then don’t pretend like it’s only a matter of not having your very original questions answered.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That’s not close to how science works.
What do they all have in common? Some here have called them stupid but I don't think that's it; for one, they're all skeptical positions, a refusal to accept the official line and being cautious, last I checked, is a healthy habit, to be cultivated and mastered.
As far as I can tell, the underlying theme of these fringe groups is a mistrust of the establishment and this level of doubt in the powers that be could only have originated and perpetuated by governments continually, on a regular basis, breaking the people's trust in them.
In short, even though these groups are, on the whole, deletorious to society, they serve to keep the memory of past failures alive - we dare not forget our errors lest we repeat them. Let's give the devil his due.
I don’t think so either.
It sure did make a difference, if the chaps running the show were the ones who developed the virus. It calls into question their biases, their judgment, and their intentions. Other countries have adopted completely different policies with far superior results. The problem with the U.S, is that it is run by the pharmaceuticals (immune suppressant drugs are rampant) and it is probably the most obese of all the countries. Obese people are 3x more likely to develop severe symptoms. Should vegetable only diets be mandated? . This is a very sick country, the sickest of whom are the ones who funded gain of function research in the U.S. and then China. Guess who?
Yes, let's remember that they mad-scientists that created the virus are now running the vaccination show. Natural immunity is better than the silly 6 months of immunity you get from a vaccination, and I have NATURAL IMMUNITY. Vaccinated people are not only spreading the virus, but they are also a great environment for creating mutations.
Rofl! It's already been shown the virus load is the same for vaccinated same vaccinated. Why should I take instructions and advice from a totally uninformed person like yourself? Listen, I think you are due for a booster. :)
Precisely my point although I think you were trying to be ironic.
When did trees virus load work into this? And of course the virus load is the same for vaccinated same vaccinated.
The problem is that we are faced with a man-made virus that is very virulent, especially for those with weak immune systems (obese, overly drugged, poor living/lifestyle conditions). Eventually the human body will adapt, but I'd be crazy to take advice from the total idiots that created the human catastrophe.
Cite?
Quoting MondoR
Cite? I heard antibodies fade faster with natural?
Quoting MondoR
It's not about you. You don't count.
Quoting MondoR
Cite? I thought it was the people who didn't play ball that were responsible for the variants?
I guess maybe you are an expert after all. What lab do you use?
Read the literature and reporting. There is tons of it.
Cite?
Quoting MondoR
How do you know they are the same idiots? Cite?
You said:
Quoting MondoR
So I was wondering why I should take advice from someone who can't spell or write. Just curious.
How do you know you exist? Cite?
You're the U.S.? Or did you mean "in"? The new mask mandate is courtesy of those who violated the old mask mandate. DOH!
I haven't given you any advice. Just take your boosters. The heck I care.
If that were true, then you would not be saying what you're saying. Take your own advice.
Wrong. Cite?
LOL! I'm not the one here claiming expertise. I'm humble enough to rely upon expertise. You should try it.
Just take your boosters every 6 months of you want. Shrug
I don't. I never said I did. See how that works?
Good. You don't have any.
It's not about you.
Right. Do your own research, Dr. Mondo. LOL!
And neither do you. The difference is, I'm not claiming I do. Dr. Mondo. LOL!
Right, it is the millions who have been killed, and the 100s of millions whose lives have been destroyed by a man-made virus.
I asked you before, have you ever seen a life destroyed? You sound like pampered, entitled, hyperbolic little child who thinks a mask is an inconvenience. "Destroyed?" LOL! What's the matter, can't pack the bars and snuggle with strangers any more? You don't care about those killed or inconvenienced. It's all about you.
Cite?
You think it is all a joke right?
You're the one living in a closet. You are a psychiatrist also? A real jokester.
I think any inconvenience to you is a joke. I don't think you know what a hard life is.
As an anti-vaxxer, I know there’s a mental block to this stuff, but I’ll repeat it again for anyone else listening: since the vaccines protect against the virus extremely well, the vaccinated do not spread the virus as much as the unvaccinated. Not even close.
