79248cm/s

Vaccination does work and I am a strong proponent of it, but I think there is a fine line some people don't get which I think is why vaccination skepticism continues. I do find it a bit disturbing how there are many parents who will administer any kind of treatment to their child just because a "professional" advises it. I remember seeing middle school kids being given aspirin like candy but when I reported it in a memo, most parents interviewed didn't see an issue with it. Really? I don't like the kind of mindset some people have when promoting vaccinations to argue simply "do it or you're dumb". I like what Garrus did, the best way to counter skepticism of vaccination is to explain it. Skepticism should never be berated as that is a component of scientific pursuits and a sign the parents care about their child. Skepticism should be matched with logic and fact, because the irony is that other methods like shutting down or belittling the other side just spurs on more meat for conspiracy theorists to go on about. And in reference to Solarchos' comment, I don't think bringing in another conspiracy theory exactly helps to negate the first.

When some people start saying vaccinations should be mandatory or the parents written up for child abuse even I push the brakes on hard. People should be strongly encouraged to take advantage of vaccinations but it should never be forced, because then who knows what other treatments are forced on us simply because some technocratic decree. Best example are lobotomy.

NWSiaCB

over 1 year ago

79248cm/s said:

Vaccination does work and I am a strong proponent of it, but I think there is a fine line some people don't get which I think is why vaccination skepticism continues. I do find it a bit disturbing how there are many parents who will administer any kind of treatment to their child just because a "professional" advises it. I remember seeing middle school kids being given aspirin like candy but when I reported it in a memo, most parents interviewed didn't see an issue with it. Really? I don't like the kind of mindset some people have when promoting vaccinations to argue simply "do it or you're dumb". I like what Garrus did, the best way to counter skepticism of vaccination is to explain it. Skepticism should never be berated as that is a component of scientific pursuits and a sign the parents care about their child. Skepticism should be matched with logic and fact, because the irony is that other methods like shutting down or belittling the other side just spurs on more meat for conspiracy theorists to go on about. And in reference to Solarchos' comment, I don't think bringing in another conspiracy theory exactly helps to negate the first.

When some people start saying vaccinations should be mandatory or the parents written up for child abuse even I push the brakes on hard. People should be strongly encouraged to take advantage of vaccinations but it should never be forced, because then who knows what other treatments are forced on us simply because some technocratic decree. Best example are lobotomy.

The problem with that argument is that while you mention the difference between a healthy degree of skepticism and solipsistically just plugging your ears and refusing to listen to anything, you don't set any standard for that determination and there is no logical connection to your conclusion.

To take the logic your conclusion uses reductio ad absurdum, why do we let "doctors" and "the police" tell us that feeding our children rat poison is bad for them just because there's documented evidence of it? Why do we hold that parents that feed their children rat poison are "mistreating" their children or "attempting murder"? If we don't stop them here, it's a slippery slope to them telling us drinking lead-based paint is bad for our health!

It's not like there isn't real-world evidence of lack of vaccinations leading to outbreaks of epidemic diseases once thought contained. Parents are making choices risking not their lives, or even "just" the lives of their children, which they are risking, but the lives of other people's families. Keep in mind that herd immunity is necessary to protect other children who, due to compromised immune systems, would be at risk of death taking a vaccine, themselves.

However, even if you ignore that and want to go full-on, "people should be free to be as stupid and suicidal as they want to" route, that's also settled case law from cases like challenges to the constitutionality of laws requiring seat belts or motorcyclists to wear crash helmets: The state can make laws pertaining to self-destructive behaviors because no such harm is ever truly self-contained. It is harmful to society as a whole to have people taking up hospital beds because they couldn't be bothered to take rudimentary care of themselves, much less the loss to society as a whole for losing what was at least presumably a productive working member of society.

There absolutely is a place for skepticism - either in the legal process for what actually becomes mandated (even in cases of supposed overreach of "Nanny State" politics regarding high-calorie food and drinks, there's a lot of money at stake and funding lobbying those same politicians such that much less gets done than is talked about), or in applying that skepticism scientifically.

Outside of the furor, the paper the vaccination scare was based on didn't say "all vaccines are a government conspiracy to kill your children", trying to create a study to test if there were negative side effects to a common drug is the healthy way to go about skepticism... they just did it in a deliberately shoddy manner, using a too-small sample size (12 kids), and the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. The people running the study were funded by someone suing vaccine makers to give them evidence in court. Even IF the findings had been true, however, it wasn't "all vaccines cause autism", its findings were, supposedly, "this particular binding agent in MMR vaccines specifically may lead to higher rates of autism", and when the furor rose up, even after debunking the paper's findings, they switched out that binding agent, which in any rational world, would have made any lingering doubts caused by that paper die down.

