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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33221 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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No matter what position you hold on Covid, you almost necessarily must believe at least some conspiracy theory.

I think there's a third position- that the elite and decision-makers really just did not know how to handle it, and their various decisions and mistakes were more them running around like chickens with their heads cut off. That would stand in opposition to the more conspiratorial claim of them being strategic about using Covid response for ulterior motives, which I've never bought into. They want people going to work and buying stuff, they don't want to destroy the economy simply because they are evil. These measures, bad and ineffective as they may be, were not motivated by a greater plan for social reform.

I would consider that to be a non-conspiratorial approach to opposing Covid measures.

You said it better than I could.

COVID measures are adequately explained by politics-as-usual. Once the options picked up a political framing, evidence took a backseat.

Conversely, lockdown/mandate skepticism is also down to normal factors. No conspiracy necessary.

I think there's a third position- that the elite and decision-makers really just did not know how to handle it, and their various decisions and mistakes were more them running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Which still necessitates the conspiracy theory that they falsely claimed certainty to goad the public into going along with their decisions. And still means they conspired to do lockdowns. And that they had an ulterior motive. It just makes the ulterior motive very petty.

They want people going to work and buying stuff, they don't want to destroy the economy simply because they are evil.

The average government official does not personally suffer from damaging the economy, so I don't think they "want" this in any meaningful way.

It's this. My observations of Finnish decisionmakers, including in some cases direct conversations with them, basically have given me an image of a process where various politicians have, more than anything, just make the problem go away so they can get back to doing what they were planning to do or advance before the pandemic, which typically would be one or several reforms or laws that often were conclusively derailed by the pandemic, either timewise or budget-wise.

However, this then led to varying ideas of what "making the problem go away" meant at various stages; at one stage it was possible to believe that just utilizing restrictions would be sufficient to get back to normalcy, this initially looked promising when Covid numbers dropped low in summer 2020, then when you had new variants you had more restrictions, when those didn't seem to work and looked like harmful for economy (bad! if the economy is bad you can't do your projects and get thrown out!) it was easy to fall for the idea that masks are the trick to keeping people out and about while combatting the virus, when that didn't do the trick it was time to buy into the vaccine hype and believe that would make the problem go away, when the vaccine hype started getting exposed as hype and there was no more willingness for restrictions it was time for more vaccines, then vaccine passports, when that didn't work there were restrictions after all etc.

In the end, the whole process just unravelled, everyone got Omicron, the Ukraine War occupied the national headspace etc. and now there's no masks, restrictions, and almost no new vaccinations, either. Of course they could have done that from the beginning, but once the process got going, it was pretty hard to step off directly - the masks, the vaccines, the passports etc. were all presented as tools for stepping off the hamster wheel softly and indirectly, but of course they then all had their own issues. And as for just doing nothing, well... what if the Long Covid was real? Then the problem would essentially never go away - there would be a permanent constituency of people disabled by Covid and their relatives ready for the blood of the politicians who were to blame, ie. you.

Combine them with an endless amount of Parks & Rec style bureaucracy turf wars (litres of ink have been spilled in the local media about territorial struggles inside the Finnish equivalent of CDC and between the CDC-equivalent and the Ministry of Health, etc., and I've also heard stories about ministers pushing for whatever measures they have that don't affect the operations of their ministry, or alternatively might keep their people safe from Covid) and what you get is less a conspiracy and more a SNAFU.

This gets into there being a very fine line between malice and extreme recklessness. If they instituted useless and harmful lockdowns because their ideology led them to believe that they knew better than the people and that the harm caused by lockdowns is very unimportant and should be heavily discounted when considering whether to do lockdowns, they aren't "deliberately evil". But indifference to how badly the people are harmed as long as the cause is good, is itself a type of evil.

But indifference to how badly the people are harmed as long as the cause is good, is itself a type of evil.

Only if you are a consequentialist surely? If not, then doing the (edit - what you think to be the) right thing regardless of the outcome is often seen to be good in and of itself.

I'd also add that often it was the people who were asking or even demanding lockdowns. The UK for example was explicitly against lockdowns early on and only changed when MPs were inundated with thousands of emails, calls and letters demanding that they take the same actions that other nations were taking. At which point responding to demand from the public even if it is stupid is arguably at least part of what they should do.

Only if you are a consequentialist surely?

There's also a fairly well establish strain of though that holds (among other things) that bodily autonomy and freedom of movement are terminal goods, and infringing them is (deontologically) evil?

Seems like the covid response loses either way.

Then we're grappling with what to do if one (supposed) good conflicts with another (supposed) good, which is a difficult problem definitely!

But it's a different issue as to whether people who hold to non-consequentialist beliefs are doing evil if the outcome is bad. That depends on whether good is judged on intentions, actions or outcomes which is entirely subjective (and highly contested).

I'm not specifically a consequentialist for example, but I think it's a mix of all three, trying to do the right thing can result in bad outcomes, but you're still reasonably a good person if the issue was big enough that the bad outcomes are worth the risk, or were not reasonably foreseeable, or all your choices were bad and you are trying to pick the best among them.

Then we're grappling with what to do if one (supposed) good conflicts with another (supposed) good, which is a difficult problem definitely!

Being a moral deontologist means never having to say you're sorry grapple with greater goods. "Violating a person's bodily autonomy is wrong" can pretty well stand alone; cf. "The Golden Rule".

But it's a different issue as to whether people who hold to non-consequentialist beliefs are doing evil if the outcome is bad.

But you can guarantee that they are not evil within their moral framework despite the bad outcome.

Conflicting moral frameworks tend to cause bad outcomes as well, of course -- which is why one of the principles of liberal governance is to ensure that the moral framework of government be as anodyne (and unyielding) as possible, so as not to be incompatible with that of large swathes of the citizenry.

Seems fair to say that the covid response taken in it's entirety runs counter to the deontological framework of (for instance) the founding of the United States -- and thus is evil by that standard.

deontological framework of (for instance) the founding of the United States -- and thus is evil by that standard.

The theoretical deontological framework of the founding of the US or the as practiced deontological framework? Given slavery was widely accepted you could argue it is perfectly in line with how it was practiced but not with it's optimistic theory. If you can justify slavery you can certainly justify vaccination mandates after all.

Just to be clear I much prefer the optimistic theory of the founding framework and prefer that as to what founding myth should be lived up to. But I think there are enough differences that we do need to specify, as I think the founders certainly could have justified mandates and more pretty easily under the deontological framework they actually demonstrated in practice.

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