It was given to me. Is it someone else’s property? — NOS4A2

So your grounds for ownership is that it was given to you? Is everything given to you automatically yours? I'd hate to lend you a lawnmower.

Why would I not use something that I’ve already helped to fund? — NOS4A2

Moral integrity?

A wage is payed to me for my labor. Do you think it should be payed to someone else? — NOS4A2

That's not what I asked. On what grounds is it your property?

I am well aware that roads aren’t free, and I use them because I pay taxes. What I don’t agree to is the coercive and involuntary arrangement. — NOS4A2

Then don't use the roads. You've no argument so long as you're using them.

I don’t remember the argument but sure I’ll try to defend it. — NOS4A2

Great, then we'll start again. On what grounds is the pre-tax wage your property?

I use roads all the time. — NOS4A2

Then you've seriously misunderstood the arrangement. Do you get chucked off a lot of fairground rides too? The roads aren't free, they're there for you to use on the assumption that you (or others in your community on your behalf) pay for them. If you don't agree to this, don't use them.

Consider a madman with a gun shooting up a neighborhood. What are your individual chances of being harmed? — tim wood

Depends entirely on where you're standing, what protection you're wearing, how good you are at seeking cover, your chances of disarming said gunman... On average, poor. A fully armoured and trained Special Forces operative, pretty good. That's the whole point of differentiating between prevalence and risk.

And of what value that? If both good, then both. — tim wood

As public policy, yes. As a moral requirement, why? If one is sufficient then one has absolved one's moral responsibility to others by adopting it.

Is it an exercise of freedom to increase rather then decrease the chances of that? Or is that again just stupidity? — tim wood

Again, you've cited no evidence at all that avoiding vaccination in all cases will either make me sick or make others around me sick. It is only true on average as a matter of public policy.

I shall take a lesson from published reports of people, sick with Covid or recovered from it, who wish to God they had gotten vaccinated. — tim wood

Why on earth would you do that? I mean, disregarding your inability to tell the difference between prevalence and risk, this doesn't even make sense from either. You have around a 1:100 chance of getting to that point even if you catch covid, and that's assuming you're of exactly average health.

Do you run? Do you smoke, drink, eat red meat? Do you work a stressful job? Spend a lot of time sitting down? Do you eat plentiful fruit and vegetables? Do you live in a city? - What do you think people who are suffering from preventable cancers and heart disease 'wish to God' they'd done about these entirely demonstrable factors? Do you "take a lesson from published reports" on these conditions too?

Now just wtf is your point? — tim wood

That prevalence is relevant for public policy, but it is risk that's relevant for carrying out one's own moral duty.

By taxing my income, my property, they confiscate the fruits of my labor. — NOS4A2

It doesn't get more true just by ignoring the arguments to the contrary. You abandoned the last thread in which you made this ridiculous claim because you couldn't answer the criticism raised against it, and yet here you bring it up again like a polished turd. Do you plan to actually defend it this time?

I did not request those services. So why should I have to pay for them? — NOS4A2

Wow. So you've never used a road? Do tell us how.

Review our posting history on this topic (a topic of science primarily). Who do you think would exceed whom in a count of the number of scientific papers cited and experts quoted per post? If you deal in facts (but I only beliefs) then you should have no trouble in citing them.

We'll start with your evidence that in every single case "any danger the vaccine itself presents... is less than miniscule against the real hazard of Covid and its ability to mutate and spread". Not just on average - that would be the prevalence rate sensibly used to determine public policy - but in every single case - which is what's required for your sycophantic moralising about each and every person who does not want to take the vaccine.

Then we'll have your evidence of the relative transmission rates of viral loads from the vaccinated vs. the healthy asymptomatic carrier across all variants.

Then we'll have your evidence for vaccination exceeding non-pharmaceutical interventions in reducing transmission.

I presume, from your dogmatic level of certainty, that you simply have this data to hand, yes?

How did that work out for them in the end? — Kenosha Kid

Good point. Although, on topic, maybe them doing their thing and then shuffling off was their last act of greatness!

