The Contradictory Feelings Thread

[Linguoboy]

My friend Thomas is in Köln and he says he’s never seen the river so high. The pictures he shared are disturbing and they’re not half so bad as what’s coming out of Wallonia.

It was a dry June and I complained about having to water so much. Then we got a week of near constant rain which resulted in water in the lower level and some of the potted plants dying from root rot. I’m hoping for more of a balance going forward though the prediction is for another hot rainless week.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I've taken to putting out buckets to catch rain to water my plants (of which I have rather a lot); my hydrangeas, among others, don't like the bright sun, unfortunately (all of them are still in containers, since I don't own the land, and plan to take them with me when I move), so I keep having to rearrange my plants to keep them from all withering up.

"Climate change" is such a mild-sounding word. I tend to call it "climate extremefaction", though I'm not sure whether that second word previously existed or not.

[rotting bones]

So now I wonder whether I should keep hoping for rain.

You could always hope for perfection. As Aristotle puts it: All chains of means to ends must terminate in a final end. This final end will be the supreme good. (The obvious fallacy is, it doesn't follow that all chains terminate in the same end.)

To me, the antivaxxers here are a danger to society; while drug companies have done questionable stuff at times, we really need to crack down hard on the antivaxxers. They literally have people's blood on their hands, every last one of them.

I'm wishy-washy on this topic.

This may not be very far left of me, but I personally support the right of antivaxxers to do as they please. I know they threaten the common good, but as I see it, so does religion in general.

The way I see it, it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong. People will always disagree with you no matter what you're trying to do because of the structure of power relations. Game-theoretic analyses of society explain this in considerable detail.

This is why, in general, I think we should let people act on their convictions while trying to change those convictions. The question is when you think it's legitimate to enforce compliance. I would make exceptions to liberalism in the case of societal survival, like for essential goods or climate change. I don't think the danger antivaxxers pose is that great as yet.

While I am willing to potentially die for the liberty of antivaxxers to throw a hissy fit, I also understand why others might not be so accommodating.

[Travis B.]

The issue is this - antivaxxers not only refuse COVID-19 vaccination, but induce others to do as well. The consequences of failure to be vaccinated have consequences that go beyond the individual, so it is the right of society as a whole to expect individuals to be vaccinated. People who are not COVID-19-vaccinated put an incredible strain on society because they comprise over 99.5% of those who die from COVID-19, and I presume they comprise a similar percentage of those who are hospitalized in the first place. The number of people dying or getting severely ill itself has major societal consequences, starting from the individuals' own families and extending to the whole of society. Also, hospital beds and resources taken up by people who would not be using they had they gotten vaccinated for COVID-19 are taken away from other people who may need them, and people who need to use them may be dissuaded from using said resources for fear of getting infected, which itself may have serious consequences. Because of all this, I feel it is right for society to punish individuals for spreading anti-vaccine propaganda, because they are endangering society as a whole by doing so. And as much as I normally am not the biggest fan of suing people for libel, this seems like a type of case where it is completely appropriate.

[rotting bones]

Dissent is always costly. If you consider that religion is everywhere preventing socialist policies, its social cost is astronomical compared to the minor inconvenience caused by anivaxxers.

Would it be a cruel and unusual punishment to get antivaxxers to sign a release saying that if they get Covid-19, they will be quarantined without treatment?

[Travis B.]

Dissent is always costly. If you consider that religion is everywhere preventing socialist policies, its social cost is astronomical compared to the minor inconvenience caused by anivaxxers.

Would it be a cruel and unusual punishment to get antivaxxers to sign a release saying that if they get Covid-19, they will be quarantined without treatment?

Minor inconvenience? More people have died of COVID-19 here in the US than all American deaths in World War 1, World War 2, and Vietnam combined.

[rotting bones]

Minor inconvenience? More people have died of COVID-19 here in the US than all American deaths in World War 1, World War 2, and Vietnam combined.

As a first step, compare the following Google searches:

worldwide covid deaths

VS

worldwide malnutrition deaths

Of course, the latter are concentrated in Africa. Then there is lack of medicine, ethnic and religious violence, human rights violations in general, war like the one in Yemen, etc. 21st century clerics who don't understand how material systems function are responsible for selling much of this to the public. Eg. Watch the Bangladeshi film The Clay Bird. (Edit: This film is about events in the 20th century, but the same problems are much worse now.)