Which gets to the problem of that "skepticism of technocrats" - it's not like you can refuse to listen to absolutely everyone, so people are choosing who the "wrong" people to listen to are. Why are the people who say that all the "technocrats" are wrong, who are generally just celebrities, people who you think are much more qualified to listen to about medical advice than the people who actually had to get an education and prove their mastery of their field to earn their credentials?

The only reason that didn't is because anti-"technocrat" hysteria was a rich vein for the unscrupulous to mine for views or means of promoting their own patented snake oil cures sold right through their radio show.

Updated over 1 year ago

79248cm/s

over 1 year ago

NWSiaCB said:

...

You may not think it is necessary to explain anything... and that is exactly the kind of attitude that allows the propagation of these conspiracy theories even to this day. It is as simple as that. It is tiring, but there is never a reason that educating people is somehow worse than forcing or shaming people into submission. It may not seem reasonable but it will backfire as we see here. It is something I learned quickly from my work, if the goal is to manipulate or convince people you have to understand how they think and cater to it, even if you think you shouldn't have to. If your goal is just to convince yourself you are right, then of course you don't have to consider anything outside of your perspective, but nothing in the world will change as a result. What is the goal? To simply be superior in perspective, or to actually get people to do something?

Science by nature is decentralized, I'm not sure where you are going with the snake oil stuff. Sophistry unlike science involves the group-think mindset that lead to the end of Socrates. Science does not simply believe any one individual or a conglomerate of associations for who they are, it only is a process where we can systematically observe the world. The scientist does not matter as much as what he is presenting. Which again goes back to my main point that there is never an excuse to ignore education for technocracy. You don't need to make someone a doctor to understand the value of medical practices, but you are unlikely to convince anyone of your expertise if your rely simply on your title. What many people don't seem to realize is that most people don't really care about your background as much as you and your peers. Persuasion requires a higher level of reasoning than a resume or a club membership.

People who believe things simply because a figure of authority tells them without reason are bound to believe anything they are told. Those kind of people are the kind we find to be victims of cults and we would be taking steps backward if we cultivated that kind of mindset as a default setting for the layman. Remember, the guy who started the whole vaccine scare had a medical doctorate. No one is immune to scrutiny, it isn't reserved for one issue and not another, it applies everywhere and at all times. You have to fight misconceptions with education.

NWSiaCB

over 1 year ago

79248cm/s said:

People who believe things simply because a figure of authority tells them without reason are bound to believe anything they are told. Those kind of people are the kind we find to be victims of cults and we would be taking steps backward if we cultivated that kind of mindset as a default setting for the layman. No one is immune to scrutiny, it isn't reserved for one issue and not another, it applies everywhere and at all times. You have to fight misconceptions with education.

Again, there's just no reasonable standard to differentiate reasonable skepticism from solipsism, here.

If the American Dental Association (I.E. an authority on dental care) tells you that brushing your teeth with toothpaste after every meal prevents cavities and that this advice is backed up by decades of peer-reviewed science, and the weird hobo living in a pile of dead animals in a dark alley tells you that you should only brush your teeth with dead rats because it will appease the rat god and give you incisors that will never break, I certainly hope you place more trust in the people who have earned their credentials and have their facts checked.

If anything, the people who reflexively disbelieve anything authority figures tell them, and believe anything said by some person they like on YouTube or talk radio is arguably far more into a cult mentality than the person who trusts peer-reviewed medical papers.

79248cm/s said:

Remember, the guy who started the whole vaccine scare had a medical doctorate.

HAD would be an operative word, here. That guy was convicted of fraud, lost his license, and lost all credibility, and hence, authority.

Again, yes, there is a place for skepticism, and one definitely shouldn't take everything a single scientist finds in a single report to be an untouchable truth just because it "seems sciency", but there's a reasonable limit to how far skepticism goes. Peer review is skepticism, that's why most scientific publications take their peer review process very seriously. Any scientific paper should be backed up by further scientific experimentation to ensure that the evidence gathered by others backs up the conclusions drawn by the first experiment. This is where you find healthy skepticism of hearing just 'a study found X' in the morning news having much meaning until you find out more about the nature of the study, and if it is backed up by further experimentation. That skepticism, however, doesn't extend to refusing to believe anything no matter how much corroboration those things gain.

And yes, expecting people to follow every study for everything they hear is a lot of work. That's why there should be someone who does that work for other people, and simplifies the process. Some sort of group that can speak with some kind of authority on their subject matter, and where trust in their authority can be constantly checked by people in their field who have a vested interest in maintaining the credibility of people in their profession.

There are good reasons to be skeptical of authority and good ways to test that skepticism, but blanket refusal to listen is neither.