The options aren't my spawn or no one though: if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that by the time there's a shortage of humans, it'll be too late anyway. — Kenosha Kid

I was doing you the credit of assuming yours would be better than average, I should take the compliment...

I am a stepfather to two kids. It pains my parents because I'm an only child myself, but I don't feel like having selfish genes is a good reason to reproduce. If I had none, I would have liked to adopt. — Kenosha Kid

Cool. That's the bonus score option in terms of ethical bingo I suppose. Step-parent or adopt two kids and then bring them up to be Gandhi and MLK.

My feeling is just that there's going to be a human race into the future (we're never going to get everyone to stop breeding) and life for those people is going to be really miserable if we don't do something to fix the mess we've made. Unfortunately that project {fixing the mess we've made} is going to take more than one generation to complete. So if we (the hip and cool ones) don't have kids, it's not going to get done. The only choices I see are no-one has kids (no future generation, no misery), or we continue to have kids (at a reasonable rate), in order to ensure there's enough of a future generation to carry on fixing things up.

Maybe there's a good argument for not having kids if you're not that bothered (we don't need a massive population to do the repair work), or if you're a dick (always applies). But if you're even a little above average in niceness then your kids (adopted, step, or otherwise) are going to be just the sort of people the next generation need to help reduce the harm already done by the previous one.

You are suggesting that you are immune from the tribal mentality of the groups you describe and that you have figured out why I'm believing as I am. — Hanover

I don't see anywhere me claiming to be immune or objective. As for figuring out why you believe what you do, it wasn't my intention. The part of my post you're quoting here simply claims that you followed expert advice in one case where it tallied with a popular social identity and yet reject it in another where it does not. I haven't really gone as far as to assess why.

It might interest you to know that if a meeting is divided into an area with maskers and non-maskers, I'd most certainly be in the non-mask section. I also voted 100% Republican last election, except for the presidential race, which I abstained from. This is just to say that your psychoanalysis is incorrect, your grouping theory is incorrect — Hanover

Social groups overlap political ones.

I've also not suggested telling people they're idiots will help the situation, but I also don't think it will hurt. — Hanover

It will.

When did vaccinations participation become a "lifestyle choice"? I take lifestyle choices to be things like what we eat, our forms of recreation, and things that meaningfully affect our day to day lives. If you want to ride a motorcycle without a helmet to feel the wind through your hair and you ride to live and live to ride, that could be characterized as a lifestyle choice, even if it's extremely risky. Whether to spend 5 minutes getting a vaccine isn't a lifestyle choice. I'd call that "getting a vaccination." — Hanover

Why? It takes five minutes to get a tattoo, but doing so is a lifestyle choice, so it's not the time. Why wouldn't getting a vaccine be a lifestyle choice? Not doing so certainly seems to be something people use to define themselves certainly no less than helmetless-biker, or solo-climber. You have faith in the medical establishment, you don't see it as a threat, so to you it's nothing. To others it defines them. That's the whole point. Your 'lifestyle choice' is that it's a nothing event.

my question back to you is why do you single out the Covid vaccination as the single vaccine we can avoid and proclaim it's off limits, but as to measles and whooping cough you allow that we can impose these on our children? Why can't I proclaim those vaccines as "lifestyle choices" so that I can take those too outside the purview of societal control? — Hanover

You can. As I said in my response to @Benkei above, the great thing about vaccinations as a public health response is exactly that we don't need everyone to take them for it to work. With measles is high (95%), with polio only 80%, with Covid it might be two thirds of the population to get the R0 to less than 1. Making a lifestyle choice to not have a vaccine is fine. If the number of people making that choice ever breaches the thresholds, then there would need to be a public policy change, but until then a few people not taking it is fine. Beyond that, not all vaccines are the same. The flu vaccine, for example, is still not widely regarded as necessary and there's arguments about what groups should and should not have it. The MMR vaccine, by contrast is almost universally agreed on. The covid vaccine is not even out of its testing period yet, so the approval of it's use for all cohorts is moot. (note, this is not the same as the decision that it's the best strategy to deal with the crisis, which is a different decision, on which there is widespread agreement).