In defense of antivaxxers: 1. The antivaxxers who are not asymptomatic will probably shrink over time, whether because the topic is no longer a hot button issue or because Covid-19 weakened their nervous and reproductive systems and they died out. I doubt the same will happen for the other problems I mentioned. 2. I guess their illness is creating jobs in the Covid-19 treatment industry. This one's a stretch, sorry.

In defense of religion: Unlike the antivaxxers, the sins of religion is those of omission rather than commission. I don't think most clerics are being deliberately manipulative. Their seminaries simply never taught them how material systems function. On the other hand, if they knew this, would they support their respective establishments without being manipulative?

[Nortaneous]

Minor inconvenience? More people have died of COVID-19 here in the US than all American deaths in World War 1, World War 2, and Vietnam combined.

More people have died of complications from AIDS than died in those wars. Should we bring back laws against fornication and sodomy? If not, why not, and what's the difference?

In defense of antivaxxers: 1. The antivaxxers who are not asymptomatic will probably shrink over time, whether because the topic is no longer a hot button issue or because Covid-19 weakened their nervous and reproductive systems and they died out. I doubt the same will happen for the other problems I mentioned. 2. I guess their illness is creating jobs in the Covid-19 treatment industry. This one's a stretch, sorry.

A correct defense of antivaxxers is that the odds of the medical establishment making a thalidomide-tier oopsie without noticing are not epsilon, and it's a good idea to keep some crazies around in case the sane and normal thing turns out to be bad. This trivially generalizes.

[rotting bones]

A correct defense of antivaxxers is that the odds of the medical establishment making a thalidomide-tier oopsie without noticing are not epsilon, and it's a good idea to keep some crazies around in case the sane and normal thing turns out to be bad. This trivially generalizes.

"Bad" is relative. Seems to me like they were just desperate for wealth. I don't regard wealth as bad in itself, only a system that makes men desperate to find it. I say this as someone who has received multiple blood transfusions in the Third World. IIRC a lot of tainted blood was sent to the Third World, including IIRC blood containing HIV. A Google search suggests I'm on the right track: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24785997/

So yes, corporate medicine is bad, but it doesn't follow that antivaxxers are good. Antivaxxers could be good if the whole Covid thing is a hoax. To me, this seems about as probable as the whole "earth" thing being a hoax. Neither are impossible, so I guess this is one reason to tolerate antivaxxers, though perhaps not the best one.

[Travis B.]

Minor inconvenience? More people have died of COVID-19 here in the US than all American deaths in World War 1, World War 2, and Vietnam combined.

More people have died of complications from AIDS than died in those wars. Should we bring back laws against fornication and sodomy? If not, why not, and what's the difference?

No, we should not bring back laws against fornication and sodomy, because those kinds of things tend to make things like AIDS worse by making them become secret.

In defense of antivaxxers: 1. The antivaxxers who are not asymptomatic will probably shrink over time, whether because the topic is no longer a hot button issue or because Covid-19 weakened their nervous and reproductive systems and they died out. I doubt the same will happen for the other problems I mentioned. 2. I guess their illness is creating jobs in the Covid-19 treatment industry. This one's a stretch, sorry.

A correct defense of antivaxxers is that the odds of the medical establishment making a thalidomide-tier oopsie without noticing are not epsilon, and it's a good idea to keep some crazies around in case the sane and normal thing turns out to be bad. This trivially generalizes.

The thing is that we have a long track record of making vaccines, and they clearly have shown themselves to not be thalidomide-tier oopsies with very few exceptions (probably the only exceptions I can think of is the dengue vaccine that they had to retract because it turned out to act like the "first hit" from dengue that would cause dengue hemorrhagic fever on subsequent dengue infection, and that they have stopped giving people (except IIRC people in the military?) smallpox vaccinations because they on rare but non-negligible circumstances (i.e. more frequently than the side effects with the Johnson & Johnson or the AstraZeneca) have severe, potentially fatal side effects, not just to the person given it, but also to people around them).

[rotting bones]

"Bad" is relative. Seems to me like they were just desperate for wealth. I don't regard wealth as bad in itself, only a system that makes men desperate to find it.