In breakthrough cases, the evidence is still out about whether the vaccinated who get infected have the same viral loads as the unvaccinated who get infected. But there’s evidence to suggest they don’t.
This is why you should be totally ignored.
Says an anti-vaxxer who doesn’t know what breakthrough cases are.
(1) If vaccines protect against COVID infections and
(2) you cannot transit COVID if you’re not infected, then
(3) who is more likely to spread COVID? The vaccinated or the unvaccinated?
:chin:
I know this is a tough one, but think about it for a second.
Quoting https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-transmission-idUSKBN29N1UH
Ha, those idiot 'scientists'. Fancy them not even being able to understand your logic, you must be some kind of genius...
From the article you cite:
“ verdict: Missing context. There is no conclusive evidence to claim COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent people spreading the disease. Scientists are not yet sure of how the vaccine affects transmission – and this is currently undergoing research. People are still required to follow restrictions even after vaccination to account for this uncertainty.“
This would seem to make the (1) claim currently unsupported, yes. Until you realize that this article was last updated 8 months ago, and is originally from January.
But keep fighting the good fight, Isaac.
Take a look at this for something more recent:
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/covid/covid-19-post-vaccination-data-082321.pdf
Woah, so the way vaccines interact with viruses has changed since January! Those damn biological facts, they just won't stay the same from one minute to the next will they?
Yes, there's been some experiments which tentatively show the vaccine might reduce transmission. No, it's not via the playschool version of the mechanism you claimed was so 'obvious'.
No, there has been more research since January, which the article itself said was needed.
But keep trying.
Which of the three facts you claim so obviously show vaccines reduce transmission did this 'research' only recently discover?
They ALWAYS need more research. It's a BIG business. So much for your pontification.
Wait, so is Dr. Mondo saying science is not a process and must meet the childish demands of: "ANSWER! NOW!"?
I guess it's more important to say "GOTCHA" than having to actually think and comprehend transmogrification. After all, why "adult" if we don't have to? How's that buggy whip working for you?
I’m sorry you’re having trouble reading, so I’ll repeat what I said:
Quoting Xtrix
Then (emphasis mine):
Quoting Xtrix
The transmissibility is lowered even with lower symptoms, which is established. But with lowered infections, even more so — you can’t transmit it if you don’t have it. Research seems to have confirmed the latter as well, which isn’t always the case in vaccines:
'Gold Standard' Study Confirms mRNA Vaccines Prevent Infection
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210722/gold-standard-study-mrna-vaccines-prevent-infection
Emphasis mine, to help your reading comprehension.
Here’s another, from Forbes (in case you thought this knowledge was obscure):
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/03/30/moderna-and-pfizer-vaccines-prevent-infection-as-well-as-disease-key-questions-remain/amp/
Predictably, you’ll find a way to ignore all this. I post it for others’ benefit, however, not yours.
This is relevant to the question @Harry Hindu was asking too.
No, Vaccinated People Are Not ‘Just as Likely’ to Spread the Coronavirus as Unvaccinated People
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/620161/
I wonder if this means anti-vaxxers and their enablers will now stop saying the vaccinated and unvaccinated both spread the virus equally?
:chin:
I’m going with: no.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/delta-infection-unvaccinated-and-vaccinated-people-have-similar-levels-of-virus
I think we're need to put two masks on vaccination propagandists. One to keep their viruses out of people's faces. The other to keep their sound out of people's ears. They only know what they read in pop headlines.
Like the Nazis, they like experimenting with people.
From your Googled source:
See the bold emphasis.
Now let’s see if you can understand what that means…
No? Okay, I’ll just give the answer:
This is dealing with breakthrough cases. You don’t seem to understand what that is, so I encourage you to read about it.
Or simply go back to sleep.
I understand exactly what it means. It means you have no idea what you are talking about. By the way, would you mind putting your face mask on? I don't want that dangerous load of virus that you are carrying, even if you show no symptoms. Thank you.