If only the helmetless rider were insulated such that the consequences of his riding were his alone. Then he could cogently argue his "freedom." As to dangers, whatever danger the vaccine presents - and I am unaware of any danger the vaccine itself presents - it is less than miniscule against the real hazard of Covid and its ability to mutate and spread. — tim wood

It's like talking to a brick wall here. Do you understand the very simple concept of other people not believing the things you believe. Is that just too complicated for you? Other people do not believe the danger of the vaccine is less than miniscule against the real hazard of Covid. Why would you expect them to make decisions based on what you believe and not on what they believe?

Furthermore, you're simply conflating prevalence with risk (something of a bugbear of mine). The prevalence of side-effects of the vaccine is lower (by miles) than the prevalence of harms from covid. This only informs the risk, it does not constitute the risk as anyone with above a secondary school education should know.

The effect on other people. — tim wood

We've just got though discussing the effect on other people. If you have some data to share on the ability of the vaccine to reduce transmission rates to lower than those of healthy, asymptomatic carriers, then I'd be very interested to read it because I've not seen anything to date. Absent of this data, I don't see any justification for suggesting taking the vaccine is a public benefit if you're fit and healthy and live in a relatively isolated area. As things stand, there's a very low chance you'll get a develop a more severe viral load than a vaccinated person, especially in the nasal mucosa which are hardly affected by the vaccine and yet are a primary site for transmission. Social distancing, mask wearing and hand washing are, however, effective barriers to transmission. From Dr Paul Offit (one of Americas' most strident pro-vaccine advocates, by the way)...

if I wear a mask and stand 6 feet away from you, and you wear a mask and stand 6 feet away from me, the chances that I'm going to get the virus from you or you from me is about zero. You have two things going for you. One, you have a mask, which is going to prohibit the virus' small droplets from travelling very far. And two, even if I didn't wear a mask and stand 6 feet away, the odds are also that you wouldn't get it.

Now tell me how the vaccine is a public duty for someone committed to a strategy that one of the country's leading immunologists suggests provides a virtually zero chance of transmission, whilst to date there's no evidence at all that the vaccine even reduces transmission lower than a healthy immune response would.

The implication being that, if someone is imposing on another, it can still be wrong despite the person being exploited perhaps not minding. I wanted to use a different example than the usual one I use about slavery, but it is similar. A slave who may not know they are being imposed upon unjustly, may not seem to care. This doesn't mean the slaveowner is thus absolved of doing the imposing or should keep persisting. This goes back to what khaled (you) said earlier about the absolute subjective nature of ethics, as I interpreted him/you:

I don’t think “how bad they have it objectively” makes sense. How bad one has it is always a subjective assessment. — schopenhauer1

Yes. I agree that how bad one has it is not always a subjective judgement. In terms of 'judgement' other people judge on our behalf too. My point is that they can judge happiness as well as suffering. If you can judge the slave to be suffering despite them appearing happy, I can judge that you, for example, would be happy if you just...{whatever therapy one might advise}. You'd want to say to that "no, you don't know me, what right have you got to say that", but the grounds are the same - external judgement by a third party based on what we know about people on average. So just as you can claim more people are unhappy than say so, I can claim more people are happy then know it.

Subjective at what point in time? Is a summative statement the one that should be used or the in-the-moment?

This leads then to the factors that seem to indicate we shouldn't quite take the summative statement (Scenario 1 and 2)... — schopenhauer1

But it doesn't 'lead to' those factors at all. They are just some factors we might consider, there's no grounds on which to choose the summary over the in-the-moment judgements or vice versa.

I think cultural groups are basically self-reinforcing with their social pressures. — schopenhauer1

As I said, I agree. But you've still not made your case for the extent of this phenomena, only for it's existence. It may be only a minor positive spin on some otherwise mixed events. It's mere existence doesn't mean most people would rather have never been born.