In case it's not obvious why I'm not condemning corporate medicine as a nest of vipers, that's because all capitalist industries have done this sort of thing. Each and every last one of them, including luxury industries. For example, many European alcohol companies once mixed additives in their drinks that were known to be harmful and made many people sick. This was in Europe, not during the time of prohibition. How would you feel if a Muslim cleric cited that factoid to claim that Islam is right to ban alcohol? I kind of feel the same way about the argument that corporate medicine is "bad".

[rotting bones]

The thing is that we have a long track record of making vaccines, and they clearly have shown themselves to not be thalidomide-tier oopsies with very few exceptions (probably the only exceptions I can think of is the dengue vaccine that they had to retract because it turned out to act like the "first hit" from dengue that would cause dengue hemorrhagic fever on subsequent dengue infection, and that they have stopped giving people (except IIRC people in the military?) smallpox vaccinations because they on rare but non-negligible circumstances (i.e. more frequently than the side effects with the Johnson & Johnson or the AstraZeneca) have severe, potentially fatal side effects, not just to the person given it, but also to people around them).

No common, horrible side-effects are known yet for these vaccines, and they have been analyzed by researchers the world over. Even if they have some side-effects in the future, how could antivaxxers know what those are?

[Travis B.]

"Bad" is relative. Seems to me like they were just desperate for wealth. I don't regard wealth as bad in itself, only a system that makes men desperate to find it.

In case it's not obvious why I'm not condemning corporate medicine as a nest of vipers, that's because all capitalist industries have done this sort of thing. Each and every last one of them, including luxury industries. For example, many European alcohol companies once mixed additives in their drinks that were known to be harmful and made many people sick. This was in Europe, not during the time of prohibition. How would you feel if a Muslim cleric cited that factoid to claim that Islam is right to ban alcohol? I kind of feel the same way about the argument that corporate medicine is "bad".

Conspiracy theorists are frequently invoking the whole "follow the money" thing, as if just because money can be made from something it is automatically questionable. Just because drug companies make money off of vaccines should not be taken as a sign that those vaccines are somehow bad. After all, people have to be paid to do work, and if people do not get paid, work that cannot be done by individuals working in their free time simply is not going to happen.

[Travis B.]

The thing is that we have a long track record of making vaccines, and they clearly have shown themselves to not be thalidomide-tier oopsies with very few exceptions (probably the only exceptions I can think of is the dengue vaccine that they had to retract because it turned out to act like the "first hit" from dengue that would cause dengue hemorrhagic fever on subsequent dengue infection, and that they have stopped giving people (except IIRC people in the military?) smallpox vaccinations because they on rare but non-negligible circumstances (i.e. more frequently than the side effects with the Johnson & Johnson or the AstraZeneca) have severe, potentially fatal side effects, not just to the person given it, but also to people around them).

No common, horrible side-effects are known yet for these vaccines, and they have been analyzed by researchers the world over. Even if they have some side-effects in the future, how could antivaxxers know what those are?

Antivaxxers have no reasonable grounds on which to question the safety of vaccines, the dengue vaccine and the smallpox vaccine I mentioned aside. They are simply going "but but but they must be bad because that's how I feel and I heard they were bad from someone else and they must be right".

[rotting bones]

In case it's not obvious why I'm not condemning corporate medicine as a nest of vipers, that's because all capitalist industries have done this sort of thing. Each and every last one of them, including luxury industries. For example, many European alcohol companies once mixed additives in their drinks that were known to be harmful and made many people sick. This was in Europe, not during the time of prohibition. How would you feel if a Muslim cleric cited that factoid to claim that Islam is right to ban alcohol? I kind of feel the same way about the argument that corporate medicine is "bad".

BTW evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_diet ... ne_scandal

More recent than I expected too.

Conspiracy theorists are frequently invoking the whole "follow the money" thing, as if just because money can be made from something it is automatically questionable. Just because drug companies make money off of vaccines should not be taken as a sign that those vaccines are somehow bad. After all, people have to be paid to do work, and if people do not get paid, work that cannot be done by individuals working in their free time simply is not going to happen.

It's a shame because these are proto-Marxist arguments. I suppose even if these people had been scientific socialists, their paranoiac tendencies would slip through now and then.

Antivaxxers have no reasonable grounds on which to question the safety of vaccines, the dengue vaccine and the smallpox vaccine I mentioned aside. They are simply going "but but but they must be bad because that's how I feel and I heard they were bad from someone else and they must be right".

