> Instead, he's raising the subtler (and I think reasonable) issue of whether despite the societal benefit there may be individuals within the population for wh

> Instead, he's raising the subtler (and I think reasonable) issue of whether despite the societal benefit there may be individuals within the population for whom the risk/reward ratio is reversed. FWIW, this is a variant of a debate tactic known as "just asking questions" (on rationalwiki) or the "loaded question" (wikipedia). I won't accuse ~Varcht of doing this intentionally, because I don't know them well enough to assume bad faith, but the end result is the same: the question, appearing innocent enough, is based on false premises and derails the conversation. It's especially common coming from people who have been misinformed on some controversial subject and have developed vague doubts towards established science on that subject, but don't have a sufficient library of information at-hand to argue directly. Instead, they just try to raise the same doubts in others. Their conversations follow the form, "Okay, but what if...?" It works because people in civilized forums don't want to be seen as unkind towards people asking innocent-looking questions. For instance, here we are being distracted by ~Varcht's 1-in-100 question, but the patently false statement they started with is being ignored. To bring this back to the subject of the thread, ~Varcht unintentionally -- I assume -- made themselves an excellent example of a victim of the modern problems of misinformation. I would wager that they don't regularly read the National Enquirer, and probably wouldn't believe most or any of the stuff in one, but here they are to raise the spectre of the dangers of vaccination -- a popular belief, I would add, that kills people, especially young children. So that we don't let ourselves become too emotionally detached from the consequences people suffer from this pandemic of misinformation, here's a reminder of what infant whooping cough looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3oZrMGDMMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3oZrMGDMMw > If your goal is persuasion, I think it's better to engage rather than resorting to sarcastic responses of "Good job, HN". Sometimes persuasion is a reasonable goal. Other times, bad ideas should be mercilessly mocked before they have an opportunity to germinate in fertile ground. You were around here then, do you remember what HN's attitude towards established science was shortly after the CRU email compromise? But yeah, I could've left that last part off. But I can't -- and shouldn't -- be dispassionate all the time, either. > Your comments are usually excellent, but I thought this one fell short. Thanks, and fair 'nuff.