No, you can't say that is happier, because that is a post-hoc "answer". — schopenhauer1

All there is is the post hoc answer. That's what I'm telling you. There's no such thing as 'happiness' or 'sadness' that isn't a post hoc assessment - it's a psychological unicorn, doesn't exist.

You've had the errors pointed out to you in the last thread in which you made this same appeal, there's no point in doing it again.

I find it hard to rationalise how another consumer could help matters. — Kenosha Kid

What makes you think you'd bring up 'just another consumer'. Don't do yourself down. I'm sure you've the potential to bring up the next Ghandi, or MLK, wouldn't that be better than no one?

What say you? — Roger Gregoire

That this kind of bullshit is one of the reasons why serious debate is next to impossible. Laymen weighing in with a superficial understanding of the science and no references or citations to back up their outlandish claims. If you can't present either your own credentials or a scientific paper to back up your assertions then please just stand down. It really shouldn't need to be pointed out that the situation is extremely serious with millions dying, we don't need armchair speculation, we certainly don't need imbeciles imploring people to take action against all scientific advice.

If you don't want to wear a mask, don't wear a mask. You need more than your ad hoc opinion before imploring others to do likewise.

Yeah. Worse still, as Baral and dozens of others in public health have pointed out (to stony silence from the media), it draws attention away from the very thing we need the spotlight firmly pointing at - which responses worked and which didn't? What needs doing better next time? Those suggesting that the main improvement would be 'have a population who unquestioningly do as they're told' should stop and think about what they're suggesting for a minute.

It's not even necessary for everyone to be vaccinated, so blame-shaming those that aren't is even more ridiculous. As a public health intervention, one of the reasons why mass vaccinations are such an excellent policy is that they don't need 100% compliance to work - people can continue to be stupid, or rebellious, or individualistic, or untrusting... whatever, as people always will be. It doesn't matter, the policy will still work pretty well.

What doesn't work is shutting down emerging disease monitoring to save a bit of cash, or closing community health services just as they're needed most, or promoting lifestyles which make one more vulnerable to diseases like this, or providing little to no support for those needing to isolate...etc. I'm ranting, but it pisses me off that people have become so obsessed with the inevitable handful of resistance when there's good solid targets of blame available. We're at over 70% take up in England. That's really good for a first time vaccine, we couldn't realistically expect better than that.

How would you like to be born now — hypericin

Depends how shockingly, narcissisticly selfish you are.

Usual standards these days - probably not.

Anyone with even a shred of compassion for their fellow man - yes, even more so because there's a lot of work to do to make things better for those who'll follow us.

The lunatic anti-vax, anti-mask fringe have blood on their hands in this matter. — Wayfarer

I'll repeat the advice from the experts I posted in the main coronavirus thread.

Engaging in discussions about the validity of complementary or even contradictory inferences can support an effective response. However, it is not feasible to engage meaningfully within 280 characters or if value judgments are ascribed to only certain positions. Public health means that the consensus view may have blindspots, so we must encourage healthy debate and dialogue. Debate was stifled during covid-19 in the name of fear. We witnessed social media platforms censoring scientific views and positions, only later to rescind those bans (e.g. the lab leak hypothesis). But equally we have seen misinformation proliferate on social media platforms. How to manage, foster, and regulate social media businesses must be part of future disaster planning.

Public health means going on TV and saying that the Governor is failing, not that people are failing. Yet, over and over, we heard experts lament that it was private gatherings and bad people, and not bad systems and weak leadership that failed. The inattention to the structural and network risks including structural racism that increased risks for some and not others is antithetical to public health. Shame-based messaging has no role in a pandemic. — Monica Gandhi, Vinay Prasad, and Stefan Baral writing in the BMJ

The blood is on the hands of the people whose responsibility it was to pay for the monitoring which should have caught the emergence early, but didn't due to tax cuts. It's on the hands of the people who delayed in shutting borders and locking down hotspots. It's on the hands of the authorities whose mixed messages have sown this confusion in the first place. It's on the hands of organisations like Facebook, whose draconian banning of alternate opinion which later turned out to be perfectly valid has, without doubt, put faith in media messages back by a hundred years. It's on the hands of the virologists who signed Daszak's letter and allowed him to lead the enquiry into the lab leak despite the glaring conflict of interest, putting trust in 'the science' at it's lowest point in the pandemic, just when it needed a real boost.