If they have no reason to doubt the vaccines, antivaxxers are bad even if there are unknown side-effects. They would have made the same claims even if the side-effects had not existed.

[Travis B.]

In case it's not obvious why I'm not condemning corporate medicine as a nest of vipers, that's because all capitalist industries have done this sort of thing. Each and every last one of them, including luxury industries. For example, many European alcohol companies once mixed additives in their drinks that were known to be harmful and made many people sick. This was in Europe, not during the time of prohibition. How would you feel if a Muslim cleric cited that factoid to claim that Islam is right to ban alcohol? I kind of feel the same way about the argument that corporate medicine is "bad".

BTW evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_diet ... ne_scandal

More recent than I expected too.

The classic example from the days of yore was the adulterating of wine with lead acetate to make it taste sweeter.

[Nortaneous]

So yes, corporate medicine is bad, but it doesn't follow that antivaxxers are good. Antivaxxers could be good if the whole Covid thing is a hoax. To me, this seems about as probable as the whole "earth" thing being a hoax. Neither are impossible, so I guess this is one reason to tolerate antivaxxers, though perhaps not the best one.

Or if the vaccine causes long-term issues, or if any future vaccine causes long-term issues, or if fully legitimizing the power of the state to inject things into everyone's body causes long-term issues, or if strengthening the relevant political principles causes long-term issues.

No, we should not bring back laws against fornication and sodomy, because those kinds of things tend to make things like AIDS worse by making them become secret.

Whereas no one can print a vaccine card. (If you propose an expansion of the surveillance state to deal with this, will expansion of the surveillance state really not cause long-term issues?)

The thing is that we have a long track record of making vaccines, and they clearly have shown themselves to not be thalidomide-tier oopsies with very few exceptions (probably the only exceptions I can think of is the dengue vaccine that they had to retract because it turned out to act like the "first hit" from dengue that would cause dengue hemorrhagic fever on subsequent dengue infection, and that they have stopped giving people (except IIRC people in the military?) smallpox vaccinations because they on rare but non-negligible circumstances (i.e. more frequently than the side effects with the Johnson & Johnson or the AstraZeneca) have severe, potentially fatal side effects, not just to the person given it, but also to people around them).

Not only are vaccines relatively new, they were popularized in the era when FDR ruled the airwaves, and still retain a lot of that aura today. (Nobody wants to force people to take aspirin. Or even lose weight. A handful of politicians in places like NYC campaign against sugary drinks, but that's political theater.)

Epidemiology is hard - nobody knew until recently that soursops are neurotoxic!* - and finding honest and comprehensive information is harder, especially when people who know enough about the issue are likely to reason that the general public shouldn't be. It's extremely unlikely that vaccines cause autism, but if they did, what would be different? Autism isn't as bad as polio or measles, and Fauci knows his Plato. Are there any time-traveling historians in the audience?

Besides, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Is it really worth it to secure airplane cockpits? It had to be 9/10/01 sometime...

* In some countries, people make allegedly medicinal teas out of the leaves of plants in the soursop family. Those countries have elevated rates of atypical Parkinsonism due to the neurotoxic activity of annonacin. The fruits also contain annonacin, but in lower concentrations, and I'm not sure what the dose-response curve looks like.

The classic example from the days of yore was the adulterating of wine with lead acetate to make it taste sweeter.

Those time-traveling historians could bring plenty more. Epidemiology is hard!

[rotting bones]

Or if the vaccine causes long-term issues, or if any future vaccine causes long-term issues,

These are bad reasons:

If they have no reason to doubt the vaccines, antivaxxers are bad even if there are unknown side-effects. They would have made the same claims even if the side-effects had not existed.

Like you said before, this is a state of emergency.

or if fully legitimizing the power of the state to inject things into everyone's body causes long-term issues,

I don't think that's how this law would be interpreted even if Travis B.'s proposal were followed. If there were a government that could force this interpretation through all checks and balances, there is no telling what it could do. It could invoke self-defense to destroy its political enemies.

or if strengthening the relevant political principles causes long-term issues.

This is a good reason. It's also in line with what I said at the very beginning.

[Travis B.]