The Annals of Internal Medicine? :rofl:
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-1577
like the new masking protocols: All the fault of Dr. Mondo, el al. Negligent homicide, at the very least.
Pop headlines…Web MD is pop journalism? The study they are discussing is from the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Eh, nevermind.
Quoting MondoR
I’ve been talking about the exact same thing. Try reading and thinking before responding like a child.
Keep googling, maybe you’ll find something from Infowars.
You can tell he’s a scholar, can’t you?
Makes Isaac look reasonable.
:point: :up:
We don't want to experiment on human beings. They've already stepped up.
The point of getting vaccinated is that the vaccinated are far less likely to carry and spread the virus. Does it have to be all or nothing?
Quoting James Riley
:rofl:
If you're in close contact with anyone who has a chronic condition, you should assume that you're a carrier even if both of you have been vaccinated.
It's a mistake to spread the rumor that vaccinated people can't transmit.
The main reason to be vaccinated is to potentially save your own life.
Who did that?
Quoting frank
Is that a better reason than to save the life of another? Maybe not take up a bed they could use?
I haven't said that vaccinated people can't transmit, though; I said that they are far less likely to transmit. If you are without co-morbidities and under 70, your chances of dying from covid, even if unvaccinated, are quite small apparently.
So, I see being vaccinated as playing your part in reducing, however minimally, the overall risk of infection, serious illness and death, and hopefully enabling our societies to get back to some reasonable semblance of normality, because the cycle of successive waves of infections and lockdowns cannot be sustained without great general suffering and increased rates of poverty, illness and death from causes other than covid.
I don't think it is unreasonable to think that, if the aforementioned cycles continue for sufficient time, it could lead to general economic and even civilizational, collapse. If that happened it may indeed be the best thing for the environment, for other species and ultimately for humanity itself, but we don't want to bring that about do we? Wouldn't we prefer to opt for trying to find an easier, more generally beneficial transition to reduced populations and sustainable living, no matter how unlikely such an outcome might seem?
At this point you’re just lying. Either that or you haven't been paying attention.
Vaccinated people can transmit the virus, when they're infected. Those are called breakthrough cases. Whether those who are vaccinated and get infected spread the virus as readily as those who are infected and unvaccinated is undetermined at this time. But that entirely misses the issue, because breakthrough cases are rare compared to cases in the unvaccinated -- which is why we see the unvaccinated account for the vast majority of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Also, the "main reason is to potentially save your life" depends on your motivations. If you're relatively young and healthy, or otherwise don't care about getting the flu or COVID because you think you can handle it, and you refuse the flu shot or the COVID shot, you're simply overlooking the fact that it's not necessarily all about you. This apparently has to be repeated over and over again.
Here we are in a pandemic, and we all want to get back to normal. I also assume we don't want to harm other people if we don't have to. We have a vaccine that is very safe, very effective, and helps slow or stop the spread of the virus.
And yet we're here, on a philosophy forum (where you'd think has a higher level of critical thinking skills and respect for science), still debating with people (mostly trolls) about whether we should get vaccinated or not.
It's like playing whack-a-mole. One absurd claim made and debunked, another two pop up.
It loops us back to the OP question:
Quoting Xtrix
It comes down to whether or not anyone who's "on the fence" is even listening. I guess we have to assume they are -- otherwise this is an exercise in futility. Although I have learned a bit about communication, psychology, and delusion.
Young people without comorbitities do die or end up with permanent loss of function. They have been all along.
My concern was about messaging: if you're vaccinated you can't transmit. That's not true.
Quoting Janus
I think it would take more than pandemics and lockdowns, but yes there's a great deal of hardship that accompanies lockdowns.
I'm mostly ignoring you at this point, just FYI.
So your "main concern" was, as usual, a complete fabrication, since no one here has once said that. Or perhaps you struggle with reading comprehension -- which is fine, but at least give us a heads up about that.
How bizarre it is to have to create straw man after straw man, an imaginary enemy, just to feel good about yourself when you tear it down. Maybe sad is a better word.
Emphasis mine, to help your reading comprehension.