At very bottom of the list of the bloody-handed, are the few people caught up in all this mess without enough knowledge and intelligence in these matters to find their way through it.

At what point should we wait till we decide that safety takes precedence over freedom of choice? — SteveMinjares

Who's 'we' in this?

They can know it but in a very simple way... It is not the same when you are more mature and can understand it more deeply. — javi2541997

Interesting. So what do you think is going on in the child's psyche? They see violence, understand it in their simple way, but when a teacher explains it to them, they understand it in a deeper way. If they were capable of understanding it in this deeper way (no insurmountable cognitive barrier), then why didn't they understand it in the deep way first? I'm trying to draw out exactly what it is the teacher knows that the child doesn't, but which can be taught, and how the teacher came to know it.

So what do you think is the solution to this and why I am seeing it bad? — javi2541997

I don't think it's radically complicated. Children are brought up to think so little of themselves that they'll unquestioningly follow the first role model who shows any sign of real power. The media know this and so products which appeal to that sell better than those which don't. The simplest (and least troublesome) representation of power is violent domination. So role models have this type of power and children emulate it. I mean, there's a lot more to it than that - whole books have been written on this stuff - but that's a potted summary.

The reason for the masks (and eventual possible shutdowns) is to protect the unvaccinated. https://www.yahoo.com/news/nih-director-acknowledges-mask-mandates-141636429.html

That is, the very people hell bent on keeping the economy going and whining about masking are the cause of the interruptions with the economy and the cause for increased masking.

This isn't a right versus left battle. It's an irresponsible/ignorant versus responsible/informed battle, with the former wanting to protect their right to be irrational. — Hanover

It's telling how readily 'expert' opinion is wielded and dropped depending on it's correlation with current social group ideology. Experts from public health tell you to mask and vaccinate - anyone who doesn't is an idiot. Experts from public health tell you that blaming the people themselves has no part in a public health response - fuck 'em, they don't know what they're talking about.

Even if it were true that masking protected the unvaccinated (which it isn't - masking protects the vaccinated too, some 15-35% of whom will not be adequately protected by the vaccine they took), are we to similarly resent protection for other lifestyle choices? Should we rail against treating the ailments of smokers, the overweight, those who don't exercise enough, those whole eat too much bacon...?

Are you a semi-vegetarian, never-smoker, low alcohol consuming, frequent runner in a stress-free job? Why is choosing not to have the available antibodies and so putting oneself at higher risk any different to choosing any of the above lifestyle choices, all of which have been demonstrably linked to diseases which put more ten times more pressure on health services than the pandemic has, hell, all of which have been implicated in the severity of Covid.

Only one lifestyle inflicted weakness is railed against - not having the antibodies to one variant of covid-19. One could be overweight, have type II diabetes, have cancer-risking polyps from poor diet, have lung fibrosis from smoking, have high cholesterol from poor diets and lack of exercise, have a weakened heart from a sedentary lifestyle, have lowered immune response from poor exercise and stress management... All are choices one made which left one more at risk of diseases which the public health services have to manage.

One particular lifestyle choice which has become the badge of choice for the 'right-minded' gang is the only one railed against. Can you explain why?

Yes, I guess it is positive to teach them what violence is without taboos. — javi2541997

I can't see how you think children don't know what violence is.

So if we take this from the roots we can avoid conflict situations in the future. — javi2541997

There's two aspects to this - there's the fact about what violence is and then there's not wanting to do it to someone - you seem to be promoting the rather heterodox theory that it's the former not the latter that's the problem.

