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I have a very smart friend who is also a talented decoupler, who could easily be a very quality contributer here if dealing with Culture War issues didn't make him bleed from the eyes. He is literally the only person I know whose Facebook posts about politics did not make me lose respect for him. Over the years, we have had a number of conversations about contentious CW topics that flirted with the border of Adversarial Collaboration, long detailed discussions handled with fairness, civility, and mutual respect.
Until the topic of student loan forgiveness came up. That discussion was unusually heated. He seemed almost frantic, heated about PPP loan forgiveness hypocrites and just not giving the expected degree of decoupled consideration for arguments about how the loan forgiveness was an overall terrible policy. He seemed personally invested, felt personally attacked, in a way he hadn't in conversations about abortion or gun control.
The thing is, my friend is a teacher. Education is a big factor in his identity. He has taught maybe a thousand students who might benefit from the forgiveness plan. Attacks on that plan are an attack on his class identity. Politics is the mind-killer, and it is a sad fact that a rationalist's Art is most likely to abandon him when he needs it most (or, rather, he will fail the Art). And so my arguments sparked an uncontrolled emotional response that was missing from other, less identity-laden topics.
The second thing is, I've been on the other side of that coin, back when we had our multi-day deep dive into the gun control literature. Gun control hits me emotionally as an attack on my class identity. When I hear a gun control proposal, before I hear a single specific detail or spend a second considering merits, some lizard part of my brain interprets it as "Fuck you, your father, your father's father, and your father's father's father". (Does the word "father" still mean anything to you?) I've begged off having spontaneous discussions about it in person, even with close family, because I don't want to spike myself into rage and other unpleasant feelings. During that deep dive, my excellent friend was so calm, fair and rational that he overrode that concern, and I ended up learning a lot and having a great time.
And I'm thinking about this now, because I notice a similar reaction to the trans discussion downthread. The idea that my children might be brainwashed into taking evolutionarily self-destructive choices, and I can't even attempt to oppose it without facing the full wrath of the modern State, kindles a pre-rational, animal panic/fury response. I find myself getting heated to an unusual degree just thinking about it. I don't think I'm particularly "anti-trans". I was willing to be accepting two decades ago, when I first learned it was even a thing. But something about the thought that the phenomenon might hit my kids triggers an atavistic survival instinct. That reaction doesn't trigger when I consider my son dressing like David Bowie, or my daughter playing sports. It doesn't happen when a peer goes trans. It triggers at the thought of one of the two corporeal incarnations of my DNA and memes getting sucked into a fraught psychological memeplex, and particularly at the thought of them being medically sterilized.
Imagine an alternate world where any time a kid expressed suicidal ideation, government employees would firmly nudge them towards euthanasia, and would jail you as a parent for protesting. That's roughly the level of emotional hit - some part of me considers this an existential threat.
But what are the odds? 0.3%? That's not that much worse than the odds of childhood cancer, or other kind of unexpected death that a healthy mind doesn't overmuch worry about, and deals with gracefully if it comes. But now it's apparently something more like nearly 2%? That hits me in the Papa-Bear-Who-Wants-Grandkids-In-Space-Forever. And it seems very likely that a lot of that is social contagion or could otherwise be wildly reduced with a minimal degree of skepticism towards youth fads.
So, two points. One, I think it might behoove activist types (assuming we're not in pure conflict theory) to try to notice when one of their pushes is hitting this sort of reaction and figure out a path to undermine or alleviate it.
Secondly, a question for the community: What gets you fiercely activated, beyond what you can rationally justify? What CW issues feels like molten hot war to the hilt, where your instincts fight to throw aside all reason and charity? Any thoughts about why?
Why not just get vaccinated? I also thought it was kind if bullshit but did it to avoid running my social life.
Are you concerned about health risks or is it a principle?
At first I just saw it as very unnecessary, since I had already had covid in the summer of 2020 and it had been harmless. By the winter of that year the vaccines were out but I was still feeling safe without one. Then everyone went crazy as described above, plus the creepy politics and media campaigns, and from there on you might call it principle or just spite.
The whole thing caught me off guard; I never saw the social pressure and the social ruin coming until was already too late. I had mistakenly assumed that people around me were running on mistake theory and that my reasons might matter to them. Silly me, it was conflict theory all along and I had strayed into the enemy camp.
But had I seen it coming, I would have done the same anyways. Only with more firing back right away.
Vaccine safety didn't factor into it for me.
Thanks for answering honestly. I get this sense from most educated anti-vaxxers I talk to. I don't feel the same way but I understand how people would, and definitely think that the lockdowns were insane and over the top.