It's a complex matter involving the degree to which the vaccines effect viral populations in the nasal mucosa, the extent to which such effects wear off, how this rate differentially affects the mucosal population relative to the vascular population, the extent to which symptoms exacerbate viral shedding, the extent to which behavioural changes affect opportunities for transmission, the effect of missing the very severe cohort (usually hospitalised and so removed from real-world transmissability studies)...
Basically, not anywhere near your naive attempt at a condescension.
Quoting Xtrix
Here's an article by a practising physician...
I wonder if that means pro-vaxxers will stop saying the vaccines are safe and effective...oh no wait, it won't...because it's just the opinion of one fucking physician and no one in their right mind would change their entire belief system on that basis...
Quoting Xtrix
@frank is right. If you continue to spread this idea that vaccines generally make you unable to spread the virus (apart from a few 'rare' breakthrough cases) you'll worsen the problem. Recorded breakthrough cases are rare but that is a function of the recording system (people need to actually bother getting tested which is unlikely in asymptomatic cases) We have no idea what the viral load is in people who have been vaccinated longer than four month, but we do know that it will be significantly higher than that of a person vaccinated yesterday (in the case of exposure to the virus). We also have no idea of the effect of either on the viral population in the nasal mucosa which is the main site for transmission. It is dangerous to spread the myth that vaccines reduce transmission in all but a few 'rare' cases.
Predictably, you’ll find a way to ignore all this. I post it for others’ benefit, however, not yours.
COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases: Data from the States (Jul 30, 2021)
Monitoring Incidence of COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths, by Vaccination Status — 13 U.S. Jurisdictions, April 4–July 17, 2021 (Sep 17, 2021)
Vaccinated make up minority of severe COVID-19 hospitalizations in Minnesota (Sep 22, 2021)
Mapping America’s hospitalization and vaccination divide (Sep 23, 2021)
Hospitalizations [Ontario] (Sep 24, 2021 - as of typing)
By now, denial seems a bit lame.
Denial of what?
Yes it does
No, but it makes a massive difference to understanding the variance in support for different solutions.
Mistrust of the pharmaceutical industry and government scientists is among the top reasons for vaccine hesitancy. Denying that such mistrust is justified is therefore among the top activities of the pro-vaccine lobby.
The matter of the degree to which government sponsored schemes were responsible for the origin of the virus, and more importantly, the extent to which they tried later to smother any such suggestion, even banning the very discussion of it, is absolutely critical to the choice of management strategy.
Surely you can see that a theory banned from discussion on various social media, which later is accepted as equally likely with no change in evidence (just a change in attitude), makes all appeals to "the scientists all say..." toothless. And it's not about the 'science constantly updates as new data comes in' tagline - no new data came in.
A dozen scientists were flat out paid off or otherwise persuaded to put their names to a letter which relegated a perfectly valid theory to the status of a banned conspiracy, written by the person who would be directly responsible if the theory were true.
So when someone like Dr Robert 'this-is-all-a-bioterrorism-plot' McCullough state their 'theory', a few dozen doctors come along to say it's nothing but wild conspiracy and all discussion of it is banned on Facebook - what do you expect people to think? Do you still think they'll see such treatment as good mark of a theory that's got no merits?
We can't keep sweeping the medical establishment's biases and the government's involvement in them, under the rug as if it were a non-issue. It's the issue. This is all about the extent to which we can trust governments and medical institutions to provide advice which is in the public interest over and above advice which is in the corporate interests. The treatment of the lab escape theory doesn't speak too well of the former side, sweeping it aside each time it's raised does even less.
Yep. I was reading that a case of shingles may be a sign of latent covid19 infection. Herpes viruses and SARS-CoV-2 circumvent the immune system at the same place, so there's some kind of link.
There may be other situations like that which we haven't detected yet.
:lol:
Finally found something to latch on to— the standard note about limitations, of which you’ll find in nearly every study. I guess that disproves the results! Well done.
Talk about desperation.
Quoting Isaac
I didn’t cite just one physician, I cited two large studies which demolished your ignorant claims about infections and transmission.