It is not the right way when we see a kid suffering of domestic violence and then say the usual: "let's put him in a psychologist" — javi2541997

Why should children not get psychological help? It seems odd to suggest that teachers can intervene in a helpful way but psychologists can't. What is it about a teacher talking to children you think capable of bringing about psychological change that a psychologist talking to children can't do. Is there some magic teachers learn?

children tend to be innocent in these issues and complex aspects. Sometimes they are linving/making violence when they don't truly know what they are doing.
There are cases where children live domestic violence but they don't get the situation until they become older. — javi2541997

I don't really understand what you're suggesting. That we tell children that domestic violence exists? What do you think that will achieve? What does them 'getting' the situation entail?

We have to develop a better educational system and teach how bad the violence is. — javi2541997

Why would you assume children do not already know?

khaled and Isaac same person, slightly different writing style? haha — schopenhauer1

No Khaled is a lot more tolerant than I am.

Is the boss wrong in what he is doing? Is he being exploitative of someone's comparative willingness to work? Is this just? Is this too much of an imposition? I would say yes to all of this, EVEN THOUGH the willing-worker doesn't see it as a problem. — schopenhauer1

You haven't said on what grounds. The simple explanation seems to be contrary to your hyper-individualist stance. You say we can't judge happiness on behalf others (and take action assuming our answer), but here you're saying we can judge unhappiness on behalf of others and take action accordingly. Why can we assume we're better judges of suffering but not better judges of happiness?

The interviewer walks away and is satisfied that this is a perfectly accurate self-assessment.. but is it?

There are the immediate phenomenological aspects to life that is the "lived experience" and then there are abstractions of this lived experience, in some remove from daily goings-on. It could be demonstrably shown that humans overestimate their positive experiences when put in the non-usual mode of evaluating their WHOLE life with one sentence. — schopenhauer1

But why should the 'in-the-moment' assessments take precident, there's nothing which objectively makes these assessments more 'real'. They're subject no less to expectation biases, perhaps the thought out judgement at the end of the day is a better assessment for taking the whole day in context. All you have is two slightly contradictory assessments. You've no grounds to treat one as more 'real' than another.

So a person on the fence who is thoughtful might never give the true answer, because then they are the weird "Negative Nancy" or "Debbie Downer" (or put in X pejorative here). — schopenhauer1

This is true, I think. Positive outlooks are more socially acceptable than negative ones. I can see how this could impact overall judgements of a person's quality of life, but there's a long way from "people overstate their quality of life when asked" to "most people would rather not have been born". The social pressure wouldn't apply in therapy, for example, where it's a documented effect that people overstate their negative moods to better justify to themselves why they're seeking help.

People have cognitive biases to distort what their experiences are when recalling them. They become cherry-picked, confused, etc. So sure we can say that in their evaluation they sounded like they were content with the situation, but then not be living the situation they are describing (see Scenario 2). — schopenhauer1

Also true, but this one is subject to the problem above. Happiness is just a state of mind, it's not an objective property of causal events. If we're happier with out post hoc filtered recollection than we were with the original events, then we're happier. Full stop. There's no 'real' happiness, it's all constructed. There's literally no neurological equivalent of being 'happy', it's entirely something we construct from recollection, there is no other form.

One cannot sensibly talk about those things of which nothing can be said. — Banno

If the limits of our language are the limits of our world, then those things of which nothing can be said, must be within our world... what with us having just used language to refer to them.

If so, what then is the analogue of that in the realm of epistemic authority, standing next to religion the way capital stands next to the state?

The media, perhaps? Should they be a fourth option in the OP’s question? — Pfhorrest

Not everything has to be symmetrical enough for you to draw one of your diagrams of it. Some things actually come in threes.

Some Americans believe the vaccine has a nano tracking device in it. Like, they really believe that. — frank

You guys are so cute. We don't mention David Icke though, he's one of ours, sorry.

I think it's because a lot of vaccines do result in herd immunity that a lot of people assumed this would be the case as well. — Benkei

Yeah, I think you're right, it was more a media (or possibly even just social) narrative than anything specifc. The pharmaceuticals were clearly more circumspect about their claims than I recalled.