Yeah luckily I was organizing some far-left local dance groups that totally freaked out - helped me see the writing on the wall very early. I wonder if people who don't associate with leftists just didn't understand how bad it would be?
Although apparently it's not very popular here, my calculus was more like - is it worth destroying all these important relationships I've built over the years, or risk taking a relatively untested vaccine? The choice was clear for me.
You mention principle, what is the principle here? If vaccine safety wasn't a problem, do you place your right to avoid government mandated drugs higher than social values?
For me the principle involved in refusing the vaccine was simple- white hot rage at people who took the pandemic seriously. The hypochondriacs of the world had already infringed against me, and now they dared to lash out at me for not dancing along to their tune on imagined risks?
There were a lot of deaths. What is your standard for taking a risk seriously?
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Quite possibly. I associate with them plenty, but I figured this was something that people were still allowed to make up their own mind about. Yet another topic on which some may have opinions they consider morally significant, but which in the end remains a private matter. Like electric cars, or vegetarianism, or what kind of companies you buy from.
There are several principles at work. One I might charitably call bayesian thinking, or less charitably being a stubborn ass who'd rather trust his lying eyes than any number of wise mouths speaking words of wisdom. Another is not succumbing to unjustified social pressure so as to not validate people and trends who would wield it. Another is not playing along with government policies I disagree with, to the extend that I can afford to. I could come up with more, but really, spite is the most of it. And yeah, I draw something of an arbitrary line at anything being mandated to go under my skin, or be carried on my person, or anything other than lie at home in a drawer where I can forget about it. That just seems like the government overstepping its bounds, severely, and not something to be done unless there were no other way. And in the case of covid anything down to "do nothing at all and come through it fine" was another and a preferable way.
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I would have just lied about it for as long as it benefited me. It would be impossible for anyone to prove otherwise. I'm sorry your family is like that.
I wouldn't. Stupid of me I guess, but on that point it is a principle.
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I mistakenly assumed that everyone around me regularly got flu shots and would be totally ok getting experiencing less than a second of pain to avoid harming my family. And I suppose now that the old folks are already dead from covid I shouldn't have anything to worry about-it's not like they're going to die again. But just like you, I feel like it's the principal of the thing. Choose Team Mankind or Team Virus (or, hell, Team China if you believe in lab leak theory.)
I think people should have the absolute authority to choose what goes in their arm, but if I see someone with 'death to /u/evinceo's ancestors' tattooed on their forehead, I'm going to treat them with some amount of contempt.
FWIW, both Covid shots resulted in 8-12 hours of moderately severe flu symptoms, and this seems very common among my friends and family. For those of us who had already had Covid at that point, it's more like 5-10% of a "call out sick for a week" infection for a negligible reduction to our transmission risk.
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The decision to take a vaccine can only be understood in context of (what I see as) the authoritarian push that surrounded it. I got vaccinated but would have unvaccinated myself in 2021 if I could.
From my perspective you were party to a crime in lending emotional support to a push for mandatory medical procedures. Nevertheless, I do not see you as wearing a 'dystopian social credit system and human domestication for @popocatepetl and all future humans' on your forehead. I understand that you do not believe what I believe and have a different moral ecology between your ears, and so I don't jump to assuming malice or cruel indifference on your part. I do consider it a moral failing that you do not extend the same charity to us.
During the height of the War on Terror, I remember people demonizing the tiny number of Americans who did not extend the "simple courtesy" of standing for the pledge. It's "the least" they could do. As if they were resisting the overpowering wave of social pressure out of simple desire to rest their legs.
I guess we just straight up differ here. I see it mostly in the context of what it costs (practically nothing) and what it achieves (some nonzero decrease in the chance that people get sick.) If you only care about the signaling you can always get vaccinated and not tell anyone.
I've been careful to repeatedly state my opposition to mandates, which I don't agree with. I have a personal issue with people not doing it.
If you're willing to stretch to see me as morally culpable for mandates, would you permit me to see the antivax movement as morally culpable for the FDA's extremely slow, fatally cautious rollout of the vaccines, leading to excess deaths including people I really would have preferred to remain alive?
Is there a way to vaccinate without being statistically logged as having done so? I would consider it if another 2020 Covid situation comes around.
As for getting a booster in late 2022, I see the new updated vaccines as having an unclear cost/benefit ratio (EDIT: for me and for transmission), which I did not believe in 2021. Probably not worth the $110 they apparently cost the government. I guess I'll donate another buck to the Red Cross this year, or incur the equivalent moral debt by not doing so.
You may see that as a ridiculous moral framing, which leads me to:
Yes, clearly. You can see our decision as woefully morally incorrect. On the other hand, you're not morally entitled to suspend imaginative empathy and micharacterize the intent of our decision.