Keep trying.
Quoting Isaac
Yeah, and..?
Reading comprehension problem again, I see. So I’ll help: “compared to cases in the unvaccinated.” Which is obviously true. But even if that weren’t the comparison, they’re still rare:
— CDC
I wasn’t expecting such a weak response from you…but not surprised.
Quoting Isaac
Given that this is confirmed by the evidence, I will continue to make that claim until shown otherwise. In breakthrough cases, where the individual is actually infected, they can transmit the virus— yes, that’s true. I never claimed otherwise. To claim vaccinated people spread the virus as much as unvaccinated people—no, that’s not true. With has now been demonstrated, and which you prediction ignore by pointing to the “limitations” section of the study.
Quoting Isaac
And yet these studies say exactly that. Odd.
It’s almost as if you don’t want it to be the case…
:chin:
Yes, that's right. The indicators of the exact humility, concern for accuracy and acceptance of complexity which you consistently lack in your sophomoric understanding of the science.
Quoting Xtrix
The other studies aren't about transmission, they're about infection. Infection and transmission are not the same thing. The virus is transmitted mainly by the nasal mucosa, the vaccine reduces infection, which is measured by viral load in the blood. Two different places. That reducing the load in one place will also reduce it in another is a theoretical assumption. One which the studies you cite do not provide any new data on.
from the NEJM September 2021
How do you square...
Quoting Xtrix
...with
I know your grasp of statistics is shockingly poor, but if we don't know the population size we can know the frequency of the observations. Primary school level - we divide the number of observations by the size of the population. The second part of that equation is missing.
Quoting Xtrix
So the WHO are wrong then when they say
Quoting https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/covid-19-vaccines/advice
...those damn overwhelming consensus of scientists, eh?
The studies don't address transmission, as I mentioned above. They don't address viral loads in the nasal mucosa, they don't address viral load in asymptomatic cases, they don't address behavioural changes in vaccinated people, they don't address different responses in the full range of cohorts. That is the reason the WHO still appeals to people to continue with their hygiene measures, despite vaccination. But that doesn't work quite so well as an advertisement for the vaccine, so of no interest to you.
Says the guy who was completely ignorant of these studies, and then refuses to accept their results because he doesn’t like them—pointing to “complexities,” which can be said of literally everything. That’s impressive.
Quoting Isaac
For anyone following, notice the pattern. When all else fails, simply create a straw man.
I never claimed they were the same.
You cannot transmit a virus you don’t have. If the vaccines lower infections, as was shown, then the virus cannot be transmitted. If the vaccinated were still infected, but symptoms were far less severe, then that’s a separate issue — which has its own studies (in breakthrough cases).
None of this is actually hard to understand. You simply don’t want to understand it, and so have to invent positions to fight against.
Desperate.
Quoting Isaac
At least provide a link.
Quoting Isaac
How do I square it? Don’t you mean how does the CDC square it? From the exact same citation:
They then go on to give some data, which you ignore. But ask yourself how they square these two claims that you’re struggling with. Are they bad at statistics? Or are you simply a deluded anti-vaxxer with reading comprehension problems? What’s more likely…?
I’ll explain it to you if you want. But consider it for a second. I’ll repeat what I already quoted, so you can try again:
0.5% is rare, I’d say. True, we don’t have an EXACT count. You seem to take this to mean that they CDC is therefore unjustified in claiming breakthrough cases are “very rare,” but you simply don’t understand statistics— despite your pathetic attempts to portray this as your speciality.
Quoting Isaac
I’ll help: the population was 4.1 million. Breakthrough cases: 21,757. That’s one example from one state, yes— there are others. But that goes to show how this is measured.
You’re just confused, I’m afraid.
Quoting Isaac
That’s also an old link, last updated in July.
But regardless, they’re talking about all vaccines— the studies I cited only mentioned Pfizer and Moderna. The “extent to which” is worth remembering as well — that’s true, but that’s not questioning their effectiveness of doing so. It just means an individual shouldn’t feel invincible. I think it’s perfectly fine for the WHO to be cautious. No one, including me, would encourage people do be reckless simply because they’re vaccinated — breakthrough cases happen, one can be asymptomatic yet infected, etc.