One thing I do remember from the time is epidemiologists actually asking the pharmaceuticals to test for reduced transmission whilst they were doing the Ps III, they wouldn't do it. Not a 'valuable endpoint' apparently (meaning there's no additional income they can make from knowing that, on top of knowing the vaccine is safe and effective).

Gotta love a public-private partnership, but at least that work was done eventually...

I see. It's a serious issue, but glad to hear you're on the right side of it.

Apparently you haven't met any of them. — frank

No, not really. It's something of an urban legend over here that such people exist in America... you guys do everything so much bigger over there, even your version of stupid is bigger than ours.

I'm not sure which problem you mean. — frank

The problem of people resisting vaccination, mask-wearing, hand-washing, social-distancing...

Firstly, it's not medical advice, it's public health advice, you of all people should know the difference.

Secondly - the public health advice from the experts -

Nothing about the epidemiology or appropriate responses to covid-19 has been simple. Consequently, perspectives have varied even among highly trained and experienced professionals systematically evaluating the same data. Engaging in discussions about the validity of complementary or even contradictory inferences can support an effective response. However, it is not feasible to engage meaningfully within 280 characters or if value judgments are ascribed to only certain positions. Public health means that the consensus view may have blindspots, so we must encourage healthy debate and dialogue. Debate was stifled during covid-19 in the name of fear. We witnessed social media platforms censoring scientific views and positions, only later to rescind those bans (e.g. the lab leak hypothesis). But equally we have seen misinformation proliferate on social media platforms. How to manage, foster, and regulate social media businesses must be part of future disaster planning...

...Public health means going on TV and saying that the Governor is failing, not that people are failing. Yet, over and over, we heard experts lament that it was private gatherings and bad people, and not bad systems and weak leadership that failed. The inattention to the structural and network risks including structural racism that increased risks for some and not others is antithetical to public health. Shame-based messaging has no role in a pandemic. — Stefan Baral, epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, writing in the BMJ

People have legitimate reasons to be wary of both government advice and public health advice. Both have been wrong in the past, both have been shown to be swayed by monied interests, both have shown a shocking lack of transparency and a roundly condemned failure to properly gather and respond to the emerging data, both have been mired in controversy and not a single panel, nor advisory body isn't replete with those either lobbied by or directly invested in the pharmaceutical industry.

People may well be wrong about resisting these policies, but it's absurdly naive to suggest it's similar to religious dogma.

It becomes almost a religious thing for some people to defy all the medical advice. — frank

Your comment shows exactly the attitude which makes the problem worse.

Thanks, those are form a bit later than the time period I was thinking about, but I can't find anything from back then, so I will take your word for it, my memory is not what it used to be.

Official statements by Pfizer and Moderna at the start of vaccination. — Benkei

You don't happen to have those to hand do you? I'll Google if not, so don't go to any effort. It just clashes with my memory of the way that issue was dealt with at the time, finding old news is never so easy as finding latest news on search engines, I never now how to get them to tell me what was said, not what is being said.

So you wouldn't consider, for example, masturbation a moral issue? — baker

As I said...

Many moral duties are about cultivating good moral sense to protect people from harm later on, they're not necessarily about harm at the time. — Isaac

... I don't doubt that if someone wanted to make a moral case against (or for) masturbation, they would have no trouble framing it in terms of future harms.

Outstanding dialogue, you guys. Well done. — Mww

Thanks... though 's latest effort doesn't quite match previous standards.

"[deleted]"... I don't get it... some sort of metaphor perhaps?... Like eliminativist views on the mind, his post is like, 'deleted' from discourse, man?... Woah...Too deep for my shallow positivist block of neuro-jelly to understand no doubt. I cede.

we're well aware of your ideological stance and the resulting confirmation bias. God forbid fact-based decision making. — Benkei

True, but...