So yes, corporate medicine is bad, but it doesn't follow that antivaxxers are good. Antivaxxers could be good if the whole Covid thing is a hoax. To me, this seems about as probable as the whole "earth" thing being a hoax. Neither are impossible, so I guess this is one reason to tolerate antivaxxers, though perhaps not the best one.

Or if the vaccine causes long-term issues, or if any future vaccine causes long-term issues, or if fully legitimizing the power of the state to inject things into everyone's body causes long-term issues, or if strengthening the relevant political principles causes long-term issues.

This is half hypothetical fear-mongering and half "but but but suveillance state bad"...

No, we should not bring back laws against fornication and sodomy, because those kinds of things tend to make things like AIDS worse by making them become secret.

Whereas no one can print a vaccine card. (If you propose an expansion of the surveillance state to deal with this, will expansion of the surveillance state really not cause long-term issues?)

One should have to present a vaccine card or provide documentation from one's doctor as to why one cannot be vaccinated to participate in society. After all, if one is not vaccinated, one is a threat to the public simply by interacting with them.

The thing is that we have a long track record of making vaccines, and they clearly have shown themselves to not be thalidomide-tier oopsies with very few exceptions (probably the only exceptions I can think of is the dengue vaccine that they had to retract because it turned out to act like the "first hit" from dengue that would cause dengue hemorrhagic fever on subsequent dengue infection, and that they have stopped giving people (except IIRC people in the military?) smallpox vaccinations because they on rare but non-negligible circumstances (i.e. more frequently than the side effects with the Johnson & Johnson or the AstraZeneca) have severe, potentially fatal side effects, not just to the person given it, but also to people around them).

Not only are vaccines relatively new, they were popularized in the era when FDR ruled the airwaves, and still retain a lot of that aura today. (Nobody wants to force people to take aspirin. Or even lose weight. A handful of politicians in places like NYC campaign against sugary drinks, but that's political theater.)

Thing is, we give vaccines to millions of people every year, so whatever negative effects they have should be quite apparent. And the difference between campaigning against sugary drinks is that vaccination protects people around oneself that are not vaccinated, for one reason or another, or for whom vaccination failed to take effect. Anyways, vaccination is why millions of people each year do not die from smallpox and are not paralyzed by polio, amongst other things.

Epidemiology is hard - nobody knew until recently that soursops are neurotoxic!* - and finding honest and comprehensive information is harder, especially when people who know enough about the issue are likely to reason that the general public shouldn't be. It's extremely unlikely that vaccines cause autism, but if they did, what would be different? Autism isn't as bad as polio or measles, and Fauci knows his Plato. Are there any time-traveling historians in the audience?

Thing is, the guy who posited the supposed connection between vaccines and autism essentially made it up. It was not "extremely unlikely", rather it was positively fraudulent.

The classic example from the days of yore was the adulterating of wine with lead acetate to make it taste sweeter.

Those time-traveling historians could bring plenty more. Epidemiology is hard!

Thing is, they figured out that lead was toxic back in the days of the Romans. It is just that the people making wine, and the people making plumbing, and the people making leaded gasoline, and the people making paint could not care less.

[Nortaneous]

Like you said before, this is a state of emergency.

There are degrees. The Chicoms haven't invaded. And to the extent that it was, it isn't. Vaccines are widely available. People can be responsible to the degree that they're willing. The remaining concerns are lack of vaccine effectiveness (which, since they seem to work very well in the short term, is a logistics issue) and mutational escape. What else?

No authority anywhere in the West has the necessary charisma to eradicate COVID in one country, and I doubt any authority anywhere has the competence and attention span to eradicate it worldwide.

This is half hypothetical fear-mongering and half "but but but suveillance state bad"...

The surveillance state is, in fact, bad, and the slippery slope is real.

One should have to present a vaccine card or provide documentation from one's doctor as to why one cannot be vaccinated to participate in society. After all, if one is not vaccinated, one is a threat to the public simply by interacting with them.

What's the point of vaccines, then, if they provide so little protection to the vaccinated?

Thing is, we give vaccines to millions of people every year, so whatever negative effects they have should be quite apparent.

No, this makes epidemiology harder. At least with annonacin you can investigate how much tea people drink!

Thing is, they figured out that lead was toxic back in the days of the Romans. It is just that the people making wine, and the people making plumbing, and the people making leaded gasoline, and the people making paint could not care less.

Atrazine still isn't banned in the US, for one example.