The claim was that vaccinated people are just as likely to transmit the virus as the unvaccinated. This is simply untrue, and remains untrue — no matter how badly you want to believe otherwise.
You cannot transmit the virus if you don’t have the virus. Vaccinated people do not have the virus as much as unvaccinated people, as is abundantly clear. That alone shows your claim is completely bogus. Now substitute “have” with “infected,” and the same thing applies to transmissibility: you cannot transmit something you don’t have. That fact that you struggle with this connection would be baffling, until one understands you simply don’t want to understand it.
The vaccines reduce the virus in the blood, the virus that you transmit is in the nasal mucosa.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33320052/
That the two are linked is a theoretical assumption that you've done nothing to even address, let alone confirm.
You sure they're converging on a genetic fallacy? You think they'd be happier with witchdoctors brewing things out in the woods?
I think they'd be happier with a system guided more around the public good and less around private profiteering.
Are you really so bromidic that you can't think of any other option than the system we have or witch doctors?
That is not true. If it were, then people would not take pharmaceuticals. But, as a gargantuan industry, that is clearly not the case. People love pharmaceuticals.
The top reason for vaccine hesitancy is politics.
Quoting Isaac
No. The top activity of the pro-vaccine lobby is politely asking people to vax.
Ah, the binomial thinking is contagious. Why, in your bizarre hypothetical, are people robbed of their ability to use more than one factor in their judgements?
In France for example...
For those following along: notice the strategy. Now it's a shift to differentiating internal and mucosal immunity. Those without a leg to stand on often engage in diversion like this, but let's remember the original claim: vaccinated people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people. It's worth repeating that no matter how you slice it, this is incorrect.
We can now move on to the vaccines' effectiveness on mucosal immunity, if we want to. But the data so far suggest a much, much better efficacy rate for nasal infection as well, compared to the unvaccinated, even though with the Delta variant and the waning of immunity these numbers have dropped from in the 90% range to the 40%-80% range. This is still superior to being unvaccinated, which is why every major medical organization in the world is encouraging vaccinations.
So this diversion still doesn't support the original claim.
Mayo Clinic
They do urge, however, "further evaluation of mechanisms underlying differences in their effectiveness such as dosing regimens and vaccine composition are warranted." Which is understandable.
So in summary of this odd interchange, we're left where we were, despite lies, ignorance, denial, and misreading, distraction, and delusion: the vaccines are safe, effective, and slow the spread of the virus by lowering both infection (internal and mucosal) -- whether one contracts the virus at all -- and severity of symptoms in breakthrough cases (hence far less hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated who contract the virus).
Lastly, breakthrough cases remain rare indeed, as per the CDC -- and for those without reading comprehension issues.
I never made that claim.
Quoting Xtrix
Your data?
Quoting Xtrix
Why would it. I didn't make the 'original claim'.
Quoting Xtrix
Is all the opinion of some scientists based on a handful of low powered studies suffering from the same limitations as most biosciences (which is why they can barely even manage a 50% replicability rate).
I've never claimed anything of the sort you've bizarrely attributed to me. My 'claim' is limited to showing that matters you present as certain, settled facts believed by virtually all experts are nothing of the sort. The kind of detail that matters is a wide open field with most studies still running, virtually none have been replicated, most have contrary studies opposing.
Institutions, consequently urge caution and seek confirmatiin an further data. It's only ideology flag-waivers who pretend this is all very simple and any difference of opinion is only political.
They're not. Twas you that painted pharma with a single brush.
One factor. Distrust of pharmaceutical companies.
Another factor. Having diabetes and no other choice than to take the product of a pharmaceutical company.
Any understanding of how this works breaking through yet?
Yes, some people might distrust some pharmaceutical companies and not others. I'm not one of those people. I distrust all pharmaceutical companies, but I have other factors which weigh in when deciding whether to use one of their products.