And this really gets to the big problem, which is that, as previously mentioned, unless you're SO skeptical of everything everyone says that you're living as a hobo trying to shiv anyone who gets close to you, you're believing in the words of someone and operating in society. This line of argument is so dangerous because it's just an excuse to say that you can believe whoever you want to believe no matter how massive the mountain of objective evidence is stacked against you. I mean, why are you still believing in a round Earth just because people TELL YOU that there are satellites and stuff? Obviously, ships appearing mast-first over the horizon is a government conspiracy to hide the truth about the giant turtle and four elephants, man!

What this argument supports is not "healthy skepticism", but "only hearing what you want to hear".

79248cm/s said:

Science by nature is decentralized, I'm not sure where you are going with the snake oil stuff.

And this, again, is part of why there needs to be authority to designate which people are trustworthy purveyors of medical advice. Before laws on truthful disclosure of ingredients, patent "snake oil" medicine was touted by "medical professionals" in spite of basically being watered-down whiskey with some opium in it.

Likewise, modern-day snake oil salesmen will tell you that fluoride in the water is a Communist mind control plot, then helpfully sell you their own patented water purification system. The entire "vaccines cause autism" scare was created by a study funded by people with a financial interest in the outcome of that study.

As if there wasn't enough reason to trust the ADA that toothpaste was good for your teeth, you should definitely stop and check the hobo's credentials if his plans to brush your teeth with dead rats involves a special offer to buy some special "100% organic dead rat festering with genuine pure bubonic plague - accept no substitutes!" from him at the low, low price of just 4 payments of $99.99!

79248cm/s said:

Sophistry unlike science involves the group-think mindset that lead to the end of Socrates.

I'm not sure where this comes from or how it's relevant, but OK...

Socrates wasn't killed by science or a group-think mindset in any way other than a group thinking that he was a political rival whose rhetoric was dangerous and possibly seditious since he was denouncing Athenian democracy and praising the enemy city-state that was threatening to conquer them.

79248cm/s said:

You may not think it is necessary to explain anything... and that is exactly the kind of attitude that allows the propagation of these conspiracy theories even to this day. It is as simple as that. It is tiring, but there is never a reason that educating people is somehow worse than forcing or shaming people into submission. It may not seem reasonable but it will backfire as we see here. It is something I learned quickly from my work, if the goal is to manipulate or convince people you have to understand how they think and cater to it, even if you think you shouldn't have to. If your goal is just to convince yourself you are right, then of course you don't have to consider anything outside of your perspective, but nothing in the world will change as a result. What is the goal? To simply be superior in perspective, or to actually get people to do something?

I'm a little confused by this part, being as I did take the time to explain far more than anyone else. If I just want to convince myself I'm right, then I probably could have saved myself a lot of time by just thinking what I know rather than taking an hour to type it out.

Beyond that, if you're trying to say that everyone should respond to any form of criticism or disbelief by sitting down and writing out a referenced essay on the subject, well... There's a saying that gets tossed around regarding global warming science that goes, "It takes a scientist 30 pages of peer-reviewed study to refute what a charlatan can say in 10 seconds." Asking for there to be nobody in all of society who will respond to someone making an argument they've already heard dozens of times before by just dismissing it is functionally demanding that literally every single person in society have infinite patience. Maybe it's not ideal, but the thoughts and emotions of all of humanity are way more decentralized than science.

Beyond that, there is again the problem of your not setting any reasonable limit to these claims. There are many people out there that throw out arguments in bad faith, are trolling, or are just insane. If someone comes in brushing their teeth with their dead rat, and saying that listening to THE MAN and "authority" about what to brush your teeth with, you're probably going to do yourself better by giving up on reasoning with that person, and just staying away from the bubonic plague boils he's flicking out in his spittle.

With regards to shaming, I remember one of my mother's old bosses had a son who was a problem child when he was very young. The instant he was out of sight, he would strip naked, sneak outside, climb onto his father's truck, and start playing with his penis in full view of the neighborhood. This isn't exactly the kind of behavior a civil society can withstand having constantly happen among adults. The very basis of social interaction is built upon the notion that there is a negative consequence for wild misbehavior.

Shaming absolutely does have its place in society. Fear of shaming and loss of credibility is supposed to be the first line of defense stopping any good scientist from risking publishing bad science. Fear of shaming is what the First Amendment keeps as the counterbalance to Freedom of Speech - that you can say what you want, but saying something really stupid will in people telling you that you're really stupid.

That's not to say it's an absolute good that cannot and does not get abused by any stretch, but again, there has to be a reasonable limit to what arguments get taken seriously, and which ones should just get the people who espouse them mocked.