Imagine were I to say "@evincio wants to create a police state because he'd rather not get a cold". That is a twin of "@Southkraut doesn't want to experience less than a second of pain to avoid killing my relatives". The statements assume that the subject accepts a premise of the speaker's — that Covid measures are a slippery slope to a police state, that not vaccinating will lead to @Southkraut killing people — and frame the subject's decision in the most uncharitable way possible.
@Southkraut may not be able to articulate the principle behind his actions. Those principles may be dead wrong. And yet it is clear from his resistance that it was not out being miserly with his time (thirty seconds walking to the pharmacy counter the last time he swung through CVS) or unwilling to endure the pinch in the arm. This is obvious enough that I feel failing to see it is willful, which is what I'm responding against.
I guess I also don't buy that avoiding a non-mandatory vaccination is in any way resisting the imposition of a police state.
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Choose team liberty over team coercion. Choose team bayesian inference over team blind obedience. Choose team calm over team panic. Choose team economy over team lockdown. We can all spin this any way we like.
I'm really not sure what you're saying here, except for the surface-level reading which seems both obvious and very unlikely to occur.
IMO past lockdowns permanently increased liberty in the future, by shifting the default from office to remote work, where applicable.
The previous arrangement was plain coercion (just look at the management class still trying to fight back occasionally, despite workers clearly preferring their freedom). Which actually affected lives, to a drastic extent. Lockdowns were lukewarm, and very temporary.
Same here; it could've only increased the pace of change long-term. Killing/damaging obsolete sectors of the economy like physical retail is good.
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Same, but please also make good decisions, not just decisions based on vibes.
What does that have to do with getting a shot?
I was hamhandedly drawing an equivalence, ie, a very expensive signal to show that you don't care about me and mine. Which is fine. I don't want to coerce you into caring about who you hurt. But it might affect my decision to invite you to parties, yeah?
Consider the pledge of allegiance-US school kids recite it every day. Compared to getting a yearly shot, this is an astounding amount of time, and a much clearer signal of conformity. I assume you're US-based, did you refuse that too?
And you never did mention if you got your flu shots.
I never got a flu shot. Why would I? I'm neither old nor immunocompromised.
Here's my good decision: I don't worry about what's not a problem. The flu is not a problem. It comes, it goes, its effects are negligible. Covid was not a problem. It came, it went, its effects were negligible. Nobody I know had any problems from covid more serious than flu symptoms, no matter how sickly or old they were. Yes, damn my lying eyes, the cost is low even for small benefits so just get the shot you troglodyte, and again as per the actual topic of this sub-thread: No. There is an ongoing conflict here, and I will not accommodate the opposition by retreating into mistake theory while they sit on their conflict theory gains.
Getting the shot, especially when there's no need for it, validates the ideological crusaders and policy-makers and nudges the overton window in their favor. Since their policies and ideologies would give away great amounts of freedom, prosperity and social trust in exchange for marginal protection from a fairly harmless virus, and no just "getting a shot" cannot be separated from this memeplex, I would rather spite them for all the harm they've done than cooperate to attain some minor benefit.
Do you care about me and mine? All that I can see is that both care about how our societies behave, where you are afraid of society's vulnerability to viruses and I'm afraid of society's vulnerability to totalitarianism/social engineering/witch hunts.
You assume incorrectly.
Because A) getting the flu can suck even if you're young and B) you might infect a child or elderly person, or infect someone who does.
I suspect you've had colds rather than the flu. When I was young I had a flu which kicked my ass. Though I'd actually been vaccinated, so I suppose that's not the strongest argument for vaccination!
Well not for those who didn't die I suppose.
Your anecdote; mine is that people I cared about died.
My initial post regarding the face tattoo wasn't conflict theory enough?
Let me get this straight: the insurmountably small protection you get from a covid shot is negligible, but the insurmountably small influence on policy you exert by getting one isn't?
This is hard sentiment to sympathize with, because you're hurting everyone to spite them. This is the type of thing I was comparing to a face tat. Or spitting in people's hamburgers because you hate your boss at McDonald's.
I would prefer that y'all not get sick, if that matters to ya.
I see 'surrendering to a virus' as just as dangerous a meme as what you've listed. We are mankind and we make shit extinct, damn the consequences.
That might explain some of the disconnect then. Maybe you live somewhere where the lockdowns were truly draconian. Stateside they, well, weren't. Unfortunately, having not actually imposed a lockdown from the top down, nobody had the proper authority to lift the lockdown either, so you've still got some folks for whom 2020 never ended, which is its own kind of problem, while the rest of us have long since resumed our lives.
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