Gods, I can't believe I'm having to actually write this out to explain...
:D I was inquiring about the genetic fallacy.
Quoting Isaac
You do eh? That's a rather unspecific/abstract, possibly overlapping, response. (Personally, I have no problem with paying taxes, if that's of any relevance.) Yet, I'm not convinced of your take. If I was to guess, it might more so be your own preference. Some incorrigibility among anti-vaxxers has been seen. Whether or not a vaccine is produced in this or that factory may not make much difference to those people. It's possible that closer involvement might make a difference, and that'd be moving into socializing type efforts.
And there it is. "Some scientists" and a "handful of studies." Annals of Internal Medicine, Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, the AMA, the Lancet, the CDC, the WHO -- all just opinions. We should go with an anti-vax internet troll with reading comprehension problems instead.
:lol:
Quoting Isaac
Which is what flat-earthers, climate deniers, Creationists, and holocaust deniers all say as well.
I never said it was all "certain, settled fact." This is a fluid situation, and things may change.
But what we know, to the best our our knowledge, right now, is that vaccines are safe (that is indeed supported by overwhelming evidence), effective (likewise), and help stop the spread (likewise). You have shown no evidence to the contrary.
You deny the evidence of this, and distrust the sources given (yet are happy to cite them when you think it helps what you want to believe). Yes, we all knew that already. I mentioned at the beginning that there would be no amount of evidence that will convince you. You will go on believing what you believe years from now, after hundreds of studies have been done -- let's at least be honest about that.
Oh? What are the contrary studies opposing the several ones I've mentioned? Please enlighten us to such studies that contradict them. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
Ha! That's brilliant. You're citing a study showing how radicals refuse to believe in the possibility of error as evidence that we should accept what our governments tell us without question.
Yes. Many people who hold strong views do so because they have trouble seeing alternative possible worlds in which they might be wrong.
So, here I am arguing that alternative viewpoints to the government narrative are often perfectly valid, even if they're unpopular, so long as they meet the threshold of expert approval and peer review. I'm met with a wall of infantile simplicity, fixated on the utter truth of a single narrative.
Who exactly do you think is suffering from the metacognative failure?
Time to take some time out again.
How nice it must be to feel as though you're a crusader for the truth. Very self-serving. The reality is that these "alternative viewpoints" are actually quite popular indeed. They're held by a significant portion of the population of otherwise ignorant people who have, for political reasons, decided to cast impregnable skepticism on this one topic.
Yes, it's distrust of government -- especially when a Democrat is in office -- and riding a wave of anti-intellectualism and general distrust of science (especially when it conflicts with our religious beliefs).
You're just one common example of it. I've now had the misfortune of interacting with many of you. A dime a dozen.
Anyway -- the "as long as they meet the threshold of expert approval and peer review" part is interesting, because that's exactly where you've been shown to misread almost everything you cite. You cite the CDC and the WHO, then claim they don't know what they're talking about -- that they contract themselves, etc. You cite outdated studies, and then claim newer studies are flawed.
I wonder: is your position evidence-driven, or did it exist prior to any evidence (and is, in fact, immune to evidence -- completely unfalsifiable)?
(I don't really wonder.)
Breakthrough cases shown to be very common.
As many (or close to) hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated as unvaccinated.
Studies (any studies) that conclude that the vaccines are ineffective.
Studies (any studies) that conclude vaccines are not safe.
Studies that show vaccinated people can transmit the virus as much as the unvaccinated.
I won't hold my breath, but they COULD be out there. They happen to NOT be. Yet vague, unsupported claims keep being made.
Anecdotes about sterilization, heart attacks, magnetization, chip implantation and death after taking a vaccine abound to this day. Claims about how there's no point in getting vaccinated if you have to wear a mask anyway, or that you spread the virus just as readily as someone without a vaccine -- all continue unabated, supported by nothing.
Of the little that's given in support, it's obvious to anyone without a reading comprehension disorder that the studies say the exact opposite of what's implied by these "skeptics." It's the exact same tactics used by Creationists. They too will cite Nature and Science articles, published studies, world renowned authorities and organizations, etc. (While simultaneously dismissing them all as corrupt establishment groupthink).