When the vaccines were introduced, they made clear the efficacy against the spread of the disease was not certain. — Benkei

What sources are you using for your impression of institutions being clear that the efficacy of the vaccines at reducing transmission was uncertain? I remember a couple of articles in Stat and The BMJ making that point (both of which I believe I posted here at the time), but both articles were warning against what they saw as the strong trend toward panacea narratives. Were they just jumping at shadows, do you think?

It's OK though because Pfizer's CEO has already made his five and a half million off of the peak share price hit as a result of claiming the vaccine was 90% effective. There can't be that much wealth left in the hands of anyone but a few billionaires, so we're nearly done. No doubt as soon as that important job is finished the left wing will remove their gags to mediate the scrabble over the remaining scraps.

I'm not even sure what you disagree with, as it's almost a truism what I said. — ChatteringMonkey

Wow, that's an impressive speed of repair to the self-esteem. Two posts have taken you from "I'm no scholar" to "Everything I say is irrefutable"

I say if you don't work, you don't eat. — Book273

I agree. Seems a truism. One has to at least lift the fork.

Your bullshit is that you've got some ideological dogma that literally anything a capitalist-approved profit making enterprise does counts as 'work' and anything else doesn't count.

Whatever is true 'in the absence of a subject' is by definition unknown. In fact I'm going to call into question that there is a domain of facts that exist in the absence of any subject. — Wayfarer

I agree. I don't think a domain of facts absent a subject to have them makes any sense at all. I believe in an external source of facts, but that's just a belief which works for me, I think it's the default position, so I question the true commitment of people who claim they believe otherwise, but yeah, just an assumption. Facts are things subjects know.

what you're appealing to as 'objective in the absence of any subject' is just the common-sense view that the world is real independent of any act of observation. — Wayfarer

I'm not appealing to it. I'm denying it. My claim is that you are appealing to it by elevating the way things seem to you (I have a conscious experience... etc) to the status of a fact about reality. For example...

what is the nature of mathematical reasoning? What of the inner processes of judgement, that we use all the time to arrive at conclusions about the nature of things? I don't see that, and many other facets of reason, as being empirical in nature. — Wayfarer

You're taking your subjective experience of using numbers, seeing other people use numbers, thinking, judging etc. and assuming that the way it then seems to you tells you something about the nature of reality. That's doing exactly what you accuse scientism of doing, ignoring the fact that there's a subject experiencing these things and that the act of doing so interferes with that which is the source of such experiences.

There is an enormous volume of literature on just these kinds of questions. Many books have been written on it. — Wayfarer

And you think this is not true of realism, physicalism, materialism... That many books have been written on a subject has no bearing on its qualities.

Honestly, hand-on-heart, not trying to be confrontational or condescending, there really is something you're not seeing in this argument. What it takes is a kind of shift of perspective, something like a gestalt shift. — Wayfarer

Honestly. How would you defend yourself if I said the same to you?

Surely you don't expect us to all be scientific scholars on every subject and post on a science journal level or shut up. — ChatteringMonkey

Well I sort of do, yeah, insofar as one is interested enough to post about it on a public forum I think the least prerequisite effort should be to familiarise oneself with the basic facts about which one is theorising. There are a number of very approachable books on the subject - I recommended Clive Finlayson's work on early humans - which requires very little 'scholarly' prior knowledge. Jared Diamond's work is pretty famous now, also Alice Roberts (off of the telly!) has written a really nice summary called 'The Incredible Human Journey'. Failing that, there's Wikipedia, which should take no more than half an hour to read through the pertinent links.

Aah right, you are generally distrustful of people making an argument about human nature, promoting a defeatist attitude, put me in that box and thought I deserved a good beat-down. — ChatteringMonkey

That's about the size of it, yep.

If you want to draw conclusions about human nature and prehistory, I suggest doing some research on the matter might be a good start.

This...

as soon as the ice-age came to pass and conditions were such that we could have enough population and density, cultural evolution took off all across the world in multiply isolated locations, and the rest is history. — ChatteringMonkey

...for example, is hopelessly wrong.