@leSving and @Graham I don’t think I ever wrote that either of you are anti -vaxxer. I don’t have a clue whether you are or not. Frankly, now that there is a vaccine that my health service advises should give some degree of protection and what’s more its free, I am happy for others to do what they wish.
That’s a good attitude, and I hope everyone stops trying to ineffectually run other people’s lives… now and forever, very much including governments that have proved that they can wreck a society for several years in a matter of months.
Personally I can’t see myself getting any more Covid shots (I had two long ago) not because I’m against them but because they are so short lived and ineffective for somebody in good health that it’s not worth the trouble to me.
Then he suddenly came out with this, which is one of the more intelligent things I have heard in many years.
Nicely compiled, especially the conclusion in last few sentences.
aart wrote:
He says it’s ok to have people believe different things, but ‘we’ just have to be ‘rational’ and we’ll then move in the right direction. But isn’t the problem with a ‘believer’ that his frame of reference is fixed and he/she will only be receptive to facts that support that frame? So how do you get ‘believers’ to convert to being rational?
I’m not sure that is his message. IMO it’s more that “we” should stop arguing our believes. Being “right” on the internet serves no purpose. If you are capable of seeing past the unproductive polarizations, then do it, instead of getting sucked up in it. It’s a bit like vaxxers and antivaxxers. Very few people are either super pro vaccines or a convinced anti-vaxxer. Most people have a perfectly relaxed relation, and don’t offer it much thought, if at all. On the internet though, people are either pro vaccines or convinced anti-vaxxer for some odd reason. The problem is that the internet is the perfect arena for “split and conquer” techniques, and is used as such all the time.
LeSving wrote:
It’s a bit like vaxxers and antivaxxers. Very few people are either super pro vaccines or a convinced anti-vaxxer. Most people have a perfectly relaxed relation, and don’t offer it much thought, if at all. On the internet though, people are either pro vaccines or convinced anti-vaxxer for some odd reason.
Generally I could not care less who gets vaccinated and who not. It’s their risk if they get ill on stuff where nobody needs to get ill anymore. If they want to expose their children to polio, measles, tetanus…
What I resent is if this concerns highly contageous diseases like Covid where a vaccination strategy was the only out of jail card for that particular crisis. The consequence of 30% + non vaccinated population by their choice was unfortunately seen in 2021/22 when we had 2 unnecessary waves which cost lifes which would 99% have been saved if those people had vaccinated themselves. Not to speak of countries where conspiracy nuts managed to “infect” 60% or more of the population. In those places I fear we shall see other consequences too, unrelated to vaccinations, such as populism and similar stuff. Even here, populism and conspiracy nuts are very much on the rise since then. And I don’t put all that down to Covid induced “brain clouds”.
By now I strictly look after my own devices and get what vaccinations I deem fit for myself and my family.
LeSving wrote:
On the internet though, people are either pro vaccines or convinced anti-vaxxer for some odd reason. The problem is that the internet is the perfect arena for “split and conquer” techniques, and is used as such all the time.
True. Also on the internet, people often are much ruder and determined to be “right” than in a direct confrontation. But primarily, the internet serves as a vehicle for populist and extremist desinformation to an extent which was never possible before. IMHO that is the main danger we are facing today and lots of current political crisis where people stop seeking consent and compromise in favour of total confrontation are caused by this. The current goings on e.g. in Washington show this brutally.
While “populist” tends to be synonymous with the election of a thick-as-a-plank politician (some current examples in the former comm bloc) it is also a pejorative term favoured by champagne socialists (also itself a pejorative term but usually wholly accurate in that usage; hypocrisy is never a nice attribute 
) so one has to be careful how one uses one label, to avoid picking up the other label…
Can we please end the covid debate? The original thread reached 10,000 posts, and it just repeats itself.
Peter wrote:
itself a pejorative term but usually wholly accurate in that usage
Yes. Pejorative terms are always accurate when you use them yourself, aren’t they?
I prefer to stay away from pejorative terms as they tend to obscure the issues and cause unnecessary polarisation. Anyway, the problem with the term “populist” is not that it is pejorative but that it is ill defined. (That’s to some extent true of most political labels, but particularly so for “populist” together with “fascist” and “communist”.)
“Populist” has indeed been picked up by socialists as a pejorative term, in response to seeing something they really don’t like: democratic process rejecting their ideas. I find it amusing.
Knowing who he was (is), I doubt it.