Quoting Isaac
So you don't agree with that statement? Wonderful.
Nah, wasn't citing. In all honesty, I was copy/pasting. (My mistake, gave you something to latch onto, sorry.)
Some incorrigibility among anti-vaxxers has been seen. In some cases, even in their death beds at the hospital. Fortunately, some have also regretted their (deadly) ways, though their pleas seem to have swayed few. The anti-vaxxer machine and the sheeplets referring to it, keeps rolling.
Quoting Isaac
:grin: Hilarious. The righteous martyr eh? It's not quite a narrative as such. The evidence is the authority on the ground, tells the story. Maybe you're up for doing a comprehensive meta-study? Effectiveness, risks, that stuff? We could make bets on the outcome. Where would you place yours?
Quoting jorndoe
Once the leading advocates of vaccination are discredited, then we might develop a real, longlasting approach to this US/China manufactured virus. What is needed is 1) Reduce obesity 2) Have better living conditions for the elderly (the nursing homes are death camps), 3) provide nutritious food, encourage exercise sunlight exposure, reduce stress to promote healthier immune systems, 4) Stop the over prescription of all of these chemical drugs that are destroying the immune system. 5) Focus on early treatment (I use natural modalities).
Vaccinations are just another unnatural manipulation of the natural immune system, with totally unknown effects. It has never been studied. Shrug. Humans tend towards the hysterical and craziness. And the more hysterical you are, the more likely that you will get in power. Sweden is the lone exception.
I had Covid, I have a very strong immune system, and it was uncomfortable. Ditto for my wife. There is a sane, non-hysterical, low stress way to lead a life. But, if someone wants a neverending series of vaccinations and boosters, then by all means. It will be interesting to see the results. This pandemic will die out as more of the population develops natural immunity. As for all those who are full of vaccinations .. I don't know what the fallout will be.
That's because you can't keep your foolish eyes on the ball. You said:
Quoting Isaac
I simply corrected your error in reasoning by showing you the real reason for vaccine hesitancy. See how that works? No? I didn't think so. You should leave the thinking for your intellectual superiors, like me and other vaxers.
Yes, those 182 million Americans (out of 6 billion shots administered worldwide) are in for a real hell! What could happen! Could be anything! In a few months…a year maybe…maybe a few years, just wait…could take a decade or two…ugh, I died from pneumonia: thanks, Covid vaccines!
It has been studied. They’re not experimental.
Same with the polio vaccine. Totally unknown effects. Just wait. They’re a disaster waiting to happen.
9 months, 6 billion doses, over a billion people vaccinated— study after study showing safety and effectiveness. That’s quite a conspiracy. But you “NEVER KNOW.”
We don’t know the effects of your “natural modalities”…better watch out! Few months from now you could be in REAL trouble! I mean years…decades maybe. Just you wait. Prove that I’m wrong!
:rofl:
It is easy to feel smart next to these guys, isn’t it? But then I feel like the bully picking on the weakest kids. Remorse sets in. I really don’t hold them in contempt— I just think they’re delusionally wrong.
:100:
I've always felt that wise cannot complain about stupid. So I am admittedly very unwise, even demonstrating my stupidity by engagement with those who have mastered the art.
Right, and long term effects were never studied.
BTW, polio was already in a steep decline before the first vaccination was administered. Natural immunity.
Given that it’s been 70 years or so, we do know the long term effects: eradication of polio.
Oh to go back to the good ol’ days of natural immunity and no artificial nonsense like vaccines— or antibiotics, or sterilization of equipment, or…
Oh to be able to die from smallpox once again!
How?
How do we know polio is eradicated…hmm. You got me. It’s a hoax!!
Yep. Good thing we didn't have the top reason for vaccine hesitancy back then (politics).
Politics and Pinterest.
All I see is there same diseases with different names and lots of new diseases that didn't even exist when I was young. Medical bills have skyrocketed. Seems to me a sicker life.